Not Strictly Business: Freaks and the Australian Showground World

Abstract

Freak show performers are popularly portrayed as exploited individuals. This article examines the debate within the history of intellectual disability over freaks, and tests the contested positions against the evidence of freak shows in Australia, 1920 to 1950. It argues that these were not exploitative relations or simply business ones, but complex and nuanced two-way paternalistic relations. Freak performers experienced some power and a sense of belonging to the showground world. They consented or assented to their role in that world.

Notes

¹Kate Adamson, ‘Odd, But We're Fun’, 15 April 2007, Sunday Herald Sun.

²‘Big Brother Rima Hadchiti Appears In Nude Photos’, 29 April 2008. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23615941-5012974,00.html (accessed 15 September 2008).

³Angela Bennie, ‘Paperbacks’, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 1998; The Australian Way [of Qantas], August 1988; Michelle Griffin, ‘Out of the Shadows’, Sunday Age, 23 August 1998 and Michelle Griffin ed., ‘Coming Soon’, Sunday Age, 12 July 1998.

⁴Kate Darian-Smith, Australian Historical Studies 30, no. 113, (October 1999), 366; Norman Abjorensen, ‘Roll up, Roll Up’, Sunday Times, 16 August 1998; John van Tiggelen, ‘Sidelined’, Good Weekend, 8 August 1998.

⁵ The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2 vols, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 802–803, 1351.

⁶L. Fiedler, Freaks. Myths and Images of the Secret Self (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), 13–15; Robert, Bogdan, Freak Show. Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), x.

⁷Rosemarie Garland Thomson, ed. Freakery. Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

⁸ http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/ (accessed October 2006, currently being reconstructed).

⁹C. J. S. Thompson, The Mystery and Lore of Monsters. With Accounts of Some Giants, Dwarfs, and Prodigies (New York: University Books, 1968), 1–30.

¹⁰Thompson, 39; Henry Morley, Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair (London: Chatto and Windus, 1880), 364–368.

¹¹Morley, 1–33; Robert Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society 1700–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 20–29.

¹²A. H. Saxon, P. T. Barnum. The Legend and the Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).

¹³Richard Shears, Ripley's Believe it or Not Book of Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne: Curry O'Neil, 1983), 1–3.

¹⁴R. G. Thomson ‘From Wonder to Error. A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity’, in Garland Thomson, 1–22.

¹⁵Thompson, p. 1.

¹⁶Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston, ‘Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century France and England’, Past and Present no. 92 (1981), 20–54.

¹⁷Fiedler, 18.

¹⁸Fiedler, 24.

¹⁹Fiedler, 34.

²⁰Bogdan, viii.

²¹Bogdan, x.

²²Garland Thomson, xviii.

²³Bogdan, 268.

²⁴Bogdan, 272.

²⁵See Robert Bogdan, ‘In Defense of Freak Show’ and David A. Gerber, ‘Interpreting the Freak Show and Freak Show’, Disability, Handicap and Society 8, no. 1 (1993), 91–94 and no. 4, (1993), 435–436, respectively.

²⁶David A. Gerber, ‘Volition and Valorization in the Analysis of the “Careers” of People Exhibited in Freak Shows’, Disability, Handicap and Society 7, no. 1 (1992), 53–69; David A. Gerber, ‘The “Careers” of People Exhibited in Freak Shows. The Problem of Volition and Valorization’, in Garland Thomson (ed.), Freakery, 38–54.

²⁷Gerber in Freakery, 40.

²⁸Gerber in Freakery, 39.

²⁹Gerber in Freakery, 39.

³⁰Gerber in Freakery, 43.

³¹Gerber in Freakery, 48.

³²Gerber in Freakery, 49.

³³Gerber in Freakery, 40, 52.

³⁴ http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/about/ accessed October 2006.

³⁵Broome with Jackomos, 20–27; Kate Darian-Smith, and Sarah Wills, Agricultural Shows in Australia: A Survey, (Melbourne: The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, 1999).

³⁶Broome with Jackomos, 27–45.

³⁷Richard Broome, ‘Windows on Other Worlds. The Rise and Fall of Sideshow Alley’, Australian Historical Studies, 30, no. 112 (April 1999), 1–22.

³⁸ People, April 1951, 43–45.

³⁹ Sun, 24 March 1937.

⁴⁰ Daily Telegraph, 22 February 1938; see also Labour Daily, 22 February 1938.

⁴¹A. McGrath, Born in the Cattle. Aborigines in Cattle Country (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987).

⁴²David Roberts, Paternalism in Early Victorian England (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1979), chap 1; Robert Paine (ed.), Patrons and Brokers in the East Arctic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), cited in Bruce Shaw, Banggaiyerri. The Story of Jack Sullivan as told to Bruce Shaw (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies 1983), 11–13; P. L. Van den Berge, ‘Paternalism’ in Eric Cashmore ed., Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies (London: Routledge, 2004), 311.

⁴³Tommy Castles interview in Bob Morgan's The Showies. Revelations of Australian Outdoor Side-Showmen (Melbourne: by the author, 1995), 4.

⁴⁴Tommy Castles interview in Bob Morgan's The Showies. Revelations of Australian Outdoor Side-Showmen (Melbourne: by the author, 1995), 4.

⁴⁵ Shepparton News, 20 October 1947.

⁴⁶Jack Allan interview with Richard Broome and Alick Jackomos, Bulla, 8 May 1997.

⁴⁷Corinne Manning, Bye Bye Charlie. Stories from the Vanishing World of Kew Cottages (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008).

⁴⁸Gerber in Freakery, 43.

⁴⁹National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stoke Microcephaly Information Page, http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/microcephaly/microcephaly.htm (accessed 16 September 2008).

⁵⁰Jack Allan interview 1997; Jack Allan tapes in Morgan, 106–109.

⁵¹R. Lew-Boar email to the author, 21 May 2008.

⁵²Gail Magdziarz interview with Richard Broome, Bulla, 23 August 2003. Chinese troupe see Labour Daily, 5 April 1936; Sun, 22 and 23 March 1937, Daily Telegraph, 25 March 1937; Jack Allan interview with Richard Broome and Alick Jackomos; Morgan, 4–5, 88–89, 106–109.

⁵³ People, 11 April 1951.

⁵⁴Gwenda Tavan, The Long Slow Death of White Australia (Melbourne: Scribe, 2005), chap 3.

⁵⁵Jack Allan interview with Richard Broome and Alick Jackomos.

⁵⁶Gail Magdziarz interview 2003.

⁵⁷Gail Magdziarz interview 2003.

⁵⁸ Shepparton News, 20 October 1947.

⁵⁹ Outdoor Showman, May 1947.

⁶⁰ Outdoor Showman, October 1952, October 1953.

⁶¹Gail Magdziarz 2003.

⁶²Gail Magdziarz 2003.

⁶³Cited from ‘Zandau the Quarter Boy’, http://www.quasi-modo.net/Zandau.html (accessed 15 April 2009).

⁶⁴Alick Jackomos interview with Richard Broome, Kew, 6 June 1995.

⁶⁵Gail Magdziarz interview 2003.

⁶⁶Dennis O'Duffy, The Life-Story of a Giant, (no publication details), 4, author's possession.

⁶⁷ Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April 1938.

⁶⁸Broome with Jackomos, chap 7.

⁶⁹Dave Meekin to the Commonwealth Migration Office, 1 October 1948 and 9 February 1950 in ‘Maria Peters, Pygmy Woman’, Australia Archives, Queensland, CRS J25/108, item 1975/11361.

⁷⁰Jack Allan interview 1997; Gail Magdziarz interview 2003.