Joseph Merrick, aka "The Elephant Man"

But you're shirtless, so there is no cuff. That's that is true? Man, I hadn't thought about all this. Maybe I should changed off the dome. Speaking of domes, Chuck, Yeah, what were you gonna say? I was going to talk about Thunderdome? Were you really? I'm always this close to talking about Thunderdome? Yeah. I guess that's that's a pretty way to be, isn't it. Sure? So who's who? Chuck? Am I master or blaster? And are you master or blaster? Are we both blaster and both master? I'm not sure

who was who? But I would prefer to ride around on your shoulders. That's fine. I prefer to be a giant shirtless man wearing nothing but a leather daddy across belt across my chest, which I guess I could probably do that anyway. You know, why not, I'm Tina Turner. Oh so you're Tina Turner writing on blasters shoulders? Yes, what happened to master? Uh? That was? That was? We don't like to talk about it. Two men entered, that's all I'll say. Okay, he was suffocated by Tina Turner

sitting on him. That's right. So UM, obviously, Chuck, we're talking about one of the most in my opinion, admirable, brave human beings to ever walk the face of the earth. UM, and a man named Joseph Merrick, who a lot of people UM no of his John Merrick incorrectly, but probably know. I'm even better as the elephant man. That's right. And uh, you know we have to use those words because that's

how he was referred to. Um. We'll get into the reasons why, but we're gonna call him Joseph Merrick mainly because that's the man's name, and we don't like to to call somebody by their sideshow name. It's a rule here, sure, no, but it should be noted that um, he was uh And it's really I think a lot of people probably don't realize this, but he um was an active, willing and initiating participant, founding member, you could say, of his

own sideshow act. Um. So he was fully on board with the idea of being called the elephant man um, which is just another facet of this extremely complex person, you know who. I think it's painted with a very simple brush sometimes. But the great thing is is a lot of times when you when you look into a widely misunderstood, wildly oversimplified person, you very frequently find that there's a lot of like really terrible stuff to them, Like they you know, like, um, they were fine with

with hitting women. They thought that that was like a totally fine thing to do, like Sean Connery, right, and instead, Um, when you look into Joseph Merrick, you find, oh my gosh, like he was even he was an even better person than I I dared hope, you know, like he was a really great guy who went through just hell on

Earth in the twenty seven years that he was alive. Yeah. So, um, you may have heard of the story of the Elephant Man from UM a few things in pop culture, namely the David Lynch movie UM or perhaps the various Broadway shows UM. I watched a few of those, like clips from a few of those. He's been played by David Bowie, Billy Crudup, recently by Bradley Cooper, and I was kind of Bradley Cooper said that the movie caused him to want to become an actor, so it's actually pretty apropos

that he played him. Eventually, Well, we can all thank Joseph Merrick for Bradley Cooper's success, That's right. But yeah, I was kind of curious because I was like, did they undergo prosthetics? Like how do they pull this off? But UM, I'm sure you looked at some of the clips. No one does that. When you play Joseph Merrick. You just embodied the man. You um, sort of contort your body in certain ways and you just sort of play

the person. And I think that's a good way to go about it, rather than just you know, throwing some

uh some big mask over David Bowie or something like that. Right. Yeah, Yeah, they just kind of contorted their body, they altered their speech and just affected they like they Yeah, I think it was a good way to go to And apparently I don't remember the guy's name, but the guy the first guy to play Joseph Merrick in the stage version and when that came out and I think seventy nine or eighty, Um, he he was the one who started that trend and really kind of came up with this

this embodiment that everybody else has has kind of followed suit with afterwards. And I don't know, I didn't catch it. Did you say Mark Hamill was one of the people who played him, Yeah, Luke Skywalker he uh yeah, he used the force, he did. So there's something really weird that happened in the late seventies, and I am not quite sure what it was. But in nineteen seventy nine,

the stage play based on Joseph Merritt came out. In nineteen eighty, David Lynch released the Just the legendary film, one of the best films ever made about um Joseph Merrick. And then there was a definitive book that was written as well by a pair of authors. Um, one of whom I believe was like a doctor who had like all this great research, but his writing was a little over the top, so they assigned a ghostwriter with him, and they basically wrote the definitive book on Joseph Merrick's life,

UM and medical condition. And all three of these projects happened independently, like one wasn't adapted from the other or anything like that, and they all came out at around the same time, which is really strange in and of itself.

