In the flower of the American freak show , some shower try out to pass off certain turn as “ educational , ” because the citizenry exhibited were from exotic , far - off land . The educational content was virtually nil , however , as those exhibit were rarely what they were promoted as being . Such is the story of the humans known asClico , the Wild Dancing Bushman .
The tale went that Clico was chasing an ostrich through the Kalahari Desert when he injured his peg . Captain Paddy Hepston issue forth to his rescue and nursed him back to health , “ tamed ” him by strap him every mean solar day for six months , andthen took him to Europe and made him a wizard .
The accuracy was a piffling less striking , and a slew more believable . Clico was the stage name of Franz Taaibosch , a member of the Korana people of South Africawho work as a house handmaid in Kimberly , South Africa . He was not “ wild , ” nor was he a Bushman ( San ) , although his nameless female parent , who died when he was young , may have been San . That could explain Taaibosch ’s short height ( he was reportedly 4 ’ 3 ’ marvelous ) while his brothers were much taller .
One part of the hoopla hem in Taaibosch ’s exhibition was genuine : he was skilled in traditional Khoisan step - dancing . That natural endowment see Hepston ’s eye . Paddy Hepston ( or Epstein ) had been in South Africa for 15 years and became a Fannie Merritt Farmer after fulfilling his military duties . Hepston determine that he could take Taaibosch on turn and become flush as his manager . Taaibosch was probably take over around 1870 , as he was already halfway - elderly when Hepston took him to England in 1913 .
The alien exhibition of Taaibosch , now called Clico , Clicko , or Klikko because of the clicking sound of his Khoisan language , dressed in beast skins and dancing a wild African dance , wasa cock-a-hoop draw in Europe and England . We do n’t jazz how willingly Taaibosch accompany Hepston ; as a house handmaid , he may have been up for the adventure or he may have been under terrifying duress — or some compounding of the two in which he felt he had no option . However , the great unwashed in Kent , England , drive note ofthe coarse mode Hepston treated Taaibosch , beat him , berating him in Afrikaans , and veto him to address English . The Anti - Slavery and Aborigines ’ Protection Society opened an investigating . report on Taaibosch ’s condition trace , with varying conclusions , some of which were biased by the detective ’s popular opinion of Clico as a “ savage . ” Afteryears of wranglingover custody of Taaibosch , during which he performed in Cuba , Hepston eventually left the circus and exhibition business , and Frank Cook became Taaibosch ’s guardian . In 1917 , the two move to America .
Taaibosch worked in Ringling Brothers ’ carnival and at Dreamland in Coney Island in the 1920s and ’ 30 . He see English and took to other sideshow performers as his family . In his act , he was billed as everything from a native of Madagascar to a Bushman to a Pygmy . He was even billed as the last remaining phallus of his tribe . He told the hearing he did n’t feel comfortable sleepingunless there were chimpanzees with him , which was perfect showmanship — chimp do n’t subsist in the Kalahari region of South Africa .
Franz Taaibosch play the sideshow circuit well into his old age . Heretired from show line in 1939and live with Frank Cook ’s widow and daughter , who had inherited guardianship when Frank snuff it just a couple of years originally . By then , Taaibosch was belike around seventy years old . His retreat did not last long , and he die in 1940 .
Was Taaibosch exploited ? Undoubtably , although the argument could be made that his life story as an exhibit in America was easy than it would have been as an African labourer under Boer normal . One could also argue the accurate opposite : taking someone off from his family members and culture against his will does not improve his life . Taaibosch was one of many human “ ethnographical ” exhibit that highlighted cultures that were alien and exotic to the audience , even wolf or , as many a impresario hinted , “ subhuman . ” Taaibosch ’s dance was hailed as advanced art , but his time value as a sideshow savage who play his role well trump his terpsichore skill for the mass who paid to see the Bushman .
