by Peter Ford
In his account Treves says that Merrick stayed at Fawsley for six weeks, enjoying the freedom of being able to wander unseen and unmolested about the woods as the estate was strictly preserved. Merrick wrote several times to Treves, and his letters overflowed with descriptions of the wonders he discovered, of the trout he watched darting beneath the surface of a stream, of the wild animals he saw, of the bird-calls he heard, of his developing friendship with an apparently fierce and noisy dog. The wild flowers fascinated him, and he picked and pressed them so that he might send them to Treves to examine. Treves privately identified them as the commonest of hedgerow plants, but valued them for all they represented. They enabled him to create in words an unforgettable image of Merrick ‘who had once crouched terrified in the filthy shadows of a Mile End shop … now sitting in the sun, in a clearing among the trees, arranging a bunch of violets he had gathered’. It had all been, said Treves, ‘the one supreme holiday of his life’.
Once again, however, the facts step forward to catch Treves out in poetic licence. Lady Louisa Knightley kept a diary. It survives in manuscript in the Northamptonshire Record Office. The earliest reference to Joseph it contains is dated Friday, 9 September 1887, when he was evidently staying in the family of William Goodman Bird, a farmer at Haycock’s Hill near the Northamptonshire village of Badby:
Mother and I drove to Badby where two sad cases – poor old Powell dying of cancer in the face – and a young Billingham of consumption. Then on to Haycock’s Hill where Joseph Merrick, the ‘elephant man’ about whom there has been so much in the papers, has been boarded out for some weeks with the Birds. I think it is impossible to imagine three more melancholy things – they haunt me; one can only pray – and remember that Jesus lived and died for them. Merrick has such nice brown eyes! I looked straight into them – but he is very awful to behold. Croquet with my darling afterwards.
There is another entry for that same year, on Saturday, 29 October:
Wednesday I went again to see poor Merrick at Haycock’s Hill and thence to Daventry to distribute prizes at a work show.
As a conscientious member of the upper classes, Lady Louisa Knightley struck a broadly equal balance between pursuing the social round and the performance of good works. The following year Joseph was staying at another farm in the same locality, adjoining the village of Byfield. On Wednesday, 19 September 1888, she recorded in her diary:
Mother and I went to a pleasant enough garden party at Edgcott and I visited poor Merrick by the way – and found him very comfortable and the Goldby’s quite reconciled to him.
The mention of the Goldbys seems to provide a reference to the unfortunate incident Treves describes. That Mrs Goldby was happily able to accept Joseph in the end is borne out by one brief entry for Thursday, 5 September 1889: ‘Went on the way to see poor Merrick who is at the Redhill Farm again.’
Thus it was not one but three supreme holidays that Joseph Merrick enjoyed in the Northamptonshire countryside. Mr Goldby seems in fact to have been a gamekeeper, so Treves apparently reversed the households concerned. It is also hard to resist mischievously pointing out that violets were never in season at Joseph’s holiday times. Redhill Farm nevertheless lay just about a quarter of a mile back along a track from Redhill Wood skirted by the main Daventry to Banbury road. Joseph could therefore easily have walked at leisure between the house and the woodland unobserved as Treves describes. Moreover he was, at Redhill, befriended by a local farm lad, Walter Steel, who told his family in later recollection how he would call on him each day to chat and pick up any letters he had written to take them to the post. He, too, was impressed by the interesting quality of Joseph’s conversation and by someone he felt to be a well-educated man. Mr Merrick, he remembered, composed a great many letters, and would sit out of sight in the woods to write them. He also remembered that Joseph liked to read a great deal of poetry and spoke of the delight he took in the natural world.
Joseph was back at the London Hospital by 7 October that year, for on that date he dispatched a letter of gratitude to Mrs Maturin, the ‘young and pretty widow’ to whom Treves had introduced him in his memorable therapeutic experiment. Mrs Maturin had sent Joseph a book and a brace of grouse from her home on the isle of Islay, off the west coast of Scotland. The letter is the only one to have been rediscovered from among the many expressions of thanks Joseph must have written to his patrons during his time at the London Hospital. It is one of only two examples of his handwriting that are known to have survived.
