6 OTHER HUMAN ODDITIES

AMONG THE MANY TYPES OF human oddities are those who do not readily fit into traditional categories.

“Animal” People

A diverse group of human oddities consists of those whose deformities can be likened to some animal—hence “alligator” boys and girls, “frog” people, and others, such as the Lobster Boy and Sealo.

“Alligator” people (unless they are gaffed—see chapter 8) suffer from ichthyosis, or “fishskin disease,” which is characterized by profoundly dry, scaly skin (figure 6.1). There are several different types of ichthyosis, many of which are hereditary. One type does not manifest until sometime between one and four years of age; another type is sex-linked, being present only in males (transmitted by females through a recessive gene), and is apparent in early infancy. Ichthyosis is incurable, but symptoms may be relieved by skin-softening ointments (Gould and Pyle 1896; Taber's 2001).

Among the early oddities with this condition was a “fish-boy” or “merman” born in 1684 in Italy and exhibited in London at the age of ten. Named Bernardin, he was “quite covered with the scales of fishes.” Another, shown in London in 1820, was described as “a new species of Man,” covered with scales except for his face, palms, and soles.

In 1879 two youths from my own home county in eastern Kentucky made news with their ichthyosis. One newspaper represented James and Henry Elam, aged eight and twelve respectively, as “The Alligator Children of Morgan County,” while another characterized them as “Mistakes of Nature, The Boy-fishes,” noting their affinity for water (Nickell 1991a). Actually, the water provided relief from their condition. Those suffering from extreme ichthyosis cannot perspire, so in hot weather they may seek relief by immersing themselves in cool water (Meah 1996). According to a newspaper account: “They may have to keep their bodies greased when not in the water. When the body becomes dry the skin cracks open.” The boys’ heads were covered with scales, which also prevented the growth of hair. Lapsing into superstition about their reptilian appearance, the account continues: “The boys handle snakes with impunity and delight, frequently quarreling over a single reptile, but satisfied when each has one, and snakes have no antipathy to them, but follow them like a dog does his master” (quoted in Nickell 1991a). According to a later newspaper article, “The alligator children of Morgan County are to be exhibited in Central Kentucky for the benefit of their parents,” who were probably poor. Attempts to learn more about the boys—including a query to Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin—were futile.

FIGURE 6.1. “Alligator” people suffer from the disease ichthyosis, characterized by profoundly scaly skin. (Author's collection)

There were many other alligator children, and banner artists have had great fun with such attractions. For example, under the heading “Alligator Boy,” one such artwork features in typical fashion a hybrid creature with the upper half human and the lower half reptilian; it is shown attracting the interest of real alligators. Less frequent were banner depictions closer to the exhibit's real appearance, such as “Alligator Girl” by legendary banner painter Snap Wyatt. Her scantily clad body merely exhibits a boldly checked appearance (Johnson et al. 1996, 62, 121, 122). Banner artist Johnny Meah (1996, 120) says of the more realistic depictions: “I’ve pictorialized numerous alligator skinned people. In rendering them one must constantly bear in mind that the banner will be viewed from many feet away, therefore very bold lines and exaggerated light and dark contrast must be used in depicting the unusual skin. As is the case with most banner art, you constantly repress the urge to use softer more subtle effects as they are lost when viewed from a distance.”

The banner described earlier, featuring the hybrid human-alligator creature, may have been used to advertise Emmitt Bejano. Born in Punta Gorda, Florida, he was adopted by “the dean of the sideshow men of the nineteen twenties and thirties, Johnny Bejano” (Hall 1991, 45). Emmitt was exhibited in Texas and sold such promotional items as alligator and snakeskin pocket-books. He later worked for showman Karl Lauther, who had a dime museum show and later a ten-in-one midway sideshow. Bejano was advertised as the “Alligator Boy” and “Alligator Man.” In 1938 Emmitt eloped with Lauther's adopted daughter, who performed as Percilla the Monkey Girl (discussed later in this chapter). They exhibited with the Ringling Brothers circus sideshow and “some of the most prominent carnival sideshows of this century” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 186-203).

A 1950s alligator boy, William Parnell, starred with Claude Bentley's Freak Circus, a sideshow traveling with the James E. Strates Shows. Born in 1925 in North Carolina, Parnell “suffered with an obscure skin disease that left him covered with greenish white patches, a condition that most people agreed looked distinctly reptilian.” Reportedly, the local school administrators found him so repellent that they would not admit him, so at the age of nine he ran away with a carnival. “I don't mind when they look at me; that's what I get paid for,” he was quoted as saying in a 1952 magazine. “But then they ask me, is it a fake? Really, I wish it was a fake” (Nelson 1999, 121-22).

