Picture above is a very rare and wonderful, 1860 Currier & Ives stone lithograph advertising print for P. T. Barnum’s American Museum. The print features Barnum’s Premier Sideshow / Circus Freaks / Human Oddities Exhibit “Chang and Eng,” the original “Siamese Twins.”

The piece measures 9 ¾” by 13 7/8″ (including visible margins on all sides) and is framed for display in a simple, period, gold gilt surface wooden frame (overall size of framed display is 11 7/8″ by 14 7/8″). The image features a central, full-figured portrait of the conjoined twins surrounded by smaller, vignette images of scenes depicting the Twins in various daily activities. Included are views of Chang and Eng plowing a field, playing musical instruments, chopping down a tree, hunting, fishing, rowing a boat and driving a carriage. Also included are portraits of each man’s wife with their young children.
The text below the images reads “’Chang’ and ‘Eng’ / The World Renowned United Siamese Twins. / Now Exhibiting At Barnum’s American Museum, New York.” The lithograph is copyright 1860 by the publishers and lithographers, Currier & Ives.

Born in Siam (now Thailand) in 1811, Eng and Chang Bunker were connected at the chest by a five-inch-wide band of flesh. The location of this connection suggested to some doctors and other observers that the brothers shared a heart or some respiratory functions. These medical assumptions would later be proven wrong. In fact, it is believed that the brothers were xiphopagus twins, meaning they were joined only by a small piece of cartilage located at the sternum. The only organs fused were their livers, but each twin had a complete liver that could function independently. By careful practice, they were able to stretch their connective tissue enough for that they could stand side-by-side, rather than facing each other. This is what gave the “iconic” Siamese Twin look, where perception leads us to believe they are joined at the side, and which is the common depiction of this affliction. It is believed that separating Chang and Eng would have been very easy, even for the medical technology available at the time.

According to their biography, the twins shared relatively “normal” boyhoods in Siam, running and playing with other children, doing chores, and helping to support their parents and siblings by gathering and selling duck eggs in their small village. Later, as teenagers, the twins left Siam and began a career traveling with two agents, Robert Hunter and Abel Coffin.

Eng and Chang earned money by giving lectures and demonstrations throughout the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe. In fact, entries in their travel-expense journal document that they visited the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in October, 1834. In their far-flung travels, Eng and Chang became such popular celebrities during the 1830′s that their promotion as “Siamese twins” were terms that were universally employed to describe connected or conjoined twins.

By the late 1830′s, Eng and Chang grew tired of all their traveling, opting then to settle in North Carolina. There, the brothers married two sisters, Adelaide and Sarah Yates of Wilkes County. The sisters were of European ancestry and were neither twins nor connected themselves. The couples were married in 1843, and would ultimately produce 21 children between the two families.

Although they had minimal dealings with P. T. Barnum, the master showman displayed a wax figure of the twins in the American Museum in the 1840s, published a pamphlet on their lives in 1853, and publicly associated himself with the brothers. With large families to support, Chang and Eng returned to show business in 1860, agreeing to a six-week engagement at Barnum’s American Museum. This lithograph was issued to promote that appearance and was likely commissioned of Currier & Ives by P.T. Barnum himself. After suffering financial loses during the Civil War, the brothers again agreed to a European tour sponsored by Barnum in 1868, but these were the only times that they were in any way associated with P.T. Barnum.

Eng and Chang died in January 1874, at the age of 63. Chang preceded Eng in death by about two and a half hours. An autopsy indicated that Chang died of a blood clot in the brain; and, at the time, Eng’s demise was attributed, understandably, to shock.

Ann E. Leak was born without arms in Georgia in 1842. Her mother’s physician predicted that she would die within a few days but she survived and, while behind others her age in learning to walk, she eventually learned to use her feet as most use their hands. She became so adept at using her feet that she could skillfully sew and braid hair!

Like many Southern families, the Leaks lost their money and livelihood during the Civil War, so Ann did all she could to support both herself and her family. For a while she gave classes in braiding, but the money wasn’t enough to support both her and her parents, so she, reluctantly at first, chose to exhibit her skills. She first appeared at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York. It was not easy for Ann, but eventually she reconciled herself to the life of a “sideshow attraction.” She wrote poetically in her autobiography about the life she had chosen:

Only the conviction that it seemed best, reconciled me to it. My lot was not one of my own choosing, but such as Providence had assigned me, and my feet seemed to be directed in the path that I was about to tread. It is the doom of man that his sky should never be altogether without clouds.

