Freak show (The University of Chicago Press)

From 1840 until 1940, freak shows aby the hundreds crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. Żeby today's standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitive - the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America's most popular forms of entertainment.