5 HUMAN ODDITIES
Between a half and two

IN ADDITION TO THOSE WHO DEFY normal parameters by their size, there are those who do so as versions of a single, complete individual.

Siamese Twins

Siamese twins—today called conjoined twins—are monozygotic (“one egg”) twins who are not completely separated. The fertilized egg divides incompletely at an early stage, and the two parts continue to develop into two anatomically linked individuals. They may be paired in various ways, such as a single head with double neck, trunk, and limbs; a doubled head, shoulders, and arms, but with a single trunk and pair of legs; or a rare type with a “Janus head,” that is, two faces on one head and body (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960, s.v. “Monster”).

Authentic records of conjoined twins in ancient times are sparse, but Cicero (106-43 B.C.) mentioned the birth of a girl with two heads. During the reign of Theodosius (346?-395) a child was reportedly born with two heads, two chests, and two pairs of arms, yet a single leg. According to the account (quoted in Thompson 1968, 31), the conjoined twins had different personalities: “One head might be crying while the other laughed, or one eating while the other was sleeping. They quarreled sometimes and occasionally came to blows. They are said to have lived two years, when one died four days before the other.”

In A.D. 945 two Armenian boys, joined at the abdomens, were exhibited in Constantinople. “They excited great interest and curiosity,” states Thompson (1968, 30-31), “but they were removed by order of the authorities, as it was considered at the time that such abnormal creatures presaged evil.”

The earliest known English conjoined twins who actually survived were Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst. They were called “Ye Maydes of Biddenden” (the Biddenden Maids) after the village in which they were born about 1100. Joined at the shoulders and hips, they were otherwise separate and lived until 1134, when first one died and then, necessarily, the other died within hours. They are still remembered on Easter Monday, when the locals distribute Biddenden Maids’ cakes imprinted with their image from boxwood dies cut in 1814 (Thompson 1968, 32-36; Parker 1994, 79-80). (See figure 5.1.)

FIGURE 5.1. The Biddenden Maids were the earliest known English conjoined twins. (From an old print)

The sixteenth century brought a number of works on “monstrosities” and “prodigies” and often included wood engravings of double-headed “monsters” and other conjoinings. One pair of such twins who lived in Switzerland had reached age thirty in 1538: “Each of the heads possessed a beard, and their two bodies were fused together at the umbilicus into a single lower extremity. They resembled one another in features and face, and were so joined that they could see each other. They had a single wife with whom they are said to have lived in harmony” (Thompson 1968, 37-48).

London has been characterized as something of a Mecca for “every variety of monstrosity” in the seventeenth century. Conjoined twins were among those exhibited. For example, during the reign of William and Mary (1689-1694), a twenty-one-year-old, single-headed person with two distinct bodies was brought to London and exhibited by Sir Thomas Grantham at the Blew-Boar's Head in Fleet Street and later at the King's Head in the Strand. Eventually, he “proved a great attraction” at the famous Bartholomew Fair (Thompson 1968, 63-66).

The most famous conjoined pair was Chang and Eng, the original “Siamese twins” (figure 5.2). Born in Meklong province, Siam, on May 11, 1811, they were linked by a three-and-a-half-inch armlike tube of flesh. They were of Chinese ancestry, their father and maternal grandfather having been Chinese. The family consisted of fourteen children, including other pairs of twins. Reportedly, the superstitious king of Siam wanted them put to death but was eventually persuaded that they were not only harmless but could function well enough to support themselves. And so they did.

At the age of eighteen, after a two-month visit to Boston, where they were examined by Harvard professor J. C. Warren, they sailed to England for exhibition. They first appeared at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London. After touring Europe they eventually returned to America, where they were exhibited as an individual attraction in dime museums and other venues (Thompson 1968, 79-80; Parker 1994, 76-78). An early handbill depicted them in oriental dress with pigtails and heralded them as “Siamese twins” called “The United Brothers, Chang-Eng.” The bill stated “Admission 50 cents” with date, time, and place to be filled in. The twins sold a pamphlet about their lives and also had “a few copies of a very superior likeness, executed in lithograph and suitable for framing—price 25 cents” (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 144).

They became world famous, but after seven years of exhibition in the United States, Chang and Eng retired in 1838. They became American citizens, adopted the surname of Bunker, and purchased a North Carolina plantation and, eventually, thirty-three slaves. The Bunkers married sisters, whom they decorously set up in separate houses and took turns visiting a few days at a time. They eventually fathered twenty-two children.