If Joseph’s body was degenerating as the decade of the 1880s drew to its close, his spirit somehow seemed immune to decay; his peace of mind and quiet contentment were evident to all who had contact with him. His life was growing more restricted, and he found it necessary to conserve his strength, making it his habit to remain in bed till midday. The afternoons he spent reading or writing letters. The evenings were the precious moment when he chose to escape from the confinement of his rooms to walk alone unseen in the hospital gardens.
His spirits remained good, and on Easter Sunday, 6 April 1890, he twice attended the chapel services, taking communion in the morning. On the following Thursday evening, he walked as usual in the garden, then retired to bed. On Friday morning, 11 April, he followed his usual custom, staying in bed till noon. When his nurse, Nurse Ireland of Blizzard Ward, came to attend his needs, she spoke to him but noticed nothing to cause anxiety. She left him sitting up in bed. At 1.30 p.m. a wardmaid arrived with lunch and left it for him to eat in his own time. And then, shortly after three o’clock, Mr Hodges, Treves’s current house surgeon, came down to Bedstead Square to pay a routine call. He found the Elephant Man lying across his bed and saw at once that he was dead. The untouched lunch remained where the wardmaid left it.
The house surgeon felt so shaken that he thought it best to refrain from touching the body until he could obtain the help of a more senior colleague, Mr Ashe. The doctors had expected Joseph’s end to be swift, but not so startlingly sudden. Only when Mr Ashe arrived was the body disturbed as the two surgeons examined Joseph together, turning him this way and that as they sought the explanation for his abrupt departure from life.
An inquest on Joseph Merrick was held at the London Hospital on Tuesday, 15 April 1890. Mr Wynne Baxter, the coroner for Central Middlesex, heard the evidence, and next morning The Times carried a full report headed ‘Death of The Elephant Man’.
Charles Barnabas Merrick, hairdresser, tobacconist and umbrella repairer of Churchgate, Leicester, had journeyed south to perform the last unhappy service he could for his nephew: formally to identify his mortal remains. His uncle and aunt remained the only persons in his family to have stood by Joseph so far as was in their power, and he maintained contact with them. At some point during his later years he sent to Leicester a copy of Robinson Crusoe: His Life and Adventures, adapted from Daniel Defoe and handsomely illustrated with chromolithographs after watercolours by Carl Marr. The inscription on the flyleaf,
John Ernest Merrick
From his Cousin
Joseph Merrick
is the second example of Joseph’s handwriting known still to exist. John Ernest, who was born in 1881, fourteen months after Joseph’s departure from the household for the workhouse, was therefore only nine at the time of Joseph’s death.
Of Joseph’s father, Joseph Rockley, the bare fact was recorded that he was known to be still alive. Then the inquest moved on to its essential business. Mr Ashe confirmed the death had been natural.
Witness believed that the exact cause of death was asphyxia, the back of his head being greatly deformed, and while the patient was taking a natural sleep the weight of the head overcame him, and so suffocated him.
Nurse Ireland and Mr Hodges respectively described Joseph’s last hours and the finding of his body, and then the coroner summed up by saying:
… there could be no doubt that death was quite in accordance with the theory put forward by the doctor. The jury accepted this view and ret
urned a verdict that death was due to suffocation from the weight of the head pressing upon the windpipe.
In parallel, on the same day, the house committee of the London Hospital used its Tuesday meeting to discuss the problems raised by Joseph’s demise. Treves offered his comments to the committee, from which medical men were rigorously excluded, and the minutes were as brisk as ever.
It was decided that the skeleton should be set up in the College Museum, a funeral service having been held in the chapel before the body was handed over to Mr Treves, the licensed anatomist of the college.
Mr Carr Gomm read a letter he proposed sending to The Times re Merrick and Mr Carr Gomm was thanked for his kindness in writing it.
