William Henry Johnson A.K.A. Zip the Pinhead
By: The Wheelchair Historian
Tags: Freak Show, History, Entertainment, Disability, American History

Welcome to my latest blog post on disability as entertainment, specifically the freak show of the 19th century. So far, I have discussed P.T. Barnum, General Tom Thumb, as well as Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins. This week it is the turn of Zip the Pinhead. As with everything I cover, it is far more complicated than I initially anticipated.

What is a Pinhead?

Pinheads were a common feature in 19th and early 20th century freak shows. Pinhead was the term used to refer to a person born with the condition microcephaly. This is a neurological disorder which means that the head fails to grow at the same rate as the face. This results in the top of the head being much narrower than the face. As the person grows older, the size difference becomes more apparent. In a majority of instances, the size of the person’s body is also smaller than average. Furthermore, the mental capacity can be reduced too, delaying motor functions and speech. As you may have guessed, the term Pinhead is not an acceptable one anymore.

I ran (well not literally) into several problems when researching ‘Zip the Pinhead’. You see, there was more than one of them. The man I was looking for, and the one I will be discussing later, was William Henry Johnson. However, he was not the only one, but perhaps he was the most famous. To further complicate things, he was also known as ‘What is It?’. The idea was that he was so strange looking, it was impossible to tell whether he was human or an animal. This name arose when Charles Dickens attended one of Barnum’s exhibits. Perplexed at what he saw, he leaned over and asked Barnum “What is it?”

There had been other iterations of ‘What is it?’ before William Johnson arrived on the scene. The most famous of these was a legless man in London by the name of Harvey Leech. Unfortunately for Barnum, Leech was an actor, who had appeared in plays, and the people of London easily identified him. Johnson was a more successful attempt at duping the public.

The life of William Henry Johnson

William Henry Johnson was a black man born in the 1840s in Liberty Corners, near Bound Brook, New Jersey. He was the son of former slaves, William and Mahalia Johnson. He was believed to be between four and five feet tall and his head was an unusual shape. The top of his head was narrower than the bottom. This attracted some attention, and the nearby Van Emburgh’s Circus came calling to add Johnson to their sideshow.

In 1860, P.T. Barnum came across Johnson and decided to take him on. As can be expected, Barnum had an elaborate backstory for his new performer. He shaved Johnson’s head, leaving only a small tuft of hair at the top. He also changed his name to Zip the Pinhead. It is only when I started to do my research that I discovered this topic has more to do with race than disability. The origin of the name Zip is most likely from “Zip Coon”, an early minstrel show character, who for white people came to personify the stereotypically dumb but dapper black person. Thinking along these lines, Barnum dressed Johnson in a fur suit and stated that he had been found along the Gambia River in West Africa. He was thought to be part of a tribe that was the missing link between monkey and man. As well as being called Zip the Pinhead and “What is it?”, he was given the names “The Monkey-Man” and “The Missing Link”. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, so evolution was the hot topic of the day.

For several years, Johnson was presented on stage in a cage (hey, that rhymes). His job was to act like a monkey to entertain people. So I guess you could say that he was in a rage, in a cage, on a stage! Barnum paid him $1 a day not to speak, which Johnson happily agreed to, becoming rich in the process. Instead of speaking, he would grunt every time he was addressed. I know it sounds pretty bad, but Johnson seems to have enjoyed performing. He did so until he was in his 80s. In fact, when he got bronchitis and influenza in 1926, he ignored the advice of doctors, his manager, and his sister to rest. He insisted on finishing the run of the play he was in. He died a few weeks later, on 9 April 1926 in Bellevue Hospital, New York. His funeral was attended by several of his fellow performers and he was the longest serving freak show attraction.

How Intelligent was Zip?

There has been some debate as to how intelligent William Henry Johnson was. Robert Bogdan, in his 1988 book, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit thinks that he had reduced intelligence due to a diagnosis of microcephaly. However, since then opinions have changed. I for one feel that Johnson was not mentally deficient. Here’s why.

While his head was an unusual shape, it was not as pronounced as others with microcephaly. In fact, by shaving his head, Barnum made it look much worse than it actually was. Johnson also showed several signs of intelligence. For instance, he held up the act of not speaking for over 60 years, even though his sister reported that he was capable of holding conversations. If he was not able to speak, Barnum would not have had to pay him $1 a day. I think he had to be intelligent not to break character for such a long period. Furthermore, he acquired a fiddle on his travels which he played for several years. Apparently, he was so bad at playing it that observers and even fellow performers would pay him to stop. He made $14,000 by doing this. If he was not intelligent, he may have either stopped playing entirely or kept playing and not taken the money.

Near the end of his life Johnson performed at the Coney Island freak show. One Sunday afternoon in 1925, while out walking on his break, Johnson heard a girl screaming. It was a seven-year-old who had fallen into the water. Johnson (in his 80s) quickly jumped in and rescued the girl, immediately running away as a crowd gathered around her. Finally, his last words to his sister on his deathbed were reported to be “Well, we fooled ’em for a long time”. This suggests that he may have been an (incredibly wealthy) actor playing a role for most of his life.

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Next week I will be examining the life of ‘The Elephant Man’, Joseph Merrick.

The Wheelchair Historian

Further Reading

Bogdan, Robert, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, (University of Chicago Press, 2014).

CandyGuy, ‘ZIP THE PINHEAD — What is it?’ https://www.thehumanmarvels.com/zip-the-pinhead-what-is-it/ Accessed: 27th November 2020.

Fact Index, ‘Zip the Pinhead’ http://www.fact-index.com/z/zi/zip_the_pinhead.html Accessed: 27th November 2020.

Gerber, David A., ‘Volition and Valorization in the Analysis of the ‘Careers’ of People Exhibited in Freak Shows’, Disability, Handicap & Society, Vol.7, №1, 1992.

Newspapers.com, ‘Zip the Pinhead (“Barnum’s What-Is-It”) saves a life’. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17123705/zip-the-pinhead-barnums-what-is-it/ Accessed: 27th November 2020.

WeirdNJ.com, ‘Zip The “What Is It?”’ https://weirdnj.com/stories/local-heroes-and-villains/zip-the-what-is-it/ Accessed: 27th November 2020.