This 19th century engraving features a fairground showman and a clown enticing an audience to climb the steps to enter a freak show, pointing at one of the two painted canvases that advertise a fat woman and a giant. Before the technology for printing large coloured posters was developed, images painted on cloth or wooden panels were used for local publicity, but couldn't be mass-produced.

Freak shows were a popular feature of fairgrounds and circuses in the 19th century. 'Exhibits' would include people who could perform unusual physical feats, such as contortionists, or people with remarkable physical appearance such as conjoined twins, dwarves, extremely corpulent, thin, tall, or unusually hairy people. Even people from other continents were exhibited because they fascinated people in the 19th century and earlier. The majority of people had very limited experience of the world; they didn't travel abroad, and didn't know what other races looked like. Exotic or unusual animals were also popular exhibits, such as performing fleas, horses who could apparently count, or 'Learned Pigs' who were said to be able to read and write. Another canvas in the background advertises a lion, another frequent exhibit in 19th century menageries in towns and on tour.