Adam Ozimek, Alex Tabarrok, Andrew Sullivan, Miss Cellania, and others post this picture of “Human Freight Car” Chauncey Morlan (1869-1906), one of the freak show fatties who traveled with the Barnum & Bailey Circus:
Alex wonders, “What would the circus goers of 1890 have thought if they were told that in the America of 2010 Chauncy Morlan would be unremarkable?”
Cellania quips, “People paid money to look at him, because he was so unusually obese. A hundred years later, you can walk into any buffet restaurant and see a dozen people bigger than Morlan.”
Admittedly, Morlan doesn’t look fat enough in that picture that I’d pay to see him. But, in actuality, Morlan was 512 pounds at age 18 and was reputedly well over 600 pounds later in life. That’s hardly “unremarkable” even now.