Among the famous ladies of the genre was Mona Osanbaugh, the “Alligator Skin Girl,” who once posed with one-and-a-half Betty Lou Williams (mentioned in chapter 5). Similarly billed were Christine Doto, shown in a 1968 photo wearing only a top and miniskirt to show off her skin condition (and trim body), and Mildred Durks, wife of Bill Durks, who was known variously as the “Man with Three Eyes” and the “Two-Faced Man” (discussed later) (Hall 1991, 53-56; Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 133, 135-36).

A variant of the alligator person is the performer whose skin is roughly textured or loose and baggy (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 243). Such was Charlotte “Suzy” Vogel from Germany, where she was a medical curiosity at the University of Freiburg in the early 1920s. The artwork on an early poster depicts her on a platform with a small elephant behind her. The poster is headed “Suzy / Nature's Enigma” and “A Puzzle to the entire scientific world” (Meah 1996, 120). She was also known as “Suzy the Elephant Skin Girl.” She was recruited by Ward Hall as an attraction for Peter Hennen's sideshow in 1960, and she remained with Hennen for several years. Says Hall (1991, 21): “On one occasion, he had signs advertising her as an ‘Outer Space Monster.’ She was hurt by this and she protested, ‘I am not a monster.’ The signs were removed.” After Hennen ended his sideshow, Charlotte Vogel retired to her native Germany. Hall recalls her as having “a very sweet disposition.” Like many others with her condition, she showed the truth of the old adage (penned by John Davies in 1606), “Beauty's but skin deep.”

A different skin disorder is the explanation for certain “leopard” people (figure 6.2). Vitiligo, a condition characterized by a lack of skin pigment in patchy areas, affects people of all races but is more noticeable in those with dark complexions (Taber's 2001). P. T. Barnum exhibited a “leopard child” at his American Museum; she was an African American girl with large white splotches on her face, chest, arms, and legs (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 188). Frenchwoman Irma Loustau, a Caucasian “Leopard-Spotted Woman” (probably of the latter nineteenth century) with prominent dark patches, was billed as “Femme Panthére” (Panther Woman) at age twenty-four (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 176). During the mid to late 1920s, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Congress of Freaks show exhibited various leopard girls, mostly African American, as shown in the circus photographs of Edward J. Kelty (Barth and Siegel 2002, 104-6).

FIGURE 6.2. A “leopard” child, with splotchy skin, is shown in an 1896 color lithograph. (Author's collection)

Another type of fancified human-animal hybrid is the amphibianesque oddity exemplified by Samuel D. Parks (1874-1923), “Hopp the Frog Boy.” His cognomen may have been inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's story “Hop-Frog.” (The king of a fabled land kept a jester, a clumsy-gaited dwarf whom he cruelly mocked and abused. However, on the pretext of contriving a masquerade, Hop-Frog manages to lure the king and his councilors into adopting the guise of apes, with the use of tar and flax. Then he hangs them, chained, from a great chandelier and burns them to “a fetid, blackened, hideous and indistinguishable mass.”)

Parks was featured on his banner as a human-headed frog. He first appeared before medical students at the 1893 Chicago world's fair and later joined the Barnum & Bailey Circus for a European tour. Hopp the Frog Boy subsequently “exhibited all over the United States and Europe in the leading circuses and largest carnival companies,” according to a tribute in Billboard. It was written by his second wife, who described herself as “a Connecticut midget.” She stated: “Hopp was the only attraction of his kind in the World. His face, hands, and feet were human but the rest of his body was deformed similar to that of a frog. When he got down on all fours he looked exactly like a huge bullfrog” (quoted in Drimmer 1991, 306).

As mentioned earlier in the discussion of banners (see chapter 3), another such sideshow oddity was Major John the Frog Boy, who was depicted by banner painter Fred G. Johnson in 1940 (see figure 3.4). He was portrayed in the usual hybrid fashion, as was Otis Jordan, an African American who had (according to one of his many admirers) the body of a four-year-old but a normal head with “a noble, scholarly face” (Meah 1998, 56; Johnson et al. 1996, 16). Jordan performed as “Otis the Frog Boy,” beginning in 1963. Part of his routine was to roll, light, and smoke a cigarette using only his lips. When his act was shut down in 1984 after a woman complained about the exhibition of disabled people, Jordan moved to Coney Island, where he continued with the more politically correct billing the “Human Cigarette Factory” (Bogdan 1990, 1, 279-81; Taylor 1998, 55-61).