The point was that so much interest had been aroused by the Elephant Man’s plight, and so many influential benefactors had stepped forward, that the news of Joseph’s death was unavoidably a matter of public concern. Carr Gomm’s letter was an attempt not only to offer the world a full picture of Joseph’s life and death in the care of the London Hospital, but also to make account of his stewardship of the charity sought on Joseph’s behalf. It was printed in The Times of Wednesday, 16 April 1890, immediately beneath the report of the inquest. Again it summarized at length the desperation of Joseph’s life before chance brought about his admission to the London Hospital, and the generosity of the public response that enabled him to remain.
There he received kindly visits from many, among them the highest in the land, and his life was not without various interests and diversions; he was a great reader and was well supplied with books; through the kindness of a lady, one of the brightest ornaments of the theatrical profession, he was taught basket making, and on more than one occasion he was taken to the play, which he witnessed from the seclusion of a private box.
The next paragraph made much of Joseph’s virtues, of his confirmation by the bishop, of his attendance at chapel services, and how, during the last conversation he had with the chaplain, he ‘expressed his feelings of deep gratitude for all that had been done for him here, and his acknowledgement of the mercy of God in bringing him to this place’. Then there was the six weeks’ outing he had enjoyed at a country cottage ‘each year’. Yet, declared Carr Gomm, despite ‘all this indulgence’ he remained ‘quiet and unassuming, very grateful for all that was done for him, and conformed himself readily to the restrictions that were necessary’. Even into the very grave, Joseph Merrick’s status as an infinitely deserving case needed to be repeatedly emphasized.
I have given these details, thinking that those who sent money to me for his support would like to know how their charity was applied. Last Friday afternoon, though apparently in his usual health he quietly passed away in his sleep.
I have left in my hands a small balance of the money which has been sent me from time to time for his support, and this I now propose, after paying certain gratuities, to hand over to the general funds of the hospital. This course, I believe, will be consonant with the wishes of the contributors.
It was the courtesy of The Times in inserting my letter in 1886, that procured for this afflicted man a comfortable protection during the last years of a previously wretched existence, and I desire to take this opportunity of thankfully acknowledging it.
Among those who took a personal interest in the news of Joseph’s passing was Lady Louisa Knightley at Fawsley Park. She made a note in her journal:
I see in today’s paper that poor Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man’, is dead, passed quietly away in his sleep. It is a merciful way of going out of what to him has been a very sad world, though he has received a great deal of kindness in it. Thank God – he was not unprepared. Now! he is safe and at rest.
When Carr Gomm’s first appeal appeared, the British Medical Journal had followed it up with a report on the Elephant Man. Now, on 19 April, it did the same, its informant being Treves himself. The report reminded readers of the earlier reference and stated that Joseph’s death had occurred at ‘the age of 27, according to his relatives’. This at once created a problem since the article four years before said his age was twenty-seven then. ‘His age must therefore have been overstated four years ago …’ The inquest report in The Times created further confusion by saying he was twenty-nine, but Treves was correct in accepting the relatives’ statement for the British Medical Journal. Joseph’s age at death was twenty-seven years and eight months.
He derived the name by which he was known [said the British Medical Journal report] from the proboscis-like projection of his nose and lips, together with the peculiar shape of his deformed forehead. His real name was John [sic] Merrick. He was victimized [sic] by showmen for a time; when shown in the Whitechapel Road, the police stopped the exhibition. He was afterwards exhibited in Belgium, where he was plundered of his savings. On one occasion a steamboat captain refused to take him as a passenger.
The report went on with an account of Joseph’s appearance and deformities, and proceeded to ‘say a few words on poor Merrick’s last days and death’:
The bony masses and pendulous flaps of skin grew steadily. The outgrowths from the upper jaw and its integuments – the so-called trunk – increased so as to render his speech more and more difficult to understand. The most serious feature, however, in the patient’s illness was the increasing size of the head, which ultimately caused his death. The head grew so heavy that at length he had great difficulty in holding it up. He slept in a sitting or crouching position, with his hands clasped over his legs, and his head on his knees. If he lay down flat the heavy head tended to fall back and produce a sense of suffocation.
