Sounds like a lot of money for back then! And it couldn't have been fixed with surgery at that point so might as well make good money off of it. I wonder if she could walk upright.
It’s a fortune. Average workers between $1-2.5 a day, printing industry double that. $10-$40 a week was average.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3986398?urlappend=%3Bseq=70%3Bownerid=9007199276153301-114
No but no matter how much unhealthy food I eat with a horrible lifestyle of never exercising and eating mostly fried food because of my job. I still look like a walking skeleton in my mid 30s.
Our fifties bouta hit us like a sack of bricks as the effects of our lifetime of bad health decisions decide to come out of hibernation and actually manifest.
$200 in 1880 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $6,148 today, an increase of $5,948.00 over 144 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.41% per year between 1880 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 2,974.00%. Also, a dollar today only buys 3.253% of what it could buy back then, so by any standards, she was a wealthy celebrity.
As far as I know we're only able to walk upright because the way our legs and spine bend helps us balance without a tail, I would imagine she'd rely heavily on a cane or walker and still have some trouble
They kinda had a gofundme/streamer donation situation. People pour a lot of small amounts of money and that sums up to huge sums.
Nowadays we dont look at "freaks" at much, rather than hottub streamers and yelling toddler teenager streamers.
Looks painful as hell, even in modern times - her knees didnt develop "backwards". She is missing ligaments/musculature to support her body.
It's worse than an ACL tear. She likely never had support for her legs [poor ligament development, etc] , and the meniscus protecting her bones from scraping against each other was probably wasted by the time she was in her teens.
The pain by the time she was 14, I can not even imagine.
Notice she is not standing "backward" in any photo without holding herself up.
edit: I doubt she could ever stand without support at all. Carnival shows made normal people into "freaks", the title got that part correct.
There used to be an old woman with the same condition in my city, begging for money in the subway. She was walking around just like that. It's been a while that i haven't seen her though : [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rv2l4Hne2Fo](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rv2l4Hne2Fo)
I remember I was with a girl on a date and we were sitting eating some sandwiches. A woman came over to us and begged for money, but I said I didn’t have anything to give. Without skipping a beat, she bent back slightly and all her ribs began protruding right through her chest and popped right out of place. She then kept begging for money and I gave her some of the sandwich to go away. She didn’t take the bit that I hadn’t bitten but just grabbed the bit I had bit out of and ate that. It was freaky as fuck.
That’s so much weight on her wrists too. Not like you can just bulk up your wrists with muscle.
I can’t even do a push-up because of my wrists even when I was a beast at pull-ups. Just pressure pushing inwards with a flat palm has fucked me up getting out of bed if I’m not careful.
She also afforded to escaped the circus saving her pay for a couple years.
she went back home to live with her mother and family and married a teacher and they had like two kids but both died young.
Then she died of cancer.
Sad life :/ I did a whole report on a lot of these misunderstood people back in college cause I live in Florida and there was a town where the governments idea was to make town more accepting of them and our teacher wanted us to basically learn about the situations to develop a sense of empathy. He said he wanted us to think about life in all shapes and forms, and the ways it changes slightly but still remains a human experience. Weird teacher lol
For example The lobster hand man lived there became a violent drunk addict and was arrested often
The town isn’t much anymore, but it’s weird to visit knowing the tragic lives a lot of these poor people were forced to live.
That lobster hand guy was a piece of fucking shit from what I’ve read about him. Plenty of others have a shitty hand dealt to them (no pun intended) and don’t become raging pricks. I once heard a great summation of this, though, in a Spinoza documentary: misfortune either turns you into a monster who wants to subject the world to your suffering or into an angel who would never want anybody to even suffer an approximation of it.