Among others of the genre was Flip the Frog Boy, who was with the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Sideshow in the 1930s. His upper body was normal, but he had diminished legs and tiny feet that required him “to hop like a frog” (Mannix 1999, 12). Another was Carl Norwood, an African American dwarf with tiny legs who was featured as “Carl the Frog Boy” and the “World's Smallest Man” in a single-O launched by Hall & Christ in 1973 (Hall 1981, 71, 100; 1991, 51).

Any one of a number of deformities might qualify one as a frog boy (figure 6.3). In 1969, when I worked at the Canadian National Exhibition, I visited the ten-in-one that included El Hoppo the Living Frog Boy. Although the banner depicted him in the usual fashion—a youth with a frog's hindquarters—in actuality, “Hoppy” was a gray-bearded man in a wheelchair; he had spindly limbs and a distended stomach. To make him look more like his banner image, he was stripped to the waist and dressed in green tights (Nickell 1999). Sometime later, in downtown Toronto, I saw a man who looked remarkably like “Hoppy” selling the Telegram newspapers from his wheelchair. Was he really the frog boy? Some three decades later, while researching this book, I queried showman Doug Higley. He wrote to say that since “El Hoppo” was “not a well known freak performer, I would guess that he was just some poor unfortunate…picked off the street and created on the spot for that one date” (Higley 2000).

FIGURE 6.3. A hunchback midget, like this man from around 1890, might be styled as a “frog boy.” (Author's collection)

Most frog people are males, but there was at least one “frog girl show.” It ran afoul of a Florida statute prohibiting the exhibition of anyone with a deformity or disfigurement for profit, but the law was successfully challenged by Ward Hall, “Little Pete” Terhurne, and Sealo (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 9-11).

“Sealo the Seal Boy” was Stanley Berent, whose condition is called phocomelia; it is a congenital malformation in which the limbs are poorly developed or entirely absent, so that the hands and feet are attached to the trunk (Taber's 2001). When exhibited, individuals with this condition are typically described as “seal” or “penguin” people. A friend of Sealo's (Melvin Burkhart, who is discussed in chapter 7) said, “He had one hell of an act. He'd take a piece of clay and make the damnedest things right before your eyes. He'd take that ball of clay and boom, boom, boom you'd have a horsey. Switch it around and have a goat and a pig. He was just amazing” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 9, 166, 247-48).

Another oddity of this type was Dickie the Penguin Boy, whose banner by Fred G. Johnson (circa 1960s) shows him with normal arms but short, fused legs so that, as the banner claims, he “Looks and Walks Like a Penguin” (Johnson et al. 1996, 68). An attraction billed as “Mignon the Penguin Girl” was Ruth Davis, who exhibited in the 1930s and 1940s along with her husband, Earl, another “Hoppy the Frog Boy” (Hall 1991, 44).

A very distinctive oddity is that of so-called lobster people, like the one featured on a “Strange Girls” banner painted by Snap Wyatt. The otherwise pretty girl is depicted with red claws and tail like her crustacean namesake. The actual deformity is ectrosyndactyly, a congenital condition in which some digits of the hands and feet are missing and the others are fused, producing two opposed “claws” like those of a lobster (Taber's 2001; Taggart 1996).

The most famous—and infamous—“lobster” family consists of the ancestors and descendants of Grady Stiles Sr., the “Lobster Man” of American sideshows. The deformity had been known in his family since the 1840s. Nearly a century later, in 1937, Stiles became the father of a boy named Grady Stiles Jr., who at the age of seven began to be exhibited as the “Lobster Boy” (figure 6.4). In time he married a fellow carny, Mary Teresa, who ran a shooting gallery. Their first child, Donna, was normal, but the next, Cathy, began the sixth generation of Stileses with the lobster-claw deformity. The family settled in “Showtown USA,” aka Gibtown (Gibsonton, Florida).

