You’ve undoubtedly heard of P.T. Barnum, world-renowned showman and circus guy. But have you heard of E.T. Barnum?
Probably not, unless you’re into penal history. E.T. Barnum, you see, was in the jail accountrements business. From 1866 on, if you were in need of a heavy-duty jail cage, plate-iron cell lining (something to stop prisoners from digging their way out, you see), or a dandy set of double-lock handcuffs, E.T. Barnum was your go-to guy. And that wasn’t all. The company also sold iron fire escapes, iron shutters, lawn settees, grave fencing, and much, much more.
So when Douglas County’s commissioners voted to erect a Gardnerville branch jail in 1910, the new metal bedsteads came from E.T. Barnum’s well-known product line. (As luck would have it, I’m hearing that one of those historic metal bed frames has now “come home” – a recent donation to the Douglas County Historical Society!)
All of which got me doing a little digging into the iron works company’s founder, Eugene Turner Barnum himself.
Turns out E.T. was only a distant relation of his far-more-famous cousin – so distant, he’s practically no real relation at all. But E.T. did hail from a proud, patriotic line. A card-carrying member of the Michigan Society of Sons of the Revolution, he boasted 194 patriots in his family tree who’d served in the American Revolution. (He also proudly named Sir Francis Drake as his ancestor).
Born in 1841, E.T. Barnum had initially launched his Detroit iron works business “in a small way” in 1866, with a staff of fewer than ten men. He was all of about 25 years old at the time.
Two decades later, by the mid-1880s, Barnum’s tenacity and “indomitable” spirit had built his company into “probably the largest wire and iron works in the world.” The business mushroomed an astonishing 40% in 1882 alone, and jumped another 50% the following year.
By the 1880s the company boasted a four-story brick facility at 105 Woodward Avenue in Detroit (likely a sales room or administrative offices), plus a “mammoth factory” some 330,000 square feet in size spanning Numbers 27, 29, and 31 Woodward, at the corner Howard Street and Wabash Avenue. All-told, the facility sprawled over ten acres of land, with a railway line running down the middle of its two large wings. As many as 700 employees were employed, turning out iron products from cemetery fencing to cotton gins to lawn furniture. (And, yes, jail supplies, too.) All touted in its advertisements as “superior work at a moderate cost.”
But the company may have grown too much, too fast. It hit a rocky patch in the spring of 1884, when a financial panic caught them with too much inventory on their hands. Creditors sued, and by 1885 the company found itself in receivership. Adding insult to injury, a catastrophic fire in December 1885 destroyed the iron works just when it looked like a reorganization was about to succeed.
But Barnum persevered, slowly rebuilding his company. At the 1893 World’s Fair, E. T. Barnum Company took highest awards for its steel jail cells, cheese safes, wire and iron fences, and wire bank and office railing. And at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1896, they made off with no less than five awards for their metal-work, including one for steel jail cells.
The company boasted that its flat, criss-crossing jail cage design made escapes more difficult than traditional round iron bars because more cuts were necessary for a prisoner to create an opening large enough for a body to pass through. In fact, however, the company’s flat iron bars were thinner and therefore easier to cut. At least one city actually rejected a jail cell the company delivered, claiming the “so-called Bessemer Steel can be cut with a pen knife.”
But by and large, Barnum became the jail industry standard. By 1900, their steel jail cells were in use in such widely-separated places as Santa Monica, California; Independence, Missouri; Fairbanks, Alaska; and Elko, Nevada. Even Fort McKinley in the Philippines used E.T. Barnum’s jail products. And cells and iron bars were just the beginning. Among other jail amenities, the company advertised a fold-up bunk bed, designed to help make use of limited space for incarcerees. Thus, not surprisingly, when Gardnerville’s Branch Jail was furnished in 1910, the beds for prisoners were ordered – of course – from E.T. Barnum’s Iron Works.
Iron works entrepreneur Eugene T. Barnum passed away in New York City on October 14, 1909, at roughly 68 years of age. It’s possible he had been visiting his unmarried sister, Helen, who resided there.
Barnum’s will was probated not long afterwards back in Detroit. News reports confirmed he had left just $50 to each of his three children, though perhaps they had already been provided for, with stock in the family business. The vast majority of Barnum’s probate estate – some $25,000 – he left in his will to his unmarried sister, Helen. Today, that legacy would be worth an estimated $887,000.
As for the company itself, E.T. Barnum Wire & Iron Works continued to publish its product catalogs through at least 1930 – now a collector’s item.