Joseph Merrick

"The Elephant Man" redirects here. For other uses, see The Elephant Man (disambiguation).

File:Joseph Carey Merrick.png

Joseph Carey Merrick.

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.

Life

Born in Leicester to Mary Jane Merrick and Adam Rockley Merrick, he had a younger brother and sister. He began showing signs of deformity at age two or five (Sources differ). 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. She gave her husband an ultimatum: "Joseph, or me," and her husband responded by throwing Joseph out of the house.

He was forced to earn a living by selling shoe polish on the street where he would be constantly harassed by local children. For the better part of his life he was unemployable, so as a last resort he took a job as a sideshow attraction. He was treated decently, and made a small amount of money. However, when sideshows were outlawed in the United Kingdom in 1886, he travelled to Belgium to find work. There, he was mistreated and abandoned by a showman.

After making his way back to London, Merrick had the good fortune of befriending the well-known Victorian doctor, Frederick Treves, who discovered him at Liverpool Street train station suffering from a severe bronchial infection. In his role as physician at London Hospital, Treves enabled Joseph to be given a permanent home at the hospital. There, Merrick thrived. He became something of a celebrity in High Victorian society, eventually becoming a favourite of Queen Victoria. Although numerous people, including a few women, came to visit him, he never found love. Treves later commented that Joseph 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. In his later years, he found some solace in writing, composing both prose and poetry.

File:The Elephant Man poster.jpg

Poster of the film The Elephant Man.

He was cared for at the hospital until his death at the age of 27 on 11 April, 1890 from suffocation while sleeping, which was apparently accidental. Merrick was unable to sleep horizontally due to the weight of his head, but he may have intentionally tried to do so in this instance in an attempt to imitate normal behaviour.

Merrick's preserved skeleton is on permanent display at the Royal London Hospital.

He returned to popular attention in 1979 and 1980 when two high profile productions made Merrick their subject. His life story became the basis of a 1979 Tony Award-winning play, and in the following year an Academy Award-nominated film. 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.

Medical condition

In 1971 Ashley Montagu suggested that Merrick suffered from neurofibromatosis type I, a genetic disorder also known as von Recklinghausen's disease. This disease is still connected with Merrick in the mind of the public. However, in 1979, Michael Cohen first identified a condition which came to be named Proteus syndrome by Rudolf Wiedemann in 1983. In 1986 it was argued that Proteus syndrome was the condition from which Merrick actually suffered. 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. His PTEN gene (often mutated in the Proteus syndrome) appears to have been healthy (i.e., not mutated). As it stands, many people still mistakenly refer to his condition as elephantiasis (sometimes misspoken as "elephantitis.").

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.

In popular culture

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Michael Jackson dancing with a depiction of Merrick's skeleton in the video for "Leave Me Alone".

• In a Calvin and Hobbes story arc, in which Calvin's face is frozen in a face he was making, at the dinner table, he covered his face with a tablecloth with eyeholes (Similar to Joseph's hood in the movie), saying "But I won't let it bother you. See? Elephant man!"
• In the mid-1980s, singer Michael Jackson reportedly 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 their 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 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, he 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", 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.

The number of elephant men in recent years has tripled.

• Howard Stern, in a chapter about Michael Jackson in his book Miss America, wrote that he had heard the report that Jackson had bid US $1 million for Mr. Merrick's remains. As an on-air bit, he called the London Hospital Medical College live on the air, and bid US $2 million. His "bid" was rejected as well.
• The second series of UK sitcom I'm Alan Partridge, the tale of a (fictional) failed television host's mundane and pitiful later years, features a reference to Merrick. In a scene where Alan attempts to justify his tax discrepancies to his personal assistant Lynne by comparing them to white lies, he asks of her whether or not - if the Elephant Man had donned a dress and makeup and then enquired "how do I look?" - she would say "take that dress off you ugly misshapen-headed elephant tranny, bearing in mind he is depressed and suffers from respiratory problems". When she responds that she would not hurt Merrick's feelings in such a fashion, Alan agrees, enforcing that the polite thing to say would be "you look nice... John". This is yet another instance of Merrick's real name being mistaken for John.
• Comedians Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais regularly discussed the Elephant Man with their accomplice and famed Mancunian simpleton Karl Pilkington on both their podcasts and XFM radio show. Pilkington is fascinated with anything unusual and regularly insists that the film version of The Elephant Man is his favourite film of all time.
• The British band Suede released a song titled "Elephant Man" on the album "Head Music" in 1999.
• The band The Fall of Troy has a song jokingly titled "Whacko Jacko Steals the Elephant Man's Bones".
• Heavy metal band Mastodon have a song on their Leviathan album titled "Joseph Merrick", as well as the final track on their Remission album, entitled simply "Elephant Man".
• The Avant-Garde guitarist Buckethead makes numerous references to The Elephant Man including a song on the album Bucketheadland 2 called "The John Merrick Elephant Man Bones Explosion" and an album called "The Elephant Man's Alarm Clock". During live performances he will sometimes play a sampling of dialogue from the 1980 film.
• Merrick briefly appears as a character in the 2001 film about Jack the Ripper, From Hell. He is played by Anthony Parker.
• The song "If I Had $1000000" by Barenaked Ladies includes the line "I'd buy you John Merrick's remains... All those crazy elephant bones". This is an obvious reference to Michael Jackson's alleged attempt to purchase the bones for US $1 million.
• The band Murder City Devils recorded a song "Bride of the Elephant Man". The song included the lyrics "John Merrick, your prayers are all heard first", and "Tell me John, tell me I'm forgiven".
• In the 1989 film The Tall Guy, Dexter King (played by Jeff Goldblum), lands the lead role in the production of a play called Elephant!, a "musical based on the life of Joseph Merrick".

Due to unknown reasons, in the past six months, the number of patients with conditions resembling that of Elephantitis have tripled. (March 2006-August 2006)

Further reading

Following are books about or inspired by Joseph Merrick

• Ashley Montagu, The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity
• Michael Howell and Peter Ford, The True History of the Elephant Man
• Christine Sparks, The Elephant Man! (based on the movie)
• Frederick Drimmer, The Elephant Man
• Bernard Pomerance, The Elephant Man (the stage play)
• P. W. Graham and F. H. Oehlschlaeger, Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters
• Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, From Hell - (Merrick makes a cameo in book and movie)
• Tom Baker, Joseph: A Victorian Fairy Tale (horror novel featuring Merrick as a main character)
• Kenneth Sherman, Words for Elephant Man (the story of Merrick told in poetic form)

Online references

• A BBC story about the results of DNA tests on Merrick's body
• Proteus syndrome
• Merrick seems to have a healthy copy of the PTEN gene

External links

• Joseph Merrick tribute site
• Skull Photo on Discovery.com