The Humbugs of the World

by Barnum, P. T.

• ISBN13: 9781108044356
• ISBN10: 1108044352
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-22
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Ebenezer Scrooge's cry of 'Humbug!' is well known throughout the English-speaking world. But what did he mean? In this entertaining book, P. T. Barnum (1810-91), defines 'humbug' as 'glittering appearances by which to suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye and ear'. A showman himself and the creator of 'The Greatest Show on Earth', Barnum was famous for his own tricks, and describes here some of the most fascinating and outrageous examples perpetrated in his time. He explores the cases of Mr Warren, who wrote an advertisement in enormous letters on the pyramids of Giza, and the Fox daughters, who caused a stir among spiritualists in New York when they held seances with tapping spirits - in fact their own cracking knee joints. First published in 1866, this tour of Victorian humbug, fraud, superstition and quackery will appeal to social historians and readers interested in nineteenth-century popular culture.

Table of Contents

Publisher's note

Introduction

Personal Reminiscences

General view of the subject

Definition of the word humbug

Monsieur Mangin, the French humbug

Old Grizzly Adams

The golden pigeons

The whales, the angel fish, and the golden pigeon

Pease's horehound candy

Brandreth's pills

The Spiritualists

The Davenport brothers, their rise and progress

The spirit-rapping and medium humbugs

The 'Ballot-test'

Spiritual 'letters on the arm'

Demonstrations by 'Samson' under a table

Spiritual photographing

'Banner of light'

Spiritualist humbugs waking up

The Davenport brothers shown up once more

Trade and Business Impositions

Adulterations of food

Adulteration in drinks

The Peter Funks and their functions

Lottery sharks

Another lottery humbug

A California coal mine

Money Manias

The petroleum humbug

The tulipomania

John Bull's great money humbug

Business humbugs

Medicine and Quacks

Doctors and imagination

The consumptive remedy

Monsignore Cristoforo Rischi, or Il Créso, the nostrum-vendor of Florence

Hoaxes

The Twenty-seventh-street ghost

The moon hoax

The miscegenation hoax

Ghosts and Witchcrafts

Haunted houses

Haunted houses

Magical humbugs

Witchcraft

Charms and incantations

Adventurers

The Princess Cariboo, or, the Queen of the Isles

Count Cagliostro, alias Joseph Balsamo, known also as 'Cursed Joe'

The diamond necklace

The Count de St Germain: sage, prophet, and magician

Riza Bey, the Persian envoy to Louis XIV

Religous Humbugs

Diamond cut diamond, or, Yankee superstitions

A religious humbug on John Bull

The first humbug in the world

Heathen humbugs

Modern heathen humbugs

Ordeals

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