JOSEPH MERRICK

:''For the Jamaican missionary to Cameroon, see Joseph Merrick (missionary)''
'Joseph Carey Merrick' (5 August, 1862–11 April, 1890), known as '"The Elephant Man"', gained the sympathy of Victorian era Britain because of the extreme deformity of his body. Due to a mistake in Frederick Treves' book on him, he is sometimes known as 'John Merrick'.

Contents

Life

Medical condition

Family

Incorrect name

In popular culture

Further reading

Footnotes

Online references

External links

Life

Born in Leicester to Mary Jane (née Potterton) and Joseph Rockley Merrick,^[1] he had a younger brother and sister. In an autobiographical note which appeared on the reverse side of his freak show pamphlet, Merrick mentions that his deformity began developing at the age of five.^[2] His mother died when he was 11. According to family accounts, she too was "crippled". His father remarried, but his stepmother did not want the younger Joseph. Forced to earn a living by selling haberdashery on the street, Joseph was harassed constantly by local children. When the then young Joseph Merrick could no longer take the lashing of his stepmother's tongue at his inadequacy to take in a profit, he left home.
Twice ending up in the Leicester Union workhouse, Joseph was unemployable for the better part of his life. On August 29 1884, he took a job as a sideshow attraction where he was treated decently and made a large sum for the time. At one point during his sideshow career, Merrick was exhibited in the back of an empty shop on Mile End Road in London, where he was seen by the physician Frederick Treves (later knighted). As Treves recalled decades later in his memoirs, he gave Merrick one of his calling cards in the event that Merrick would be willing to submit to medical examination. The two men then went their separate ways. When sideshows were outlawed in the United Kingdom in 1886, Merrick travelled to Belgium to find work. There, he was mistreated and ultimately abandoned by a showman, who stole Merrick's 50-pound savings.

After making his way back to London, Merrick unintentionally became the cause of a disturbance in Liverpool Street train station. Suffering from a severe bronchial infection and hampered by his deformities, Merrick was barely able to speak coherently. However, he had carefully retained the calling card of Frederick Treves, who was duly summoned by the authorities. In his role as physician at London Hospital, Treves enabled Merrick to be given a permanent home at the hospital. There, Merrick thrived.
He became something of a celebrity in Victorian high society. Alexandra, then Princess of Wales and later Queen Consort, demonstrated a kindly interest in Merrick, leading other members of the upper class to embrace him. He eventually became a favourite of Queen Victoria. However, Treves later commented that Merrick always wanted, even after living at the hospital, to go to a hospital for the blind so that he could find a woman there who would not be frightened of his appearance and love him. In his later years, he found some solace in writing, composing both prose and poetry.
In the summer of 1887, he spent some weeks vacationing at the Fawsley Hall estate, Northamptonshire. Special measures were made for his journey, and he was forced to travel in a carriage with blinds drawn to avoid attracting attention. He greatly enjoyed his time away from urban London, made many new friends and collected wild flowers to take with him back to London. He visited again in 1888 and 1889. He was cared for at the hospital until his death at the age of 27 on April 11 1890, from suffocation while sleeping, which was apparently accidental. Joseph, unable to sleep horizontally due to the weight of his head, may have tried to do so in this instance in an attempt to approximate normal behaviour.
Merrick's preserved skeleton was previously on display at the Royal London Hospital. While his remains can no longer be seen by the public, there is a small museum mostly centred around his life and has a few items from his past.

Medical condition

Joseph Merrick was originally thought to be suffering from elephantiasis. In 1971, Ashley Montagu suggested in his book ''The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity'' that Merrick suffered from neurofibromatosis type I, a genetic disorder also known as ''von Recklinghausen's disease''. This disease is still strongly associated with Merrick in the mind of the public; however, it was postulated in 1986 that Merrick actually suffered from Proteus syndrome (a condition which had been identified by Michael Cohen just seven years earlier).^[3]
Unlike neurofibromatosis, Proteus syndrome (named for the shape-shifting god Proteus) affects tissue other than nerves, and is a sporadic rather than familially transmitted disorder. In July 2003, Dr. Charis Eng announced that as a result of DNA tests on samples of Merrick's hair and bone, she had determined that Merrick certainly suffered Proteus syndrome, and may have had neurofibromatosis type I as well. As it stands, many people still mistakenly refer to his condition as elephantiasis.
In 2002 a television research team, along with genealogists, put out a BBC appeal to trace the Merrick family line. In response to the appeal, a Leicester resident named Pat Selby was discovered to be the granddaughter of Merrick's uncle. A research team took her DNA samples in order to try to diagnose the condition that caused his deformities. The TV crew also discovered that Merrick's sister, Marion Eliza, also suffered from a crippling disease called myelitis. Marion Eliza died at the age of 24.