But it's even stranger to think that all of this happened um centered on a character who had been largely forgotten by this time, you know, like there was really only two surviving um pieces of literature about him, about Joseph Merrick, the man um that that that anyone was aware of, and they had been written in the nineteenth century.

But then suddenly, for some reason in the late seventies, three different projects started up about Joseph American kind of made him a icon for humanity that is still, you know, lasting today. Yeah. I think the seventies spawned Disco Fever and Elephant man Fever. Sorry, and they were both rather unlikely considering uh, both Disco and Joseph Merrick were born in the eighteen hundreds, specifically in England on August five, eighteen sixty two. So I meant to look it up.

I don't know if it's Is it Leicestershire like the sauce Leicester Lester Lester? Right, yeah, you have that last time. It's just Lester from what I understand. Okay, So he was born in Leicester, England, on August five, eighteen sixty two. And UM, we'll talk a little bit about what they are pretty sure his condition was. But being eighteen sixty two at the time, Um, after he started developing, um, some very strange symptoms at the age of five, doctors

back then we're pretty flummixed. Yeah, yes, yeah, So. UM. The reason why is, we'll see, is because they think he's one of maybe a hundred people in the entire history of the world, or at least as far as people have been writing stuff like this down on um, to have this condition that he had. So it's not like he started developing strangely and they were like, oh, well, you know, this is what's going on, this is what's to be expected. Instead, just a little by little his

body started taking on these odd differing forms. Um. And like you said, I think it was around the age of five that he really started to to show that he was going to be rather different. Yeah, it was five. His father Joseph and his mother Mary Jane noticed he had swollen lips, and then a lump started to form on his forehead. His skin started to kind of get loose and rough. Um, And this was just sort of the beginning. His face became spongy, his jaw started to deform,

his speech was impaired. Um. The right side of his body was, or at least upper body was a little more or I guess a lot more affected, because it seemed like his left arm in hand stayed kind of as is, but the right side arm became sort of like this giant fin right. So. Um. The the thing that I guess kind of gave him the moniker the elephant man was growth that started protruding from from what

I saw beneath his upper lip. So the way that I read that, Chuck, is that like when you pull your your top lip up, that part of your gums right there above your teeth, that he had like a growth start that started there and it got pretty big. I think it got up to about eight inches long, and that I guess you would just look at it and be like wow, that looks a lot like an

elephant's trunk. This this strange growth that's growing up from under this poor man's top lip um, and he later had it removed so it doesn't show up in any photographs of him. But that supposedly is um one of the places where the idea that he was an elephant man came from. Yeah. So as far as his family goes, he had a couple of younger siblings. It seems like both of them passed away. William Arthur Um succumbed to

smallpox and Marian Eliza. It just says on her death certificate that she was crippled from birth with an unknown ailment. And he Um he went to school like he Like I said, it didn't start happening un till he was five, and it wasn't so severe right away that he couldn't go to school like any other kid would his age. Um, things really took a turn though, when his mom died when he was eleven years old. Things went really bad for him. Yeah, so there's like a few things that

you should know about his mom. So his his mom was vilified by his biographer, who also would turn out to be a surgeon. Um who will talk about later. Frederick Treeve's um as as a terrible woman who abandoned him, and um, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. And in fact, Um Joseph recalled his mom is a very saintly sweet woman who was basically his only friend. Because when you're you know, starting around five and uh you and you, you are having trouble keeping up with

other kids. Something else happened in when he was five two Chuck, he injured, He felt really hard and injured his hip, and that injury became infected, so he became um what at the time they would have called lame or crippled in his I believe his left leg. So he had trouble walking from the age of five. In addition to his genetic condition, um that was making him look more and more different. So he became further and

further alienated from his friends. I saw a quote that said that he was becoming a lonely, introspective child, increasingly dependent on his mother for company. And luckily, his mother seems to have been a very sweet woman who, again in the vertacular, was crippled. That's how she was described. So we have no idea in what way, But today you would describe her as without the use of say one or more of her limbs. So they had like that kind of connection. But she also was very protective

of Joseph two. So when she died it was more than him just losing his mother at age eleven. It was him losing like his best friend, his his main companion, um and the source of like basically anything good in his life was was taken from him at a very young age. Yeah, his father remarried and by all accounts his father and stepmother were not very kind to him

at all. They were emotionally abusive, uh could be physically abusive. Um. He left school at age thirteen, which is um about when kids left school back then, and got a job at a cigar factory and Um worked there for a couple of years until his left arm got to the point in hand such that he couldn't do the job anymore. So at that point he got what they called a hawker's license in order to help his dad, who had

a couple of small businesses. But he helped his dad sell stuff from his hab a dashery in England there and then eventually went to work at the Lester Union workhouse. Uh.