FIGURE 6.4. Grady Stiles Jr., the “Lobster Boy,” was an abusive man whose life ended with his murder. (Author's collection)

Grady Jr. was a heavy-drinking, abusive man whose wife eventually left him to marry the “Smallest Man in the World,” a midget named Harry Glenn Newman. Stiles retained the children, remarried, and fathered another lobster child, Grady Stiles III. When teenaged Donna became pregnant and told her father that she wanted to marry her lover, Stiles asked to meet the young man. Instead of approving the match, the Lobster Boy pulled out a pistol and shot him to death. Astonishingly, Stiles received probation and, equally astonishingly, after divorcing his second wife, persuaded Mary Teresa to come back to him. She brought her son, Harry Glenn Newman Jr. (who, unlike his father, was not a midget).

Grady resumed show life, framing his own sideshow. It starred him, of course, as the Lobster Boy, and had Grady III and Cathy as backups. It also featured his wife's son Harry as a human blockhead, along with “enough other acts to make it a respectable ten-in-one” (Taggart 1996, 172). The show prospered, but Stiles kept morale low by continuing his abusive behavior. He sometimes appeared drunk in the sideshow and angrily snapped at the spectators with his “claws” (Taggart 1996, 172). Grady continued to beat up Mary Teresa and once struck his pregnant daughter, “Lobster Girl” Cathy. (An emergency cesarean yielded a daughter, the first of the seventh-generation “lobster” children.)

Finally, after Grady threatened Mary Teresa and her family with a knife, she had her son, Harry, arrange a contract killing of Grady. Subsequently, Mary Teresa was convicted of manslaughter; her son received a life sentence for first-degree murder; and the killer, Christopher Wyant, received a twenty-seven-year sentence for second-degree murder (Taggart 1996). Thus ended one of the darkest chapters in the history of the sideshow.

In addition to this veritable menagerie of human oddities who were imaginatively interpreted in animal terms, there were the Biped Armadillo, the Snake Boy, Koo-Koo the Bird Girl, and Emmitt Blackwelder, the “Turtle Man,” who had “only short stubs of arms and legs” (Hall 1991, 23). Others are discussed more fully later, including Percilla the Monkey Girl, the Mule-Faced Woman, and the Elephant Man.

Hirsute Women—and Men

Bearded ladies have long been popular sideshow attractions. Their excessive facial and body hair is due to a condition called hirsutism, which is usually caused by overproduction of androgen (Taber's 2001).

As mentioned in chapter 1, P. T. Barnum once had the effrontery to have his bearded lady accused of being a man. The hirsute woman, Madame Josephine Clofullia of Geneva, Switzerland, dressed in feminine fashion and wore about her neck a broach with a cameo portrait of her equally bearded husband. She had previously appeared in London, but not before a physician had examined her, declaring her beard genuine and “her breasts…large and fair, and strictly characteristic of the female.” She gave birth in 1851 to a normal daughter, but the child died before her first birthday. In March 1853 Barnum signed her for his American Museum. During her inaugural appearance, a spectator—secretly hired by the showman—accused Madame Clofullia of being a fake, a male in female dress. He brought a charge of imposture against Barnum, who, feigning annoyance, arranged a medical examination. His three doctors joined Josephine's husband and father and a city physician in certifying her as a genuinely bearded woman. Newspaper stories of the failed suit sent huge crowds to Barnum's museum (Bogdan 1990, 226-28; Harris 1973, 67; Kunhardt et al. 1995, 112).

Annie Jones (1865-1902) was still a baby when Barnum first exhibited her in 1866. Born with long hair and a down-covered face, Annie became the “infant Esau” (after the biblical Isaac's hirsute son). Later she was the “Child Esau” or the “Bearded Girl.” She was such a salable commodity that, when an emergency back home in Virginia caused her mother to leave her in questionable hands, a phrenologist made off with the child and tried to exhibit her at a fair. Mrs. Jones had to go to court to reclaim her daughter, which she did when the wise judge let Annie out of an anteroom and she ran not to the phrenologist but to her mother.

A pitch pamphlet, sold at Barnum's museum when Annie was about five, truthfully described her “marvelous endowment of fine silken beard, whiskers, and mustache,” while characterizing her otherwise as “altogether as other little girls of her age.” When Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth began touring, Annie went with it. Billed as the “Bearded Lady” or the “Esau Lady,” she appeared in the circus sideshow during the regular season and then exhibited in dime museums during the winter months—until spring came and she repeated the cycle.