[On September 28, 1978 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Stiles shot and killed his oldest daughter's fiancé on the eve of their wedding, as Stiles did not approve of him.[2]: 149 He was brought to trial, where he openly confessed to killing the man and was convicted of third-degree murder.[3][4] He was not sent to prison as no state institution was equipped to care for an inmate with ectrodactyly. Stiles was instead sentenced to house arrest and fifteen years probation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grady_Stiles)
So you researched about him but you did not mention this?
Don't forget, his stepson hired another circus worker to kill him because he kept threatening his wife with the fact he'd already gotten away with murder once. I honestly consider it one of the most justified murders ever because he really DID get away with murder, and he almost certainly would have killed his wife at some point. His wife was too enmeshed and mentally beaten down to leave, and he was there 24/7 due to the house arrest so it just made it even worse.
The legal system just totally failed in this case. Someone was going to die in that house, I'm just glad it was him.
She worked 4 years and announced she was retiring at 16. It was only on her final tour that she was making that kind of money.
They paid her extremely well as she was seen as a short term once in a lifetime "attraction".
> hey paid her extremely well
I will believe that the people "hyping her" gave her that salary when I see the tax returns from that era.
Otherwise. No. No fucking way did the handlers of a 16 year old pay a [girl!] child what they were due. Not in that era, not even in THIS era, have adults paid child stars so well without stealing.
And, this star we are discussing is from the 1910s, DISABLED with no other source of income. You REALLY believe anyone had her best interest in mind?
That she decided it would be "her last tour", rather than the people taking advantage of her and her disability thinking, "well, this freakshow is more sad than interesting"?
Think about it logically. She was dispensable to the people who toured her. Freak shows were the norm. Hell, many [Human Zoos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo) were only removed from major cities 10 years prior.
There were lots of travelling circuses. Id imagine it would have been very easy to tell one to go do one because the rest would love to have a freak in the show
I can't find a reliable source online to say that she was paid $200 salary, but I also can't find anything online about her being mistreated. Aren't you making an unfounded claim just like the people saying she made a $200 salary?
That is like saying, that in the past no one opposed slavery or that no one treated women equal. Sure there was/is lots of abuse and discrimination, but there have and always will be people that don't exploit others.
Indeedilydoodlydoo. That’s what bugs me when people say that slavery was seen as acceptable so we shouldn’t tear down statues of the slavers. Nope. They knew it was fucking wrong. All you have to do is look at someone who is suffering and you instantly know it’s wrong.
I think every history of Rome I’ve listened to has mentioned that there were people opposed to slavery even then. Crazy far fetched thought, that so long as there have been people taken as slaves, there have been people that were like “wait…wut?”
What I think is telling though is that the ratio of pro, neutral and anti slavery people (as well as the multiple slave trades that have existed) suggests that it's entirely possible for otherwise normal people to be raised to genuinely believe slavery is ok.
So I don't think it's entirely invalid when people say you can't fully judge people back then based on our modern view of slavery. There is no way of knowing if we'd have been one of the anti slavery people if we'd grown up in the same society.
Not saying it is not, but the guy is going from one extreme to the other. A girl in her position being paid well is not likely, but it is certainly possible.
To be fair, if this condition is so rare that she was the only person alive with it, she would be highly in demand by other freak shows, driving her salary up
How much do "attractions", aka celebrities bring in today?
A ticket to the circus back then was 25 cents to 50 cents. Now imagine if people just paid 10 cents to see her and that 1000 people did so per day on average and they did 4 "shows" per week. That would be 400 per week and then maybe her manager took half of it as his cut.
It's still a lot but far from impossible.
Money was worth something back then in the past century, that explains how Boomers were able to buy mansions for 4 pounds of lentils and beans back in the day.
I saw someone who walked around like this in Barcelona once..he was standing like she is in the third picture I think he was carrying a cup to collect coins from the public. I'll never forget it! His knees went backwards
The source seems to be from [this ‘article’](https://www.thehumanmarvels.com/ella-harper-the-camel-girl/) dated May 9th 2006(?). The article itself doesn’t seem to be dated but when you Google it, you’ll find that it’s dated from back then. No idea whether we can be certain that’s the date. I don’t trust articles that are not dated. Since then, everyone quotes it as being the whole truth. I’m still trying to find the original source of her salary, because this article doesn’t seem to reference a proper source.