Family

There are not many known facts about Joseph Merrick's family. He was named after his father, Joseph Rockley Merrick (March 1838–January 30 1897), who was born in Leicester to Sarah Rockley, the third wife of Barnabas Merrick (August 23 1792–12 April 1856). Joseph Sr. married the reportedly "crippled" Mary Jane Potterton on December 29 1861.
Their eldest son, Joseph, was born on August 5 1862, in Leicester. Their younger son, William Arthur Merrick, was born on January 8 1866, followed by their daughter Marion Eliza Merrick on September 28 1867. William contracted scarlet fever and died on December 21 1870. Marion Eliza had been disabled since birth, but would survive until March 19 1891, dying from a seizure.
''The Elephant Man'', the film released on October 3 1980, features Mary Jane's son "John" speaking highly of her. "She has the face of an angel," he says. John (Joseph) is depicted looking at a small picture of his mother very often in the film.
Mary Jane died from bronchial pneumonia on May 19 1873. Joseph was re-married to Emma Wood Antill on December 3 1874, and she soon convinced her new husband to send the deformed Joseph away.

Incorrect name

Early biographies of Merrick inaccurately give his first name as John, an error repeated in many later versions, including the 1980 film ''The Elephant Man''. This error arose and propagated because most of the early works which mentioned the Elephant Man (including Ashley Montagu's ''The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity'' and Frederick Drimmer's ''Very Special People'') all took their information from the memoirs of Sir Frederick Treves, written many years after his first-hand experience with Merrick. Treves mis-recalled Merrick's first name as John, causing Montagu and Drimmer to repeat this error in good faith. Montagu's book, in an appendix, quotes a document by Doctor F.C. Carr Gomm, written shortly after Merrick's death, in which Gomm correctly identifies Merrick as Joseph; Montagu dismisses this as Gomm's error. The stage play identifies Merrick as John throughout, except when Gomm (also a character in this play) reads aloud the same document later quoted by Montagu, correctly naming the Elephant Man as Joseph Merrick. In the play, Treves considers this an error, "correcting" Gomm by remarking, "John. John Merrick."

In popular culture

Following the publication of Montagu's book, Merrick returned to popular attention in 1979 and 1980 when two high-profile productions made him their subject. His life story became the basis of a 1979 Tony Award-winning play (portrayed by Philip Anglim initially, followed by David Bowie), and in the following year an Academy Award-nominated film, in which he was played by John Hurt. Each production took a different approach to the story.
See ''The Elephant Man (play)'' and ''The Elephant Man (film)'' for more information on these productions.
In the mid-1980s, singer Michael Jackson allegedly attempted to purchase Merrick's remains from the London Hospital Medical College. A press release on May 29 1987, from Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo, stated that the singer "has a high degree of respect for the memory of Merrick. He has read and studied all material about the Elephant Man, and has visited the hospital in London twice to view Merrick's remains. His fascination with the historical significance increased with each visit, along with hopes to add them to his collection of rare and unusual memorabilia at his California compound." He went on to claim that Jackson had no intentions to exploit the remains for profit and only wished to treat them as art or antiques. Michael Jackson's offer of US $1 million was turned down. He later went on to extensively deny that he had tried to obtain the Elephant Man's bones. In 1993, during an interview at his Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson told Oprah Winfrey that it was, "another stupid story. I love the story of the Elephant Man, he reminds me of me a lot, and I could relate to it, it made me cry because I saw myself in the story, but no I never asked for the... where am I going to put some bones? And why would I want some bones?" In a 1989 music video for the song "Leave Me Alone" (from ''Moonwalker''), Jackson could be seen dancing alongside a claymation version of the Elephant Man's bones. This was most likely a self-parody, as other parts of the video dealt with how he felt he was unfairly portrayed by the press.
Merrick has been mentioned in song by a number of artists, including Barenaked Ladies (in the song "If I Had a Million Dollars"), Suede (band) (in the song "Elephant Man"), Mastodon (in the songs "Elephant Man", "Joseph Merrick" and "Pendelous Skin"), Bigbang (in the song "The Elephant Man"), Fall of Troy (in the song "Wacko Jacko Steals the Elephant Man's Bones"), The Bloodhound Gang (in the song "Why's Everbody Always Pickin' on Me?"), Buckethead (in "The John Merrick Elephant Man Bones Explosion") and Webb Wilder (in "The Olde Elephant Man").
The Elephant Man is a supporting character in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel ''From Hell'', and also appears very briefly in the film based on the book, albeit in an entirely different context.
The comedy ''The Tall Guy'', starring Emma Thompson and Jeff Goldblum, includes a fictional, over-the-top musical based on the Elephant Man story, with Goldblum in the title role.
In the novel The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin, Joseph Merrick is revealed to be a hybrid of human and alien DNA.

Further reading

★ The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences, , Sir Frederick, Treves, Cassell and Co., 1923,

★ The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity, , Ashley, Montagu, E. P. Dutton, 1971,

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Footnotes

1. Wargs.com: Ancestry of Joseph Merrick
2. Joseph Carey Merrick Tribute Website: Joseph's autobiography
3. The Proteus syndrome: the Elephant Man diagnosed., Tibbles J, Cohen M, , , Br Med J (Clin Res Ed), 1986

Online references

★ A BBC story about the results of DNA tests on Merrick's body

★ Proteus syndrome

★ PTEN - phosphatase and tensin homolog

External links

★ Joseph Merrick tribute site

★ Skull Photo on Discovery.com

★ Joseph Merrick's short autobiographical note