Cardiff, New York, October 16, 1869 – Workers digging a well behind the barn on the farm of William C. “Stub” Newell unearthed a ten foot four inch stone giant. Word spread quickly and people came by the thousands to view the behemoth and speculate as to its origin. Some said it was a petrified man, citing Genesis 6:4, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” Others believed it was a statue created by earlier inhabitants of New York. The attraction was so strong that even when the stone colossus was revealed to be a hoax people stood in line and paid fifty cents each to view the Cardiff Giant.

The Cardiff Giant was the brainchild of George Hull, a tobacconist from Binghamton, New York. During a visit to his sister in Iowa, he got into a heated argument over the truth of Bible stories. Specifically, he could not understand the belief in Biblical giants and wondered if he could create a stone man and pass it off as a petrified giant. He became so obsessed with the idea that he sold his business and went looking for stone.

He found what he wanted near Port Dodge in Iowa—gray gypsum with bluish streaks that would pass for human veins. Hull bought an acre of land with an outcropping of this stone and hired a force of men to chop out a block 11’ 4” x 3’ 6” x 2’. After an arduous journey by wagon to Boone, Iowa then by train to Chicago, the stone block was handed over to an Italian stonecutter named Salla, who, after being sworn to secrecy, carved the giant man.

Salla took the work very seriously, cutting away some spots as if the flesh were imperfectly petrified, and using a tool made from a bundle of darning needles over the entire surface to simulate pores in the giant’s skin. When it was done, he poured sulphuric acid over the sculpture to give it the appearance of antiquity. It was packed in an iron box and sent to Union, New York. The entire package weighed 4000 pounds.

Hull chose Cardiff as the burial site because it has an ancient lake bed where fossilized fish and reptiles had been found. He took “Stub” Newell into his confidence and the two men, working late at night buried the giant on Newell’s farm. Hull then went back to cigar making for one year less two weeks before giving Newell instruction to “discover” the giant.

While Hull was still in the shadows, Newell began charging fifty cents a head to view the Cardiff Giant, now enclosed in a tent behind the barn.  He had made at least $7000 before Hull returned to the scene.

The State Geologist and a number of other scientists declared that it was, indeed, a petrified man. John F. Boynton, an early Mormon leader believed it was not a man but a statue carved by French Jesuits in the 16th century to impress the Indians.  Among those taken in by the Cardiff Giant and expressing belief in its authenticity were Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Newell began receiving offers to buy the giant. Seeing that Newell could not be trusted to keep the secret—he had already told several relatives and friends—Hull told him to sell. Newell sold three-fourths interest to Higgins, Gillett & Westcott in Syracuse for $30,000, of which Hull received $20,000 and one-quarter interest. He eventually sold the last quarter and the new owners moved the giant to Syracuse.

In Syracuse, the giant received closer scrutiny and Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh declared the Cardiff Giant a clumsy fake. There were fresh chisel marks that would have worn away if the giant had been in the ground any length of time. Having already cashed out, Hull came clean and revealed the giant’s true history. The public didn’t seem to care; they nicknamed the attraction “Old Hoaxey” and continued paying to view it.

At one point showman, P. T. Barnum offered the new owners $60,000 to use the giant for three months. When they refused, Barnum had a German sculptor make him his own Cardiff Giant.  The owners tried to sue Barnum, but the judge refused to hear the case because the owners could not prove that their giant was genuine. Soon after there were at least six copies of the Cardiff Giant being exhibited throughout the country.

The Cardiff Giant also inspired a wave of imitators:

• The Solid Muldoon, Beulah, Colorado, 1876 – A giant made from clay, ground bones, meat, rock dust, and plaster was also created by George Hull
• The Taughannock Giant, Lake Cayuga, 1877 – A stone giant planted by the owner of the Taughanock House Hotel.
• “McGinty,”  Creede, Colorado, 1892 – A real human body injected with chemicals for preservation and petrification. McGinty was displayed by conman Soapy Smith, primarily to run a shell game on people waiting in line.
• Fin McCool, Ireland, 1872 – Salla, the sculptor of the original Cardiff Giant saw the potential of stone giants and began planning his own, including Fin McCool in the north of Ireland.
• The Fresno Giant, Fresno, CA, 1890 – Another of Salla’s creations.