FIGURE 5.2. Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874) were the original “Siamese twins”—born in Siam, exhibited in London, and later under contract to P. T. Barnum. (Wood engraving from Life of Barnum)

P. T. Barnum was aware of the retired pair, and in the late 1840s he installed a wax figure of them in his American Museum. In 1860 he got his chance to exhibit the living twins when they decided to come out of retirement to raise money to send their many children to college. They did not like Barnum, who in turn found them troublesome. Their wives bickered, and Chang, a heavy drinker, feuded with his teetotaler brother. According to a newspaper account (quoted in Kunhardt et al. 1995, 147): “They had a sleeping room in Barnum's museum, as did the other curiosities; and one night a rumpus was heard in it. On breaking open the door, the twins were found fighting. Eng was on the floor, underneath Chang, who was choking him.”

Their six-week engagement at the museum was very profitable, but the Bunkers rejected Barnum's offer for a countrywide tour. Instead, they had decided to plan their own western tour, then sail from California for their first visit to Siam in three decades. However, secession and civil war forced them to scrap their plans and rush home for the duration. The war devastated their wealth, and afterward they permitted Barnum to send them on a tour of Europe to rebuild it.

Promotion of the Bunkers required little in the way of deception. Unlike oddities whose size could be exaggerated, they were unique as they were. There was one little secret about their height, however: although Eng was five feet two inches, Chang was an inch shorter (due to a slightly curved spine) and so wore thick-soled boots to compensate. The twins were most comfortable in specially made chairs that were wide enough for them to sit in together. One from Chang's home was shown on the Antiques Roadshow television program (December 30, 2001) by his granddaughter; an identical one had been at Eng's house. As well, at each respective home, they—and one wife—shared “what was perhaps understatedly described as a ‘very large bed’” (Parker 1994, 78).

In 1870 Chang suffered a stroke and thereafter had to be partially carried by Eng. Four years later, on January 17, 1874, Chang died in his sleep at age sixty-two. Eng resigned himself to his fate and asked that his brother's body be shifted closer to him; he lived for about two more hours (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 147; Thompson 1968, 83-84).

Although “Siamese twins” could be gaffed (see chapter 8), real conjoined twins, suitable for exhibition, were not common—especially after advances in surgical separation techniques. Among those conjoined pairs who were exhibited as human oddities were the Millie-Christine sisters (figure 5.3). Also billed as the “United African Twins,” the girls, who had been born into slavery, were joined back to back at the buttocks. They were exhibited by being shuttled “back and forth across state lines” and were finally taken to England. Later they were exhibited by Barnum, who styled the pair as the “Two-Headed Nightingale,” with Millie singing alto, Christine soprano. They also danced and even skipped rope. To prove that they were genuinely conjoined, their point of connection was shown to spectators “without any infringement of modesty.” A pamphlet sold as a pitch item at their exhibitions contained “Medical Descriptions,” revealing that they had “a common anus…and actually discharge their feces and urine at the same time” (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 209; Fiedler 1993, 209).

FIGURE 5.3. Millie-Christine, the “United African Twins,” were born slaves. (From an 1896 color lithograph; author's collection)

Another pair of back-to-back conjoined girls was the beautiful, charming Hilton sisters, Daisy and Violet, who were born in Brighton, England, in 1908. Their mother, barmaid Kate Skinner, turned the girls over to bar owner Mary Hilton, who became their guardian. From the age of three, the Hilton girls were exhibited at fairs, circuses, and carnivals as the “United Twins.” They toured Europe and Australia. Later, in the United States, after Mary Hilton died, the twins’ lives were taken over by her daughter and son-in-law. They taught the twins to play saxophone and transferred them from the sideshow to vaudeville. “We are our own Jazz Band,” they joked to a reporter in 1924, when they were fifteen (Drimmer 1991, 53-57).

The Hilton sisters’ 1926 pitch booklet, titled “Life Story and Facts of the San Antonio Siamese Twins,” took liberties, beginning with the details of their origin. Instead of being born out of wedlock with an unknown father and a mother who did not want them, the booklet claimed that they were “the daughters of an English Army Officer. Their mother died a year after their birth. Their father was killed in Belgium in 1914” (quoted in Bogdan 1990, 169-70). These fictions were elaborated in their “autobiography” (Hilton and Hilton 1942), which claimed that “Captain Hilton” had “married Mother in Texas.” One early pitch-card photo was captioned “Daisy and Violet / Texas Siamese Twins,” although an earlier one was captioned “Violet and Daisy / English Siamese Twins” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 52, 61).

