86 Facts About Joseph Merrick

Joseph Carey "John" Merrick was an English man known for his severe physical deformities.

Joseph Merrick was first exhibited at a freak show under the stage name "The Elephant Man", and then went to live at the London Hospital, in Whitechapel, after meeting the surgeon Sir Frederick Treves.

Joseph Merrick was born in Leicester and began to develop abnormally before the age of five.

Joseph Merrick's mother died when he was eleven, and his father soon remarried.

The shop was visited by surgeon Frederick Treves, who invited Joseph Merrick to be physically examined.

Joseph Merrick was displayed by Treves at a meeting of the Pathological Society of London in 1884, after which Norman's shop was closed by the police.

Joseph Merrick then joined Sam Roper's circus and then toured in Europe by an unknown manager.

In Belgium, Joseph Merrick was robbed by his road manager and abandoned in Brussels.

Joseph Merrick eventually made his way back to the London Hospital, where he was allowed to stay for the rest of his life.

Joseph Merrick received visits from some of the wealthy ladies and gentlemen of London society, including Alexandra, Princess of Wales.

The exact cause of Joseph Merrick's deformities is unclear, but in 1986 it was conjectured that he had Proteus syndrome.

Joseph Merrick's life was depicted in a 1977 play by Bernard Pomerance and in a 1980 film by David Lynch, both titled The Elephant Man.

Joseph Merrick was apparently healthy at birth, and he had no outward anatomical signs or symptoms of any disorder for the first few years of his life.

The Joseph Merrick family explained his symptoms as the result of Mary Jane being knocked over and frightened by a fairground elephant while she was pregnant with him.

Joseph Merrick held this belief about the cause of his disability throughout his life.

Joseph Merrick was a Sunday school teacher, and his father worked as an engine driver at a cotton factory, as well as running a haberdashery business.

Joseph Rockley Merrick moved with his two surviving children to live with Mrs Emma Wood Antill, a widow with children of her own.

Joseph Merrick left school aged 13, which was usual for the time.

Joseph Merrick ran away "two or three" times, but was taken back by his father each time.

Joseph Merrick failed to make enough money as a hawker to support himself.

Joseph Merrick continued to hawk around Leicester for the next two years but his efforts to earn a living met with little more success than before.

In late December 1879, now 17 years old, Joseph Merrick entered the Leicester Union Workhouse.

One of 1,180 residents in the workhouse, Joseph Merrick was given a classification to determine his place of accommodation.

Joseph Merrick concluded that his only escape from the workhouse might be through the world of human novelty exhibitions.

Joseph Merrick wrote a speculative letter to Sam Torr, a Leicester music hall comedian and proprietor that he knew.

Joseph Merrick slept on an iron bed with a curtain drawn around to afford him some privacy.

Joseph Merrick's enlarged head was too heavy to allow him to sleep lying down and, as Merrick put it, he would risk "waking with a broken neck".

Joseph Merrick was able to put his share of the profits aside, in the hope of earning enough money to one day buy a home of his own.

Later the same day, he sent Tuckett back to the shop to ask if Joseph Merrick might be willing to go to the hospital for an examination.

Joseph Merrick measured Merrick's head circumference at the enlarged size of 36 inches, his right wrist at 12 inches and one of his fingers at 5 inches in circumference.

Joseph Merrick noted that Merrick's skin was covered in papillomata, the largest of which exuded an unpleasant smell.

Joseph Merrick's left arm and hand were neither enlarged nor deformed.

Apart from his deformities and the lameness in his hip, Treves concluded that Joseph Merrick appeared to be in good general health.

Norman later recalled that Joseph Merrick had visited the hospital "two or three" times, and that Treves had given Joseph Merrick his calling card during one of those visits.

Joseph Merrick eventually told Norman that he no longer wanted to be examined at the hospital.

In 1885, Joseph Merrick went on the road with Sam Roper's travelling fair.

Joseph Merrick remained a horrifying spectacle for his viewers, but Roper grew nervous about the negative attention he was drawing from local authorities.

Joseph Merrick's management was assumed by an unknown man and they left for the continent.

Joseph Merrick was no more successful in continental Europe than he had been in Britain, and similar action was taken by the authorities to move him out of their jurisdictions.

Joseph Merrick travelled to Antwerp, and was able to board a ship bound for Harwich in Essex.

Joseph Merrick reached London on 24 June 1886, safely back in his own country but with nowhere to go.

Joseph Merrick was not eligible to enter a workhouse in London for more than one night; the only place that would accept him was the Leicester Union Workhouse, but Leicester was 98 miles away.

Joseph Merrick approached strangers for help, but his speech was unintelligible and his appearance repugnant to passersby.

The police contacted Treves, who went to the train station and, on recognising Joseph Merrick, took him in a hansom cab to the London Hospital.

Joseph Merrick was admitted for bronchitis, washed, fed and then put to bed in a small isolation room in the hospital's attic.

