Cardiff Giant

The Cardiff Giant being exhumed in October 1869

The Cardiff Giant on display at the Bastable in Syracuse, NY circa 1869.

The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous hoaxes in United States history. It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m) purported "petrified man" uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell in Cardiff, New York. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P.T. Barnum are still on display.

Creation and discovery

The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist revival meeting about Genesis 6:4 stating that there were giants who once lived on Earth.^[1]

The idea of a petrified man did not originate with Hull, however. In 1858 the newspaper Alta California had published a bogus letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode. Some other newspapers also had published stories of supposedly petrified people.^[2]

Hull hired men to carve out a 10-foot-4.5-inch-long (3.2 m) block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Chicago, where he hired Edward Burghardt, a German stonecutter, to carve it into the likeness of a man and swore him to secrecy.

Various stains and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old and weathered, and the giant's surface was beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. In November 1868, Hull transported the giant by rail to the farm of William Newell, his cousin. By then, he had spent US$2,600 on the hoax (nearly $46,000 in 2015 dollars, adjusted for inflation).^[3]

Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869 they found the giant. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!"^[2]

Exhibition and exposure as fraud

Newell set up a tent over the giant and charged 25 cents for people who wanted to see it. Two days later he increased the price to 50 cents. People came by the wagonload.^[2]

Archaeological scholars pronounced the giant a fake, and some geologists even noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found. Yale palaeontologist Othniel C. Marsh called it "a most decided humbug". Some theologians and preachers, however, defended its authenticity.^[4]

Eventually, Hull sold his part-interest for $23,000 (equivalent to $431,000 in 2015) to a syndicate of five men headed by David Hannum. They moved it to Syracuse, New York, for exhibition. The giant drew such crowds that showman P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for the giant. When the syndicate turned him down, he hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in wax and create a plaster replica. He put his giant on display in New York, claiming that his was the real giant, and the Cardiff Giant was a fake.^[2]

As the newspapers reported Barnum's version of the story, David Hannum was quoted as saying, "There's a sucker born every minute" in reference to spectators paying to see Barnum's giant. Over time, the quotation has been misattributed to Barnum himself.

Hannum sued Barnum for calling his giant a fake, but the judge told him to get his giant to swear on his own genuineness in court if he wanted a favorable injunction.^[2]

On December 10, Hull confessed to the press. On February 2, 1870 both giants were revealed as fakes in court. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant a fake.

Current resting place

The Cardiff Giant appeared in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, but did not attract much attention.^[2]

Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles, Jr.^[5] bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947 he sold it to the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still on display.^[6]

The owner of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, a coin-operated game arcade and museum of oddities in Farmington Hills, Michigan, says that the replica on display there is Barnum's replica.^[7][8]

Imitators

The Cardiff Giant has inspired a number of similar hoaxes.

• In 1876 The Solid Muldoon emerged in Beulah, Colorado, and was exhibited at 50 cents a ticket. There was also a rumor that Barnum had offered to buy it for $20,000. One employer later revealed that this was also a creation of George Hull, aided by Willian Conant. The Solid Muldoon was made of clay, ground bones, meat, rock dust, and plaster.
• In 1877, the owner of Taughannock House hotel on Cayuga Lake, New York, hired men to create a fake petrified man and place it where the workers who were expanding the hotel would dig it up. One of the men who had buried the giant later revealed the truth when drunk.
• In 1892 Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, de facto ruler of the town of Creede, Colorado, purchased a petrified man for $3,000 and exhibited it for 10 cents a peek. Soapy's profits did not come from displaying "McGinty", as he named it, but rather from distractions, such as the shell game set up to entertain the crowds as they waited in line. He also profited by selling interests in the exhibition. This was a real human body, intentionally injected with chemicals for preservation and petrification. Soapy displayed McGinty from 1892 to 1895 throughout Colorado and the northwest United States.
• In 1897, a petrified man found downriver from Fort Benton, Montana, was claimed by promoters to be the remains of former territorial governor and U.S. Civil War General Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher had drowned in the Missouri River in 1867. The petrified man was displayed across Montana as a novelty and even exhibited in New York and Chicago.^[9]

Popular culture

• In 1870, Mark Twain wrote "A Ghost Story" in which the ghost of the Cardiff Giant appears in the hotel room in Manhattan to demand that he be reburied. The giant is so confused that he haunts Barnum's plaster copy of himself.^[10]
• In 1871, L. Frank Baum published a poem titled "The True Origin of the Cardiff Giant" in his private newspaper, The Rose Lawn Home Journal, vol. 1, #3.^[11]
• George Auger, a Ringling Brothers circus giant, used the stage name "Cardiff Giant". He was to act in Harold Lloyd's 1923 comedy film Why Worry?, but died shortly after filming started, sparking a nationwide search for a replacement.
• The Cardiff Giant figures in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories 49, "The Secret of Mirror Bay" (1972), set at Lake Otsego near Cooperstown. Nancy Drew and her friends visit the giant at the Farmers' Museum.
• The episode "Giant" of the television series Halt and Catch Fire makes several references to the Cardiff Giant, and established the name for the computer being engineered in the series.
• In the 2001 film Made, the characters use the code words "Cardiff Giant" as a shibboleth, and at various points to attempt, unsuccessfully, to gain admission to night clubs.
• In 2012, the indie rock band mewithoutYou recorded the song "Cardiff Giant" on their fifth album, Ten Stories.

References

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading

• Tribble, Scott (2009), A Colossal Hoax: The Giant From Cardiff that Fooled America, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 978-0-7425-6050-5 
• Jacobs, Harvey (1997), American Goliath, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 978-0312194383 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cardiff Giant.

• P.T. Barnum Never Did Say...
• Photo of "discovery" site
• US Library of Congress photo of the giant
• Cardiff Giant Hoax Recreated By Syracuse Artist Ty Marshal
• Syracuse man to recreate biggest US hoax ever: Cardiff Giant