An Appreciation of Early Tattoo Collectors

If you’ve seen the film “The Greatest Showman” you’re already at least somewhat acquainted with Georje Constantin, AKA Prince Constantine, AKA Captain George Constentenus; the tattooed man most well known for travelling on and off with P.T Barnum from 1874-1894 across much of Europe and the United States. Constantine was born April 17, 1833 in Ottoman controlled Albania and by adulthood was more or less fluent in Greek (native language), Arabic, Persian, English, French, Italian and German.

It’s unknown unfortunately who did Constantine’s 388 tattoos and where exactly they were done, but all of them were Burmese (now Myanmar) in design, depicting animals native to Myanmar and East Asian mythologies such as sphinxes, snakes, tigers, elephants, monkeys, various birds and other creatures as well as plant life and script confirmed by professor Max Müller in Vienna to be Burmese. All of his tattoos were done in blue or red ink and everything on his body was tattooed, from head to toe, including his genitals and the webbing between his fingers, his scalp, his eyelids and inside his ears. Very little is known about Constantine’s life before he started exhibiting his tattoos at sideshows and circuses.

Like most performers of the time, and especially tattooed oddities, Constantine made up his own story of how he became to be so heavily tattooed, and unfortunately none of it is verifiable, though it does make for great stories! One story he told most often is that he was kidnapped while mining for gold in China and was forcibly tattooed over a period of months. In another story he was a mercenary for the French and had been captured and again forcibly tattooed.

What could be the closest to the truth in at least the location is that Constantine had in fact gone on an expedition somewhere in Southeast Asia looking for gold and was most likely tattooed by or at least in the style of the Shan people known to be in what is now Myanmar and have very distinct tattooing practices.

Though of course in Constantine’s story he was also kidnapped along with the others on the expedition, claiming that all but he and two others escaped execution only to be faced with a very different kind of torture, tattooing. While Constantine was most likely tattooed somewhere in the Myanmar area or at least by an expert(s) in the style, he was almost certainly tattooed by his own volition with the desire to become a tattooed performer for a career.

And make a career of it he certainly did. At the height of his fame Constantine was raking in about $100 USD per day, approximately $1600 USD in modern equivalency. Constantine made an impression everywhere he went, performing for royalty, the elite and working class alike, entertaining with his stories of kidnap and torture while showcasing his amazing collection of art.

Constantine’s retirement and death are as mysterious as how he acquired his tattoos. Eventually his faith was failing and he left the US sometime in 1884, appearing at least one more in France in 1889 before more or less vanishing in 1894 after applying for an American passport. Today he is still probably the most recognizable tattoo collector and exhibition of the 1800s, and was more than likely the worlds most tattooed person at the time.

Nora Hildebrandt, known widely for being one of the first “tattooed ladies” to perform in the United States and also usually misrepresented as famed Martin Hildebrandt's daughter, was and remains today a symbol of American traditional tattooing. Like many if not most early tattoo collectors and performers, Nora’s real history and background is a bit of a mystery.

She was born in London, England sometime around 1857 to John Keatin and Mary Cochran, and immigrated to the US sometime before 1882 most likely to work as a domestic house servant like many young women of her generation. While it is also unknown how exactly Martin and Nora met each other, she had her whole body tattooed from the wrist up and collar bone down to her ankles by Martin in 1882.

Like all good performers of the time Nora had a fantastical and completely fabricated back story of how she became to be so heavily tattooed. In Nora’s stage story she was born in Australia in 1860, Martin was her father and not her common-law husband, and in 1978 she and Martin started travelling together out of Salt Lake City to explore “the Wild West” when they were captured by none other than Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull who forced Martin to tattoo Nora for an entire year.

This Martin reportedly did until he could no longer bear torturing Nora, breaking his needles and refusing to mark her again. Martin was killed for this and Nora was rescued by knight in shining armour General George Crook who brought her to a hospital in Denver where she was treated for her blindness from the pain of tattooing. Her blindness magically went away after she met Adam Forepaugh, a circus owner and sideshow manager who funded Nora’s return to New York where she went on to have a long and fruitful career as a tattooed lady, travelling around the US and Europe.

In actuality, when Nora’s career as a tattooed lady really started to take off, her common-law husband Martin was imprisoned in an asylum in 1885 until his death, and numerous sources seem to think she had at least a hand in that, though it is unconfirmed.

Nora was able to make such a comfortable living by not only being so heavily tattooed but also by wearing expensive clothing and jewelry, reportedly wearing as much as $5000 worth of diamonds at a time while working at a dime museum in the Bowery in New York. Nora worked in this way until 1889 when she received and accepted an offer to marry a tattooed barber in Europe named Jacob Gunther.

The two were married on January 20th, 1889 and celebrated their one year anniversary by signing a contract to work and travel with Barnum & Bailey’s circus, both working under the now well known name Hildebrandt until Nora’s untimely death in New York at the age of 36 in 1893, reportedly from a particularly aggressive flu. While her career was relatively short she is still remembered today as an elegant tattooed icon.

Jumping forward in time to the 1960s we meet Janet Field, AKA Rusty for her fiery red hair. Rusty was born December 20th 1943 in England. Like all of our earlier tattoo collectors and performers, Rusty worked in the military which is where she also encountered tattoos.

In 1961 by the age 17 Rusty, a driver for the Women’s Royal Armt Corps in Hampshire had gotten her first tattoo on a dare, and by 1964 she already reportedly had 62 tattoos and was spending more than half her salary on getting tattooed. Rusty’s main tattooer was her soon to be husband and well known artist Bill Skuse, son of famous tattooer Les Skuse, who helped her achieve the title of Britains most tattooed woman with the Guinness World Records, an achievement she held for more than twenty years. While Rusty was most known for being tattooed by her husband, she also collected tattoos from renowned artists Les Skuse, Ron Ackers, Chris Connett, Lyle Tuttle, George Bone, Cash Cooper, Dennis Cockell and Bob Maddison.

Bill taught Rusty how to tattoo sometime in the 1960s where she specialized primarily in doing coverups. The pair worked side by side until they decided to retire from tattooing and run a boarding kennel and stray dog rescue in Norfolk until Rusty’s untimely death due to kidney disease in 2007 at the age of 64.