In 1932 they won a $100,000 judgment against their “guardians” and gained their independence. They acted in movies, including Tod Browning's cult classic Freaks (1932). (Browning, a circus contortionist turned filmmaker, hired real sideshow oddities and built a realistic carnival set for his film. The plot featured freaks taking revenge on an aerialist and her strongman lover for their evil deeds.) The Hilton twins also starred in a quasi-autobiographical film, Chained for Life, which bombed in the early 1940s (Wilson et al. 1996, 150-58, 201-9). The girls each suffered a failed marriage, and Daisy became a blonde (Hilton and Hilton 1942). Although they once earned $5,000 a week, by 1969, when they died of influenza at age sixty, they were employed by a Charlotte, North Carolina, supermarket. Fiedler (1993, 209) reports, somewhat imaginatively, that they were working “as a double checkout girl—one bagging, no doubt, as the other rang up the bill on the cash register.”

Perhaps the last of the famous sideshow Siamese twins are Ronnie and Donnie Galyon (figure 5.4). Born October 28, 1951, the boys were rejected by their mother but cared for by their father, Wesley. They spent their first twenty months undergoing X-ray and other examinations. The twins were joined facing each other, being connected from the lower end of the breastbone to the abdomen, and they shared a single rectum and set of male organs; separation was considered impossible. Wesley Galyon put his sons on exhibit, rationalizing, “What else can Siamese twins do?” An early poster declared, “$10,000 Reward if the Boys Are Not Alive” (Hall 1991, 40; Sideshow 2000).

FIGURE 5.4. Ronnie and Donnie Galyon, conjoined twins born in 1951, were once promoted by this pitch pamphlet. (Author's collection)

I saw the Galyons about 1970 or 1971 at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. Their single-O sideshow consisted of an air-conditioned trailer that had a picture window so that customers could view the teenagers while filing past. I recall them eating while watching television, then getting up to put their plates away, necessarily walking sideways.

Ronnie and Donnie were the only conjoined twins exhibiting in 1991 when Ward Hall wrote his book My Very Unusual Friends. At that time, they were appearing in Central and South America, where they were often called “Doonie and Roonie” but were treated with more respect than in the United States and Canada. They traveled on a single passport. The Galyons are now retired, having earned enough money to buy their own home.

One-and-a-Halfs

Sometimes the incomplete division of the fertilized egg that produces conjoined twins is even more flawed. Instead of dividing into a pair of nearly equal and symmetrical individuals, the result is one normal body and a stunted or vestigial one growing out of it (figure 5.5). As Drimmer (1991, 29) explains: “The little twin might be almost complete. It might be a whole small body from the neck down. Or a whole small body from the waist down. It might be the upper part of a body, with a large, deformed head. The twin might be just one or two legs. It might be just a head—fused to the head of its completely normal twin. Sometimes a portion of the partial twin might be enclosed within the body of the larger twin. Doctors call the larger twin an ‘autosite,’ the smaller one a ‘parasite.’”

Among the best known of these “one-and-a-halfs,” as they are sometimes called (Fiedler 1993, 219; DeBurke 1996), was a Hindu man known as Laloo (figure 5.6). Born in India in about 1874—the second of four otherwise normal children—Laloo had a small, headless, parasitic body attached to his lower breastbone. He was described in the July 1886 Indian Medical Gazette. He toured England in 1891 and later traveled to the United States, where he became part of Barnum's show. He married in Philadelphia in 1894, and his wife subsequently traveled with him (Thompson 1968, 219; Drimmer 1991, 32).

In Laloo's sideshow and dime museum appearances, his managers advertised that the vestigial twin was Laloo's sister; to promote the idea, they dressed the small body in feminine clothing. Of course, like Siamese twins, such parasites are always the same sex as their autosite; if they had developed properly, they would have been “identical” twins, because they came from the same fertilized egg. (“Fraternal” twins are produced from different eggs and may be as different as any two siblings.) In fact, although Laloo's stunted twin lacked testicles, it did have a rudimentary penis. Laloo reportedly boasted privately that it urinated and even had erections. (Fiedler 1993, 219; Drimmer 1991, 32-33). However, Thompson (1968, 93) states that the ancillary body “was incapable of active motion and no pulse could be felt.”

