The Victorian Poster

The Victorian Poster Was All There Was in Advertising

In Victorian times advertising can tell you a great deal about the consumer and what it was like to live in the day of the industrial age.

It was a time when masses of people left behind existence on the land for employment in factories. Cities were growing rapidly and wealth was distributed more widely. The overall standard of living in Europe and America improved dramatically during the 19th century. However, working 13 hour day shifts the Victorian society very much needed a break from it all. Advertising promoted the break and the enjoyment was in product consumption, traveling circuses and side shows.

I cannot avoid mentioning the master of this era’s entertainment and celebrity- PT Barnum.

Its been said that some have called Barnum the Shakespeare of advertising.

As a teenager Barnum discovered ingenious ways to make money. He ran his own lottery in Connecticut and he sold tickets for various amounts of winnings. From twenty-five dollars down to twenty-five cents he made a lot of money until Connecticut outlawed the business. Accustomed to making close to eleven thousand dollars in today’s worth a week, he eventually set out to find other ways to keep his income going at that level.

Barnum eventually moved to New York. Keeping an eye on what was going on with the sideshows in England, he decided to purchase his first actor (then called freaks and not so appropriately now). He purchased a blind paralytic former slave and made up a sensational story to support his presentation. This, of course, was something he would become well known for. Her name was Joice Heth and she was being portrayed by Barnum as 160-year-old nursemaid of George Washington (she was 81). The Victorian society bought into this ridiculous exploitation. When ticket sales begin to drop he wrote an anonymous letter to a Boston newspaper admitting that the whole thing was fraudulent. In the letter Barnum stated that she was actually a robot made of whale skin and wood. Ticket sales rose again. The purchase was for a thousand dollars and he made that every week in sales.

In 1842 Barnum began his next hoax that he called the Fiji Mermaid.

This was basically odd taxidermy. The head of a monkey sewn onto the tail of a fish that he purchased from Japanese fishermen. Leasing it for twelve dollars and fifty cents a week, Barnum then printed up pamphlets to support his theories that this was the real thing. His partner posed as a scientist to validate this oddity. This helped convince the newspapers his scientist/partner supplying letters that the Fiji Mermaid belonged to science.

In the 1840s Barnum opened a museum in New York on Broadway. He then discovered that he had a distant cousin named Charles Stratton who was only three feet five inches tall. He named his new sensation General Tom Thumb, dressed him up in adult suits, and quickly made him part of his sidekick show. Teaching him to sing and dance playing Cupid and Napoleon, Tom Thumb was our first international celebrity. For fifteen years Tom Thumb would visit Queen Victoria and travel Europe as well as throughout the United States. Queen Victoria met with him twice and Barnum made so much money off of the first European tour that he was able to buy his museum outright.

Tom did not do bad for his role as a Victorian celebrity making over $4,000 a week and retiring very well off. Barnum made an equally huge sensation out of the Tom Thumb wedding and quickly thereafter he and his sidekick visited the White House to be introduced to president Lincoln. When he died he had 20,000 people at his funeral.

His sideshow included a 6 ton elephant named Jumbo. Victorian Style posters announcing the arrival of jumbo with their typefaces filling every available inch of space were plastered on every wall PT Barnum could find. Barnum created Jumbo mania that people in the Victorian era just had to see.  

Sadly for Barnum (and Jumbo), the elephant was accidentally killed by a train. Always the clever and resourceful showman, Barnum had his skin and skeleton mounted on a wagon and followed by Jumbo’s tearful widow Alice. Jumbo’s widow was trained to wipe her eyes with her trunk as she followed behind in the parade.

The phrases that Barnum created for his commercial posters still exist in our modern media more than a hundred years later. You’ll find them on junk mail, websites and magazines: order now, all items must go, don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! PT Barnum was the master of attention getting graphics and phrasing that caught the attention of the Victorian audience.