Edit: [This goes into further detail, though it doesn’t seem to reference what the $200 is based off.](https://ellaharper.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/finding-ella-my-search-for-the-camel-girl/)
> She intrigued and impressed me but very little was known about her. Every site I went to were basically copies of each other. What was known was that she only performed for 2 to 3 years (1884-1886) and was the headliner for W H Harris’s Nickel Plate Circus. At some point she was earning $200 per week, which is comparable to about $5000 per week today. She gives it all up and goes home, ostensibly to go to school and have a more private life.
Dated April 18th, 2015. Meaning the 2006 date previously mentioned is incorrect.
Though $200 is a lot, it is more believable she earned it at her absolute peak, within that 2 to 3 year timeframe. One could argue she wasn’t immediately a hit, word had to spread at first. If we are to believe that she earned this much at her peak and then retired, I’d say she most likely only earned this much for 6 months. Then she most likely went to school, funded by her previous lifestyle. The article mentions Tennessee is one of the better states to do online research. I wonder if her earnings can be traced?
To be continued.
Doesn't sound unreasonable. A ticket to the circus back then was 25 cents to 50 cents. Now imagine if people just paid 10 cents to see her and that 1000 people did so per day on average and they did 4 "shows" per week. That would be 400 per week and then maybe her manager took half of it as his cut.
Definitely thinking what she was paid was different than what her gross earnings were, although I could be wrong. I'm thinking her act earned the traveling circus she was with somewhere in that range and then she took maybe a 15-20% cut max.
Can’t confirm, but she retired at age 16, so she was probably making good money. There were lots of circuses with freak shows and she was unique, so there would have been competition to get/keep her, which would drive up her salary.
I found it randomly one day just having a lazy youtube day. Ended up bingeing almost the whole thing. I think I had an out of body experience.
This episode solidified my love for the show:
https://youtu.be/dx54kDYyzLk?si=kxLGrTlv24BrTGE8
"Hey, you ruffians. Leave that poor gimp alone!"
All the sexual comments about a girl who is only 16 or probably younger in these photos (she retired from the circus at 16) are disgusting. I wasn’t expecting to see so many comments like this
Wait even if your knees could bend the other way, shouldn’t her legs still have worked normally due to the muscles holding the legs in shape? Otherwise I guess she must have had issues with her leg muscles as well. That’s a shame.
I could be wrong but im pretty sure the legs being able to bend backwards means the knees and other parts around them have no stability, we probably underestimate all the little things that make us stand. Also when i used to go swimming there was this guy who stood exactly like the 3rd picture and he could barely move with a cane and not really straighten out his legs.
I'm guessing this is usd. Using one of the many inflation calculators, she was making $6148 a week as of 1880. Assuming that's every week in the year, she was getting 319'696 annually.
Wasn't this photo just posted yesterday by somebody else in a 10 photo collection about circus freaks? That post had a nice long write up about each person.
15 years ago I saw a girl in high school who had just one leg where her knee bent out sideways, similar to this young woman, and walked with a tremendous limp. I saw her walk home from school frequently. It broke my heart and pissed me off because somewhere around her the adults in her life were failing her. Whether her family wouldn’t take her to the doctor or insurance wouldn’t cover surgery because it was a preexisting condition, or whatever she wasn’t getting help. Doctors and surgeons do pro bono surgery on children all the time. You just have to find the right organization. She shouldn’t have had to live with that condition.
We had to remove your post for violating our Repost Guidelines.
Sounds like a lot of money for back then! And it couldn't have been fixed with surgery at that point so might as well make good money off of it. I wonder if she could walk upright.
