MERRICK

Joseph (son of an engine driver, his mother was knocked down in a circus by an elephant when bearing him). b. Leicester 1857; known as the Elephant man, having bony exostoses on his frontal bone, and a deformity of the superior maxilla, which gave a trunk-like appearance to the nose and upper lip; exhibited in the White chapel road, London 1884; taken abroad by an Austrian adventurer who after exhibiting him on the continent decamped, taking with him all Merrick’s savings namely £50 in 1885; the public gave sufficient to pay his expenses in the London hospital for life from 1885. d. in London hospital, the weight of his head suffocating him while he was asleep 11 April 1890. Times 16 April 1890 p. 6; British Medical Journal 11 Dec. 1886 pp. 1188–9, 4 portraits ; Trans. Pathological Soc. xxxvi 494–8 (1885), 2 portraits .