He ran away from home a couple of times. It was just a really bad scene and eventually landed with his uncle, who was a barber named Charles, and he was a good guy and he um, he felt bad for what Joseph was going through and sort of his home life, so he took him in and that ended up being um, after a couple of really bad years with his dad and stepmother, a really nice place to be for a little while. Yeah, stepmother was just pretty evil.

She she um. She was the one that made him drop out of school at thirteen and go get a job. And when he was hawking stuff from his father's shop, if he didn't come home with uh, you know, enough money, um, she wouldn't give him a full meal. I guess she'd give him enough food to sustain him, but she if he couldn't pay for the meal that she had on offer with the proceeds from what he sold that day,

she wouldn't give him that meal. And then his father would frequently beat him too, So it's no wonder that he he tried to run away, but then his father would go get him and bring him back home. So he had a terrible life. And yeah, luckily he had the uncle named Charles who who took him in for

a little while. But even he was like, I can't support you anymore, kid, because after a little while, very sadly, Joseph actually had his hawker's license revoked because he was deemed a menace to the community because he was scaring people when he was going door to door trying to sell stuff. His appearance scared people and there were enough complaints that the city revoked his license. So at the at the end, by the time he was seventeen, he had no choice but to go to the Union Workhouse,

which is a poorhouse. It's what Dickens described in Oliver Twist and some of his other stories, where you went there if you were either unable or unwilling to support yourself through honest work, and they would put you to work and it was basically like a prison for poor people. Um, they'd fee you and they give you a bed, but

it was a very cruel place to live. And that's where he spent a little while, I think five years um, because he had no other choice, and then finally chuck out at one point towards the end of his stay at the union workhouse. He said, you know what, there's an alternative for me, and I'm going to take it. And we should probably take a break now and uh, maybe come back and talk a little bit about his this mystery illness that he had that we now sort

of understand. Yea, So he referred to himself as the elephant boy and then the elephant man. Um. This was a moniker that was uh, he he sort of embraced. But he thought his whole life that he was this way because of something called maternal impression, which was still a common belief back then, which was that something could happen to a mother while pregnant that would affect the baby. And that's not to say, you know, she drank or smoked and had a literal, um literal effect on the

development of the of the baby. Um. What they meant was she was knocked over by an elephant when she was pregnant, and that is what caused his illness. And he believed that his whole life and the whole notion of maternal impression obviously something in the late eighteen hundreds mid eighteen hundreds was um, it's kind of crazy to think about now, but they actually thought that in utero it could have an effect like that. Yeah, yeah, so,

I mean, but it also kind of makes sense. Don't you think that if he started to basically grow, what you'd be like that looks like an elephant's trunk. Your mom was knocked over and almost stomped by an elephant once when she was pregnant with you. We have no idea what genetics are yet. I mean, you could see somebody, you know, making sense of it that way. Maybe. I guess it's hard to kind of put my head in

that mindset back then. But um, what we now think, and what doctors now think, is that he had either UH a case of neurofibro mitosis or UH and or something called proteo syndrome. And it really seems like proteo syndrome, as rare as it is, is probably what he suffered from. Yeah,

I saw that. Experts in neurofibromatosis have categorically ruled that out is what he had, because with neurofibromatosis you have all sorts of tumors that actually grow on your nerve tissue, so your nerve endings, your spine, brain, and he may have had those, so it's possible he did have a case of that, but like you said, it's much likelier as proteus syndrome, which is characterized by basically an overgrowth of tissue of bone of organs even um and and

I looked into this. So it has a genetic basis, as I kind of mentioned a couple of times, Chuck, But it's based on this idea of mosaicism, which is where you end up after you're conceived in your cells start dividing um. At some point, there's a mutation that occurs and your cells start dividing differently in in that they have two different sets of chromosomes. So you have two different sets of cells with different sets of chromosomes, and they start doing their own thing and in building

a human body, but it becomes incoherent. Whereas it would if they were uniform and all the cells shared the same set of of DNA or the same gene set um, they would build a coherent human But in this case it's incoherent. And it's kind of like if you gave two different building plans to two different construction companies and told them to build on the same site at the same time and just ignore each other. That's what you would produce. But in this case, it's not a building,

it's a human body. Yeah, I've heard of mosaic downs is the only time I've heard that used, and I think it's sort of similar in that case. But as far as proteosyndrome goes UM, it's progressive UM. Your body could be covered with um tumors, either benign or malignant. UM. It can malform blood vessels, you can have skin lesions, you can have blood clotting which results in all kinds of problems like deep vein thrombosis or maybe pulmonary embolism.

