Emily Chan
Born with a disorder that enlarged his head and limbs, Joseph Merrick used his disfigurement to earn a living as a freak show performer known as “The Elephant Man.” To this day, medical experts still don’t understand what caused his condition since DNA tests of his bones and hair have been inconclusive.
Joseph Carey Merrick was born in Leicester, England in 1862. At around the age of five, his appearance began to change. His lips swelled up; his pink skin turned a ghastly gray.
A large lump grew on his forehead, and another protruded from the back of his neck. Both feet increased in size, and his right arm became twisted and gnarled. His left arm remained normal.
With medical experts at a loss, Merrick’s mother came up with her own explanation, telling him that his deformities had developed due to an incident at a fair that occurred while she was pregnant with him.
A crowd of people had shoved her into the path of an animal parade. An elephant reared up, and she was trapped underfoot for a brief time.
When he was 11 years old, his mother died of pneumonia. He quit going to school soon after, unable to bear both the bullying from kids and the loss of his mother.
Eighteen months later, his father remarried another woman who was the spitting image of a wicked stepmother from a Disney princess movie. The stepmother demanded that he get a job and bring home some money if he was no longer attending school.
So, at the age of 13, he worked at a shop rolling cigars for three years. However, his hand deformity worsened, making the job tough to do. When he was 16, he became unemployed and wandered the streets, looking for work.
He tried going door to door, selling goods from his father’s shop, but he had a hard time speaking clearly because of his deformities. Plus, his appearance scared people, and no one wanted to interact with him.
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