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Dime Museums & Sideshows - A Brief
History
For as long as humanity has existed,
there has been the desire to collect,
especially to collect the strange, the
unusual, the bizarre and the exotic.
This drive led to the Cabinets of
Wonder--collections of exotic objects
gathered by wealthy and often eccentric
Europeans prior to the 19th
Century. These personal collections were
the spiritual ancestors of the ultimate
collections: the dime museums.
Though simply called museums in their
early form, the idea of a collection of
objects which the public would pay to
see spread quickly in early 19th
Century America. And by the mid-1800s,
the idea had become so popular with the
American public that entrepreneurial
geniuses like P. T. Barnum became
millionaires through the exhibition of
vast collections of man-made and natural
curiosities. Eventually, capitalizing on
the public's need for entertainment of
all types, museums came to house not
only unique collections of objects; they
also housed the first family-oriented
performance spaces, menageries, and, in
fact, nearly every type of entertainment
available in 19th Century
America. And all for only one dime.
Throughout the last days of the 19th
Century and bulk of the 20th,
carnivals roamed the American
countryside as the circuses - the
competition to the carnivals - had
roamed the land since the late 1700s. In
the days up to World War II, the
carnivals were mostly shows - called the
back end as that was the location of the
shows on the typical carnival lot - with
a ride or two thrown in among the
concessions and games. The carnival
shows grew from several traditions:
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The dime museums made famous by
Barnum and the Peale family, with
their fame in exhibiting the
"wonders of nature, the works of
man".
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The traveling circuses, which showed
that mobile entertainment could tap
the resources of the exploding of
population of a growing America.
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The world's fairs, particularly the
Columbian Exposition of 1893 in
Chicago, where the grand Midway
Plaisance and its multitude of
amusements is credited with
demonstrating to showmen that a
gathering of their kind could make
big money.
Even after the Second World War, when
the writing was on the wall for the
decline of the shows, there were still
grand and glorious days for the back
end, and there were still classic shows
on the road into the '60s and early
'70s.
James Taylor
Shocked &
Amazed
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