When Annie was sixteen, she secretly married a sideshow talker named Richard Elliott. About 1888 she was photographed by Charles Eisenmann. Brilliantly, he posed her admiring her beard in a mirror; thus, with her back to the camera, he also captured her long tresses, which reached below her knees (Drimmer 1991, 124; Bogdan 1990, 225). After fifteen years of what her mother called a “bad match,” she divorced Elliott and wed the show's wardrobe man, William Donovan. They took advantage of her notoriety and successfully toured Europe, at times appearing before royalty. When her husband died several years later, she rejoined the Barnum & Bailey Circus while it was in Europe. Reportedly, “Annie's reunion with the circus was a joyful one. She had many old friends there. Her warmth and eagerness to help were as proverbial in the circus as her skill with her needle. Whenever she came down from her platform after a show she had a steady stream of callers, including many who wanted to chat with her and circus hands who knew they could rely on her to sew on a button or put a patch in a pair of trousers. And she enjoyed hearing herself called by her familiar name, Jonesy, once more.” In time, however, Jonesy fell ill with consumption and died at the age of thirty-seven (Drimmer 1991, 120-26).

Although born in the same year as Annie Jones, Clementine Delait of Thaon-les-Vosges in Lorraine was a young woman before she became France's most famous bearded lady. Until then, she had shaved; however, seeing an unimpressive bearded lady at a fair sideshow, she wagered that she could grow a fuller beard. Bets were met with counterbets at her husband's Café Delait. Clementine soon won the contest, and when people began to come from afar to see her, Monsieur Delait renamed their business Café de la femme á barbe (Café of the Bearded Lady). After his death in 1926, Clementine began to exhibit herself, becoming a celebrity on Parisian and London stages. At her death in 1939, as she had requested, her tombstone identified her as “The Bearded Lady of Thaon.” Three decades later, her hometown dedicated a museum to Clementine Delait, its most celebrated daughter (Drimmer 1991, 127-31).

Perhaps the longest-appearing bearded lady was Jane Barnell, who was born in 1871 in Wilmington, North Carolina. The daughter of a Russian Jew who repaired wagons and a mother of Irish and Native American heritage, she was born with a down-covered face. Her mother reportedly thought that the child was cursed, and when her husband was away on business, she gave the little girl to the Great Orient Family Circus, a small show with six ox-drawn wagons. Allegedly she toured Europe, where an illness landed her in an orphanage at about age five. “In one way or another,” says Drimmer (1991, 135), her father located her and returned her to North Carolina. In 1892, at the age of twenty-one, she joined the John Robinson Circus. Over the years, she appeared in numerous circuses, including Forepaugh-Sells Brothers, Hagenbeck-Wallace, Royal American Shows, and Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. She was “Princess Olga,” then “Madame Olga,” and finally “Lady Olga.” She married four times and in 1932 appeared in Tod Browning's movie Freaks. At that time, she provided the public with some beard-grooming tips, declaring, “Every woman who is lucky enough to have a beard should learn how to take care of it.” Her secrets included a weekly milk bath and avoiding too-hot curling irons, which could cause brittleness. A showman once proposed that she dye her hair blue so she could be billed as “Olga, the Lady Bluebeard.” She angrily rejected the idea but watched her beard turn naturally gray over the years (Drimmer 1991, 132-38).

FIGURE 6.5. Bearded lady Grace Gilbert appeared as the “Wooly Child” and the “Female Esau” in such circuses as Barnum & Bailey. (Author's collection)

Among other celebrated bearded ladies was Madame Jane Devere of Kentucky, who was born in 1842 and was still showing her fourteen-inch beard in 1908 with the Yankee Robinson Show. Another was a Mrs. Meyers, who was with Barnum in the 1880s. One of her contemporaries, who toured dime museums from the late 1870s to the early 1880s, offered a pitch booklet, “Brief History of a Celebrated Lady, Namely, Madam Squires, the Bearded Lady” (Bogdan 1990, 227-29; Kunhardt et al. 1995, 260).

Women with beards typically had excessive body hair as well; however, it was usually concealed by the Victorian attire used to emphasize the bearded lady's femininity. Michigan-born Grace Gilbert (1880-1925) was covered at birth with reddish hair (figure 6.5). Circuses such as Barnum & Bailey billed her as the “Wooly Child” and (like Annie Jones) the “Female Esau.” According to Drimmer (1991, 138): “In the winter season, when the circus closed down, she would return to her father's farm. She was heavily built, and according to legend she was able to perform a man's work on the farm. Old circus buffs also say that when the roustabouts were erecting the sideshow tent she would take up a sledge and give them a helping hand. Yet, like other bearded ladies, she was famed for her ladylike refinement and her skill with needlework and spent much of her spare time making lace.”

