God’s strange “Life Recipe” for the Elephant Man

Last time we considered how God had a unique recipe for the life of my brother Dale. Dale’s life in this world was like God’s mixing bowl for his recipe. (Based on Romans 8:28: “And we know that (or we know how) God causes all things to work together for good (into good) to those who love God”.)

This time we will look at the life of Joseph Carey Merrick (1862-1890). He was called the “Elephant Man”. When my family and I first watched the original black & white move about Merrick, I think I cried during the whole thing. Some years later, I got to read some great biographical works on Merrick and just came to respect and admire him so much. I got curious about the meanings & backgrounds to this man’s three names, so I looked them up. Many times you can see embedded in someone’s name, given to them at or before birth, God’s prophetic work intended for that person.

Joseph: "He will add"

Carey: A beautiful name that can honor either the baby's heritage or mysterious, dark features.

Merrick: "Fame" / "Power" / "Rule", "To face life's challenges head-on by not always taking the road most traveled."

As you read through so many of the things below, that God allowed in Joseph’s life (through God’s divine recipe), look for the ways that the meanings of his names were fulfilled in his life through God’s supernatural providence.

After his gracious Christian mother died when he was eleven, his father remarried and then he and his new wife rejected Joseph. So, he left home to live with his uncle Charles Merrick. He eventually agreed to be put on display as an exhibit in a freak show in England (as a way to survive).

One must become somewhat familiar with the details of this man’s life and family before you can appreciate the complicated divine recipe God used in mixing and stirring together so many strange and bizarre circumstances to end up with the final culinary delight the world called “The Elephant Man”.

To save time here, I constructed a summary list of facts, circumstances, and experiences this guy had to endure during his short life, that will help you appreciate God’s final product. I gathered these from many different sources, but if you want to start with one source and see many other attached resources, go to this link. There are books, movies, research papers, etc…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus_syndrome

….Joseph Carey Merrick was born, apparently healthy with no outward anatomical signs or symptoms of any disorder, for the first few years of his life.
….Named Joseph after his father, he was given the middle name Carey by his mother (she was a Baptist) after the famous missionary William Carey. His parents also had two more children.
….He started to display anatomical signs at approximately five years of age, with "thick lumpy skin...like that of an elephant, and almost the same color".
….He began to develop swellings on his lips, 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.
….His head measured 36 inches in circumference and his right hand 12 inches at the wrist.
….His body was covered with tumors and his legs and hip were so deformed that he had to walk with a cane.
….Otherwise - he was in good health.
….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 (which was a foolish misconception and superstition he had to live with all of his life).
…. Although affected by his physical deformities, Merrick attended school and always had that close relationship with his mother, who was also a Sunday school teacher.
….In 1873, when Merrick was just 11 years old, his mother died of bronchial pneumonia. He later described her passing as the “greatest sadness in his life”.
….She had instilled in him a love of books and a strong Christian faith, both of which served him well throughout his short life. Here is one of his quotes from his own autobiography.

"I was taunted and sneered at so much, that I would not go home to my meals and used to stay in the streets with a hungry belly, rather than return home for anything to eat. What few half-meals I did have, I was taunted with the remark —'That's more than you have earned.'"
— "The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick" —

….Merrick left school aged 13, which was not unusual for the time, but his home-life was now "a perfect misery". Neither his father or his stepmother demonstrated affection towards him.
….At 13 he found a job rolling cigars in a factory, but after three years, the deformity of his right hand had worsened and he no longer had the dexterity required for the job.
….Victorian workhouses were very unpleasant, to say the least, and the last resort for young unemployables like Merrick. Essentially they were prisons, with inmates confined to highly compartmentalized dormitories and schedules. The work itself was really just to keep the workhouse going – jobs like feeding the pigs and dealing with waste.
….Now unemployed, he spent his days wandering the streets, looking for work and avoiding his stepmother's taunts.
….Eventually his father helped him get a “hawker's license” which enabled him to earn money selling items from the haberdashery shop, door to door.
….This work was unsuccessful, because Merrick's facial deformities rendered his speech increasingly unintelligible, and prospective customers reacted with horror to his physical appearance.
….People refused to open doors for him and not only stared at him, but followed him out of curiosity. Therefore, Merrick failed to make enough money as a hawker to support himself.
….On returning home one day in 1877, he was severely beaten by his father and he left home for good.
….At 17, Merrick entered the Leicester Union Workhouse. While there, Merrick underwent surgery on his face. The protrusion from his mouth had grown to 20–22 centimeters and severely inhibited his speech and made it difficult to eat. He was operated on in the Workhouse Infirmary under the direction of Dr Clement Frederick Bryan and had a large part of the mass removed.
….Merrick concluded that the only escape from the workhouse might be through the world of human novelty exhibitions.
….In 1884 he contacted a showman named Sam Torr and suggested that Torr should exhibit him for a price of a ticket (just as a way to survive). Torr arranged for a group of men to manage Merrick and they named him "the Elephant Man" and advertised him as "Half-a-Man and Half-an-Elephant".
….After some touring, Merrick went to London to be an exhibit in a penny gaff shop rented by showman Tom Norman.
….The Elephant Man exhibit was moderately successful, and made money primarily from the sales of the autobiographical pamphlet. Merrick was able to put his share of the profits aside, hoping to earn enough to one day buy a home of his own.
….Norman's shop was once visited by surgeon Frederick Treves, who was a very kind gentleman and a well-known and respected doctor in London society. They became good friends.
….This surgeon ask Merrick if he would allow himself to be medically examined. Merrick agreed and Dr. Treves arranged for him to be taken to the London Hospital.
….He was 5.2 inches and his physical deformities were later credited to “Proteus Syndrome”, that can cause tissue overgrowth involving all three embryonic lineages, but this was never fully proven.
….It did not take Treves long to realize that, contrary to his initial impressions, Merrick’s intellectual assets were totally normal.
….During times at the hospital, he did keep a relationship with Tom Norman, but the police eventually closed down his shop.
….Once again, in an attempt to just survive, Merrick joined Sam Roper's circus, which toured around Europe.
….While in Belgium, Merrick was robbed by his road manager and abandoned in Brussels.

