The Tragic Story of the "Living Skeleton" Isaac Sprague

To modern people, freak circuses and “human zoos” seem terrible and disgusting. But there was a time when they were the only way to survive for people with physical disabilities. A good example is the story of Isaac Sprague, whom the public knew as a “living skeleton.”

Isaac Sprague was born on May 21, 1841 in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, USA. Until the age of 12, he grew up like an ordinary boy and was no different from his peers. But then young Isaac began to have convulsions and, despite his excellent appetite, he began to rapidly lose weight.

No one in the Sprague family had ever encountered such a problem. The boy was shown to the best doctors, but they just shrugged their shoulders. For some time, Isaac helped his father, a shoemaker, but soon became so weak that he could no longer cope with the simplest tasks. Until the mid-1860s he lived with his parents, who cared for their sick son. But when they died, the young man faced the completely unattractive prospect of being a street beggar.

At the age of 23, Sprague, with a height of 168 cm, weighed only 20 kg. Nobody hired him, and Isaac couldn’t do anything. He was so weakened that he could barely move his legs. Even his clothes seemed like a heavy burden to the guy. In 1865, Sprague met the owner of a traveling circus. He invited the young man to perform in his troupe. At first Isaac refused, but after a while he realized that this was his only chance to survive.

But Isaac did not want to get involved with dubious employers. He went to New York to try his luck in the American entertainment capital of the time. There he quickly found work at the F. T. Barnum American Museum. He came to the owner of the entertainment establishment with an agent. Seeing Sprague, Barnum said to the middleman: “Pretty thin man, where did you find him?” And a few minutes later the young man was already signing the contract.

Isaac was immediately given a very good salary of 80 dollars a week (1320 modern dollars or 120 thousand rubles). The man began performing with bearded women and giants in freak shows. He was presented to the public as a “living skeleton.” Isaac was not at all enthusiastic about such work, but he endured it, since it made it possible not to need anything.

All was well until 1868, when the Barnum Museum burned down. Weak Isaac barely managed to escape from the burning building - he was almost trampled by his panicking colleagues. But he survived, although he decided to leave his career as an artist. Sprague had savings that allowed him to live comfortably for some time.

He met Tamara Moore, who lived in the town next to his, East Bridgewater, and the couple got married. Isaac and his wife lived the quiet life of ordinary Americans. The couple had three absolutely healthy sons. But over time, Sprague's savings ran out and his family began to fall into poverty. The “living skeleton” still weighed 20 kg and could not find a job. There was nothing else to do but return to Barnum.

Isaac Sprague again became a favorite of the public and he had money. But after several years of normal life, he began to feel even more disgusted with the circus. The man continued to look for work, but in vain. As Isaac grew older, his health deteriorated significantly. He was constantly sleepy, and to bolster his strength, the “living skeleton” wore a flask of milk around his neck.

Everything was aggravated by the fact that out of grief, Sprague began to play in casinos. Soon he had debts that he could not pay off even with a decent circus salary. By 1882, the artist felt so bad that he could no longer perform in public. Doctors examined him again, and this time they were able to diagnose him: “aggressive muscle atrophy.”

A year later, Isaac Sprague wrote a will in which he agreed that his body after death “be opened to find out, if possible, why I am so thin; then... they placed it in a museum, where it will remain.” For this, Harvard Medical School paid him $1,000 in advance.

"The Living Skeleton" Isaac Sprague died in 1887 in Chicago in complete poverty. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but a conclusion has been preserved in which asphyxia is indicated in the “cause of death” column. Also, no one knows whether the poor man's body ended up at Harvard. We can only say for sure that today his remains are not in the museum of the medical school.