Tattooing as Spectacle

From the 1870s to the 1920s, America’s industrial cities filled with immigrant and native factory workers eager for amusement. With wages in their pockets and precious leisure hours to fill, this growing, increasingly diverse urban working class created a demand for new forms of popular entertainment that could transcend differences in language, education, and culture. Spectacle—the sensationalized display of the odd, the exotic, and the transgressive—offered universal, irresistible appeal. As dime museums, burlesque theaters, cinemas and peep shows flourished in the gritty entertainment districts of America’s cities, enterprising men and women found that a living could be made from exhibiting their tattooed bodies—and from the spectacle of tattooing itself.

The Howard Family

Franklin Howard Packard, and his wife, Anna Jane Morrison Packard took on full-body “suits” of hand-pricked tattoos around 1884, while living in Chicago. They soon adopted the stage names Frank and Annie Howard. The couple trouped on the carnival and dime museum circuits throughout New England and the Midwest through 1896, performing solo or in “congresses” of tattooed people. After his performances, Frank prolonged the spectacle—and supplemented his income—by tattooing volunteers from the audience.

Frank and Annie’s daughter, Carrie Minnie Frances Howard (1883–1923), joined the circuit when she was two years old, appearing with her parents as a “spotted child.” Over the years Carrie performed as a snake charmer, a trained bird handler, a cornet player in the circus band, and—under the stage name “Ivy”—as the “Moss-Haired Girl.”

Selling “pitch books,” novelty items, and souvenir photographs like these brought sideshow performers a little extra cash.

Rhode Island natives Frank Howard and his wife Annie, America’s premier early tattooed showfolks, performed regularly at Austin & Stone’s Dime Museum. Two tours with Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth, in 1888 and 1897, established the Howards as world-class entertainers. Frank, a consummate self-promoter and a savvy businessman, later spun that fame into highly profitable ventures as a tattoo artist, tattoo shop proprietor, and dealer in mail-order tattoo supplies.

Austin & Stone’s Dime Museum Letterhead
Boston, c. 1900
Reproduction image courtesy of the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University

Austin & Stone’s Dime Museum Advertisement
Boston Daily Globe, 18 January 1884
Reproduction image courtesy of The Boston Globe

Note the billing for “Costentenus,” the world’s first widely- popular tattooed performer. He came to the United States in 1879, inspiring a generation of homegrown tattooed attractions, including Frank and Annie Howard.

Scollay Square

Boston’s crowds of thrill-seekers got their kicks in Scollay Square, the city’s iconic entertainment district. Wedged between the Boston Port, Beacon Hill, and downtown, Scollay Square was also a major local and regional transportation hub. Here bankers and businessmen rubbed shoulders with store clerks, stevedores, sailors on shore leave, shoppers, stage performers, Harvard boys, daytrippers and travelers. Boston’s first tattooed performers joined the curiosities on display in Scollay Square’s many live theater venues, including Walker’s Nickelodeon and Austin & Stone’s Dime Museum.

Frank Howard's Design Book

This early book of painted tattoo designs by Frank Howard features popular American imagery. Sentimental and patriotic designs like these permeated American culture, appearing on mass-produced ceramics, textiles, prints, and advertisements through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Smith & Howard

Between 1905 and 1911, Frank Howard partnered with fellow tattooer and machinist Ed Smith to establish Smith & Howard, a successful mail-order tattoo supply business. Ed likely built the tattoo machines they sold, while Frank was the face of the company, corresponding with and providing personalized service to customers.

Smith & Howard Tattoo Supplies Price List
Boston, c. 1910
Collection of Historic New England

Smith & Howard Tattooing Directions
Boston, c. 1910
Collection of Derin Bray

Japanese Influence on Western Tattooing

America’s enthusiasm for Japanese tattoo designs grew out of the commercial and cultural interplay that flourished between Japan and the West after 1853, as Japan ended two centuries of isolationist foreign policy.

Over the next several decades, Western merchant sailors and wealthy tourists flocked to the previously reclusive nation. The lush, dynamic, full-body compositions of traditional Japanese tattooing captivated Western travelers’ imaginations. Acquiring this spectacular body art—and undergoing the long, costly ordeal of being hand-tattooed by a Japanese master—became coveted status achievements for English nobles and British and American socialites of the late 19th century. Sailors also acquired Japanese tattoos while in port, and carried the new aesthetic home with them.

Japanese and Western tattoo artists swiftly adapted the traditional art form to the demands of Western popular culture: smaller, “souvenir” tattoos became the norm,  and a static design repertory of dragons, geishas, animals, and flowers—largely detached from their original symbolism—replaced the heroic warriors, comic figures, and powerful gods that had so enriched traditional Japanese tattooing. By the 1890s, several Japanese tattoo artists had set up shops in Europe, Great Britain, America, and Australia, and American tattooers were offering the “latest in European and Japanese designs.”

“Japanese”-style tattoo designs remain in high demand today, as Western consumers continue to respond to their enduring mystique and special appeal.

Tattoo Kit and Supplies Owned by Joseph Hallworth
Probably Boston, c. 1907
Various materials
Collection of The Strong, Rochester, New York

Chelsea, Massachusetts, native Joseph Hallworth (1872–1956) is best remembered as the magician Kar-Mi. Hallworth and his wife, Catherine (1874–?), and children trouped throughout America, performing a variety of acts and death-defying stunts, including sword-swallowing, sharpshooting, and knife-throwing.
Between shows, Hallworth tattooed under the moniker Joe Van. His traveling tattoo kit includes a mail-order catalogue and business card from Smith & Howard, who likely supplied him with some of his equipment.

Tattoo Design Books, Stencils, and Equipment Owned by Joseph Hallworth
Probably Boston, c. 1907
Various materials
Collection of The Strong, Rochester, New York

Joseph Hallworth may have painted these tattoo designs from Frank Howard’s samples, possibly under Howard’s instruction. The tattoo machines were probably built and sold by Smith & Howard.