It can affect basically any kind of tissue from fat to skin to your central nervous system. It's really depends on the patient UM and who's afflicted how it can affect you. And uh, it usually I mean his was onset pretty late. If it started, I guess outwardly at least at five years old, because it typically starts anywhere from six months to eighteen months of age. Right. Um. But that's another thing about neurofibromatosis is that it um.

It usually starts at like the get it's onset is at birth or before birth, so that's another reason another strike against it. So UM, so it's pretty clear they think that that he he had proteus syndrome. And it's actually a pretty recent thing, like I think it was first described in ninety nine and they said there's probably about two hundred people who have ever appeared in the

medical literature that had it. And then some other reviewers in two thousand eleven did another survey of of the medical literature and paired it down to basically one people in the history of medicine whoever had proteus syndrome. And the thing is is Joseph Merrick may have had the most pronounced advanced case of proteus syndrome ever of anybody. Um. He he had basically every every symptom you can possibly have.

But the big problems that he suffered from where like you said, his his right hand was was UM, he couldn't use it because it had kind of fused into a fin like appendage. UM. He had joints that he couldn't move because the bones had had overgrown. He couldn't hear out of his right ear because his skull had overgrown.

And actually, if you see pictures of his skull today. Um, he's it's just huge and massive, and apparently it weighed something like twenty pounds and got to something like three ft in circumference, which is about a foot and circumference more than the average human man's head. Um. So it was just enormous. And all it was was he had cells that were that didn't know when to stop growing, whether it was bone or tissue or skin or whatever. He also had problems inside of his mouth with bony

growths too, which affected his speech. Yeah. He um, he couldn't sleep laying down. Uh, he had to sleep. I think one of his associates later in life he he liked to draw a curtain around himself when he slept. But one of his associates, um, kind of peeked in one night and saw that he slept sitting up with his knees drawn into his chest, with his head resting forward on his knees. So if you can imagine like

sleeping like that every night of your life. Because his head was so strong and so big that he would risk waking up with a broken neck and it affected his breathing. Um. I just I wonder if the late seventies when they first described proteo syndrome with that coincided with the interest in Merrick's story. Maybe we solved it. That's weird. Yeah, that would be weird. But I haven't seen anybody mentioned that. It's almost like he just you're in the zeitgeists somehow around then. I don't I don't

get it. But yeah, maybe that was it. But um, but no, it couldn't be Chuck because it wasn't until night six that some geneticists said that he probably had proteus syndrome for the first time, so it would have been after that. Yeah, it's just strange. So one one thing I want to say though about about proteo syndrome

and mosaicism, um mosaicism, that mutation happens after conception. So the weird cosmic irony of this whole thing is it's entirely possible that that mutation did happen around the time that his mother was pushed down in front of that elephant. It would have had nothing to do with the elephant, like she she wouldn't have been frightened into this mutation or anything. But how ironic would it be if it happened at virtually the same time you know. So, uh.

In the late eighteen hundreds four is when Merrick decided it was a pretty brave choice basically to take his life in his own hands and say, listen, I'm not gonna um, I can't go door to door, I can't stay in this work poorhouse any longer. I want to be able to sustain myself and not just end up in some you know, dark room of a hospital living off the government. Like I want to live my life

as best as I can. So he checked himself out of that workhouse and he decided to reach out to a man named Sam Tor who ran the Lester Music Hall h called the Gaiety Place of Varieties, and he started exhibiting himself as the Elephant Man, half man, half elephant, and he achieved a lot of success early on um there, and then he eventually moved to London, made even more money and was actually, I mean, we don't have real numbers on his income, but it was reportedly fairly substantial,

like enough to enough to live and live well. Yeah. Um, although living well, I mean it's a relative term. Because when he made the move to London, he was on display in a storefront in a building that's still there today. It's now numbered two fifty nine White Chapel Road in Shadwell in London. Um, and you can go visit the store today they sell Sorry's there. From what I understand, Um, But he was he lived in an iron bed and in the back of the the store and then would

come out for these performances this exhibit. But the thing is is like he was part of a side show. But he was a partner in the side show act. He he partnered with a man named Tom the Silver King Morgan, who was already a showman and Um, I guess bought out Uh Sam tores shares in Merrick's exhibition and took over for him and um when he was displaying him like like I said, they were, they were partners. Like.

