The
Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous
hoaxes in United States history. It was a 10-foot (3.0 m) tall purported "
petrified man" uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell in
Cardiff, New York. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by
P.T. Barnum are still on display.
Creation and discovery
The giant was the creation of a New York
tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an
atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a
Methodist revival meeting about the passage in
Genesis 6:4 stating that there were giants who once lived on Earth.
[1]
The idea of a petrified man did not originate with Hull, however. In 1858 the newspaper
Alta California had published a bogus letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a
geode. Some other newspapers also had published stories of supposedly petrified people.
[2]
Hull hired men to carve out a 10-foot-4.5-inch-long (3.2 m) block of
gypsum in
Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to
Abraham Lincoln
in New York. He shipped the block to Chicago, where he hired Edward
Burghardt, a German stonecutter, to carve it into the likeness of a man
and swore him to secrecy.
Various stains and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old
and weathered, and the giant's surface was beaten with steel knitting
needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. In November 1868, Hull
transported the giant by rail to the farm of
William Newell, his cousin. By then, he had spent US$2,600 on the hoax.
Nearly a year later, Newell hired
Gideon Emmons and
Henry Nichols,
ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869 they found the giant.
One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has
been buried here!"
[2]
Exhibition and exposure as fraud
Newell set up a tent over the giant and charged 25 cents for people
who wanted to see it. Two days later he increased the price to 50 cents.
[2] People came by the wagon load.
Archaeological scholars pronounced the giant a fake, and some
geologists even noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a
well in the exact spot the giant had been found. Yale palaeontologist
Othniel C. Marsh called it "a most decided humbug". Some Christian fundamentalists and preachers, however, defended its authenticity.
[3]
Eventually, Hull sold his part-interest for $23,000 (equivalent to $425,000 in 2013) to a syndicate of five men headed by
David Hannum. They moved it to
Syracuse, New York, for exhibition. The giant drew such crowds that showman
P. T. Barnum
offered $50,000 for the giant. When the syndicate turned him down, he
hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in wax and create a
plaster replica. He put his giant on display in New York, claiming that
his was the real giant, and the Cardiff Giant was a fake.
[2]
As the newspapers reported Barnum's version of the story, David Hannum was quoted as saying, "
There's a sucker born every minute" in reference to spectators paying to see Barnum's giant. Over time, the quotation has been misattributed to Barnum himself.
Hannum sued Barnum for calling his giant a fake, but the judge told
him to get his giant to swear on his own genuineness in court if he
wanted a favorable injunction.
[2]
On December 10, Hull confessed to the press. On February 2, 1870 both
giants were revealed as fakes in court. The judge ruled that Barnum
could not be sued for calling a fake giant a fake.
Current resting place
The Cardiff Giant appeared in the 1901
Pan-American Exposition, but did not attract much attention.
[2]
An Iowa publisher bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room
as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947 he sold it to the
Farmers' Museum in
Cooperstown, New York, where it is still on display.
The owner of
Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, a coin-operated game arcade and museum of oddities in
Farmington Hills, Michigan, claims that the replica on display there is Barnum's replica.
[4][5]
Imitators
The Cardiff Giant has inspired a number of similar hoaxes.
- In 1876 The Solid Muldoon emerged in Beulah, Colorado,
and was exhibited at 50 cents a ticket. There was also a rumor that
Barnum had offered to buy it for $20,000. One employer later revealed
that this was also a creation of George Hull, aided by Willian Conant.
The Solid Muldoon was made of clay, ground bones, meat, rock dust, and
plaster.
- In 1877, the owner of Taughannock House hotel on Cayuga Lake,
New York, hired men to create a fake petrified man and place it where
the workers who were expanding the hotel would dig it up. One of the men
who had buried the giant later revealed the truth when drunk.
- In 1892 Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, de facto ruler of the town of Creede, Colorado,
purchased a petrified man for $3,000 and exhibited it for 10 cents a
peek. Soapy's profits did not come from displaying "McGinty," as he
named it, but rather from distractions, such as the shell game
set up to entertain the crowds as they waited in line. He also profited
by selling interests in the exhibition. This was a real human body,
intentionally injected with chemicals for preservation and
petrification. Soapy displayed McGinty from 1892 to 1895 throughout Colorado and the northwest United States.
- In 1897, a petrified man found downriver from Fort Benton, Montana, was claimed by promoters to be the remains of former territorial governor and U.S. Civil War General Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher had drowned in the Missouri River in 1867. The petrified man was displayed across Montana as a novelty and even exhibited in New York and Chicago.[6]
Popular culture
- In 1870, Mark Twain wrote "A Ghost Story" in which the ghost of the Cardiff Giant appears in the hotel room in Manhattan to demand that he be reburied. The giant is so confused that he haunts Barnum's plaster copy of himself.[7]
- In 1871, L. Frank Baum published a poem titled "The True Origin of the Cardiff Giant" in his private newspaper, The Rose Lawn Home Journal, vol. 1, #3.[8]
- George Auger, a Ringling Brothers circus giant, used the stage name "Cardiff Giant". He was to act in Harold Lloyd's 1923 comedy film Why Worry?, but died shortly after filming started, sparking a nationwide search for a replacement.
- H.P. Lovecraft's short story "Out of the Aeons"
mentions the Cardiff Giant, contrasting it with the real mummies on
display in the fictional Cabot Museum of Archaeology, Boston,
Massachusetts.[9]
- The 2001 film Made, was produced by the production company, "Cardiff Giant," the same name that Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau's characters are told to check in under when arriving in New York.
- In 2011, artist Ty Marshal created a full-sized Cardiff Giant replica made of hypertufa for a celebration in Syracuse, New York on the 142nd anniversary of the discovery of the giant (October 16, 2011).[10]
![[image]](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/w8SbcHDqDk3zuHiF3iDTw_-3gSHsBeUSYo17_fTlsOZkFhSKOBSXYCbpktZrDundqzBvcQNTWM0Qhu8UXKm82xddbEtRZnRmHcsfYe-YKuyk=s0-d)
References
- Jump up ^ Magnusson 2006, p. 188
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Rose, Mark (November/December 2005), "When Giants Roamed the Earth", Archaeology (Archaeological Institute of America) 58 (6), retrieved April 26, 2005
- Jump up ^ Cardiff Giant, Geological Hall, Albany
- Jump up ^ Nicklell, Joe (May/June 2009), "Cardiff's Giant Hoax", Skeptical Inquirer 33 (3)
- Jump up ^ "Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum". RoadsideAmerica.com. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
- Jump up ^ Kemmick, Ed. "'Petrified' man was big attraction in turn-of-the-last-century Montana" Billings Gazette, March 13, 2009
- Jump up ^ Rizer, Fran (2013-04-01). "A Hoax of a Ghost Hoax". Hoaxes. Columbia, SC: SleuthSayers.
- Jump up ^ The True Origin Of The Cardiff Giant
- Jump up ^ Lovecraft, H.P. and Heald, Hazel Out of the Aeons
- Jump up ^ Syracuse.com: "This is no hoax, it's an artistic copy"
