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Mark Osterman ran a
well-known traveling medicine show from a folding stage
built on the back of a 1919 Model T Ford for twenty years.
Dr. Bumstead's Celebrated Lenape Liquid Show sold an elixir
called Lenape Liquid and musical instruments (Kazoos and
Humanatone Nose Flutes) using the spectacular rhetorical and
musical talents of the celebrated Dr. Bumstead (Mark
Osterman), trick shooting by K.T. Oakley (France Scully
Osterman), and an Indian named Screaming Weasel (played by
ten different people over twenty years).
Mark Osterman
worked out of the Philadelphia area and performed throughout
the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware region.
Dr. Bumstead
(Mark Osterman) contacted Dr.
Wilson (Paul Szauter) through his web site because of
their mutual interest
in traveling medicine shows; together they have assembled
these photographs and stories.
Dr. Wilson (Paul Szauter) contacted me to share the following stories and
images with Sideshow World.
Photograph
This tintype photograph (June
1993) by Claude Levet shows Dr. Bumstead in a moment of
repose, with one of the banjos that he made and bottles of
his first medicine show product, Lenape Liquid. Mark
Osterman writes: "The tintypes of
me
and my
wife
were made at a fair. Claude Levet, the tintypist,
was set up across from our stage and made them without
charge...it was a very hot and slow day. We had gotten
married just the week before. You can see the Galvanic
Battery that we used for the ballyhoo resting under the
table."
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So get ready to experience,
Dr. Bumstead's Celebrated Lenape
Liquid Show
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Dr. Bumstead's Celebrated Lenape
Liquid Show Photograph Gallery
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