Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1890-05-21
AN AWFUL LIFE HISTORY.
The Pathetic story of Joseph Merrick,
the elephant MAN.

The Pathetic Story of Joseph Merrick,
the elephant h1an.''
From the London Spectator.
We can remember no invented tale
that speaks so to the heart at once of
the cruelty of life and the beauty of
human compassion, as the true story
closed by sentence in the newspapers,
announcing that Joseph Merrick, the
Elephant Man." was dead. Imagine
human soul clothed in body 90 un-
speakably frightful; who hardly dared
to venture abroad even by night; who,
finding his fellow creatures run from
him, grew terrified by the terrors he
created, and shuddered in dark corners
like hunted beast. Imagine him driv-
en- by starvation to accept a showman's
offer and be exhibited to the most brutal
of audiences.
Early in 1886, Frederick Treves, one
of the surgeons of the London Hospital,
found Merrick in a penny show, in
room off the Whitechapel Road, crouch
ing behind an old curtain and trying
to warm himself over brick that was
heated by a gas jet. Mr.. Treves went
up to him not only without fear or
loathing, tut with sympathy. For the
first time in his life of "a years, Merrick
heard kind word and was spoken to
like man. The effect was curious. 1t
made him afraid at first. He shrank
as an ordinary man would from some
thing uncanny. Then. as he began to
realize the truth, he broke into sobs Of
gratitude. Days and even weeks
passed, however, before he recovered
from the shock Of hearing a compassion
ate word.
The police prohibited his show on the
ground of public decency. So be went
to Belgium, where again the police in
terfered, and where an agent decamped
with his money. Merrick was lett desti
tute and starving in the streets Of for
eign town, where the ignorant mob
thought him fend.
He came back to London-how, no
one quite knows. At every station and
landing place crowds logged him.
Steamers refused to have him on board.
But he came back to London because in
London lived the only man who ever
gave him a kind word. He made his
way to the London Hospital, found Mr..
Treves, who had him lodged for time
in an attic in the hospital, and deter
mined to find a permanent shelter for
him.
But now it was found that no institu-
ton would receive him. The Royal
Hospital for lncurables and the British
Home tor Incurables alike declined to
take him unless sufficient funds were
forthcoming to pay Tor his maintenance
for life. He himself begged that be
might be placed in blind hospital. It
Then in November, 1886, Mr.. Carr
Comm, the chairman of the London
Hospital, wrote to this Times, asking
help for this case, and the British pub
lie responded. A room was built Tor
Merrick on the ground floor, in re-
mote wing OF the hospital, and there,
surrounded with books, flowers, and a
hundred tokens Of kindness that is really
quick in the public heart, he has lived
until the middle of April
He found many friends-the Prince
and Princess of Wales, Mr.. Gladstone,
Mrs Kendall and others To Mrs. Ken
dali is due the happy suggestion that
Merrick should be taken to see the
Christmas Pantomime at Drury Lane.
She engaged the royal box; she had
him brought to the theater, and took
every precaution that no strange eye
should see him. Hidden from the
house, behind the curtains of the box,
the elephant Man" tasted an hour or
two of intoxicating happiness. 1t was
all real to him-the fairies, the splendor
and the jewels.
Merrick, in spite of his hideous ex-
terror and terrible experience, was in
his way a gentle sentimentalist, and
gushed forth at times under the happy
conditions of his life at the hospital IN
verse modelled on the hymns of DIR.
Watts, in which he gave utterance of
feelings Of gratitude, the sincerity of
which none ever questioned. 1t was a
tender heart that was beating beneath
mask more hideous than that of
Orson. Above all it was heart that
was filed with love for the man who
was literally his savior, who first spoke
kindly to him, who rescued him from q
fate thousand times worse than death,
and to the end was both his doctor and
his friend.