freak show, term used to describe the exhibition of exotic or deformed animals as well as humans considered to be in some way abnormal or outside broadly accepted norms. Although the collection and display of such so-called freaks have a long history—the exploitation of African slave Sarah Baartman and of the “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick are prime examples— the term freak show refers to an arguably distinct American phenomenon that can be dated to the 19th century.

The term freak appears to be descended from the Old English frician, “to dance.” Freking signified cavorting, sudden movement, or capricious behaviour. During the Enlightenment in Europe and its attendant efforts at biological classification during the 18th century, as naturalists and others attempted to find specific categories for all life-forms, organisms that failed to match a perceived species average were often referred to as lusus naturae, cavorts, or freaks of nature. In the early 19th century, some naturalists toured Europe and North America with examples of exotic or unique animals, charging admission to view their “cabinets of curiosities.” Humans with bodies that were perceived to deviate significantly from an understood norm were often grouped with those lusus naturae shows, and from those shows developed a variety of different performance genres that have become collectively known as the freak show.

Early freak shows occupied a very general category that could refer to nontheatrical exhibits such as fetuses in jars or exotic or deformed animals as well as exhibitions of humans. In this context, the term freak was considered a pejorative way of referring to humans, in performance or not, and was rarely used by professional performers or promoters. Shows of the early 19th century that are today considered freak shows were known at that time as raree shows, pit shows, or kid shows. Freak show did not come into use until close to the end of the 19th century, after the death of the American showman P.T. Barnum; Barnum is not known to have used the term himself.

Individuals who can be classed as freak-show performers (also called “human curiosities”) were present in America as early as 1738, but they were not highly professionalized, and they appeared more often in the context of scientific lectures than in theatrical performance. During the middle part of the 19th century, many such individuals gained great legitimacy, respectability, and profitability by performing their acts within the context of a new form of American entertainment known as the Dime Museum. Others, however, did not achieve such success and were instead, sometimes as involuntary performers, exploited by promoters and audiences.

In 1835 Barnum exhibited Joice Heth, ostensibly a 161-year-old African American woman who had been the nurse of George Washington, in the hall of a hotel in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She was a tremendous success, partially because of her flamboyant promotion and partially because her tales of Washington’s youth were told with such integrity and intimacy that a controversy over her true identity was kept alive for decades. The controversy was resolved when an autopsy revealed that she was merely 80, but Heth’s fame increased after her death, and Barnum’s skillful protestations of innocence produced widespread publicity and interest.

Following his success with Heth, Barnum became a promoter of theatricals and variety entertainments. In 1841 Barnum purchased Scudder’s American Museum in New York City. That moment is considered the beginning of the “Golden Age” of the freak show and its performers, which would persist until the 1940s. Among those at the museum were the notorious and controversial Broadway actor Harvey Leach, also known as Hervio Nano; Mademoiselle Fanny (who turned out to be a perfectly normal orangutan); Native American and Chinese “families”; giants, such as Jane Campbell (“The largest Mountain of Human Flesh ever seen in the form of a woman”), a 220-pound four-year-old known as the Mammoth Infant, the Shakespearean actress and “sentimental soloist” Anna Swan, and Captain Martin Bates; Isaac Sprague, the “Living Skeleton”; R.O. Wickware, the “Living Phantom”; a variety of individuals with dwarfism; the “Albino Family”; African Americans with vitiligo; the “armless wonder” S.K.G. Nellis; a cadre of persons with ambiguous sexual characteristics, such as bearded ladies and hermaphrodites; clairvoyants; “Lightning Calculators”; and many others. Without question, the greatest of all the American Museum’s stars was Charles Stratton, better known as General Tom Thumb. Stratton appeared not in the traditional pit show or cabinet of curiosities but was celebrated around the world as a talented actor in highly theatrical, expensively produced melodramas, and he appeared in performances before American presidents and industrial barons as well as European and Asian royalty.

By 1860 the human curiosity—appearing in a museum, on the legitimate stage, or in carnival sideshows (so named because they required a separate fee for entry from the main circus or carnival midway)—had become one of the chief attractions for American audiences. A major moment during that period was the “Revolt of the Freaks” in 1898, when a collection of the 40 or so most-famous performers in the world staged a labour strike while on tour in London, demanding that the management of the Barnum and Bailey circus remove the term freak from promotional materials for their shows. A campaign to produce a new name was instigated, and the term prodigy was adopted by the so-called Council of Freaks. The intensity of this controversy reflected and magnified the popularity of freak shows, and, indeed, the episode may have been a publicity stunt.

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By the middle of the 20th century, freak shows had suffered a major decline in popularity. Many factors contributed to the decline, including the emergence of the medical model of disability, which replaced the freak show’s narrative of wonder with one of pathology. Advances in roller-coaster and other mechanical amusement-park ride technology (which helped to make rides cheaper to run and more profitable than freak shows) and the rise of cinema and television were probably even more significant.

During the second half of the 20th century, some efforts were made to appropriate the term freak by those who sought to celebrate an intentional rejection of conventional, conformist ideals, but the word’s pejorative meaning persisted, and activists of the disability rights movement tended to avoid freak as a term of hatefulness. The relationship between freak-show performance and disability is ultimately a complicated one, because not all performers were persons with disabilities. In the 21st century, the freak show has survived in the United States and elsewhere as part of the avant-garde underground circus movement.