Nevertheless, the general health of the ‘elephant man’ was relatively good shortly before his death … At 1.30 p.m. on Friday he was in bed (he seldom got up until the afternoon) and appeared to be perfectly well when the wardmaid brought him his dinner. Between 3 and 4 o’clock he was dead in his bed.
Mr Treves, to whom we are indebted for the above details, is of the opinion that from the position in which the patient lay after death it would appear that the ponderous skull had fallen backwards and dislocated his neck.
A résumé of the inquest followed, and then in the penultimate paragraph there came a most interesting misstatement:
We understand that the Committee of the London Hospital refused not only to permit a necropsy on the body of the ‘elephant man’, but also declined to allow his body to be preserved.
The fact of the matter was that, in the Anatomy Department of the Medical College of the London Hospital, casts had already been made of Joseph’s body and the process of dissection was well under way. Unless this was a genuine misunderstanding, it is impossible to avoid the impression that Treves felt it would be unpolitic for the information to be made public. Perhaps he feared it might create distress for those who had responded so compassionately in contributing to Joseph’s happiness and welfare as well as often cultivating his company.
When reading the various accounts of Joseph’s end, it becomes clear that the doctors found some difficulty in explaining the eventual physical disaster that caused his death. There can be little doubt that Treves was the person most intimately acquainted with Joseph, and equally little doubt that he was one of the most gifted medical figures of his generation. It is probably therefore Treves’s own account of Joseph’s death in ‘The Elephant Man’ which should take precedence in so far as any version can be definitive:
… he was found dead in his bed … in April, 1890. He was lying on his back as if asleep, and had evidently died suddenly and without a struggle, since not even the coverlet of the bed was disturbed. The method of his death was peculiar. So large and so heavy was his head that he could not sleep lying down. When he assumed the recumbent position the massive skull was inclined to drop backwards, with the result that he experienced no little distress. The attitude he was compelled to assume when he slept was very strange. He sat up in bed with his back supported by pillows, his knees were drawn up, and his arms clasped round his legs, while his he
ad rested on the points of his bent knees.
He often said to me that he wished he could lie down to sleep ‘like other people’. I think on this last night [sic, since he died during the early afternoon] he must, with some determination, have made the experiment. The pillow was soft, and the head, when placed on it, must have fallen backwards and caused a dislocation of the neck. Thus it came about that his death was due to the desire that had dominated his life – the pathetic but hopeless desire to be ‘like other people’.
The house surgeons, coroner and death certificate all spoke of asphyxia and suffocation; Treves, in his essay and the article in the British Medical Journal, spoke of dislocation of the neck. But Treves, it must be said, had the advantage of dissecting the body after death. He supervised the taking of the plaster casts of the head and limbs and the preservation of skin samples. To the frustration of future researchers, the skin samples were lost during the Second World War. The jars containing them dried out in the absence of staff who had been evacuated to Cambridge. Dry rot began to spread through the woodwork in the wake of the effects of bomb damage, and the rot affected the specimens. Consequently they were burnt when repairs began. The post mortem document was another casualty of the war. All the London Hospital’s pre-1907 post mortem reports had been removed under the threat of the blitz to a ‘safe’ underground location, which subsequently received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb.
As Treves finally mounted the bones one by one into an entire skeleton, it must have been the conclusion to a gruesome and disturbing task, made doubly distasteful since this was for the surgeon the body of someone with whom he had been in a unique mixture of personal and professional relationship. Treves, however, was too fine a doctor to mistake the flesh for the man. Writing of their first encounter, he described Joseph as ‘the most disgusting specimen of humanity’ he ever saw. Towards the end of his account of the Elephant Man’s life he sought to find words to express what he had learnt of Joseph’s internal nobility.