by Peter Ford
Sir,
I am authorized to ask your powerful assistance in bringing to the notice of the public the following most exceptional case. There is now in a little room off one of our attic wards a man named Joseph Merrick, aged about twenty-seven, a native of Leicester, so dreadful a sight that he is unable even to come out by daylight to the garden. He has been called ‘the elephant man’ on account of his terrible deformity. I will not shock your readers with any detailed description of his infirmities, but only one arm is available for work.
In the paragraphs that followed, Carr Gomm outlined the Elephant Man’s history: how, some time before, Mr Treves, one of the hospital surgeons, saw him on exhibition. How the police stopped the exhibition and Merrick went to Belgium under the care of ‘an Austrian manager’ who left him robbed and destitute. How he pawned his last possessions, which raised his fare to England, where he felt that ‘the only friend that he had in the world was Mr Treves of The London Hospital’. How the crowd had made his journey home an utter nightmare, and how when he arrived at the hospital he had ‘only the clothes in which he stood’.
He has been taken in by our hospital, though there is, unfortunately, no hope of his cure, and the question now arises what is to be done with him in the future.
He has the greatest horror of the workhouse, nor is it possible, indeed, to send him to any place where he could not insure privacy, since his appearance is such that all shrink from him.
The Royal Hospital for Incurables and the British Home for Incurables both decline to take him in, even if sufficient funds were forthcoming to pay for him.
Mr Carr Gomm then reviewed in detail the administrative difficulties Joseph’s case had raised, but made the point that, as an incurable, he ought not to be taking up space in an already overcrowded general hospital, ‘where he is occupying a private ward, and being treated with the greatest kindness – he says he has never before known in his life what quiet and rest were’. Joseph’s appearance, said Carr Gomm, was so terrible that
… women and nervous persons fly in terror from the sight of him, and that he is debarred from seeking to earn his livelihood in any ordinary way, yet he is superior in intelligence, can read and write, is quiet, gentle, not to say even refined in his mind. He occupies his time in the hospital by making with his own available hand little cardboard models, which he sends to the matron, doctor, and those who have been kind to him. Through all the miserable vicissitudes of his life he has carried about a painting of his mother to show that she was a decent and presentable person, and as a memorial of the only one who was kind to him in life until he came under the care of the nursing staff of The London Hospital and the surgeon who has befriended him.
It is a case of singular affliction brought about through no fault of himself; he can but hope for quiet and privacy during a life that Mr Treves assures me is not likely to be long.
It was symptomatic of the spirit of the times that Carr Gomm found it necessary to emphasize not only that Joseph was in no position to do an honest day’s work, but also that no moral taint attached to his plight. To be utterly deserving of charity it was essential to be utterly virtuous. Oddly and evidently, Joseph’s character did approximate to such an ideal, and many of those who met and came to know him would have agreed without question. The fact perhaps made Carr Gomm’s task of raising the appeal easier, and he threw open an invitation to the influential readers of The Times to put forward suggestions for Joseph’s future. He also made it clear that there was no question of the hospital ejecting the patient on to the street, even though it was at this stage in its history having to deal with some 76,000 cases a year.
I have never before been authorized to invite public attention to any particular case, so it may well be believed that this case is exceptional.
Any communication about this should be addressed either to myself or to the secretary at The London Hospital.
As it happened, a complex series of perplexities and discussions had led to the drafting of Carr Gomm’s remarkable letter. Frederick Treves had deposited an administrative dilemma on the laps of the hospital committee when he acted to commandeer the small room tucked away among the attics in the roof of the East Wing. It was one among a set of rooms that had been converted to accommodate single private patients or isolation cases suffering from highly infectious diseases. The very act of admission was in technical breach of hospital regulations, as Treves himself recollected.
Chronic cases were not accepted, but only those requiring active treatment. I applied to the sympathetic chairman of the committee, Mr Carr Gomm, who not only was good enough to approve my action but who agreed with me that Merrick must not again be turned out into the world.
For the time being, it had been a question of ignoring the irregularities of Joseph’s presence in the hospital, and Treves had been free to examine Joseph at leisure. He was startled at the deterioration in physical health that had taken place during the past year and a half. The Elephant Man presented a pitiful sight: his deformities had increased to the point where their crippling effects were becoming more general; he had also developed bronchitis, and there was at least the suggestion of a heart disorder in an early stage. Eighteen months before, at the meeting of the Pathological Society of London, Treves had been able to note how Joseph enjoyed good health, how he was free from other serious disease apart from his condition, how he even possessed a fair degree of natural strength. Now he was driven to recognize that Joseph’s expectancy of life could be no more than a few more years at the most.
After his admission to the London Hospital, Joseph’s general condition remained poor for several days. Gradually a combination of food and rest helped him to recover some of his lost strength. The problem of the stink that arose from his skin was resolved more easily than might have been expected, for it was found that so long as he bathed once or twice a day, the odour could be reduced to a level which was hardly noticeable. It was also arranged that he should be attended only by nurses who volunteered, and that each of these be carefully prepared for his appearance before being admitted to the room. In this way the usual shocked reactions of people seeing him for the first time were avoided.
He remained, even so, a difficult patient to nurse. His speech was almost incomprehensible and he showed suspicion towards anyone who approached him. It was becoming clear that his spirit had suffered even more than his body from his recent experiences. Every knock on the door of the room, Treves noticed, provoked a reaction of startled anxiety. He flinched from the hands of his nurses, and he shook with agitation whenever a stranger entered his room or some thoughtless, sensation-seeking wardmaid or porter pushed the door of the room ajar to take a peep through the crack.
For many days Joseph remained unsettled and apprehensive, but at last the steady routine of hospital life and a growing familiarity with the doctors and nurses soothed his shattered nerves. He settled into a cautious watchful repose. He began to form tentative friendships with the hospital staff, expressing a shy but deep gratitude for everything they did for him. His manner, always gentle, now became almost serene, and he developed a childlike faith in those who tended him. The nurses would bring him cardboard cutouts from the toy shop to help him pass the time, and together they struggled to construct the models. Each finished model would then be solemnly presented to some member of staff as a token of the gratitude he felt but for which he could never find sufficient expression in words.
As time went on, Treves grew increasingly accustomed to the Elephant Man’s odd speech and found he was able to talk with him and study him more easily. There were fresh examinations to be made and measurements to be taken; again Joseph was persuaded to strip and pose for the clinical photographer. At least there was for Treves, as he visited Joseph each day, the professional satisfaction of seeing a slow return to relative health. But simultaneously there hung between them – unspoken, even evaded – the matter of Joseph’s future.
By November 1886, the blind eye of th
e authorities could not remain turned for much longer. Five months had gone by since Joseph’s admission, and while he could still hardly be described as fit, it was obvious that little further improvement could be expected from the treatment the hospital had to offer. He was, moreover, occupying a private ward, urgently needed for other patients and for which no payment was being received. There were no other institutions that could be persuaded to offer him shelter, and even the hospitals for the chronic sick approached by Carr Gomm refused to give him a place. It seemed unthinkable that he should be callously discharged into the street, yet no funds were available to maintain him in a hospital ward where, by all the rules, he was an inadmissible case. Carr Gomm felt he could go no further without the authority of the full house committee.
At this point in the history of the Elephant Man a vigorous publicity campaign was set in motion on his behalf, though by whom it was originated is unclear. The fact is that events moved fast, the starting point having been a strikingly apposite sermon preached by the Master of the Temple, Dr Charles John Vaughan, on Advent Sunday, 28 November 1886. Dr Vaughan had achieved his present eminence only by living down a homosexual love affair with a pupil that had, in 1859, compromised and put an end to his career as a headmaster of Harrow School.
For his Advent sermon he took his text from the Gospel According to St John: ‘Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Was his choice of text coincidence, or did he speak from a knowledge of Joseph’s distress? In theory his attention could have been drawn to the case of the Elephant Man by Carr Gomm, who was himself a barrister of the Inner Temple. If this was so, Dr Vaughan might have been expected to take a personal interest, for he also was born and spent his childhood years in the city of Leicester, where his father was vicar of the parish church of St Martin’s.
Dr Vaughan’s sermon in turn gave Carr Gomm the chance to cite it when, two days later, he took up his pen to write to The Times. By preaching eloquently on the text concerned, said Carr Gomm, Dr Vaughan had shown how ‘one of the Creator’s objects in permitting men to be born to a life of hopeless and miserable disability was that the works of God should be manifested in evoking the sympathy and kindly aid of those on whom such a heavy cross is not laid’. The letter was accordingly printed on the Saturday, and three days afterwards, on Tuesday, 7 December, the house committee made the whole problem of Joseph Merrick’s future care the first item on the agenda to its routine weekly meeting.
As the committee minutes concisely record, Mr Carr Gomm began, as chairman, by addressing the meeting on Joseph’s behalf, outlining the steps already taken and reviewing the background to the case as well as the circumstances that had led to the appeal in The Times.
The Chairman stated that the result had been the receipt of a very large number of letters and a considerable sum of money. About £100 had been sent for his help and a Mr Singer had offered to contribute £50 yearly if Merrick were kept here. (The only other suggestions the Chairman had received were to send him to a Hospital for the Blind, to Lighthouses or to Dartmoor.)
The House Committee considered this case very carefully and it was resolved to keep J. Merrick here for the present and the Chairman said that he would communicate with Mr Singer who made his liberal offer on Merrick’s behalf.
The outcome was a public response that was literally astounding. Letters continued to arrive by every post. Even the British Medical Journal was moved on the following Saturday, 11 December, to investigate the incident with a mixture of aroused curiosity and professional detachment:
A letter from Mr Carr Gomm, Chairman of The London Hospital, appeared last week in The Times. It contained an appeal to the charitable public on behalf of John [sic] Merrick, a man afflicted by so terrible a deformity that he cannot venture out by daylight to the garden of the hospital. Not only does his condition prevent him from being kept in a public ward or admitted into an institution for incurables, but he cannot travel even by public conveyances. Among the other experiences of this kind, acutely painful to his feelings, a steamboat captain refused on one occasion to take him as a passenger.
The journal went on to dispose of any idea that Merrick suffered from elephantiasis, and reminded its readers that he had already featured in notices of the meetings of the Pathological Society of London, the case being then fully reported in the society’s Transactions, when a plate was also featured.
Since that plate was taken the disease has made great progress. Through the kindness of Mr Treves, we have been supplied with four photographs, representing the patient’s present condition. A comparison of these drawings with the plate above noted will show how the disease has advanced during the past two years …
We learn from Mr Treves that he has received piles of correspondence from the curious and from the charitable on the subject; and we trust that poor John Merrick will, through the efforts of the benevolent, be enabled to end his days in peace and privacy, with a small competence.
The report in closing rounded off with a rather technical discussion of Joseph’s deformities, and there can be little doubt that it was inspired by Treves himself. Not only did it acknowledge his help, but it also contained the curious mistake that was the hallmark of all his writings on the topic of the Elephant Man: the erroneous statement that his Christian name was John. Whereas the hospital authorities, Carr Gomm and the editor of The Times managed without trouble to record him correctly as Joseph, Treves invariably and persistently referred to him as John Merrick.
So far as the disposal of Joseph’s future was concerned, however, the situation was beginning to grow clearer by the next appointed meeting of the hospital committee on Tuesday, 14 December; was, indeed, happily resolving itself. The reverberations from the letter in The Times stirred up responses in many other newspapers, and these in turn took up the story. The plight of the Elephant Man was even carried in the provincial press, and reached, it seems, the hairdresser’s saloon in the back streets of Leicester where Joseph’s uncle Charles Merrick pursued his modest, hardworking trade. A ‘very great number of letters had been received about Joseph Merrick’, Carr Gomm was able to tell the hospital committee,
… and a very large sum of money upwards of £230 had been sent to him. No useful suggestion had been made for the best means of providing for the unfortunate man, save that his uncle had offered to take him in, but it appeared that there was an obstacle to this in the necessity Merrick was under of frequent bathing. Thus a considerable sum of money had been received, and as one gentleman, Mr Singer, had given £50 which he proposed to continue annually, it was the Chairman’s opinion that the best course to pursue was to keep Merrick here. This course was agreeable to Merrick himself, and although he was not strictly admissible it seemed that it was the right thing to keep him here.
In this opinion the Committee unanimously agreed and the Chairman undertook to write to The Times announcing that his letter had been adequately answered.
It would be impossible to grudge Joseph his luck at last in the destiny that had besieged his life from its beginning. He had all at once caught the imagination of the British public in a way that could never have been possible while he remained a grotesque, disturbing showpiece in the freakshops. Only six months before it had seemed impossible to visualize any future for him beyond the inevitability of his being drawn down into Victorian England’s insatiable and nameless maw for the destitute and broken in spirit. He also had the advantage of being the perfect object for philanthropic attention: utterly blameless, hence unqualifiedly deserving.
He had entered into his refuge.
Once it was all settled that Joseph remain resident in the London Hospital, it was essential for suitable living accommodation to be set aside and prepared. At the back of the hospital, between the high buildings of the East Wing and the new Grocers’ Wing (so called because its building had been made possible by a generous donation from the Grocers’ Company of the City of London), lay the sunny, echoing courtyard known colloq
uially as ‘Bedstead Square’. It was christened thus because it was here that the iron bedsteads from the hospital wards were brought for repair, cleaning and repainting. On one side of the square, a flight of concrete steps led downwards from the courtyard to a small wooden door with a grimy overhead fanlight. Behind the door, bare and unused in the basements of the East Wing, were two small rooms. It was decided that these could make an ideal conversion into the Elephant Man’s future home.
The task of overseeing the adapting of the rooms fell to Mr William Taylor, chief engineer to the hospital. He was in his early fifties, having come there in 1878 as an employee of the engineering firm which installed the lifts. Once the contract was completed, he was invited to stay on as a member of the hospital’s engineering team and to help ensure that the lifts continued to work satisfactorily. Gradually he rose in rank to chief engineer, acquiring with his post the resonant title of ‘Mechanical Engineer in Charge of the Artisan Staff’.
As a consequence of Mr Taylor’s labours, the larger, outer room in Bedstead Square was furnished as a bed-sitting room. It had in it a table and chairs, a small fireplace with its own mantelpiece and a pleasant specially built armchair. The bed, too, had been specially constructed by the hospital works department. It still survived, tucked away in a storeroom, as late as the 1930s, an eyewitness describing it as a couch type of bed, ‘carved or eased to accept his abnormal frame’, covered in leather, probably over horsehair, and very hard to sit on.
The room gathered daylight from glass panels set within the door, from the fanlight above and from a narrow, deep-set sash window that looked on to, the alley and the flight of concrete steps. On the inner wall of the room another door opened into a passageway, beyond which lay the second, smaller room of the suite. Here Mr Taylor managed to contrive a bathroom for Joseph’s use. There were no mirrors in either room; this was the one firm stipulation that Frederick Treves laid down in the matter of furnishing.