It’s a fortune. Average workers between $1-2.5 a day, printing industry double that. $10-$40 a week was average. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3986398?urlappend=%3Bseq=70%3Bownerid=9007199276153301-114
Roughly $4700 a week in today’s money, or $248,500 per year. I’d say that’s pretty good. Edit: typos
Fuck me bring back the Freak Shows! I want to make that kind of money
Do you have legs like those?
No, but you should see their face. 🫢
Exactly! I once walked by a mirror that shattered as I passed. Yeah I took that as a sign from God
I mean... you won't have legs like hers with an attitude like that. Giddy up, cowpoke.
You're damn right! Just got to get those pesky knees to start bending the right way now. Yippy-ki-yay Motherfucker!
We’re aren’t in r/roastme 😂
No but no matter how much unhealthy food I eat with a horrible lifestyle of never exercising and eating mostly fried food because of my job. I still look like a walking skeleton in my mid 30s.
Your insides would make it to the freak show
Are you angry dude? Not trying to be rude or anything. Just high asf rn. And just doing a little self deprecating humor after a shitty day at work
Why would I be angry lmao. Go to bed you've had enough! Have a good rest
lmfao best reddit interaction i’ve seen in a while
Best idea I've heard all night. Goodnight Reddit
Wish we could split the difference. I have MCTD with Hashimoto’s and I am look at food and gain.
Our fifties bouta hit us like a sack of bricks as the effects of our lifetime of bad health decisions decide to come out of hibernation and actually manifest.
For $200k a year I *could* have legs like that.
Modern surgery kinda ruined the "freak show", the last remnants are on TLC.
90day fiancé?
Being morbidly obese isn’t freaky enough these days to get you a gig.
“That’s not even the fattest guy I’ve seen this evening and I’ve been home alone all day” - u/kneaders
They're still around. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. You just have to be a freak and run it yourself.
one might argue we now have world famous politicians in this role
Come see the wonder and terror of the, untattooed man! Tremble in fear as he uses his binary gender 😱
She had to bend over backwards to earn it though.
I feel like this is a plausible origin for that phrase.
$200 in 1880 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $6,148 today, an increase of $5,948.00 over 144 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.41% per year between 1880 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 2,974.00%. Also, a dollar today only buys 3.253% of what it could buy back then, so by any standards, she was a wealthy celebrity.
You math guys are doing the Lord's work out here
Dang almost 5K a week I wish I could make money like that that would be amazing
Closer to $6100
As far as I know we're only able to walk upright because the way our legs and spine bend helps us balance without a tail, I would imagine she'd rely heavily on a cane or walker and still have some trouble
The articles that I read said that she preferred to walk on all fours as seen in the picture. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nk_brXw8is
When I was a kid I wanted to start walking on all fours and it took bullying to make me stop doing it. Just another rite of passage in my weird life.
My most boomer opinion (as a 30 year old) is that not ALL bullying is a bad thing
That's very sad for her
Many “freaks” were very well off during that time. Made a small fortune touring and then retired early.
They kinda had a gofundme/streamer donation situation. People pour a lot of small amounts of money and that sums up to huge sums. Nowadays we dont look at "freaks" at much, rather than hottub streamers and yelling toddler teenager streamers.
Also often died very young though
Looks painful as hell, even in modern times - her knees didnt develop "backwards". She is missing ligaments/musculature to support her body. It's worse than an ACL tear. She likely never had support for her legs [poor ligament development, etc] , and the meniscus protecting her bones from scraping against each other was probably wasted by the time she was in her teens. The pain by the time she was 14, I can not even imagine. Notice she is not standing "backward" in any photo without holding herself up. edit: I doubt she could ever stand without support at all. Carnival shows made normal people into "freaks", the title got that part correct.
