Joseph Merrick as a pony, the elephant pony.
 
This image is made to show what I’d like to see; an MLP character that is horribly deformed, and needs outside help to cope with his deformities, much like Merrick. I want to see Hasbro tackle tough subjects, like pity, something that cannot be helped, like a genetic mutation and the misery that can cause.
 
Below is a short story about Merrick’s sad and tragic life.
 
Joseph Merrick was born in Lester, 1862. He led a normal life up until around 18 months when small bumps appeared on his face.  
His moth died when he was young, and his father and now step-mother disowned him. He was pulled from school and sent to work in a cigar factory, until his light hand became too overgrown and clumsy to fold tobacco.  
He lived in a workhouse for about two weeks before signing himself out and was looking for work.  
Around this time, he signed on with Sam Torr who showed him off as a “freak” show attraction, where he was dubbed The Elephant Man.  
At one stage, his sideshow was set up across the road from the London Hospital. A young surgeon went to see Merrick, and went back and told him senior surgeon, Frederick Treves.  
Treves met with Merrick during a private session, and asked that he’d study him at the hospital, which he agreed to. Treves gave Merrick one of his business cards so he’d get entry for free.  
After Treves examined and photographed him, he sent him back to his “freak” show, however, over the next few years, freak shows were beginning to fall out of favour with the public, and so Merrick went to the continent, where in Belgium, and much or Europe, the police sent them off the stage, the views of freak shows were now seen as vulgar and unsuitable. In 1886, he was robbed of him life savings and left to fend for himself.  
He somehow got back to Liverpool Station, England that June, where he was mobbed and the police were sent to calm the crowd. Merrick showed the officers the card Treves gave him, and Merrick was taken to the hospitals isolation wards to keep him away from prying eyes.  
The London Hospital soon gave him residence there, where they cared for the now very deformed man, who could barely communicate or walk by this stage;  
His head was enormous, his face left expressionless, his mouth a wide, drooling gape. His right arm hugely overgrown, his right hand was described by Treves as a “flipper, or paddle. As a limb, it was useless.”  
His legs and feet were coated in baggy, smelly skin, covering his growing bones that is said to have made it so he could only walk with the aid of a stick.  
In contrast, his left hand and arm were said to resemble that of a young girl’s, no visible flaws were seen on the “beautiful” hand he had.  
He could only sleep by resting his giant head on his knees, sleeping in a sitting position, as laying down was feared to kill him due to the weight of his head.  
During his time at the Hospital, Merrick wrote many letters, had many visitors, one of which was then Princess Alexandria.
 
In April 1890, Merrick was found dead in his bed. He was lying on his back, unlike his normal upright position. Treves recounted how Merrick wanted to sleep “like normal people”, and he believed that, “with some determination, he made the experiment”. Treves wrote; The pillow was soft, and the head, when placed on it, must have fallen backwards and caused a dislocation of the neck. Thus it came about that his death was due to the desire that had dominated his life – the pathetic but hopeless desire to be ‘like other people’.  
His body was used for several paster casts of his horribly deformed body, which can be seen in the London Hospital’s museum, as can his skeleton, which is covered in giants growths and deformities.  
To this day, it is unknown what condition Merrick had that caused his terrible deformities, but it believed he had either Neurofibromatosis, Proteus Syndrome, or both.  
A film was made in 1980 about Joseph called The Elephant Man, starring John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins.