Col. Routh Goshen, The Arabian Giant, 29 years old; 7 feet 10 inches high; weight 508 lbs. Born in Old Jerusalem. Routh Goshen, born Arthur James Caley (1824 – February 12, 1889) was most commonly known as Colonel Routh Goshen or the Arabian Giant or the Palestine Giant.
Giant Monsieur E. Bihin. Jean Antoine Joseph Bihin (1805-1873). A native of Belgium, he grew to a height of between 6’8″ to 8′ feet (reports vary). Beyond this advantage, he could act and sing, and was a skilled strong man and comedian. After achieving fame touring fairs and circuses across western Europe, he moved to the U.S. in 1840. He worked at P.T. Barnum’s museum, where he once got into a fight with Colonel Goshen. Barnum interceded by demanding they save the altercation until there were time to properly promote it and sell tickets. Bihin also worked with Colonel Nutt in a 1862 production of the play Hop o’ My Thumb.
Monsieur Joseph, Ex-officier de l’armee francaise. Ancient officer in the French Army. The most enormous Giant living. 8 feet 4 inches high. Weighing 400 pounds. Exhibiting at Barnum’s Museum, New York.
Capt. Martin Van Buren Bates.
615-Chang Woo Gow, the Chinese Giant, 8 feet 3 inches high.
Paris Exposition, 1900. Old Paris. The Giant.
The long and short of India at the Durbar-Cashmere Giant (7 ft. 9 in.) and Patiala midget (28 in.), Delhi. Photographer Ricalton stands in the view.
Mrs. A.H. Bates, Born August 6th, 1848. Height 7 feet 11 1/2 inches. Weight 413 Pounds. Capt. M. V. Bates, Born November 9th, 1845. Height 7 feet 11 1/2 inches. Weight 478 Pounds. The man on the right is Charles Eisenmann, the photographer.
Martin Van Buren Bates (November 9, 1837 – January 19, 1919), known as the “Kentucky Giant” was an American man famed for his great height. He was 7 ft 11 in. tall and weighed 475 lbs.
He began a big growth spurt at some time around the age of six or seven, and was over 6 ft. tall and weighed over 200 lbs. by the time he was twelve years old.
Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Bates joined the 5th Kentucky Infantry Confederate States Army, as a private, in 1861. His ferocity in battle and imposing figure saw him quickly promoted to the rank of captain. Bates was severely wounded in a battle around the Cumberland Gap area and captured and imprisoned at Camp Chase in Ohio, although he later escaped.
He returned to Kentucky after the war. Before the war, his first occupation was as a schoolteacher. While the circus was on tour in Halifax, Canada, the 7-foot-11-inch-tall Anna Haining Swan visited. She and Martin soon got to know each other, and were married in 1871. The highly publicized wedding, at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, England, drew thousands of people to try to attend, due to both the uncommonness of the spectacle and the disarming good nature of the pair. Queen Victoria herself gave them two extra-large diamond-studded gold watches as wedding presents.
Martin and Anna moved to Ohio in 1872, settling in Seville. On 19 May 1872, Anna gave birth to a daughter, who weighed 18 lbs.and died at birth. The couple built a large house to accommodate themselves comfortably. He explains the next few years in his autobiography:
While in Ohio, I purchased a farm in Seville, Medina County. It consisted of 130 acres of good land. I built a house upon it designed especially for our comfort. The furniture was all built to order and to see our guests make use of it recalls most forcibly the good Dean Swift’s traveler in the land of Brobdingnag.
I had determined to become a farmer, so I stocked my farm with the best breeds of cattle, most of them being short horns. My draught horses are of the Norman breed.
My rest was not to last long, for the solicitations of managers, I consented to again travel. The seasons of 1878, 1879 and 1880 found us leading attractions of the W. W. Cole circus.
While we have during these years been blessed with many things, affliction again visited us in the loss of a boy, born on the 15th day of January, 1879. He was 28 inches tall and weighed twenty-three pounds and was perfect in every respect.
Anna Bates died on August 5, 1888. Martin ordered a statue of her from Europe for her grave, sold the oversized house, and moved into the town. In 1889 he remarried, this time to a woman of normal stature, Annette LaVonne Weatherby and lived a mostly peaceful life until his death in 1919 of nephritis.
Mr. and Mrs. Bates.
Anna Swan and Martin Van Buren Bates, husband and wife. The man on the right is Charles Eisenmann, the photographer.
The Three Sisters. Aama, the Giantess and Princess Josepha, Midget. The French giantess, Alma Bataillard (1876-1893) took the stage name of Lady Aama. Her advertised height was 8 feet, but in reality she was about 6′ 8.”
Col. Cooper, the English Giant.
Routh Goshen, born Arthur James Caley (1824 – February 12, 1889) was most commonly known as Colonel Routh Goshen or the Arabian Giant or the Palestine Giant. He was billed as the tallest man in the world at 7 ft, 11 inches (2.41 m) and 620 pounds (280 kg) but was most likely no more than 7 ft, 5 inches (2.26 m) and 400 pounds (180 kg). His true origins were kept secret from the public during his performance years in the United States and were obscured by the many apocryphal biographies that were created to publicize him. His actual origins came out slowly after his death. His birth name was Arthur James Caley and he was born on the Isle of Man in 1824. His fictional biographies said he was born in Jerusalem on May 5, 1837. After his retirement in the 1880s, he settled in Middlebush, New Jersey and gained the nickname the Middlebush Giant.
Chang-Yu-Sing, The Chinese Giant. Born at Pekin, 1847, Height over 8 Feet, Weight 26 Stone. Now with Barnum, Bailey & Hutchinson.
Unidentified Giant.
This is Karroo Mianko. Various unlikely stories surround him such as that he was born on the banks of the Congo River, or that he was a Sioux Indian. Age 19, Height 8 ft. 3 1/4″ weight 337 1/2 lbs.
Shields Brothers, the Texas Giants.
Robinson Bros. Iowa Giants, Height 7 ft, 11 in.
Shields Brothers, the Texas Giants.
Twins born with right leg missing in circus, written on verso.
Eli Bowen. Partial tax stamp on verso.
Master Eli Bowen now on Exhibition with Norman’s Museum. Tax stamp on verso.
Eli Bowen, The wonderful Man with feet but no legs. Also Mrs. Eli Bowen.
Eli Bowen, Wife and Child.
Eli Bowen, Wife and Child.
Eli Bowen, Wife and Child.
Written on verso “G.F. Spence Elizabethtown Ky. Chas. B. Tripp, Born in Woodstock, Ontario. Age 25 yrs.” This is written by Tripp with his feet.
Written on verso “Lydia Thomas, Lamartine, Wis. Chas. B. Tripp, Woodstock, Ontario. Age 28 yrs.” Written by Tripp with his feet.
Written on verso “Mrs. Lydia Brignell, Flint Mich. Chas. B. Tripp, Woodstock, Ontario. Age 28 yrs.” Written by Tripp with his feet.
Walter H. Stuart, Boston, Mass. Age 34, 1885.
George Williams, “Turtle Boy,” born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1859. He’s actually 21 years old in the photo. George was an accomplished player of the harmonica, drums, flute and panpipes. In 1889, at Worth’s Palace Museum, he was presented with a silver-mounted banjo by his fellow performers. Towards the turn of the century, George owned a 160-acre farm near Wheaton, Illinois. He made his living traveling from small town to small town with his manager, Willis Clark, exhibiting himself in vacant buildings. He spent his later years on the freak show circuit as “King Dodo” from the Fiji Islands.
Barney Nelson, Armless Boy, age 8.
