Item #19343 What We Know About Waino and Plutano, The Wild Men of Borneo, With Poems Dedicated to Them. SIDESHOW.
What We Know About Waino and Plutano, The Wild Men of Borneo, With Poems Dedicated to Them
What We Know About Waino and Plutano, The Wild Men of Borneo, With Poems Dedicated to Them
What We Know About Waino and Plutano, The Wild Men of Borneo, With Poems Dedicated to Them

What We Know About Waino and Plutano, The Wild Men of Borneo, With Poems Dedicated to Them

New York: Damon & Peets.

Undated sideshow pitch book, c. 1880. 3 x 4.5 inches, 16 pp, in original illustrated wrappers. One full-page illustration and 2 within the text. A few small chips/short tears; very good.

Waino and Plutano (also called Plutanor) were a pair of exceptionally strong dwarf brothers from Ohio named Hiram and Barney, born c. 1825 and 1827. They were each 40 inches tall and weighed about 45 pounds, yet they could perform feats of great strength such as lifting heavy weights and wrestling with audience members on stage. Discovered and subsequently promoted by a traveling showman in 1852, the brothers were renamed and given a sensational backstory in which they were wild savages captured in Borneo after a great struggle with armed sailors. They were exhibited at state fairs across the United States in the 1860s, and they later toured with William C. Coup's circus. They joined P.T. Barnum's traveling exhibitions around 1880 and went on to earn more than $200,000 over the next two decades. This scarce pitch book describes the isolated "negritos" of Borneo ("yellowish in color and undersized"), the wild "monkey antics" of the brothers when they first reached America, their amazing strength, and their travels and gradual domestication.

Item #19343

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