Skip to main content

Eccentrics

These are the personalities. The so-called “characters” who found a way to eke out a living being odd. They played a role and performed an act, seldom on formal stage or bally, but in the streets and barrooms, in public spaces, but an act sure as any other. Though sometimes the act was a life deliberately, inadvertently, or accidentally, concocted to elicit a reaction. Laughter, shock, or something else– it mattered only in that each emotion that made these brave actors a spectacle that brought people round to take a look. The spectacle, minor though it might be– seen for free, or seen with a voluntary small contribution– a nickel thrown in a can– was truly entertainment of a sort.

Performers in this category:

Related Member-Only Images

THE FULL CONTENT IS RESTRICTED TO SUBSCRIBERS

Join now or LOG IN to view the entire image and any interior or verso images, you won’t be disappointed!

THE LIFE OF DIRTY DICK

Added Jun 16 2025
sh

Rattlesnake Pete’s Museum Interior

Added Nov 7 2021
sh

Rattlesnake Pete

Added Nov 7 2021
sh

Rattlesnake Pete And His Parade Float

Added Nov 7 2021
sh

Rattlesnake Pete And “The Largest Horse On Earth”

Added Nov 7 2021
sh

Rattlesnake Pete And His Dogs

Added Nov 7 2021
sh

Rattlesnake Pete’s Restaurant and Museum

Added Nov 7 2021
sh

Mr. John Fitzpatrick

Added Oct 3 2014

Free Images

Dolly Dutton’s Sheet Music

Added May 31, 2025

Wonderland Circus Sideshow, Coney Island

Added December 31, 2024

1893 Newspaper Advertisement For The Tocci Brothers and Chevalier Cliquot

Added March 30, 2024

1893 Newspaper Advertisement For The Tocci Brothers and Chevalier Cliquot

Added March 30, 2024

HORROR STORIES Pulp Cover Two-Headed Girl (December 1940)

Added January 28, 2024

Baby Irene “Fat Lady” Cashes In On Laughs (1950)

Added December 26, 2023

1937 Philadelphia Store Show Facade

Added July 22, 2023

Mr. & Mrs. Chauncy Morlan at Huber’s 14th Street Museum

Added July 21, 2023

Hulett Pest Control Spokesmen, Dwarfs John and Greg Rice

Added January 31, 2023

Foy Large & Frank Morgner

Added October 24, 2021