{"id":3649,"date":"2012-12-12T08:13:35","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T13:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=3649"},"modified":"2014-05-14T10:05:28","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T14:05:28","slug":"the-skeleton-man-the-jersey-devil-and-a-multitude-of-other-attractions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2012\/12\/the-skeleton-man-the-jersey-devil-and-a-multitude-of-other-attractions\/","title":{"rendered":"The Skeleton Man, the Jersey Devil and a Multitude of Other Attractions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
C. A. Bradenbaugh’s Museum, Northwest corner of 9th and Arch Streets, 1890 (Free Library of Philadelphia).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Admission cost a dime at the 9th<\/sup> and Arch Museum. Indeed, dimes ruled the for-profit world of Victorian-era museums. \u00a0But in the end neither the entertainment, nor the dimes, were enough.<\/p>\n

For more than half a century, the corner of 9th<\/sup> and Arch sustained Philadelphians with opportunities for diversion, education and voyeurism. The public came and went\u2014and so did the owners. First was Colonel Joseph Wood, fresh in town having been burnt out of his Chicago emporium. The Colonel opened the doors on a relatively simple affair: menagerie plus performance space. By 1883, the venue re-launched under the new ownership. Hagar, Campbell & Co. Dime Museum advertised \u201cEntertainment Designed Expressly for Ladies and Children,\u201d and claimed they had the \u201conly great show in town.\u201d It featured everything from \u201cBarnum\u2019s Original Aztecs,\u201d the \u201cChe-Mah Chinese Dwarf,\u201d the \u201cCannibal Fan Child,\u201d the \u201cLiving Skeleton\u201d and \u201cthe \u201cWhite Moor.\u201d Hagar and Campbell piled on the attractions, adding \u201cDens of Serpents,\u201d \u201cthe Merry Monkeys\u201d and Punch and Judy, Johnson\u2019s Original Tennessee Jubilee Singers, and \u201ca multitude of other attractions.\u201d \u00a0(.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Even so, audience demands, and museum costs, proved too high. The Dime Museum soon changed hands again. This time, Charles A. Bradenbaugh re-invented the destination as the \u201c9th<\/sup> and Arch Museum.\u201d And this time, place and the public connected. Bradenbaugh kept the audiences coming from 1885 to 1910.<\/p>\n

What would a visitor see behind Bradenbaugh\u2019s colorful fa\u00e7ade? \u201cOn the first floor,\u201d Joseph Jackson<\/a> tells us, \u201cthere were numerous forms of apparatus for testing grips, lungs, lifting power, etc. \u201cOn the second floor were cages of monkeys, a prairie dog \u2018Village,\u2019 and a few other menagerie specimens.\u201d\u00a0 The third floor provided a lecture hall packed with a series of platforms, with living \u201chuman freaks.\u201d Regulars came to know \u201cThe Skeleton Man,\u201d \u201cThe Fat Woman,\u201d the \u201cReal Zulus,\u201d \u201cThe Human Bat,\u201d \u201cThe Bearded Lady,\u201d \u201cThe Elastic-Skin Man,\u201d “The Glass Eater,\u201d and \u201cThe Dog-Faced Boy.\u201d Every hour, the gawking public would be invited back down to the main auditorium where they\u2019d sit for a popular play that, no matter the length of the original, was condensed into forty minutes, give or take.<\/p>\n

In the 1890s, Bradenbaugh dabbled in movies, allowing his visitors to enjoy that emerging medium. But the Dime Museum\u2019s array of 19th<\/sup>-century offerings remained a complicated and layered activity for the public. The simpler experience of the 20th<\/sup> century movie house required, and got, a venue all its own<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A decade into the new century, Bradenbaugh saw the writing on the wall and sold out. Soon enough, the new owners of the 9th and Arch Museum recognized the same reality and did their best to turn it into an opportunity. In 1911, the museum’s new manager, T.F. Hopkins, and his press agent, Norman Jeffries, engineered (literally) a favorite local legend: the Jersey Devil.<\/p>\n

After giving birth to her 12th<\/sup> child, the story goes<\/a>, \u201cMother Leeds\u201d declared that the 13th<\/sup>, if she had it, would be the Devil. Lo and behold, one dark and stormy night in 1735, Mrs. Leeds gave birth to her 13th<\/sup>. As promised, it\u00a0immediately\u00a0transformed into \u201ca creature with hooves, a horse’s head, bat wings and a forked tail.\u201d The newborn \u201cgrowled and screamed, then killed the midwife before flying up the chimney. It circled the villages and headed toward the Pines.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Andrea Stulman Dennett in Weird & Wonderful: the Dime Museum in America<\/em><\/a>, the headlines screamed: \u201cThe Fabulous Leeds Devil Reappears after an Absence of Fifty Years.\u201d A \u201cmonster with long hind legs, short forelegs, a tail, horns on its head and short wings\u201d had reportedly been captured by a farmer in New Jersey “after a terrific struggle” and would soon be \u201cplaced on exhibition at the Ninth and Arch Museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCaught!!! \u00a0And Here!!!! \u00a0Alive!!! THE LEEDS DEVIL, read Hopkins and Jeffries posters<\/a>. “Swims! Flys! Gallops! … Exhibited securely chained in a Massive Steel Cage. A LIVING DRAGON more famous than the Fabled Monsters of Mythology. Don\u2019t Miss the Sight of a Lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the museum\u2019s short-lived center of attention was a kangaroo with wings attached. And the audiences this mutant marsupial drew to 9th<\/sup> and Arch kept the doors open for only a few more weeks. The day of the Dime Museum had passed. Frank Dumont soon bought the building for his thriving troupe of minstrels<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Admission cost a dime at the 9th and Arch Museum. Indeed, dimes ruled the for-profit world of Victorian-era museums. \u00a0But in the end neither the entertainment, nor the dimes, were enough. For more than half a century, the corner of 9th and Arch sustained Philadelphians with opportunities for diversion, education and voyeurism. The public came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}