More recently there was Percilla the Monkey Girl (figure 6.6)—mentioned earlier as the wife of “Alligator Man” Emmitt Bejano. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and adopted by showman Karl Lauther, the child with the dense, black hair was billed as the “Little Hairy Girl” and then the “Monkey Girl.” She performed in Lauther's dime museum and later his midway ten-in-one with a chimp named Josephine. She wore a veil when working the bally. After she and Emmitt eloped in 1938, when Percilla was about twenty, they exhibited in leading carnival and circus sideshows, including Ringling Brothers. Their one child died in infancy, and they adopted a boy, Tony.

For a single-O show they owned featuring Percilla, one of her banners showed her, in bearded-lady fashion, combing her hair in a vanity mirror; another portrayed her in a jungle scene encountering a gorilla; a pair of others each promised “$1,000 Reward if not Real.” Away from the sideshow, in public, Percilla pretended to be a Hindu, keeping her face covered. The Bejanos were often billed as the “World's Strangest Married Couple.” Showman Ward Hall (1991, 45-46) says that theirs “has been the love story of the century.” They celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary at the International Independent Showmen's Association headquarters in Gibsonton, Florida, where the Bejanos lived. In retirement, Percilla shaved every couple of days, and she and Emmitt loved to dance together. After he died in 1995, she grieved until her own death, in her sleep, on February 5, 2001 (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 186-203; Sideshow 2000).

FIGURE 6.6. Percilla the Monkey Girl (holding dog) and the Alligator Man were billed as the World's Strangest Couple. (Author's collection)

Other very hairy people were Tirko the Monkey Boy, depicted on a 1970s banner by Snap Wyatt (Johnson et al. 1996, 128), and the remarkable “Wolf Boys,” Danny and Larry Gomez. The brothers—covered with black hair from head to toe, including their faces—once appeared in sideshows but now perform in a Mexican circus as trapeze and trampoline artists (Sideshow 2000).

Popular hirsute attractions of the nineteenth century were members of Barnum's Sacred Hairy Family of Burmah (figure 6.7), Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, and Lionel the Lion-Faced Man. Jo-Jo, who reportedly resembled a Skye terrier, with silky yellow hair entirely covering his face, appeared in European circus and fairground sideshows. Brought to the United States in 1884 by Barnum, he was actually sixteen-year-old Fedor Jeftichew, son of a Russian peasant. Barnum billed him as a captured feral child from the Russian forests—a tale invented for his pitch book (Parker 1994, 92; Drimmer 1991, 144-45).

FIGURE 6.7. The Sacred Hairy Family of Burmah (one of whom is shown here) was a hirsute attraction introduced by P. T. Barnum. (From a nineteenth-century print)

“Lionel” was actually Polish-born Stephan Bibrowsky (1890-1931). His manelike hair, which totally covered his faced, inspired him to frighten his audiences by roaring and snarling at them the moment the curtain was raised (Parker 1994, 92). He appeared widely in Europe and also exhibited at Coney Island. The Lion-Faced Man was with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus's Congress of Freaks in the mid-1920s (Drimmer 1991, 146-47; Barth 2002, 102, 105).

For sheer quantity of hair, however, we must turn from the odd to the normal—if the celebrated Seven Sutherland Sisters can be considered normal (figure 6.8). The daughters of onetime preacher Fletcher Sutherland, they flaunted their hair, which had a collective length of thirty-seven feet. When the young ladies performed their vocal and instrumental concerts—at such venues as the 1881 Atlanta Exposition and, by 1884, Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth—Fletcher Sutherland shrewdly observed that the girls’ long hair was a greater attraction than their musical ability. This led him to create the Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower, a concoction of alcohol, vegetable oils, and water. The fifth daughter, Naomi, married Henry Bailey, a circus employee, who expanded the family sideline into a business that grossed $90,000 the first year. By the time Naomi died unexpectedly in 1893, business was so good that, to keep up appearances, the remaining sisters hired a replacement for her. The hair-growing business thrived until 1907, then declined slowly over the next decade as the bobbed-hair fad nearly put an end to sales. Overall, their hair grower and related products brought in more than $2.75 million over a thirty-eight-year period, but the septet squandered it on an opulent lifestyle that included personal maids for each, to comb their luxuriant tresses (Lewis 1991).