Ann eventually traveled around the eastern United States under the name “Ann E. Leak – Born Without Arms,” and while being taken advantage of a few times, for the most part those she met in her travels treated her very well. She eventually married and traveled under the name Ann Leak Thompson.

As with many handless and armless sideshow performers, Ann would sell CDV photographs of herself as an additional source of income. It was her habit to inscribe these photos with inspirational messages related to the challenges of her life (and the lives of all men) similar to the one found on the CDV pictured above.

The image above has an inscription on the back, written by Ann with a pen held between her toes. The Inscription reads “Expect not to pass through life without a mixture of good and evil. / Ann E. Leak, Born without arms, Georgia. / Age 34 years, July 25, 1876.”

Much of the information about the life of Ann E. Leak is taken from this wonderful web site.

If you’d like to learn more about this piece, further details can be found at our eBay listing.

A macabre yet fascinating presentation photo album has been recently discovered among the offerings from a Connecticut Estate. The Album contains the final, pre-execution photo portraits of the 22 Men executed by the State of Connecticut between December 18, 1894 and March 29, 1912 at the Connecticut State Prison in Wethersfield. This simply amazing, one-of-a-kind Photo Album was put together by a correctional officer by the name of (amazingly enough) James E. Officer (yes, he really was “Officer Officer,” not a literary construct like Heller’s “Major Major”) and was presented to another correctional officer by the Name of “M. J. Redding.”

We were honestly unaware of the fact that apparently it was the policy of the Connecticut State Prison at Wethersfield to dress the men on Death Row in a suit and take a final portrait before they were hanged for their crime. Somehow, Officer Officer obtained the original photographs taken of each of the 22 men hanged by the State of Connecticut between December 18, 1894 and March 29, 1912, and mounted those portraits in a photo album along with neatly handwritten text identifying the condemned man by name, his place and date of birth, the date he was convicted, his crime, the place and date of his crime, the date he was sentenced to death, the dates of any reprieves, and (finally) the date and manner of his execution.

The album itself measures approx. 7 1/4″ x 5 5/8″ and is a generic, photograph album of the mid 19th-century. Each photograph of the condemned prisoner measures 3 1/8″ by 3 7/8″ and are essentially identical in form and format. In each photograph, the condemned man is dressed in a suit and tie (in a number of the photos it appears that the condemned are dressed in the very same suit and tie) and most of the images depict a man with a stunned, frightened, horrified and/or vacant countenance. The looks on the faces of these men alone are a study in the horrors of capital punishment, and the shock and horror of those faced with the reality of their own death. We have never seen anything like the images contained in this album, and we feel that the images contained here are among the most graphic, though at the same time incredibly subtle, statements in support of the abolishment of the barbaric practice of capital punishment – enough said.

The first page of the album features a presentation inscription that reads “Officer James E. Officer / to / Officer M. J. Redding. / 9, April, ’47.” The next 21 leaves of the album feature a single portrait photograph of an executed man with the details of his life and crime, as stated above. The 22nd page contains a portrait of convicted murderer Andrea Tanganelli, but without any manuscript information. The next few pages of the album have cut out corners identical to those it insert the Photos found on the previous pages, but these pages are blank and it is our best guess that Officer Officer had planned to continue this morbid collection, perhaps including those 32 men executed between 1912 and 1947 (when he dated this presentation album), but for some (perhaps thankful) reason was prevented from doing so. The actual story of the assembly of this album will likely never be known, but the simply amazing content represents a unique and likely never again available insight into the faces and souls of a group of men on death row at the turn of the 20th century – a group populated mostly by immigrants who somehow found themselves facing death in a country far from their home.

If you’d like to learn more about this piece, further details can be found at our eBay listing.

The world of magic has fascinated for centuries. With the popularity of the circus rising in the mid-19th to early-20th centuries in America, magicians became celebrity figures, celebrated and revered. Pictures above is a wonderful and very rare, 1910-11 volume of The Magician Annual. The book was compiled and edited by Will Goldston, and published by The Magician Ltd. It was a fascinating and quite beautiful 102-page volume that included three colored plates and over three hundred illustrations. Bound in its original, elaborate, pictorial red cloth covers, the front board included an image of an Indian magician.

The book has a broad range of contents, from stage juggling, to the history of playing, pocket tricks, illusions, and biographical information on various magicians of the Period. It is filled with a variety of interesting articles, from trick descriptions to pattern suggestions, from biographical information to theory. Among others, there is a trick contribution by Harry Houdini.