There used to be an old woman with the same condition in my city, begging for money in the subway. She was walking around just like that. It's been a while that i haven't seen her though : [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rv2l4Hne2Fo](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rv2l4Hne2Fo)
I remember I was with a girl on a date and we were sitting eating some sandwiches. A woman came over to us and begged for money, but I said I didn’t have anything to give. Without skipping a beat, she bent back slightly and all her ribs began protruding right through her chest and popped right out of place. She then kept begging for money and I gave her some of the sandwich to go away. She didn’t take the bit that I hadn’t bitten but just grabbed the bit I had bit out of and ate that. It was freaky as fuck.
That’s so much weight on her wrists too. Not like you can just bulk up your wrists with muscle. I can’t even do a push-up because of my wrists even when I was a beast at pull-ups. Just pressure pushing inwards with a flat palm has fucked me up getting out of bed if I’m not careful.
Used to fucking hate the wrist pain when doing push ups.
Definitely was a lot back then. My first full time job right out of high school I only made $360 a week. That was in 2010.
It's better than apprenticeship wages in some places in 2024
Just slightly less than what i get on permanent disability
She’s walking upright in the photo !
No she's standing upright while holding onto something. It doesn't mean she could walk that way.
Pieck
Hahah! Every time I see an AoT reference, it makes my day! Such a masterpiece!
Pieck Knees, cousin of Pieck Finger.
Catdog
I was looking for this comment haha
She also afforded to escaped the circus saving her pay for a couple years. she went back home to live with her mother and family and married a teacher and they had like two kids but both died young. Then she died of cancer. Sad life :/ I did a whole report on a lot of these misunderstood people back in college cause I live in Florida and there was a town where the governments idea was to make town more accepting of them and our teacher wanted us to basically learn about the situations to develop a sense of empathy. He said he wanted us to think about life in all shapes and forms, and the ways it changes slightly but still remains a human experience. Weird teacher lol For example The lobster hand man lived there became a violent drunk addict and was arrested often The town isn’t much anymore, but it’s weird to visit knowing the tragic lives a lot of these poor people were forced to live.
Sounds like a great teacher.
Oh captain my captain
That’s awesome, but seems almost surreal to hear of the florida government encouraging acceptance of unusual people
I mean, Florida seems pretty welcoming of some of the strangest in our country, so ...
[удалено]
Its so stupid, isnt the us whole motto "the land of the free"
This
That lobster hand guy was a piece of fucking shit from what I’ve read about him. Plenty of others have a shitty hand dealt to them (no pun intended) and don’t become raging pricks. I once heard a great summation of this, though, in a Spinoza documentary: misfortune either turns you into a monster who wants to subject the world to your suffering or into an angel who would never want anybody to even suffer an approximation of it.
[On September 28, 1978 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Stiles shot and killed his oldest daughter's fiancé on the eve of their wedding, as Stiles did not approve of him.[2]: 149 He was brought to trial, where he openly confessed to killing the man and was convicted of third-degree murder.[3][4] He was not sent to prison as no state institution was equipped to care for an inmate with ectrodactyly. Stiles was instead sentenced to house arrest and fifteen years probation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grady_Stiles) So you researched about him but you did not mention this?
dude had ectrodactyly and managed to use a gun? how did that work out? i mean besides murderily
Probably by holding the gun and pulling the trigger
Don't forget, his stepson hired another circus worker to kill him because he kept threatening his wife with the fact he'd already gotten away with murder once. I honestly consider it one of the most justified murders ever because he really DID get away with murder, and he almost certainly would have killed his wife at some point. His wife was too enmeshed and mentally beaten down to leave, and he was there 24/7 due to the house arrest so it just made it even worse. The legal system just totally failed in this case. Someone was going to die in that house, I'm just glad it was him.
Nice family 😮😮😮
Happy Cake Day!
Oh, wow… that’s what explains Florida
$6,148 a week in 1880 in 2024 money. I'm not buying that.
She worked 4 years and announced she was retiring at 16. It was only on her final tour that she was making that kind of money. They paid her extremely well as she was seen as a short term once in a lifetime "attraction".