FIGURE 5.5. Perumal, a Hindu one-and-a-half, named his parasitic twin Sami. (Contemporary publicity photo)

Another famous one-and-a-half was Betty Lou Williams, the “Double-Bodied Girl.” Apart from her miniature twin—consisting of the lower half of a stunted body with a misplaced arm and two legs—she was an attractive black woman. She posed, smiling, in a two-piece bathing suit, one hand placed on her hip, the other supporting the vestigial twin extending from her abdomen (Drimmer 1991, 33). When not on exhibit to the public, she cleverly wore maternity clothes, permitting her to move unnoticed through the “normal” world (Hall 1991, 23, 54).

FIGURE 5.6. Laloo's parasitic twin was genuine but was falsely presented as female. (Author's collection)

In the case of autosite-parasite twins who were joined at the lower body and could not be exhibited in full without exposing the genitalia, showmen covered up all but the extra twin's limbs and billed the attraction accordingly. Thus Myrtle Corbin, who had two small extra legs hanging between her own, was billed as the “Four-legged Woman from Texas.” She began to be exhibited at age thirteen, and her first pitch book (a pamphlet titled “Biography of Myrtle Corbin,” published in 1881) described her as being “gentle of disposition as the summer sunshine and as happy as the day is long.” The birth of her first child was reported in at least three medical journals, and she later posed with her husband and little girl for a pitch-card photograph (Wilson et al. 1996, 52-53; Bogdan 1990, 230; Drimmer 1991, 37). Corbin exhibited with the Ringling Brothers and other circus and carnival sideshows for many years. Her later promotional literature described her as having two vaginas, alleging that she had borne three children from one vagina and two from the other (Drimmer 1991, 37).

Another oddity of this type was Sicilian-born Francesco A. “Frank” Lentini (1889-1966), who was billed in circus sideshows as the “Three-Legged Wonder.” His extra leg was shorter than the others and was joined to his skeleton by an underdeveloped pelvis. He also had an extra, rudimentary set of genitals or, as the showmen who promoted him proclaimed, “two complete sets of male organs.” Lentini (n.d.) was philosophical about his condition:

One time I was taken to an institution where I saw a number of blind children and children who were badly crippled and otherwise mistreated by fate, and then and there, I realized that my lot wasn't so bad after all. Even though a child, I could appreciate the fact that I was possessed of all my faculties and senses. I could hear, talk, understand and appreciate and enjoy the beauties of life. I could read and they couldn't. I could talk to my friends, but some of them couldn't because they were dumb. I could hear and enjoy beautiful music, while some of them couldn't because they were deaf. I have my mental faculties and began to look forward to my education, and some of them couldn't because they were idiots. The visit to that institution, unpleasant though it was because of the misery that I saw, was the best thing that could have happened to me. From that time to this I have never complained. I think life is beautiful and I enjoy living it.

As a child, Lentini and his family immigrated to America, and he traveled for years with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, the Walter Main Circus, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and other shows (Parker 1994, 67; Drimmer 1991, 35). During the 1930s, while he was with Craft Big Shows, he was featured on a banner that showed him kicking a football. It read, “Only 3 Legged Football Player in the World!—Alive” (Johnson et al. 1996, 39, 154). Although “Football Player” was an exaggeration, his pictured feat was not: According to Jeanie Tomaini (the “World's Only Living Half Girl,” described later in this chapter), “he could kick a football the whole length of the show with that leg” (quoted in Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 1).

Asked how he purchased the extra shoe he needed, Lentini (n.d.) said, “I buy two pairs and give the extra left shoe to a one-legged friend of mine who had the misfortune to lose his right leg.” An early pitch card, showing him nude from the rear, claimed that he was “The only man in the world with 3 legs, 4 feet, 16 toes, 2 bodies from the waist down.” (The extra partial foot and toe grew from the side of the extra leg.) Lentini married and fathered four normal children.

In 1963 Lentini left the Wanous Family Show, ambitiously creating his own ten-in-one sideshow that he operated at the Nebraska State Fair. Ward Hall (1991, 21), who had a small competing show (the Hall & Leonard Pigmy Village), sought to coexist with Lentini on the midway: “Knowing he was vain in regards to his drawing power as an attraction, after telling him of my conflicting acts, I said ‘Of course we know the people don't come to your show because of a fire eater or snake charmer. They all want to see you, for there is only one Lentini!’ He certainly agreed with that statement and as we worked in competition, we remained friends. After completing his contractual obligations, he closed his show and returned to the Wanous Show, where he remained until fatal illness struck him down while traveling between towns.”