The Table of Contents includes:

The Scribe, The Failure, and The Magician (JOHN KEYMAN)
Amateur Conjurer’s Accessories (GEORGE JOHNSON)
The Magic of Suggestion (PROFESSOR HOFFMANN)
New Patter for Popular Problems (WOOLFE CLYNE)
Wine v. Water (CHRIS VAN BERN)
Telepathic Materialization (MAX STERLING)
Original Tricks (“ELLIOT”)
Magicians I Have Met (WILL GOLDSTON)
Some Clever Box Mysteries Exposed (JAY GEE)

Original Stage Mysteries (COLLINS & BRETMA)
The League of Magicians (WILL GOLDSTON)
Something to Startle the Public (EDGAR TURNER)
Other People’s Ideas (THE EDITOR)
Fêke Mediums (“KATCHEM”)
Can the Dead Speak? (HENRY BYATT)
Spanish Maiden Escape (HARRY HOUDINI)
Quick Change Secrets (LEE LAURIE)
Mysterious Stage Illusions (WILL GOLDSTON)
Other Coloured Plates

The book’s editor, Will Goldston was born Wolf Goldstone in Liverpool, England. He was of Jewish parentage, and at age of 11 or 12 became inspired by a box of tricks given to him as a present. In 1892, Goldston was studying with Prof. Alexander and reading Hoffmann’s Modern Magic. He debuted as apprentice at age 17 in 1898. He was also known as “Carl Devo” (circa 1898-1907), initially with Black Art. He moved from Professional Magician to a Professional Magic Dealer and managed the Conjuring, Theatrical, and Entertainment Departments at Gamages 1905-14. Goldston founded “The Magicians’ Club” in 1911, serving as Treasurer throughout but running it as a one-man self-serving club, until it passed into limbo during WW II. He was also the owner-manager of Aladdin House (Will Goldston Ltd) 1914-48 in London.

The majority of the text is instruction, not only in the mechanics of various magic tricks and illusions, but more importantly, guidance for the would-be magician regarding stage presence, conduct before an audience, timing, misdirection and general demeanor. The remainder is biographical and historical material on magicians and their craft. The world of magicians have always found their place in books, past and present, and this was an exemplary tome of the tricks of the trade.

I am currently reading a wonderful (though fictional) book called The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and it has piqued my interest in carnival performers and feats of daring. “Circus life” fascinates me; there is something exotic, inspiring, quixotic, and peculiar the lifestyle. Today at Anonymous Works, the blog’s author and curator-of-the-peculiar, Joey posts about Martha E. Wagenfurher, “Maid of the Rapids.” Though not a circus worker, Martha falls into a similar category of performers living on the fringe, who eschew typical means of entertainment and seek to take themselves to unknown limits.

Martha E. Wagenfuhrer hailed from Buffalo, NY. The wife of a professional wrestler, her daring streak helped her devise a plan to be the first woman to ever shoot down Niagara Falls in a barrel. She timed her stunt to be on the exact day, and the exact time, that President William McKinley was to have a very public visit at the Falls on September 6, 1901. She expected it to be a widely publicized event, with loads of press vying to make her instantaneously famous. Unfortunately, fate was not on her side. First, as she arrived at the Falls, her barrel struck the bank and was damaged, delaying her feat. By the time she was ready at around 6pm, according to the New York Times article that followed the next day, the press had fled the raging waterfall’s banks, rushing to cover the assassination of President McKinley, which occurred mere hours after his morning Niagara visit.

In the description of the 1901 cabinet card pictured above, we learn of Martha’s fate:

Martha began her journey on the afternoon of September 6th, but before her barrel could be set afloat it sustained damage when it accidentally rolled down the bank of the river. Martha refused to go ahead with her stunt until the barrel was repaired and later that day, slightly before 6 p.m. Martha was helped inside her barrel.

Unfortunately for Martha her barrel was caught in the Whirlpool Rapids for over an hour. With darkness setting in it became necessary for the Great Gorge Railway Illumination Car to be brought to the Whirlpool so its search light could illuminate the surface of the river. When it was possible to finally retrieve the barrel Martha was found unconscious inside and barely breathing. It took over ten minutes to revive the woman.

She was featured in several publications, such as Cosmopolitan magazine, yet, as with most flash-in-the-pan performers, her story is overshadowed by the events of her time.