That brillant artist had a skull the size of a pear.
William Henry Johnson was born in 1842.
As he grows older, his skull and forehead lengthens, so we think he has microcephaly.
When he was 18, he was recruited by the Barnum circus.
William is described as having the tip of his head thin as an egg, a long, wide nose and a prognathic jaw.
The boy's physique is enough to make him a curiosity but Barnum has a sense of show, he shaves his head and leaves only a strand of shaggy hair to show the skull but above all in order to make him look particularly stupid, the businessman also asks him to wear a fake fur suit and finally Barnum renames him Zip.
Zip has known several identities, first he was the monkey man, but the one that worked best was Zip the Pinhead.
In order to make it look like Zip was the missing link between man and monkey, he said the boy had been found during a gorilla hunt in West Africa.
Zip was a member of a "race of naked men, climbing the branches of trees".
Of course, Zip plays the game perfectly, he doesn't talk when he's in public but he growls when we approach him or try to talk to him.
Barnum pays Zip more when he can fool everyone.
It's motivating and it makes him the best paid fair animal in the Barnum show.
Zip is frightening in his behaviour and interesting in his appearance, so much so that the audience does not ask for his identity as they would for a normal person, but he asks "What is it?”
And that's what Barnum likes.
Also Barnum plays it, he makes it the main character of his show and pays him $100 a week, plus $1 a day (to keep quiet in public).
He civilizes him in a way and he appears in the presence of other human monsters such as the bird woman, the giants, the Siamese Eng and Chang, or the tattooed men and women with whom they play different comedies.
From now on the idea is to make people laugh, so Zip plays (very badly) the violin and his classmates run after him in order to stop him, he has fun threatening the other freaks with a plastic gun.
The humour of the 19th century…
That's when he becomes Zip the pinhead.
Delighted by the show, the audience does not hesitate to throw coins directly on stage to thank the artist for his comedy show.
Many personalities attended the Zip show, including Charles Dickens and the Prince of Wales.
Zip has played all his life, it is estimated that there were more than 100 million ZIP spectators in his sixty-seven year career.
He was on stage until his 80th birthday, but on April 24, 1926, he died of bronchitis.
Frankly, we can say that his funeral was his last show. The giants, the dwarves, the armless, the bearded women, the Siamese, the tattooed...
They were all at the ceremony in mourning.
Zip was loved by all, because if he didn't speak in public in order to preserve his show during the first years, he didn't hesitate to show a lot of humour and wisdom afterwards.
Moreover, his finesse of mind is perplexing to many people.
In general, people with microcephaly suffer from significant mental retardation.
Which is clearly not the case with Zip.
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