FIGURE 6.8. The Seven Sutherland Sisters had thirty-seven feet of hair. They appeared with Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth and made a fortune selling bottled hair grower. (Author's collection)

FIGURE 6.9. The Aztec Children were actually microcephalics, shown here on a late-nineteenth-century postcard. (Author's collection)

And More

Many oddities do not fit into a traditional category. Perhaps the best example is the one Barnum billed as “A most singular animal” and “A creature which…for want of any name has been designated ‘The What Is It?’ or ‘Man-Monkey!’” Dressed in a furry suit, “It” was actually a black dwarf named William Henry Johnson who had microcephaly (an exceptionally small head and mental retardation) (see figure 6.9). Aged eighteen when first exhibited in 1860, he would have a career that spanned more than sixty years, “ultimately making him the most famous ‘freak’ in the world” (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 148-49). Unfortunately, he was also one of the few oddities who was “Laughed at, pelted with coins, called a ‘cross between a nigger and a baboon,’ and eventually renamed ‘Zip’ after the archetypal Southern black figure Zip Coon.” Barnum's exhibition of Zip belied his own basic racial tolerance—indeed, he fought for the abolition of slavery—and seems to have had less to do with Johnson's appearance than with his retardation. Johnson appreciated the showman's basic decency and good nature; in turn, Barnum came to see him as a unique individual and gave him an increasing share of the profits.

Sometimes Zip was presented as a mere puzzle, other times as a type of “wild man” who had been “captured by a party of adventurers while they were in search of the Gorilla.” Actually, he was American born, probably from Liberty Corners, New Jersey. He was with Barnum and his successors, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, until his death in 1926. In the Ringling sideshow he had the number-one platform due to his seniority; reportedly, he guarded the spot with a popgun (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 149; Fiedler 1993, 165-66; Bogdan 1990, 134-42).

Later microcephalics were Schlitzie and his sister Athelia, who were originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico. They were rejected by their parents and taken in as children by showman Pete Kortes and his wife, Marie. They later transferred custody of Schlitzie to George Surtees and his wife. Although always represented as female, insiders like Ward Hall (1991, 21-33) knew that Schlitzie was actually a male. He says: “I would no longer exhibit anyone mentally deficient, due to the criticism of those who would not understand the improvement in the quality of life such as a person would receive in a freak show environment, as opposed to confinement in an institution.” He adds: “I have no doubt that Schlitzie enjoyed the trips to Hawaii, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, etc. Attending luaus, holiday dinners and parties where the entire freak show would celebrate. This with the same delight and exuberance of a small child. Once having been rescued from the locked away existence of early childhood, Schlitzie had a comfortable, happy existence for the rest of her eighty plus years.”

An interesting category of human oddity exploited by Barnum and his successors is the albino (figures 6.10 and 6.11)—a person suffering from albinism, the partial or total absence of pigment in the skin, hair, and eyes (Taber's 2001). Barnum brought to America a family of albinos from Holland—the Lucasies—in 1857. In one letter Barnum reported that they were acting “disagreeable” and stated, “I will put them in jail if they don't behave.” Later he featured two cute little albino boys among his “living curiosities.” They may have been the same pair—Amos and Charles Gorhen—shown in a later group portrait along with giantess Anna Swan, fat lady Hannah Battersby and her thin-man husband John, and many others. Another lineup, for an 1888 photo of Barnum & Bailey sideshow performers, included two albino girls, the Martin sisters, whose long, pale tresses gave them a striking appearance (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 113, 189, 198-99, 327).

FIGURE 6.10. Albinos were popular sideshow performers, like this one featured in a nineteenth-century publicity photograph by celebrated New York photographer Charles Eisenmann. (Author's collection)

FIGURE 6.11. Another albino performer. (Photo by Charles Eisenmann; author's collection)

The most famous of the show-business albinos was Unzie the Australian Aboriginal Albino, who normally would have had very dark skin. He had a gigantic white Afro and was sometimes billed as Unzie the Hirsute Wonder. His hair was so fine, however, that he could tuck the whole mass into a silk top hat. “I never tip my hat to the ladies,” he would say from the platform. “If I should, they'd think a bombshell had exploded.” Suiting action to words, he would remove the hat, whereupon “his incredible white hair would puff out and surround him like an enormous white cloud” (Drimmer 1991, 305-6; FitzGerald 1897).