Prince Randian (sometimes misspelled Rardion or Randion; 10/12/1871 – 12/19/1934), aka The Snake Man, The Human Torso, The Human Caterpillar and a variety of other names, was a Guyanese-born American performer with tetra-amelia syndrome and a famous limbless sideshow performer of the early 1900s, best known for his ability to roll cigarettes with his lips. He was reportedly brought to the U.S. by P.T. Barnum in 1889, age 18 and was a popular Coney Island carnival and circus attraction for 45 years. Prince Randian (credited “Rardion”) was featured in the 1932 film Freaks, his only film appearance, in which he is seen lighting up a cigarette with a match. Randian (whose birth name is unknown) was born with no arms and legs in Demerara, British Guyana. He was a Hindu and spoke Hindi, English, French, and German. With his wife, known as Princess Sarah (apparently a Hindu woman, born circa 1872), he fathered three daughters and a son. In the 1920s he was working for Krause Amusement Company and lived in Plainfield, New Jersey. Later he and his wife lived in Paterson, New Jersey, until his death. For his act, Randian wore a one-piece wool garment that fit tightly over his body, giving him the appearance of a caterpillar, snake or potato, and would move himself around the stage by wiggling his hips and shoulders. His best-known ability was rolling and lighting cigarettes using only his lips, but he was also capable of painting and writing by holding a brush or stylus with his lips and of shaving himself by securing a razor in a wooden block. He kept all of the props and materials used in his act in a wooden box that he reportedly constructed, painted and affixed a lock to by himself. His cigarette-lighting ability was featured in the MGM film Freaks. Randian died on December 19, 1934, aged 63, of a heart attack shortly after his last performance at Sam Wagner’s 14th Street Museum in New York.
Lucius Norval Monroe was born into slavery on January 29, 1847 on a plantation in Virginia. A normal child at first, he began to suffer a “strange disease” of the left leg when he was eight years old. Within two years his condition “took possession of his right foot” as well. The disease was probably what we now call fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva; to this day, there remains no cure for it. Fully grown, the ossified man weighed but sixty-seven pounds and it was said that his limbs “ring like metal when struck”. It’s unclear exactly when Lucius entered show business, but by 1889, he’d already made a career for himself as a dime museum freak, competing directly with New York-born ossified man Jonathan Bass. Accompanying Lucius on exhibition were his faithful valet Mose (James Vanderhoo), and his manager Charles Smith, both of whom are shown in this photo,. Mose and Smith were charged with carrying the bedridden celebrity either in arms or on a litter. In 1891, while appearing at a museum in New York, Lucius was accidentally dropped by his companions and fell down two flights of stairs. He sustained fractures to his right femur and index finger, though because he couldn’t walk anyway his doctors elected not to splint either of the breaks.
Lucius Norval Monroe and his valet Mose (James Vanderhoo).
Unidentified.
Fred Wilson, Lobster Boy. From Somerville, Massachusetts.
Mme. Babault, the Lobster-Clawed Lady.
Unidentified.
Walter H. Stuart, Boston, Mass.
Ann E. Leak was born in Georgia on December 23, 1839. In spite of a prediction by her mother’s physician that she would die within a few days, she survived. While behind other’s her age in learning to walk she eventually learned to use her feet as most use their hands. She became so adept at using her feet she could skillfully sew and braid hair. Like many, her family lost their money and livelihood during the Civil War, so Miss Leak provided financially for both herself and them. For a while she gave classes in braiding, but the money wasn’t enough to support both her and her parents, so she, reluctantly at first, chose to exhibit her skills. Her first gig was at Barnum’s American Museum, something that she found difficult. But she accepted this way of life and, as she says in her autobiography, “Only the conviction that it seemed best reconciled me to it. My lot was not one of my own choosing, but such as Providence had assigned me, and my feet seemed to be directed in the path that I was about to tread. It is the doom of man that his sky should never be altogether without clouds.” She traveled around the East under the name Ann E. Leak Born Without Arms and while being taken advantage of a few times, for the most part, those she met in her travels treated her very well. She eventually married and traveled under the name Ann Leak Thompson.
Written on verso “Mr. Jesse Feary The Mouth Writer, Born in New York City, Age up to year 21 Yrs., 1884.”
Charles Tripp, the Armless Wonder.
Written on verso “Charles B. Tripp. Woodstock Ontario Age 34 yrs. Mrs. Sarah Van Ross 622 North St. Meadville Pa. Sep. 1889.” Written by Tripp with his feet.
Written on verso “Charles B. Tripp, Woodstock, Ontario Age 32 y’s. John Billounge July 19 ’87.” Written by Tripp with his feet.
Written on verso “B.D. Jordan, Cuba, NY. Charles B. Tripp Woodstock Ontario Age 29 y’s.” Written by Tripp with his feet.
Written on verso “Thaddeus Fisher Benson, Ills. Charles B. Tripp Woodstock Ontario. Age 26 y’s.” Written by Tripp with his feet.
The Jones Twins.
Unidentified.
Unidentified.