There was a pamphlet that you would get that I think there's still copies of in existence today with kind of a crude drawing of of Joseph Merrick on the front and like you said, it said the elephant man, half man, half elephant. Um. And part of the biography in the pamphlet was written by Joseph Merrick. It had the whole story about his mother being pushed down in front of an elephant and everything. So like a lot of people just you know, talk about how he was

exploited or whatever. He was doing this for work, um, And I guess part of the rationale that he used was people stared at him anyway. Like by this time, when he went out in public, he would wear like a cloak. He had a cap with a hood that hung down from it, and he put this on so that, you know, he just looked like this mysterious shape moving through the town. But at the very least he wasn't just like um as gaulked at as he would be without,

you know, wearing a hat and a hood and all that. Um. But his his rationale was that people are going to stare anyway, I might as well charge him for it. And that's exactly what he did um at that storefront and in London. And it just so happened, Chuck, that that storefront was located directly across the street and still is from the London Hospital and some doctors they're caught wind of this curiosity who was on exhibit just right across the street, and they they some of them showed

up to to check it out. He had at one point he met up with a surgeon who had heard about his story named Frederick Treeves, and he invited him to come in for an examination. And this is um, you know at this point in Merrik had I guess it was sort of his peak of his deformities in his troubles. At this point, his head was about thirty six inches in circumference, that right wrist was about twelve inches around, and he had those tumors all over his body.

Like we said, a lot of trouble walking and talking. But when he was examined by by the doctor, he was like, you know, other than this, you're in pretty good health. Um. He ended up having a heart problem later on, but um, he said, other than that, you're in decent health. And he said, I would like to present you, if I could, to the Pathological Society of

London and to come in for more exams. And it's at this point where Merrek um, I think, sort of cut the notion in his head that listen, I am getting the same feeling um of being on display in the storefront, and I don't like how it feels. I think one of his quotes was the experience made him feel like an animal in a cattle market, and he said, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go from showing myself in the storefront to being paraded around in front of a bunch of doctors for some sort of yeah, some

sort of weird medical experiment. Yeah. So so Treats like very clearly identified, Um, Joseph Merrick is a really great case study that Treats could make his his name on, and ultimately he did. Um. But when he asked Joseph to come back for more tests and more displays and demonstrations in in, Joseph declined. Apparently Tribes was very upset by this, and then a lot of people say not coincidentally, but it's never been proven that he had any hand

in it whatsoever. Shortly after he was rebuffed or he rebuffed Trees invitation again. Um, the elephant Man exhibit was shut down by police. London outlawed that particular exhibit. On the one hand, it makes sense because Victorian society it kind of started to come to see side shows or freak shows as they were called at the time, as really exploitive and distasteful, even ones where the person on display was a willing participant, and then other people think

well it was revenged by treats. He he was kind of that kind of person potentially to do something petty like that. But however it happened his show got shut down, and he found himself pretty well off, like you said, like he had a lot of money, he just wasn't living very well. He was living in an iron bed in a cold storefront. And he said, you know, I've always wanted to go see Europe the continent, and uh, I'm I'm going to go try my hand in Belgium

and see what they think of my exhibit. And so we moved to Belgium for a while and started up in exhibit there. Yeah, so in Belgium is where um he had some sort of ups and downs. He was ended up being robbed by a manager there who took him on and he took basically all the money that he had saved, and it was it was a good amount of money, um, you know, And that's I think that's kind of how we know that he had some uh some decent success and made a decent living back

in the UK. And in eighty six he goes back to England and once he's there, he goes back to the London Hospital. They say that this is an incurable thing that you have and uh. There was a letter published in The Times from the chairman of the hospital, Francis carr Goam, that said, UM that talked about his case basic lee and said, hey, if there's if there's anyone out there that thinks they could help this man, Um,

please get in touch with us. There was a big outpouring of support, mainly financial UM, which really helped Merik out because, like I said, he had his life savings taken and was definitely a hard luck case at this point financially and he was able to use that money UM basically to live on for the rest of his life. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like there's a story that that Um Treeves said in his memoirs. Like I said before, there's only

two surviving pieces of contemporary writing about Joseph Merrick. One is the Memoirs of Frederick Trieves his his doctor the man who ended up becoming his doctor, and then the other was the pamphlet written um in part by Joseph Merrick about his life that was handed out at the side show. But in tribes Memoirs, he recounts a story that Um, Joseph was so bad off when he finally found passage back after being abandoned, beaten, robbed, in belled him.