Armless and Legless Wonders

People without arms or legs—or lacking both—have frequently shown a remarkable ability to triumph over their handicap. For example, a legless youth born about 1699 near Vienna was seen and admired by many European royals. A man who saw him at age fourteen reported: “He stands and walks and climbs and leaps from the ground upon a table and sits on a corner of it…. He jumps, dances and shows artfull tricks than any other person can do with thighs and legs.” Moreover, he was able to speak “five different languages” (Thompson 1968, 58).

Probably the most celebrated legless wonder was Eli Bowen (b. 1844), whose career began at age thirteen and lasted more than half a century (figure 5.7). His pitch cards evolved from showing the image of a young bachelor to that of a family man with a wife and four children. An 1880 pitch book mixed pride with wit to pronounce: “Above these and all others of this class of curiosity, Mr. Bowen, the subject of this narrative, rises and towers conspicuously in this—that he has no lower limbs at all—in fact not a leg to stand on, and yet is able to move off very swiftly and gracefully to the astonishment of all who witness his dexterous movements—in fact I do not believe any country of any age has ever produced anything like unto him.” Though legless, Bowen did have feet. He used his extensively developed arms to perform impressive acrobatics for his audiences. Aided by wooden blocks gripped in his hands, he could raise his hips sufficiently to permit him to swing his torso between his arms. He also tumbled, did stunts on a pole, and performed other feats (Bogdan 1990, 212-15).

Several legless wonders were advertised as “half” people (see figure 5.8). One notable example was Johnny Eck, “The Only Living Half Boy, Nature's Greatest Mistake.” Like Bowen, he performed acrobatics and even trapeze feats and was featured in Browning's film Freaks.

Another was Jeanie Tomaini, the “World's Only Living Half Girl.” Born Bernice Swift, she was exhibited at a local fair at age three and began touring with a carnival called Dodson's World Fair Show when she was eleven. She later appeared with other circus and carnival sideshows. She performed cartwheels, did handstands, and climbed a ladder upside down. Jeanie married giant Al Tomaini (see figure 2.19), whose advertised height was eight feet four and a half inches. He had a stage beside hers when she eventually returned to Dodson's show. They honeymooned at Niagara Falls, then resumed show life, performing at fairs, dime museums, boardwalks, and nightclubs and even running their own sideshows, including a ten-in-one. They retired in 1949 to run the Giant's Tourist Camp at Gibsonton, Florida (figure 5.9). After twenty-six years of marriage, Al died at age fifty; Jeanie lived for another thirty years, dying August 10, 1999 (Bogdan 1990, 210-12, 215-16; Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 26-44).

FIGURE 5.7. Eli Bowen, the celebrated legless wonder, is shown in a posed publicity photograph at age thirty-six. (Author's collection)

In contrast to the legless wonders were armless ones. For example, John Valerius, born in 1667 in Germany, lacked arms yet, according to a contemporary, showed “such tricks with his feet that nobody can do with both arms, hands and feet.” He cut his own quill pens with a penknife and wrote in five languages. He could thread a needle and sew “very prettily.” He was a marksman with firearms and performed acrobatics, including jumping and vaulting. He went to London in 1698 and exhibited for several years (Thompson 1968, 58-59).

FIGURE 5.8. Mademoiselle Gabriel—the “living half woman,” as she is styled on her pitch card—appeared for a time at the Dreamland Circus sideshow at Coney Island. (Author's collection)

The first armless wonder to be publicly exhibited in the United States was probably Sanders K. G. Nellis. He debuted at age thirteen in 1830 and progressed from private showrooms to the Peale Museum in New York, later becoming a regular attraction at Barnum's American Museum. Billed as the “Wonder of the World,” he could shoot a bow and arrow, play several musical instruments, and cut silhouettes with scissors.

Carl Unthan (1848-1929) was another celebrated armless wonder who became known as the “Armless Fiddler.” He performed in circuses, fairs, and vaudeville venues, and he also lectured amputees in hospitals of his native Germany during World War I. In addition to playing the violin, he demonstrated such everyday activities as slipping on his coat, lighting a cigar, and—popping the cork—filling glasses with wine. He taught himself to type using—instead of two fingers—two pencils, eraser-ends down, grasped with his feet (Drimmer 1991, 73-86; Bogdan 1990, 222-23).

