Joseph Merrick - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Joseph Carey Merrick was born 5 August 1862 at 50 Lee Street in Leicester to Joseph Rockley Merrick and his wife Mary Jane (née Potterton). Joseph Rockley Merrick (c. 1835 – 1897) was the son of London-born weaver Barnabas Merrick who moved to Leicester during the 1820s or 1830s, and his third wife Sarah Rockley. Mary Jane Potterton (c. 1834 – 1873) was the daughter of a Yorkshire agricultural labourer and had some form of physical disability. As a young woman she worked as a domestic servant in Leicester before marrying Joseph Rockley Merrick, then a brougham driver, in 1861. The following year, Joseph Carey Merrick was born, apparently healthy, and had no outward symptoms of any disorder for the first few years of his life. Named after his father, he was given the middle name Carey by his mother, a Baptist, after the preacher William Carey. The Merricks had two more children, William Arthur (born 1866) who died of scarlet fever aged four and Marion Eliza (born 1867), who was born with physical disabilities and died in 1891.

A pamphlet entitled "The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick", produced c. 1884 to accompany his exhibition, states that he started to display symptoms at approximately five years of age, with "thick lumpy skin ... like that of an elephant, and almost the same colour". According to a 1930 article in the Illustrated Leicester Chronicle, he began to develop swellings on his lips at the age of 21 months, followed by a bony lump on his forehead and a loosening and roughening of the skin. As he grew, a noticeable difference between the size of his left and right arms appeared and both his feet became significantly enlarged. The Merrick family explained his symptoms as the result of Mary's being knocked over and frightened by a fairground elephant while she was pregnant with Joseph. The concept of maternal impression—that the emotional experiences of pregnant women could have lasting physical effect on their unborn children—was still common in 19th-century England. Merrick held this belief about the cause of his affliction for his entire life.

In addition to his deformities, at some point during his childhood, Merrick suffered a fall and damaged his left hip. This injury became infected and left him permanently lame. Although affected by his physical deformities, Merrick attended school and enjoyed a close relationship with his mother. She was a Sunday School teacher, and his father worked as an engine driver at a cotton factory, as well as running a haberdashery business. On 19 May 1873, less than three years after the death of her younger son William, Mary Jane Merrick died from bronchopneumonia. Joseph Rockley Merrick moved with his two children to live with Mrs. Emma Wood Antill, a widow with children of her own. They married on 3 December 1874.