When he found passage back to UK, he couldn't even speak um with either because he was just so so shattered by the experience or because um his the bony protrusions in his mouth had progressed so much. But regardless of the police supposedly found a business card of Frederick Trieve's on him and they took Joseph to Frederick Treeves so he was kind of at least according to trus

memoirs delivered by Providence, back into Tree's hands. And then yeah, at the hospital they were kind of like, look, you know, this is a really sad story, but he's an incurable there's nothing that we can do about. He's got to go. And if it hadn't have been for Francis car Gone basically turning out and saying like, hey, we don't know what a go fund me is yet, but this is

basically what we're going to do. And the response that he got was just so massive that that yeah, they basically said, Okay, there's enough money here now that you can live here for the rest of your life if you want to. And one of the big things that really kicked it off, uck was a visit from Alexandra or Alexander. Yeah, Alexandra, um Princess of Wales, and the Princess of Wales title is what Princess Die or Kate Middleton have now has has now Like it's a big

deal title in the royal family. So this is basically like Princess Die or Princess Kate showing up to visit him and shake his hand. And so it became very fashionable among um London's high society to visit Joseph Merrikan patronize him basically and make sure that he was supported. And it really gave the last four years of his

life like this amazing boost. Like he went from real hardship and exploitation to about as cushy a life as somebody with his medical condition can have and being celebrated as a as a really interesting good person um by London, you know, the last few years of his life, which is a real silver lining to this story. You know, yeah, we should take our last break here and talk about those last few years a little bit more after this m so uh April eleven is when Joseph Merrick finally

passed on, he was twenty seven years old. They found him lying flat on his back in his bed. So, um, this article gets it super wrong. Um. From how Stuff Works? They say that that, um this They quote a historian from University of You Talk called uh Naja what is her name? Der Back and she says that it's highly likely that Merrick committed suicide. And that is almost almost

almost surely incorrect. Um. He the story. The legend goes that he um, he had he wanted to always sleep like other people, flat on his back, but he couldn't because his head was too heavy and it would crush his windpipe. And that when he was discovered dead in his bed, he was flat on his back. Um, and had clearly tried to sleep like that because he wanted to be like normal people. And I think even in the David Lynch movie, that's how he dies, isn't it.

I've never seen it. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Really correct? Oh you're gonna love it, dude. It's one of the better movies ever made. I think it will be one of your favorites. I'll be very surprised if you don't absolutely love it. Um, wow, this I guess this research just spoiled it for you. Huh. I knew the story, but yeah, I've never seen it all the way through. Yeah, it's it's a good movie, but in it, I think that's how they depict his

his demise as well. But if you go back and you look at the um the postmortem report or the reports from the port postmortem report, he was actually found in the middle of the day. He'd already been awakened, he had been brought lunch at like one thirty pm, and he was totally fine. But then when another doctor dropped by on his rounds to see how he was

doing at three pm, he was found dead. And he was laying across his bed, and they think the way that he was laying indicated he tried to get up and either maybe he pulled a muscle or he had a heart attack or something like that happened and he slipped, and that's a big deal for him because his head weeighth twenty pounds and apparently when he went down, his head twisted just right and and twisted his vertebrae and killed him like that. So the initial um autopsy said

that he died of dis disconnected or dislocated vertebrae. And apparently somebody studied his bones in the last of your years and said, actually, that's that's probably exactly how he died, based on what his his skeleton looks like still today. Wow. So after he died, Uh, they they basically took his flesh from his body. Uh, they boiled down his bones because they wanted to have those for display and for study,

and they are still on display. And um, they ended up burying his very unceremoniously buried, um what was left of him, his organs and his remaining flesh and an unmarked grave. And there's a lot of speculation whether you know what kind of relationship he had with Trieves, and whether or not he really cared for him like he claimed to, or whether he was just sort of a

