living skeleton

{{Short description|Sideshow performers}}

File:Isaac W Sprague, living skeleton, 1867.jpg

A living skeleton, or thin man, was a common sideshow act or dime museum exhibit. Like most sideshow acts, they were displayed under a multitude of titles, including in this case "human skeleton", "skeleton dude", and "cigarette fiend". The act, which first appeared in the 18th century, peaked in the early 19th, and fell out of popularity in the late 19th and early 20th century.{{cite journal |last1=Gooldin |first1=Sigal |title=Fasting Women, Living Skeletons and Hunger Artists: Spectacles of Body and Miracles at the Turn of a Century |journal=Body & Society |date=1 June 2003 |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=27–53 |doi=10.1177/1357034X030092002 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1357034x030092002 |access-date=28 June 2025 |language=EN |issn=1357-034X}}

Unlike contemporary hunger artists, living skeletons usually claimed to eat normally.{{cite book |last1=Mullaney |first1=Jamie L. |title=Everyone Is NOT Doing It: Abstinence and Personal Identity |date=2006 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-54756-5 |page=44 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Everyone_Is_NOT_Doing_It/sTvBbmMmm7sC |access-date=28 June 2025 |language=en}} Advertisements often emphasized their overall health, in contrast to their emaciated appearance.

Nearly all living skeletons were male. Circus managers often arranged for living skeletons to marry fat ladies as a publicity stunt.{{cite book |last1=Bogdan |first1=Robert |title=Freak show: presenting human oddities for amusement and profit |date=2009 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |isbn=0226063127 |edition=Paperback, [Nachdr.]}}{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Janet M. |title=The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top |date=2002 |publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-5399-3 |page=120 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AQpLXha_mBkC |access-date=28 June 2025 |language=en}}

Sideshow historian Daniel P. Mannix writes that living skeletons were less popular as attractions than fat people.{{cite book |last1=Mannix |first1=Daniel P. |title=Freaks: we who are not as others |date=1990 |publisher=Re/Search Publications |isbn=978-0-940642-20-1 |page=128}}

Professional living skeletons included:

{{columns-list|colwidth=20em|

• Isaac W. Sprague (1841–1887)
• Artie Atherton (1890–1920)
• John Rogan (1867–1905)
• Peter Robinson (1873–?)
• Claude-Ambroise Seurat (1798–?)
• James W. Coffey (1852–?){{cite book |last1=Hartzman |first1=Marc |title=American Sideshow |date=2006 |publisher=Penguin Publishing Group |location=East Rutherford |isbn=1585425303 |page=30}}
• John Battersby{{cite book |last1=Nickell |first1=Joe |title=Secrets of the Sideshows |date=9 September 2005 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0-8131-2358-5 |pages=101-105 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Secrets_of_the_Sideshows/sACcmMWM6t4C |access-date=28 June 2025 |language=en}}
• Harry V. Lewis (1895–?)
• Alexander Montarg
• Eddie Masher (1896–1962)
• Slim Curtis
• Arthur Barnes{{cite book |last1=Stencell |first1=A. W. |title=Circus and carnival Ballyhoo: sideshow freaks, jaggers and blade box queens |date=2010 |publisher=ECW Press |location=Toronto |isbn=9781550228809 |pages=16,249}}
• Walter L. Cole
• D. J. Major

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