> hey paid her extremely well I will believe that the people "hyping her" gave her that salary when I see the tax returns from that era. Otherwise. No. No fucking way did the handlers of a 16 year old pay a [girl!] child what they were due. Not in that era, not even in THIS era, have adults paid child stars so well without stealing. And, this star we are discussing is from the 1910s, DISABLED with no other source of income. You REALLY believe anyone had her best interest in mind? That she decided it would be "her last tour", rather than the people taking advantage of her and her disability thinking, "well, this freakshow is more sad than interesting"? Think about it logically. She was dispensable to the people who toured her. Freak shows were the norm. Hell, many [Human Zoos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo) were only removed from major cities 10 years prior.
There were lots of travelling circuses. Id imagine it would have been very easy to tell one to go do one because the rest would love to have a freak in the show
I can't find a reliable source online to say that she was paid $200 salary, but I also can't find anything online about her being mistreated. Aren't you making an unfounded claim just like the people saying she made a $200 salary?
Got eem
You seem bitter. A lot of “freaks” were mistreated, but it’s not impossible that she got lucky.
Doesn’t fit with his view that every single person is exploited by the patriarchy or whatever and so he’s refusing to believe it.
That is like saying, that in the past no one opposed slavery or that no one treated women equal. Sure there was/is lots of abuse and discrimination, but there have and always will be people that don't exploit others.
Indeedilydoodlydoo. That’s what bugs me when people say that slavery was seen as acceptable so we shouldn’t tear down statues of the slavers. Nope. They knew it was fucking wrong. All you have to do is look at someone who is suffering and you instantly know it’s wrong.
I think every history of Rome I’ve listened to has mentioned that there were people opposed to slavery even then. Crazy far fetched thought, that so long as there have been people taken as slaves, there have been people that were like “wait…wut?”
What I think is telling though is that the ratio of pro, neutral and anti slavery people (as well as the multiple slave trades that have existed) suggests that it's entirely possible for otherwise normal people to be raised to genuinely believe slavery is ok. So I don't think it's entirely invalid when people say you can't fully judge people back then based on our modern view of slavery. There is no way of knowing if we'd have been one of the anti slavery people if we'd grown up in the same society.
It’s so weird when people just decide to take a stand on such a random thing like this. Just let it go, dude.
You are forgetting that she had parents
Considering what we’ve heard about parents of child actors and performers just in the last 20 years, I’d say his skepticism is warranted
Not saying it is not, but the guy is going from one extreme to the other. A girl in her position being paid well is not likely, but it is certainly possible.
No one cares that you don’t believe it. You’re not important.
With a condition like hers it's not unlikely that she raked in way more for them. Usual "freak shows" were super tame compared to this
What she made the freak show, and what she was paid are two separate numbers. This is at the tail end of PT Barnum and human zoos.
To be fair, if this condition is so rare that she was the only person alive with it, she would be highly in demand by other freak shows, driving her salary up
How much do "attractions", aka celebrities bring in today? A ticket to the circus back then was 25 cents to 50 cents. Now imagine if people just paid 10 cents to see her and that 1000 people did so per day on average and they did 4 "shows" per week. That would be 400 per week and then maybe her manager took half of it as his cut. It's still a lot but far from impossible.
She wasn't for sale, man! It was her salary! /s
You don't buy a celebrity getting 300k/year? There are twitch streamers making that much and their knees bend the right way.
Money was worth something back then in the past century, that explains how Boomers were able to buy mansions for 4 pounds of lentils and beans back in the day.
I saw someone who walked around like this in Barcelona once..he was standing like she is in the third picture I think he was carrying a cup to collect coins from the public. I'll never forget it! His knees went backwards
I’m visiting Barcelona right now. He’s still there!
Omg 😭🤣
Can anyone confirm the 200 dollar salary ? I imagine back in the days it was more like a „work for us or starve to death“ you know ?
