Hagar
Title
Hagar & Campbell's Dime Museum, Ninth & Arch Sts. Opens Monday September 3d 1883
Description
Lively advertising print for the dime museum operated by W. D. Hagar and W. T. Campbell 1883-1885. Shows throngs of people entering the mansard-roofed building, heavily adorned in signage and over 40 pictures of the museum's performers, at the northwest corner of Ninth and Arch Streets. Signs read "Specially Adapted for Ladies & Children: Open Daily from 1 to 10 P.M."; "Curiosities Constantly Arriving From All Parts of the World"; and "Philadelphia's Pleasure Palace Containing Countless Curiosities / Peerless Parlor Peformances." Other signs announce the hours of operation, the museum's purpose for the "instruction and amusement" of ladies and children, and the admission price - 10 cents. Performer's pictures primarily depict human curiosities and include tattooed men and women, a bearded lady, clowns, a two-headed woman, little people, an armless man, a man eating a slate, exotic and native costumed figures, as well as a magician and a ventriloquist. Graphics also show exotic animals and birds. Building also adorned with flags promoting the museum and its attractions, including "birds, beasts, and mechanical marvels." In the street, three street cars (nos. 44, 33, and 26) and one wagon, advertising Hagar & Campbell's, travel and stop in front of the museum. Wagon is composed of billboards illustrated with an image of seven women with floor-length hair and captioned "Seven Wonders of the World.", Also shows adjacent buildings, a crowd of people at the side of the museum, and pedestrians and passersby in the street, on the sidewalk, and near and looking at the street vehicles. Print also contains portraits of owners W. D. Hagar and W. T. Campbell in the upper corners. By 1884, Campbell and Hagar were officers in the Barnum and London show managing "Privileges." Campbell stayed with Barnum until at least the early 1890s., Date inferred from title., Gift of Barbara Fahs Charles and Robert Staples., POSP 286
Date
[1883]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department ***BW - Advertisements - H [P.2013.82]
Primrose
Title
Primrose The celebrated piebald boy, a native of the West Indies; publicly [sic] shewn in London 1789
Description
Full-length portrait of John Richardson Primrose Bobey, a young Black man with the pigmentation disorder vitiligo, born enslaved in Jamaica, and inspected and exhibited as a specimen of science throughout England. Shows the young man standing on a shoreline. He stands with palm trees in the distance. He is dressed in a loincloth knotted on his left hip and adorned with tassels. White patches are visible on his legs, torso, and down the center of his head. In his right hand, he holds up a captioned portrait broadside of himself as a boy and points to it with his left hand bent at the elbow and from in front of his waist. The broadside depicts the very young Bobey with primarily white skin above text reading "A Child born at Gros Islet, in the Island of St. Lucia, of Black Parents, Taken from a model of the infant colored from nature," and at the museum of T. Pole, Surgeon, Grace Church, in London." In adulthood in London, Bobey advocated for his freedom from enslavement and was a proprietor of a menagerie and a member of several societies, including the Free Masons., Title from item., Manuscript note on recto: Presented T. Pole Surgeon, London, to the Library of Philadelphia., Publication information inferred from broadside illustrated in image and address of London publishers Wm. Darton & Jos. Harvey., Noted in LCP Minutes, v. 3, p. 230-231., Biographies of sitter in Karl Pearson, A monograph on Albinism (London: Cambridge University Press, 1911-1913) and William Granger, The new wonderful museum, and extraordinary magazine: ... (London: Printed for R.S. Kirby, 1804), v. 2, p. 711-714., Pole, a Philadelphia-born Quaker physician, was also an artist who illustrated his own text "An Anatomical Instructor, an Illustration of the Modern and Most Approved Methods of Preparing and Preserving the Different Parts of the Human Body, and of Quadrupeds, by Injection, Corrosion, ... (London, 1790)., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., Descripton revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Gift of Thomas Pole, 1790., RVCDC
Date
[ca. 1789]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | PRINT. *portrait prints - Primrose [901.F.27]