The motive for creating hoax giants in the 19th century was, in at least some cases, financial: significant profits were possible from charging a fee to view the remains of a giant. This is why P. T. Barnum created his own copy of the Cardiff Giant, a proven money maker. In a speech published in 1854 (transcript below from the Grand River Times, November 15, 1854), Barnum describes the business of “humbug” and his plan to construct, “discover,” and then exhibit the skeleton of a manufactured giant:
BARNUM'S SPEECH ON HUMBUGS.
Delivered at Stamford, on the occasion of the Agricultural fair, Fairfield County.
It seems to be a most unfortunate circumstance that I should be selected to speak on Humbug, as looking on the ladies, whose profession it peculiarly is, I find it hard to express myself in their presence. Everything is humbug; the whole state is humbug, except our Agricultural Society that alone is not.
Humbug is generally defined, "deceit or imposition." A burglar who breaks into your house, a forger who cheats you of your property, or a rascal, is not a humbug, a humbug is an imposter; but in my opinion the true meaning of humbug is management tact to take an old truth and put it in an attractive form.
. . .
I have not the vanity to call myself a real scientific humbug, I am only an humble member of the profession.
My ambition to be the prince of Humbugs I will resign, but I hope the public will take the will for the deed; I can assure them that if I had been able to give them all the humbugs that I have thought of, they would have been amply satisfied.
Before I went to England with Tom Thumb I had a skeleton prepared from various bones. It was to have been made 18 feet high; it was to have been buried a year in Ohio, and then dug up by accident, so that the public might learn there were giants of old. The price I was to pay the person who proposed to put the skeleton together was to have been $225.
But finding Tom Thumb more successful than I tho't, I sent word not to proceed with the skeleton. My manager who never tho't as highly of the scheme as it deserved, sold the skeleton for $50 or $75.
Seven years afterwards I received from the south an account of a gigantic skeleton that had been found. Accompanying it were certificates of scientific and medical men as to genuineness. The owner asked $20,000 or $1,000 a month; I wrote to him if he brought it on I would take it if I found it as represented or would pay his expenses if not; I found it was my own old original humbug come back to me again; of course I refused it, and I never heard of it afterwards.
Barnum’s speech identifies that a successful "humbug" has to tap into an existing appetite of the public. There is no point in creating a “giant” if no-one is interested in paying to see it. In other words, a good “humbug” does not create a demand, but gives the people what they already want.
Why was there an appetite for giants in the 19th century? That is a great question, worthy of a book all by itself. While I can’t yet provide anything approaching a complete answer, I can state with some confidence that there was a connection between the public's interest in giants and the mention of “giants” in the Old Testament. A story with the headline “Giants of Olden Times” or “There Were Giants in Those Days,” listing various giants from Europe ranging in height from 10’ to 40’, was reprinted numerous times in American newspapers from the 1840s through the 1870s. The headline of the story makes a clear allusion the words of Genesis 6:4: “There were giants in the earth in those days” (King James Bible).
That passage from Genesis and the small number of other references to “giants” in the Bible continue to feature prominently in the claims of those who profess to believe in giants today. Sometimes the connection between “giants” and religion is submerged, and sometimes it is more explicit. Creationists seem to like giants because their demonstrated existence would serve the dual purpose of (1) discrediting evolutionary theory and (2) “proving” the Bible to be literally true (more on that later).
These faked photographs have now, ironically, become part of both the case for giants and the claim that there is a conspiracy to discredit giants.
I recently joined Pinterest because I wondered if it could be another avenue for promoting my evidence-based analysis of the “giants” phenomenon. Last night I spent a few minutes looking around.
Giants were not in short supply. I do not recall ever before having seen such a jumbled tangle of truth and untruth. Among the pins under “Giants” and “Nephilim” there is so little overlap between the words and images that it leaves little doubt (in my mind, anyway) about the intentions of the posters: they’re using fakery to sell a story that the public is ready to buy and the actual truth of a claim or accuracy of a statement is completely immaterial. That was humbug under P. T. Barnum’s definition in 1854, and it’s humbug today.
Zimmerman’s blog proclaims that “Giant humans called the Nephilim once roamed the earth. This blog is dedicated to the historic documents that shows this mysterious chapter in the Bible was true.”
There’s your market, and there’s your humbug.