FIGURE 6.12. Bill Durks was billed as the “Two-Faced Man” or (as shown here) the “Three-Eyed Man”—his third eye being gaffed. (Author's collection)

Ward Hall was friends with another famous oddity, William “Bill” Durks, whom he lured from the Strates sideshow for one season (figure 6.12). Often billed as the “Two-Faced Man,” he had an extreme cleft palate that separated the two halves of his face. Durks, says Hall plainly, “looked like he had been hit in the face with an axe.” He was married to Mildred, the “Alligator Skin Lady,” until her death in 1968; at one time they shared a banner, showing them at their marriage ceremony before a minister and headed “Mr. And Mrs. William Dirks [sic].”

A shy man, Durks was aware of the reaction his appearance could provoke and tried to avoid contact with the world outside the sideshow. For example, when traveling, he often asked his friend Melvin Burkhart (the “Anatomical Wonder”—see chapter 7), to get a sandwich for him from a restaurant. When he did have to go into a public place, he pulled his hat down and turned his collar up. Once in a New Jersey store, a woman approached him and said, “What's the matter with you? Don't you know somebody will think you're trying to rob the place?” When Durks turned to look at her, she gasped, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” and ran away (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 128-41; Fiedler 1993, 210).

Since Durks played the same show route for years, he periodically changed his billing to keep his exhibition fresh. Besides the “Two-Faced Man,” he was sometimes billed as the “Three-Eyed Man” (see figure 6.12), a partially gaffed presentation (discussed more fully in chapter 8).

Durks was not the only double-faced oddity. There was also Robert Milwin, who was at the Trenton State Fair in 1954, where he was billed as the “Man with Two Faces.” The right side of his face was deformed, appearing almost like a second face in profile. Daniel P. Mannix (1999, 95) says of him, “He could have been a grift (a fake) but I don't think so since I’ve never seen anything like this before or since, and don't know of any reference to such a deformity.” Melvin Burkhart mentioned Milwin while reminiscing about oddities who had passed away (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 165).

Another oddity with a facial disfigurement was “Mule-Faced Woman” Grace McDaniels (figure 6.13), whose facial tumors gave her a grotesque appearance. One of her sideshow employers, Harry Lewiston, described her in his memoirs, Freak Show Man (Holtman 1968). The inside lecturer is speaking:

“In a minute…I’m going to ask Grace to take her veil off so you can see for yourself what she looks like. You won't want to look for long. Instead, you will want to think of yourself, think how lucky you are that you are not like her. Whether you are handsome or homely, beautiful or plain, you can thank your lucky stars you are not Grace McDaniels, ‘the Mule-Faced Woman. ‘…”

As Grace lifted her veil, there rose from the audience a tremendous “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!” for she was truly a sight to bring on such reactions. It is impossible to describe her accurately. I can only try. Her flesh was like red, raw meat; her huge chin was twisted at such a distorted angle, she could hardly move her jaws. Her teeth were jagged and sharp, her nose was large and crooked. The objects which made her look most like a mule were her huge, mule-like lips. Her eyes stared grotesquely in their deep-set sockets. All in all, she was a sickening, horrible sight.

FIGURE 6.13. Grace McDaniels was as lovely on the inside as she was disfigured on the outside by facial tumors. She was billed as the “Mule-Faced Woman.” (Author's collection)

Nevertheless, William Lindsay Gresham (1953, 105-6) spoke for those who knew her when he wrote: “She is one of the best-loved women in the carnival business, a homespun, motherly soul, generous to a fault. After five minutes’ conversation with Grace you forget all about the strange contours of her face and are aware only of the warm, courageous heart of the woman herself.” Grace married and had a son, who traveled as her manager until she died in 1958 (Drimmer 1991, 321).

One of the most famous human oddities of all time was “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick (d. 1890). He was exhibited only briefly, reportedly “taken from town to town by itinerant showmen, who exploited him cruelly” (Drimmer 1991, 322). Merrick had a rare affliction that caused his skull and other bones to grow bizarrely, but his condition brought him to the attention of a distinguished medical man, Sir Frederick Treves, in 1884. For the remainder of his twenty-seven years, he was well cared for. However, Merrick's head grew so large and heavy that he was forced to sleep sitting up in bed, with pillows supporting his back and his head resting on his knees. He died in his sleep, his head apparently having fallen backward and dislocating his neck. Treves (1923) believed that he may have tried to sleep like normal people, but his head sank fatally into the soft pillow. “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.’“To a greater or lesser degree, that has been the desire of many human oddities.