October 15. 1860.

On a cold, foggy evening, October 15. 1860 Sir Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the Mile End Infirmary in east London, was walking home along the Whitechapel Road. Hansom cabs clattered by on the wet cobble stones, and Sir Frederick had to walk cautiously to avoid cracks in the pavement (Don't break your mother's back). Perhaps this was why he noticed a strip of canvas flapping in the cold wind. By the dim gaslight he could just make out the words: “ admission twopence.”

He pushed aside a greasy canvas flap and found himself looking at a huddled figure, covered in tarpaulin, and sitting on a packing case. The surgeon gently pulled back the tarpaulin, and the man looked up at him. What Sir Frederick saw made him gasp. The man’s face was hardly human; the nose was a swollen, trunk-like mass of flesh, and everything else about him was distorted.

The surgeon drew up another packing case, and sat talking to this human creature who looked like a beast from a fairy tale. He proved to be a man of mystery. His body was as distorted as his face, so it was not even clear to which sex “he” belonged. He knew that his name was John Merrick and that he was about 20. But he could only speak in an incomprehensible mumble, and could apparently remember nothing of his origins, or where he had grown up. When his “keepers” came back from the pub, where they had been drinking to keep out the cold, they told Treves that they had simply found the man wandering in the street, and had decided that he might bring them in a few pence as a freak show. But he was so horrible that women fainted at the sight of him and children had fits.

When the surgeon offered them five pounds for the monster, they could scarcely believe their luck. The next day Treves took the man to the hospital, and gave him a private suite of rooms, cut off from the rest of the building. Few nurses could bear to see him, and before a nurse was asked to bring him food or help him to dress she was given a preliminary look at him to see if she could bear it without fainting.

Yet the man proved to be gentle and charming. His gratitude touched everybody. Obviously, his life had been hard and miserable; no one had ever been kind to him. Now, at last, he had warmth and comfort, and he found it almost impossible to believe that fate had finally relented towards him.

One of his favorite occupations was cutting pictures out of illustrated magazines. One of these – his most treasured – was of Princess Alexandra, who would be Queen of England when her husband, later Edward VII, came to the throne. The princess was the patroness of the hospital, and she was deeply interested in the man.  One day she told Treves that she wanted to see him. Treves tried hard to dissuade her, but she was determined. She was shown into the man’s presence. She did not flinch as the twisted, monstrous creature dragged himself towards her, or as he took her hand in his own distorted claw and bent over to kiss it. Then she was shown out. As the door closed behind her, she fainted.

She fainted at the sight of John Merrick, Known as


the The Elephant man.

Q.E.D.

 quod erat demonstrandum

which is a translation into Latin from the Greek ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαιis

meaning "which is what had to be proven".

  thus signals the completion of the proof.