Joseph Merrick discovered that Merrick's physical condition had deteriorated over the previous two years and that he had become impaired by his deformities.

Treves suspected that Joseph Merrick had a heart condition and had only a few years left to live.

Joseph Merrick was moved from the attic to the basement, where he could occupy two rooms adjacent to a small courtyard.

Joseph Merrick settled into his new life at the London Hospital.

Now that Joseph Merrick had found someone who understood his speech, he was delighted to carry on long conversations with the doctor.

Treves and Joseph Merrick built a friendly relationship, although Joseph Merrick never completely confided in him.

Joseph Merrick told Treves that he was an only child, and Treves had the impression that his mother, whose picture Merrick always carried with him, had abandoned him as a baby.

Joseph Merrick was reluctant to talk about his exhibition days, although he expressed gratitude towards his former managers.

Treves observed that Joseph Merrick was very sensitive and showed his emotions easily.

At times, Joseph Merrick was bored and lonely, and demonstrated signs of depression.

Joseph Merrick had spent his entire adult life segregated from women, first in the workhouse and then as an exhibit.

Joseph Merrick agreed and with fair warning about his appearance, she went to his rooms for an introduction.

The meeting was short, as Joseph Merrick quickly became overcome with emotion.

Joseph Merrick later told Treves that Maturin had been the first woman ever to smile at him, and the first to shake his hand.

Joseph Merrick kept in contact with him and a letter written by Merrick to her, thanking her for the gift of a book and a brace of grouse, is the only surviving letter written by Merrick.

Joseph Merrick met other women during his life at the hospital, and appeared taken with them all.

Treves believed that Joseph Merrick's hope was to one day live at an institution for the blind, where he might meet a woman who could not see his deformities.

Joseph Merrick wanted to know about the "real world", and questioned Treves on a number of topics.

At the hospital, Joseph Merrick spent his days reading and constructing models of buildings out of card.

Joseph Merrick entertained visits from Treves and his house surgeons.

Joseph Merrick rose each day in the afternoon and would leave his rooms to walk in the small adjacent courtyard, after dark.

Joseph Merrick sent him photographs of herself and employed a basket weaver to go to his rooms and teach him the craft.

Joseph Merrick reciprocated with letters and handmade gifts of card models and baskets.

Joseph Merrick enjoyed these visits and became confident enough to converse with people who passed his windows.

Occasionally, Joseph Merrick grew bold enough to leave his small living quarters and explore the hospital.

Joseph Merrick gave him a signed photograph of herself, which became a prized possession, and she sent him a Christmas card each year.

Joseph Merrick sat with some nurses, concealed in Lady Burdett-Coutts' private box.

On three occasions, Joseph Merrick left the hospital to go on holiday, spending a few weeks at a time in the countryside.

Joseph Merrick stayed at the gamekeeper's cottage and spent the days walking in the estate's woods, collecting wild flowers.

Joseph Merrick befriended a young farm labourer who later recalled Merrick as an interesting and well-educated man.

Joseph Merrick required a great deal of care from the nursing staff and spent much of his time in bed, or sitting in his quarters, with diminishing energy.

Joseph Merrick's body was formally identified by his uncle, Charles Merrick.

Joseph Merrick's death was ruled accidental and the certified cause of death was asphyxia, resulting from the weight of his head as he lay down.

Tibbles put forward the hypothesis that Joseph Merrick had had Proteus syndrome, a very rare congenital disorder identified by Cohen in 1979, citing Joseph Merrick's lack of reported cafe au lait spots and the absence of any histological proof of his having had the previously conjectured syndrome.

Cohen and Tibbles said Joseph Merrick showed the following signs of Proteus syndrome: "macrocephaly; hyperostosis of the large skull; hypertrophy of long bones; and thickened skin and subcutaneous tissues, particularly of the hands and feet, including plantar hyperplasia, lipomas, and other unspecified subcutaneous masses".

The possibility that Joseph Merrick may have had both conditions formed the basis for a 2003 documentary film entitled The Curse of The Elephant Man, which was produced for the Discovery Health Channel by Natural History New Zealand.

Joseph Merrick had never completely confided in Treves about his early life, so these details were consequently sketchy in Treves's Reminiscences.

The reason for this is unknown, as Merrick clearly signed his name as "Joseph" in the examples of his handwriting that remain.

Joseph Merrick pointed out inconsistencies between the accounts and disputed some of Treves's version of events; he noted, for example, that while Treves claimed Merrick knew nothing of his mother's appearance, Carr Gomm mentions that Merrick carried a painting of his mother with him, and he criticised Treves's assumption that Merrick's mother was "worthless and inhuman".

The character based on Joseph Merrick was initially played by David Schofield, and in subsequent productions by various actors including Philip Anglim, David Bowie, Bruce Davison, Mark Hamill and Bradley Cooper.

Joseph Merrick was played by John Hurt and Frederick Treves by Anthony Hopkins.