ILLUSTRATIONS
Wood engraving advertising Astley's “Scenes of the Circle”
Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth
Syracuse (N.Y.) Fair, circa 1910-1920
Button advertising a 1915 Missouri carnival
Workman dismantles a Ferris wheel
Ferris wheel is collapsed and hauled away
Ferris wheel at 1893 world's fair
Ferris wheel at 2004 Erie County (N.Y.) Fair
Ghost Mansion combines rides and fun house
Carnival Diablo, a typical trailer-housed grind show
Sideshow at the Hagenbeck & Wallace Circus
Giant Al Tomaini beside a normal-sized man
Banner line, including ticket booth
Banner of “Major John the Frog Boy”
Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf on the bally platform
Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf, Ginger the Snake Charmer, and Ward Hall
Oversized ring sold as pitch item
Advertisement for “Giant Snake eating frog”
Austrian giantess Mariedl with her sister
Carnival giant beside a midget
Giants Anna Swan and Captain Martin Van Buren Bates get married
Pitch card of fat lady Miss Peggy
Banner advertising fat man Bruce Snowden
“Little Pete” Terhurne with the author
The Famous Lilliputian Company
Wedding of midgets Charles Stratton (“General Tom Thumb”) and Lavinia Warren, 1863
Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren with a borrowed baby
Advertisement for “World's Smallest Woman”
The Biddenden Maids, the earliest known English conjoined twins
Chang and Eng Bunker, the original “Siamese twins”
Millie-Christine, the “United African Twins”
Perumal, with his parasitic twin Sami
Mademoiselle Gabriel, the “living half woman”
Giant Al Tomaini at his Giant's Tourist Camp
Mademoiselle Tunison, armless wonder
Prince Randian, the “Caterpillar Man”
“Alligator” man suffering from ichthyosis
Hunchback midget, advertised as a “frog boy”
Grady Stiles Jr., the “Lobster Boy”
Percilla the Monkey Girl and the Alligator Man
One of the Sacred Hairy Family of Burmah
Bill Durks, known as the “Two-Faced Man” or the “Three-Eyed Man”
Grace McDaniels, the “Mule-Faced Woman”
Nineteenth-century contortionist
Melvin Burkhart, the “Man without a Stomach”
Lorett Fulkerson, the “Tattooed Lady” (front view)
Lorett Fulkerson, the “Tattooed Lady” (back view)
“Genuine monster-mouthed Ubangi savages”
Josephine-Joseph, the “Double-Bodied Half Woman, Half Man”
Banners for wild-woman Eeka, circa 1970s
The author walks barefoot over hot coals
The author demonstrates fire eating. Step 1: the proper angle
The author demonstrates trailing
Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf performs alongside the outside talker
Nineteenth-century engraving of a sword swallower
Nineteenth-century Scientific American illustrates the sword blade inside the body
Floram Marchand, seventeenth-century “human fountain”
Human pincushion pushes a pin through his arm
Human pincushion shows buttons sewn to his chest
Eddie the Blockhead pounds a screwdriver into his nose
Torture queen Bambi demonstrates ladder-of-swords feat
Physicist David Willey walks barefoot on broken glass
Advertisement for vaudeville knife-throwing act
Booklet of mentalist Leona LaMar
Mitt camp offering psychic readings
Box with mirrors conceals the young lady's midriff
Bobby Reynolds exhibits a blade box
Secret of the decapitation trick revealed
Advertisement for headless Hollywood starlet
Banners from Freaks of Nature and Pet Zoo
Preserved exhibits in freak animal sideshow
Single-Os “World's Largest Pig,” “Giant Alligator,” and “The Smallest Horse”
Acme Miniature Circus, with trained fleas
“Professor” Gertsacov uses a magnifying glass to view his tiny performers
Bobby Reynolds with his two-headed pickled punk
“Real Human 2 Headed Baby” exhibit
Dufour and Rogers's “Real Two-Headed Baby” show at Chicago's Century of Progress
Pickled punks or rubber fakes (bouncers)?
Bobby Reynolds, the author, and a “shrunken” friend
“Jenny Haniver,” a manufactured mermaid
Sideshows by the Seashore at Coney Island
Advertisement for Todd Robbins's Carnival Knowledge
Bill Browning mural of broken-down show truck
