Albinism in Culture: Human Exhibits

Albinism’s Use in Sideshows Reflects Our Fascination With Otherness

Jul 14, 2008 Andrew Leibs

Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, persons with albinism were exhibited in sideshows and dime museums with other freaks and human oddities.

Every volume of George C. D. O’Dell’s Annals of the New York Stage references exhibition of persons with albinism:

“On December 21st, we find those “four Snow White Albino Negro Boys” giving at the Minerva Rooms, 406 Broadway, a concert of songs, choruses, and melodies, and playing, besides, on the violin, the banjo, the tambourine, the triangle, and the “castanetts”--all for the moderate admission fee of 12 ½ cents.”

Multiple family members with albinism, especially twins, drew the most attention. They came from, or were said to come from, exotic places such as Australia and Madagascar. In Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, Robert Bogdo notes that as late as the 1930s, the dreadlocked twins Eko and Iko were billed as “Ambassadors from Mars.”

An 1885 Philadelphia Times articles reveals that persons with albinism were considered “minor curiosities” and were the lowest-paid “performers” who sometimes supplemented their income selling biographical pamphlets. Others such as mind reader Millie La Mar developed specific talents.

Three Famous Albinism-Related Acts

The Rudolph Lucasie family

The Lucasie Family (Rudolph, his wife Antoinette, and their son, Joseph) was the most popular mid-century attraction at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum.

Barnum discovered the Lucasies at the 1857 Amsterdam Fair. Rudolph was French, Antoinette, Italian; Joseph was born in Hamburg. Barnum billed them as white Negroes from Lenabon, Madagascar, bearing the “phenomena termed albinoism.”

A famous Currier & Ives print calls them “The Wonderful Eliophobus Family,” a coinage derived from heliophobia, or fear of the sun.

The Lucasies toured for nearly 40 years with various circuses, including W. W. Coles and the Lemon Bros., until Rudolph and his wife died unexpectedly in 1898. Joseph joined the Vaudeville circuit, but his violin skills never escaped the shadow of his albinism, even after shaving his head, and he retired to a cashier’s job in Kansas City, where he died of dropsy in 1909, and was heralded in his obituary as a “great showman” and a “famous albino.”

Unzie the Australian Aborigine

Among the most celebrated persons with albinism touring in 1890s was Unzie, an Australian aborigine, exhibited in New Zealand before and after a brief London tour with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Traveling with fellow spectacle JoJo the Dog-faced Boy, Unzie arrived in San Francisco in 1890. Unzie’s hook was a six-foot cloud of white hair that billowed out from beneath his silk tophat.

Unzie supplemented his income selling a pamphlet on his life, and toured the United States, exhibiting at Huber’s 14th Street Museum in New York City in October 1895. A New York Times ad states, “Unzie, the Australian marvel, will begin the final week of his engagement. He is an Australian Prince, and, though descended from black savages, is as white as a Caucasian.”

Rob Roy, dislocationist

At a young age, Rob Roy (John Campbell) discovered he could painlessly put out every joint in his body, elongating his spine nearly four inches. This skill combined with having albinism meant show business potential. He toured with Barnum & Bailey from 1894 to at least 1902 billed as an "albino dislocationist" (contortionist.

The 1894 birth of Roy’s lone child, King Roy disproved the myth that parents with albinism couldn’t produce an albino child. Roy’s career, however, also began the myth that many with albinism are double jointed.

In the 20th century, genetic awareness removed the mystery of albinism's cause, breaking performers' back stories. Albinism's continued cultural use still testifies to peoples' fascination with it.

The copyright of the article Albinism in Culture: Human Exhibits in Activism is owned by Andrew Leibs. Permission to republish Albinism in Culture: Human Exhibits in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.