BUT - through God’s providence, he eventually made his way back to the London Hospital, where he was allowed to stay for the rest of his life. Dr. Treves visited him daily and they became even closer friends. Through the doctor’s impressive network of friends, Merrick was blessed to receive visits from the wealthy ladies and gentlemen of London society, including Alexandra, Princess of Wales. This provided some very needed positive culture experiences.

Merrick's close friend and doctor Frederick Treves in 1884

The official cause of his death at age 27 was asphyxia. Dr. Treves performed the postmortem and said Merrick really died of a dislocated neck (he just did not have the strength to hold his neck up to breath properly while trying to sleep). His enlarged head was too heavy to allow him to sleep lying down. Merrick said every time he wanted to lie down, he would risk "waking with a broken neck". He died at the Royal London Hospital in London, where his skeleton is still on display there.

Merrick photographed in 1889, the year before his death

Skeleton of Joseph Merrick

The poem below was used by Joseph Merrick to end his personal letters to friends. Merrick had adapted it from "False Greatness" by Isaac Watts

'Tis true my form is something odd,
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.

If I could reach from pole to pole
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul;
The mind's the standard of the man.

And now the good news…
A look into God’s deep work of grace in Merrick’s spiritual life!

….In the evenings, he could be heard in his hospital apartment quoting Scripture and singing hymns. One evening they heard him quote all of the 23rd Psalm.
….When Dr. Treves and Carr Gomm heard him quote the Psalm with loud fervor, they were awestruck, as they realized his true capabilities. Merrick went on to explain how he was used to reading the Bible every day. He said “I know the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer very well. The 23rd Psalm is beautiful and it’s my favorite.”
….Merrick’s gentle response, coupled with the knowledge that he kept a Bible at his bedside throughout his time at the London Hospital, speaks to how important his faith was to him.
….The way in which he conducted his behavior, also revealed to Dr. Treves that Merrick found all that he needed in the Lord – not in materialism nor fame or the seeking of medical treatment to somehow alter his appearance.
….Merrick lived a simple life within his small quarters in the hospital, and seemed to be genuinely content, even when faced with such tragic circumstances. Many times Dr. Treves thought to himself why he too and everyone he knew had not found such hope with such contentment as Merrick.
….So - Merrick is said to have lived his life as a devout Christian, firmly placing his hope and trust in Jesus Christ. He was content with the knowledge that even though he had nothing in the eyes of the world, he had everything in Christ – for Christ was Merrick’s shepherd who accepted him with open arms.
….In one special moment, having been extended great kindness by Treves and other hospital staff – Merrick calmly explained to them, that despite being exploited for profit, he was “happy every hour of the day” and that “my life was full, because I know that I am loved” (by Jesus Christ and by Dr. Treves and others).
….They said the inspiring thing about Merrick was his complete lack of bitterness toward the world or his fellowmen. Despite the severity of his handicaps, despite the brutal treatment he received from strangers and acquaintances, he never showed anger or hostility. Rather, he impressed people with his meekness and generosity.

[See the book on Merrick by anthropologist Ashley Montague]

The week before he died, Merrick seemed to know the end was near, so he attended two early morning church services, instead of his customary one service.
Using Merrick’s skull and extracted DNA, along with a descendant’s facial templates, researchers were able to digitally reconstruct the undeniably handsome likeness of a man that never was.

How Merrick may have looked without his affliction

The oven where your Lord bakes up “your unique recipe” is the whole of your life’s experiences, as they happen providentially one day at a time. The heat in your oven gets adjusted one day at a time as needed, as He continues to add additional ingredients to your bowl (life), according to His eternal, providential, and sovereign plan (purpose) and He keeps on stirring all of those ingredients together.

The Lord Jesus knew what it was like to be disfigured and marred beyond recognition. Isaiah 52:14 explained how people would be appalled at the way Jesus looked after his beating and scouring, even before He was nailed to the cross. Isaiah prophesied that His appearance would be so disfigured, that He did not even look like a man and His human form did not resemble a human being. And then on that cross, He was put on public display in the most horrifying, humiliating fashion known to man.

The Lord Jesus knew how to give daily grace to Joseph Carey Merrick. Merrick received that grace and became a very Christ-like person. This was God’s plan and purpose for Merrick…to become a human being that others could clearly see Jesus Christ in. They would never be drawn to his physical appearance, but his Christ-like spirit was irresistible.

In light of Merrick’s life of demonstrated and illustrated grace, the next time we look at our lives and feel tempted to murmur or complain, maybe we can picture the elephant man standing next to us, as we look into the same mirror together. Do you think we would complain to Merrick about:

….Our thinning hair
….Those few extra pounds we might be carrying around
….How we haven’t gotten a pay raise or how our 401K Plan was down
….How someone just treated us
….How our car won’t start
….How bad the weather was
….How hard it is getting old
….How we have not been able to do that number one thing on our bucket list yet
….Or whatever

If Merrick saw us complaining, I think he would simply put his hand on our shoulder and smile at us (as we both looked into the mirror together) and tell us…”How he knows that God causes all things to work together for good (into good) to those who love God and are called according to His purpose”. [Romans 8:28]

Yours in Christ,
Gene