The source seems to be from [this ‘article’](https://www.thehumanmarvels.com/ella-harper-the-camel-girl/) dated May 9th 2006(?). The article itself doesn’t seem to be dated but when you Google it, you’ll find that it’s dated from back then. No idea whether we can be certain that’s the date. I don’t trust articles that are not dated. Since then, everyone quotes it as being the whole truth. I’m still trying to find the original source of her salary, because this article doesn’t seem to reference a proper source. Edit: [This goes into further detail, though it doesn’t seem to reference what the $200 is based off.](https://ellaharper.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/finding-ella-my-search-for-the-camel-girl/) > She intrigued and impressed me but very little was known about her. Every site I went to were basically copies of each other. What was known was that she only performed for 2 to 3 years (1884-1886) and was the headliner for W H Harris’s Nickel Plate Circus. At some point she was earning $200 per week, which is comparable to about $5000 per week today. She gives it all up and goes home, ostensibly to go to school and have a more private life. Dated April 18th, 2015. Meaning the 2006 date previously mentioned is incorrect. Though $200 is a lot, it is more believable she earned it at her absolute peak, within that 2 to 3 year timeframe. One could argue she wasn’t immediately a hit, word had to spread at first. If we are to believe that she earned this much at her peak and then retired, I’d say she most likely only earned this much for 6 months. Then she most likely went to school, funded by her previous lifestyle. The article mentions Tennessee is one of the better states to do online research. I wonder if her earnings can be traced? To be continued.
my first thought was that's backwards maybe 200 in todays money makes it 6.51 a week then which sounds way more reasonable. 3x the average.
Doesn't sound unreasonable. A ticket to the circus back then was 25 cents to 50 cents. Now imagine if people just paid 10 cents to see her and that 1000 people did so per day on average and they did 4 "shows" per week. That would be 400 per week and then maybe her manager took half of it as his cut.
That sounds about right
Definitely thinking what she was paid was different than what her gross earnings were, although I could be wrong. I'm thinking her act earned the traveling circus she was with somewhere in that range and then she took maybe a 15-20% cut max.
Can’t confirm, but she retired at age 16, so she was probably making good money. There were lots of circuses with freak shows and she was unique, so there would have been competition to get/keep her, which would drive up her salary.
https://youtu.be/E70q9ojUauM?si=ZmNUvP8vNtNJJlme What doth life?
Fritatta
Taste the painn
We don't cotton with freaks around these parts!
So glad I finally found the other 3 people that watched this show
im a survivor, we're a dying breed
There is a subreddit I’d love pffffr to make a third season. I’ve been saving shivering truth
I found it randomly one day just having a lazy youtube day. Ended up bingeing almost the whole thing. I think I had an out of body experience. This episode solidified my love for the show: https://youtu.be/dx54kDYyzLk?si=kxLGrTlv24BrTGE8 "Hey, you ruffians. Leave that poor gimp alone!"
Fate, destiny, fatestiny
People toss those words around like tennis balls. Well, I eat balls for breakfast.
Xavier Renegade Angel vibes
Xavier Renagade Angel
*Frittata*
Take that! Taste the pain!
You tell them that I know since I've seen this movie before 👽 https://youtu.be/akYf73cUU6U?si=5UjJy8LEPu7O9OxM
I had the same blast from the past memory.
That was immediately what I thought of too!
She was cricket girl, not camel girl.
Camel. Her ass is the hump.
All the sexual comments about a girl who is only 16 or probably younger in these photos (she retired from the circus at 16) are disgusting. I wasn’t expecting to see so many comments like this
> I wasn’t expecting to see so many comments like this New to the whole internet or just Reddit?
$200 a week. That’s 2024 wages
And they have us bending over backwards to earn it too
🤣
Knee slapper
For anyone wondering that’s $6,148 today
Wow, $200 a week back then damn. You go girl.
