Early Life
Though there is some uncertainty due to the characteristic embroidering of sideshow performers' stories, by his own account Horace Ridler was born into an upper-class family living outside London, and enjoyed a relatively privileged childhood, marked by travel, private schooling and comfort. There are two competing theories about his young life. In one version he is said to have gone on to Oxford or Cambridge, graduating with honours. In the second version, he instead pursued a career in the army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Soon after receiving his commission, his father died, leaving him a substantial inheritance. But (again according to the second version) he rapidly frittered his inheritance away on parties, gambling, entertainment and poor investments; and these and other circumstances led to his resigning his commission.
When World War I began, Ridler, now 22, enlisted and was decorated for his outstanding conduct and gallantry when serving in Mesopotamia. Demobilized at the end of the war with the rank of major, with a small pension and few prospects, but willing to take chances, he decided to become an act at the Odditorium. In 1922 he received his first few pictorial tattoos, and began exhibiting himself in small sideshows. This afforded him a meager living, but was not the success he had hoped for.
Read more about this topic: Horace Ridler
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“I have always had something to live besides a personal life. And I suspected very early that to live merely in an experience of, in an expression of, in a positive delight in the human cliches could be no business of mine.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“Mothers who are strong people, who can pursue a life of their own when it is time to let their children go, empower their children of either gender to feel free and whole. But weak women, women who feel and act like victims of something or other, may make their children feel responsible for taking care of them, and they can carry their children down with them.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)