The original Cardiff Giant was displayed at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901. It was then purchased by an Iowa publisher for his basement rumpus room. In 1947 he sold it to the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York where it is on display today. Barnum’s “fake” Cardiff Giant is on display at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Sources:

• Boese, Alex. The museum of hoaxes: a collection of pranks, stunts, deceptions, and other wonderful stories contrived for the public from the Middle Ages to the new millennium. New York, NY: Dutton, 2002.
• Costello, J. B.. Swindling exposed from the diary of William B. Moreau, king of fakirs : methods of the crooks explained : history of the worst gang that ever infested this country : names, locations and incidents. Syracuse, N.Y.: J.B. Costello, 1907.
• Vance, Arthur T.. The real David Harum: the wise ways and droll sayings of one "Dave" Hannum, of Homer, N.Y., the original of the hero of Mr. Westcott's popular book : how he made and lost a fortune, his many deeds of charity, amusing anecdotes about him. New York: Baker and Taylor Co., 1900.

The Great Cardiff Giant

The Night the Cardiff Giant Sang Rossini on the Lawn

New York, New York, 1882 – Tempting to Ruin! How Gotham’s Palaces of sin are garrisoned out of the hovels. The gaudy spider spreading her webs for the flies who make her loathsome trade profitable.[more]

A portly female arrayed in a sealskin dolman to her heels and with her blonde wig topped with a Gainsborough hat, descended from the elevated road at the United States Hotel, this city, recently. In the hallway she met another female who might have been her twin sister as far as costume went. The pair exchanged a profusive greeting, and the fine carat solitaires in their ears radiated a blaze of splendor as their heads bobbed together in the regulation kiss. It would have been evident to an experienced eye that the authors of these amenities belonged to a class more familiar to the police court than the prayer meeting and the glories of the attire they flaunted bore the taint of shame.

One of the women consulted a watch encrusted with diamonds and led the way to the street. They crossed Fulton Street, where one halted at the corner. The other passed on to the opposite side of Water Street, where she likewise halted. The passers-by cast curious glances at them but they did not flinch. They held their posts with the air of having a reason for doing so.

In a few minutes the shrill voices of many whistles announced that it was twelve o'clock. From the doorway of a tobacco factory near by a couple of girls came out. They went into a neighboring coffee and cake shop, passing one of the waiting women, who eyed them closely. They were ordinary-looking girls, in the shabby brown-stained attire of tobacco strippers. After them appeared a very pretty girl of perhaps sixteen years, who had a touch of coquettishness despite her cheap dress. She passed the second woman, who addressed a remark to her. The girl started, and the woman put a card into her hand, which she slipped into her pocket as she hurried away.

By this time the girls were pouring out of the factory in a steady stream. With a number of them, always the best-looking, it was to be seen that the woman repeated the performance already described. At half past twelve the two women went away up Fulton Street, leaving the girls gathered on steps and in doorways eating their lunches and talking. Several of them were comparing the cards which they had received.

A Police Gazette reporter who had observed all approached one of these groups and after considerable persuasion induced a pretty German girl to exhibit her pasteboard to him. It bore the address of one of the most noted procuresses on Twenty-seventh Street.

"Do you know what that card means?" asked the reporter.

"The lady asked me to come and see her," replied the girl after a moment's hesitation.

"What did she say to you?" "She said," replied the girl slowly and with her eyes on the sidewalk, "that I ought to be doing better than stripping tobacco for a living and if I came to her she would show me how."

"And do you know what she means?"

The girl cast a stealthy glance at her questioner and began to cry. Several of her companions gathered around her and took her away, assailing the scribe in vigorous words and intimating that he had better mind his own business. The policeman at the corner, coming up to the Police Gazette representative, said:

"Have you been giving the girls a steer about the madams? I thought so. Why, they nearly blackguarded the buttons off my coat the other day because I wanted 'em not to have anything more to do with those women. It's an outrage. The women have been coming down here about once a week these three months or so, and every time they come you find a couple of the girls leaving the factory. There was a girl last summer, one of the prettiest little things you ever saw. Her brother works in the market. She was the first one them women pitched on, and her brother told me yesterday that she's in a place uptown and won't come home. Every now and then one of the girls comes down here all rigged out in sealskins and diamonds and then there's a flutter among the other girls and one or two of them disappear. The women you have noticed pick out tobacco factories because the girls who work in them are numerous enough to pick and choose from and because the business itself is an unpleasant one and any girl employed in it is glad to get the chance to better herself even if it brings ultimate ruin on her. They take one of the girls from here whom they have gotten into their clutches, dress her up, cover her with diamonds, fill her half full of champagne and give her money to treat her former fellow workers with, and send her down here and she does more harm than they themselves can do, for she can poison the mind of any girl she gets hold of."

The National Police Gazette, November 3, 1888