During the 19th century, people with physical disabilities and rare physical characteristics often occupied a complicated position between scientific curiosity, popular entertainment, and celebrity. Public exhibitions of individuals with disabilities and rare medical conditions became enormously popular, drawing audiences to museums, lecture halls, and traveling exhibitions, eager to witness what newspapers and showmen insisted was extraordinary or exotic. As a result, people with visible physical disabilities were often exploited and abused by managers and audiences, becoming public figures whose private lives were treated as entertainment.

One of the most influential figures in this ableist culture of spectacle was P. T. Barnum, who “was making nearly $500 per week in profit ($10,700 in current dollars)” by the age of 19 (Crockett, Zachary. “The Rise and Fall of Circus Freakshows.” Priceonomics, 30 Apr. 2014). His American Museum in New York City operated from the 1840s to the 1860s. It was a premier venue, featuring acts like Charles Stratton, a performer with dwarfism who was marketed as “General Tom Thumb,” while also exhibiting unusual animals, historical artifacts, and scientific curiosities. Earlier in his career, Barnum notoriously leased an elderly enslaved woman named Joice Heth, falsely claiming that she was 161 years old and George Washington’s former nurse (Osbourne, Abigail.