doctor exploiting this really um sort of exceptional case. Um. The reason he's known as John Merrick is because, um, because Treeves called him that in a book, even though that wasn't his name. So, UM, there's been a lot of speculation about the true nature there. Yeah, there's a there's another author um quoted in this house stuff works article named Joanne Vigor Mungo Vin. She's a she's a

written at least one book on on Joseph Merrick. And she um actually found his grave has lost unmarked grave and confirmed that he had been buried in consecrated ground in a common grave, which apparently was common in those two in those days, like people have been buried in that grave before him, and people were buried in that grave after him. Um. But it was in consecrated ground in an actual cemetery, wasn't like tossed in a ditch

like right outside the medical school or anything like that. Um. And so she made sure that he got a marker UM put up on that grave in the last I think the last couple of years she found it, and maybe two thou two nineteen, I think even as recent as that. Wow, that's pretty uh, pretty amazing. And then one other thing, Chuck, did you do you remember when Michael Jackson um famously made a bid for the Elephant Man's bones. I do, except that that did not happen.

That was all just a big cooked up rumor from a man named Frank Dilio who said that Michael bid five thousand dollars and then a million dollars on the bones of the elephant man, who was someone he apparently felt very akin to and apparently that is not true, and it was just sort of like the hyperbaric chamber that that never happened. Uh, and Jackson ended up making light of it a little bit and uh and they Leave Me Alone short film by dancing with an animated

version his skeleton. Yeah, so that and that's really weird. But the thing is, if you go back and search that there are like associated press articles from about it, and they they include quotes from people who work at the London Hospital Medical College who said that they had had turned down his offers. So it's it's really weird because I mean I always had heard it was made

up as well. Yeah, I mean I think, um, it's one of those things where they, i mean, his mom said it could have even come from ah from him as far as not actually bidding on them, but just to make up the story to get in the newspapers. Yeah. So, I mean one of the things that just wanted to make sure to drive home is that Joseph Merrik didn't

give up. I think that's why I was so bugged by the idea that this this historian just so Cavalier was like it was highly likely he committed suicide, even though all the evidence points to the idea that he didn't. But Joseph Merrick lived twenty seven years putting up with some of the most humiliating, disparaging, terrible treatment that any humans ever had to endure, and he did it with

like grace and dignity. He like read, and he wrote poetry, and he like corresponded with people, and he had like a gentle soft heart. And you know, finally, thanks to things like you know, the stage play and David Lynch's movie, he's he's been portrayed accurately in that sense. And I think that that's great because I think that that's that will be his legacy forever as somebody who was a very admirable human being who put up with a lot more than you know, I probably could have with with

dignity and grace. It's quite a story. Uh well, since Chuck said is quite a story, that means that that's it for the Elephant Man, and that it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this the ghost story. Recently for the Halloween, we rereleased our ghost episode and where I detailed the old lady I saw on Athens in the middle of the road. And this comes from Eric King. He said, I I thought i'd share this

with you guys. Uh. In the episode of Unsolved Mysteries that reminds me of this, there was a motorcyclist named Robert Davidson who was struck by lightning after pulling to the side of the road during a storm. When paramedics arrived, the situation looked grim as a crowd began to gather around the incident, A mysterious woman in a black dress holding a bible appeared just like my lady. She bypassed

paramedics and began to pray over Davidson. After a few tense moments of her chanting and beating her bible in the ground, he began to show signs of life again. The woman in the black dress smiled and then disappeared amongst the crowd. Davidson wound up in a coma for two months, but came out of it with no uh no permanent injuries. Upon further investigation, it was found that the road where he was struck was near a site that was once a religious community in the mid eighteen hundreds.

The black dress witnesses claimed, Uh, the woman was wearing a similar outfit to the one on display in a museum containing artifacts from the site. So Eric says, I think he thinks I should investigate mine a little bit more. Maybe there was a similar religious site near there where I saw the woman in black. And then it's from Eric King and uh, he and his wife were big, big listeners. Well thanks a lot, Eric, that was a great one, appreciated big time. Um, Chuck, you're gonna do

some research. I was actually doing so anyway the other day. So I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it up. Oh cool man, what do you have you found anything so far? Nothing? Okay? Well, yeah, you've got to report back if you find even the slightest shred of evidence of anything. Okay, of course. Uh. Well, while we wait for Chuck's report on the source and origin of his ghosts. Um, we'll leave you to it, and you can write into us to say hi, and

how's it going with your research? Chuck? Write it in an email and send it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio for more podcasts for my heart Radio, Is it the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,