One born every minute

So here’s the story: Small town guy comes to big city in 1834, buys splashy ads in the newspapers advertising his client as the oldest woman in the world. This young fellow says that Miss Joice Heth is not only 161 years old, but “the most astonishing and interesting curiosity in the world,” not to mention she was the first person “to put clothes” on George Washington. New Yorkers loved the story so much that receipts for viewing her reached $1,500 per week.

When, as is the way of the world, things started to slow down, the young man promoted a controversy about how Miss Heth was a “curiously constructed automaton, made up of whalebone, India-rubber, and numberless springs …” The result was not surprising. He had found a way to pack the crowds in once again. And come they did.

Like the tides, after a while interest in the maybe make-believe robot woman waned, so the young man advertised in the newspaper that he, in fact, had lied originally about her age. She was real, he said, adding that she was just 46 years old. Of course, interest went back up and people came to see the person who faked out so many others, including themselves.

Then the young man caught a bad break. Miss Heth died. But even that he turned into an income stream when the enterprising young businessman allowed a postmortem and the physicians that examined the body said the woman could not have been more than 80. An editorial in the New York Sun promptly charged the young man with deceiving the public. And, of course, no one cared. New Yorkers apparently liked the idea of being hoodwinked.

Whether or not the young man actually said “there’s a sucker born every minute,” P. T. Barnum proved to America one major point: advertising pays. Without question, Barnum was the king of press agentry and one of the most interesting figures of the 19th century.

At age 21, he was editor of the Herald of Freedom in Bethel, Conn., where he was sent to jail for criminal libel for asserting the church deacon charged too much interest on his loans. When Barnum was released, he hired a brass band and held a parade which several hundred people joined.

By 1842, Barnum owned the American Museum in New York where he put a monkey’s head on a stuffed fish and advertised it as a mermaid. Of course, he packed them in.

On the way back from a trip out West, Barnum stopped in Kansas City and noticed a mangy herd of buffalo in one of the railroad pens. He checked around to see who owned the herd, bought it for a song, and then brought the herd to New York. Then he put ads in the newspapers that the next weekend anyone who wanted to see the herd of buffalo were welcome to come to Staten Island to see them free of charge. Of course Barnum had already cut a deal with the Staten Island ferry boat operators to charge 25 cents for the boat ride to Staten Island. Given that the same people had to come back that way, he cleared about $10,000 each day for the “free” viewing.

One great campaign involved Jenny Lind, “the Swedish nightingale.”

Thousands came to her on her American tour in 1850. Barnum promoted her so successfully that he charged a New York hotel $1,000 a night to let her stay there. The total profits from the tour were about $750,000. He credited newspaper advertising for the tour’s success.

Perhaps his greatest success came with Charles Stratton from Connecticut. Mr. Stratton was 2 feet tall and weighed 15 pounds. Barnum renamed him Gen. Tom Thumb. They toured America, then Europe, and made a fortune. With letters of introduction to the American ambassador to England, Barnum conceived one of his greatest stunts. He dressed Tom Thumb like Napoleon and got an audience with Queen Victoria. Then Barnum released a story that an English lady of aristocratic descent had fallen madly in love with the general and had tried to kidnap him. The British ate it up. At press time for this week’s Tri-Parish Times, Queen Victoria still hadn’t commented.

And by the way, in three years Barnum and the general cleared $1.5 million, which gave proof to Barnum’s assertion that $1 of advertising was worth $10 of revenues at the gate.