FIGURE 5.9. Half-woman Jeanie Tomaini and her husband, giant Al Tomaini, ran the Giant's Tourist Camp at Gibsonton, Florida—shown here on the restaurant's menu. (Author's collection)

Among the female armless wonders was Mrs. Ann E. Leak Thompson. Her 1871 pitch book sought public support for herself and her elderly parents, hoping to “draw forth the sympathy and consideration of every heart that witnesses her operations, or to whom this little volume may come.” She superstitiously attributed her armlessness to an impression her mother had had concerning her drinking, quarreling father during her pregnancy: “Her mother learned of his being in a scrap down in the town, and when she saw him coming home, he had his overcoat thrown over his shoulders without his arms in the sleeves.” Mrs. Thompson did crocheting and embroidered scriptural phrases, such as “Holiness to the Lord” (Zechariah 14:20) and, with irony, “A Lamp unto My Feet” (Psalms 119:105). An 1884 photograph by Charles Eisenmann, showing her with her husband and little boy, displays samples of her handiwork (Bogdan 1990, 218-19).

Another female armless wonder was Mademoiselle Tunison of Long Island. Instead of her feet, she used her mouth to produce linen doilies and crayon drawings in the early twentieth century. Her advertisement (figure 5.10) does not say that she exhibited herself (instead giving her “Permanent Address” for mail orders) but notes, “Palmistry a Specialty.”

The best-known armless wonder of the sideshows was Charles Tripp of Woodstock, Canada. In 1872 Tripp, then seventeen, is said to have traveled to New York looking for Barnum, who hired him at once. Tripp exhibited for more than half a century, appearing in many circus sideshows. For his last seventeen years he toured with carnivals so that he could be with his wife, whom he married late in life. Mrs. Tripp sold tickets for rides, and Tripp exhibited his penmanship, artwork, carpentry, and paper cuttings. He poured and drank tea for many of his pitch cards, which, over his long career, went from cartes de visite to cabinet photographs to photo postcards (Bogdan 1990, 219-22). A snapshot shows the clever Tripp, the “Armless Wonder,” and his witty friend Eli Bowen, the “Legless Wonder” (discussed earlier), riding a bicycle built for two. They also engaged in humorous exchanges: Tripp liked to caution, “Bowen, watch your step!” And Bowen would exclaim, “Keep your hands off me!” (Drimmer 1991, 87-90).

FIGURE 5.10. Armless wonder Mademoiselle Tunison produced artworks using her mouth. She also read palms. (Author's collection)

More amazing than either the armless or legless wonders were those who were both. The most famous of these was Matthew Buchinger (b. 1674), who had only flipperlike feet attached directly to his torso and upper-arm stumps. Known as the “Little Man of Nuremberg,” he was an accomplished calligrapher, musician (on dulcimer, trumpet, and bagpipes), and magician (dexterously performing the cups-and-balls feat). He dressed in the fashion of the day with coat, vest, and powdered wig. Buchinger married at least twice and fathered fourteen children. An often-quoted story about him comes from a contemporary:

FIGURE 5.11. Prince Randian, the “Caterpillar Man,” was an armless, legless wonder who rolled and lit a cigarette with his lips as part of his act. (Author's collection)

He got a great deal of mony but his last wife was a very perverse woman who would spend all his mony very prodigally and luxuriously in eating, drinking, and clothes and would not permit him to eat nor drink as she did and did Beat him Cruelly, which he had born patiently but one day, she having beat him before company, that so provoked him, that he flew at her with such force that he threw her down and getting upon her belly and Brest and did so beat her with his stumps that he almost killed her, threatening to beat her in the same manner if she ever did so any more—and she became after a very dutiful and loving wife. (Fiedler 1993, 52-53; Jay 1987, 44-57)

A more recent armless and legless wonder was billed as the Caterpillar Man or the Snake Man. He dressed in a sacklike woolen garment and wriggled on the platform like a serpent (figure 5.11). He was also billed in royal fashion as Prince Randian, the Human Living Torso, presented with his wife, Princess Sarah, and their four children. He demonstrated how he shaved himself and rolled and lit a cigarette using only his lips (Bogdan 1990, 114-15). Randian was brought from British Guiana to the United States by P. T. Barnum in 1889. He first appeared in Hubert's Museum, then traveled with Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth. He performed for forty-five years (Drimmer 1991, 102-3).