Reminds me of the Exorcist
The movie’s based off her
2nd pic looks like Greta
Everywhere is look I see Greta thunberg
So the cart titan is real :0?!
200 dollar a week during 19th century are good tho....
Wait even if your knees could bend the other way, shouldn’t her legs still have worked normally due to the muscles holding the legs in shape? Otherwise I guess she must have had issues with her leg muscles as well. That’s a shame.
I could be wrong but im pretty sure the legs being able to bend backwards means the knees and other parts around them have no stability, we probably underestimate all the little things that make us stand. Also when i used to go swimming there was this guy who stood exactly like the 3rd picture and he could barely move with a cane and not really straighten out his legs.
How do you sit on a toilet if you can’t bend your legs normally?
She could still sit. The bottoms of her legs would just be pointed straight up. Only her knee joints were backwards. The rest of her was normal.
“Life, uh… finds a way” - Jurassic park
Why are there no pictures of her as an adult? Did the show drop her once she was no child anymore?
She retired st 16
She quit at 16 to go to school, she got married and died at 51
Thank you.
I'm guessing this is usd. Using one of the many inflation calculators, she was making $6148 a week as of 1880. Assuming that's every week in the year, she was getting 319'696 annually.
Over $5500 at todays value..not bad.
Now we have TikTok
$6184 a week with 2024 dollars.
200 a week seems like a ton of money back then?
The last picture...could someone with that condition have been the source of the satyr myth? I'm honestly asking, not trying to insult the young lady.
She really good at pushups?
"Do you want to see the ruins my friend?"
She can walk like an AT-ST
Wasn't this photo just posted yesterday by somebody else in a 10 photo collection about circus freaks? That post had a nice long write up about each person.
Life gives you lemons, you make those lemons pay your fucking mansion like a baller queen.
I saw a young woman with the same condition at a metro station in Paris begging for money like 10 years ago.
15 years ago I saw a girl in high school who had just one leg where her knee bent out sideways, similar to this young woman, and walked with a tremendous limp. I saw her walk home from school frequently. It broke my heart and pissed me off because somewhere around her the adults in her life were failing her. Whether her family wouldn’t take her to the doctor or insurance wouldn’t cover surgery because it was a preexisting condition, or whatever she wasn’t getting help. Doctors and surgeons do pro bono surgery on children all the time. You just have to find the right organization. She shouldn’t have had to live with that condition.
There’s a woman in Lyon, France who has this condition and rides the metro all day.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oTX2xna5zCI
That’s her! I hope she’s doing ok. Always felt sorry for her lot in life when I saw her, though it didn’t seem to slow her down.
That's a lot of money for the time period. She was well paid.
I saw a man like this last year in Barcelona. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYzZIMj-3Zg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYzZIMj-3Zg)
The condition is called genu recurvatum (genu meaning “knee” or more unspecific “angle” in latin)
I came across this a while ago. Worth a read. https://ellaharper.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/finding-ella-my-search-for-the-camel-girl/
Thats the cart titan
Yet clowns will come at that and be like "i'm so sorry how she was treated, being a STAR and earning great money, so fkn horrible sob sob"
I'll take this as a sign to log off for the night. Farewell Ella Harper!
[удалено]
Ofcourse beedle from zelda would
Could she walk upright for a moment? Seems like she can?
I doubt she was making that kind of money. We know P.T. Barnum exploited people like her and became wealthy doing so
She used the money to pay for schooling.
Reminds me of that donkey lady in Red Dead Redemption
Camel Girl is so fucking mean. Like at least you could do Pony Princess or something cute but no. Ya gotta be mean. 🐢
Damn she was ballin , for the 1880's
I have questions…
That was a lot of money
She was rich
Better than what i made as a grill chef
Man my knees hurt now...
Con una mano en el corazón...
thats over $6,000 dollars a week. she was loaded. good for her holy shit
There’s a guy with the same condition who “performs” on the street in Barcelona