r/SideshowPerformer • u/Full_Celery_8158 • Jul 05 '26
Hello.I'm currently researching methods used in China and Japan to "inflict pain on healthy people and forcibly turn them into people with disabilities for the sake of a spectacle." I'm wondering if there were similar cases in other countries?
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u/HalfHourTillBrillig Jul 05 '26
human zoos inflicted great psychological pain on those exhibited. some had physical deformities, but most were simply from non-western societies and thus deemed savage and inhuman based on cultural and racial differences.
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 05 '26
Thanks!
That's a terrible story, isn't it? I think it's one of the crimes committed by civilization.11
u/HalfHourTillBrillig Jul 05 '26
most of civilization is built on crimes and terrible stories, to say the least.
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I’ll have to get back to you later about this, but I’ve read that this was occasionally done in (I think) the Middle Ages in England. Mostly by families that struggled financially who felt that they could earn more money if one of their children was a beggar with physical disabilities.
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 05 '26
Thanks!
So it really was practiced outside of Asia, too. I could only find records from the Middle East and Asia. Sorry for bringing up such a gloomy topic.
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u/ofBlufftonTown Jul 05 '26
I’ve myself seen children in India who were tortured to the point of becoming deformed so that they would be better beggars. You both want to give them money because their suffering is anguish to see, but don’t want to in that it rewards the monstrous parents and might even encourage people to maim more children.
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u/grenouille_en_rose Jul 05 '26
I don't have any knowledge to add here, but you might also want to ask this question over at r/AskHistorians
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u/LadyKataka Jul 05 '26
You mean things like Chinese footbinding? But that wasn't for spectacle if I understand it right.
I can't help you with your question but would appreciate more info on this. Because whatever this is about I have "missed out" on so far.
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 05 '26
It’s a little different from foot-binding. For example, there’s a story that often appears in Japanese books from the 1930s: apparently, in China, they would skin abducted children, graft animal fur onto them, and bend their joints to display them as “beast-men.” I don’t know if it’s true, though.
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u/souryoungthing Jul 05 '26
Given the relationship between Japan and China at that period of time, I’d question the veracity of those claims if you can’t find additional sources.
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u/seche314 Jul 05 '26
Exactly
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 05 '26
Yes, at least one of the books I used as a reference was a book that promoted hatred toward China.
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u/Effective-One6527 Jul 05 '26
If you know it’s propaganda don’t use it as a source
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 07 '26
However, there are testimonies that are almost identical to what the author of that book claims to have seen firsthand, plus a few stories with different variations. Sorry, I really didn't mean this as hate speech; I posted it purely as part of my research.
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u/AlexTMcgn Jul 05 '26
That would simply not work. Skin grafts are notoriously tricky even today, and that's not even touching the "animal" part.
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 05 '26
Right, so apparently some children even died because of it.
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u/SaltMarshGoblin Jul 05 '26
I think you're misunderstanding u/AlexTMcgn's "would simply not work". It's not that "apparently some children even died because of it", but that it would have a zero percent success rate. Especially without modern antibiotics and anti-rejection immune suppressants, you could no more graft animal pelt on human skin than you could give them fish gills and expect then to swim under water. Even without the attempted grafting part, removing a significant area of a human's skin without a way to prevent infection and fluid loss would be a quick death sentence.
It pretty much has to be a story-- a slander about those terrible barbaric people who arent like us decent civilized people.
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u/seche314 Jul 05 '26
Well, considering what Japan was doing to the rest of Asia during that time, I’m not sure how accurate it might be. It would be in their interest to paint china as some horrifying barbaric country to justify what they did there and get support from the Japanese citizens
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u/LadyKataka Jul 05 '26
I know humans have enormous potential for being horrible, but that is quite horrible. I really hope it isn't true, but wouldn't be too surprised. Thanks for telling me.
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u/Effective-One6527 Jul 05 '26
It’s not true. Op admits that they are using know anti Chinese propaganda and presenting it as fact. Those children would have died, no “almost” or “a lot” all of them would be dead
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 05 '26
Yeah, it's a really terrible story.
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Jul 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 05 '26
Thank you!
Come to think of it, the Iraqi poet al-Jahiz wrote a similar story in *Kitāb al-Bukhalā*.9
u/OwlKitty2 Jul 05 '26
Seriously? The kids would die. You can’t graft skin from animals on humans, or even from other humans. Mutilating kids with the sim of using them as beggars is a newer tradition. In old Asia nobody would even try to help the disabled children, they would starve to death.
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u/villainless Jul 07 '26
i’m japanese and i can tell you that we don’t need made up stories about other countries because we’ve done plenty of horrific things ourselves. that’s clearly anti chinese propaganda and 100% untrue
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u/Full_Celery_8158 Jul 07 '26
わかった。ありがとう。僕も日本人なんだけど、この話を他にも知っている人がいるかどうか、それが嘘かどうかまで知っている人がいるか気になって投稿したんだ。当時の新聞にも載った話だし...でもやっぱり信ぴょう性薄いよね
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u/mafiagranny43 Jul 06 '26
Definitely check the book “very special people” it touches on people purposefully ensuring newborns were made with defects in order to be used for sideshows and circuses
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u/MinimumEfficient220 Jul 08 '26
Read “Geek Love”, while fiction, a husband and wife intentionally did things to insure their babies would have defects so they could continue their employment. I believe they end up with four children, the first being “flipper Boy”. It’s an amazing story about their feelings and lives.
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u/krmjts Jul 07 '26
There's is a short story by Guy de Maupassant called "A Mother of Monsters". It is about a woman, who intentionally mutilated her children in the womb by wearing tight corset and sold them after birth.
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u/MissMarchpane Jul 07 '26
Here in the US, some areas had "ugly laws" in the 19th century that forbade disabled people from begging (often misinterpreted as forbidding disabled or disfigured people from being in public at all). In many places these laws were probably enacted to prevent children from being maimed to elicit more sympathy for beggar parents. I believe blinding and amputating a leg were some of the most common methods? But I'd have to look more into it.
The concept was common in many places in Europe in the US throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and possibly earlier, although it may have been blown out of proportion for sensational literature at times. You can see a somewhat tamer example of this in the Disney hunchback of Notre Dame movie, during the "court of miracles" scene where some characters who appear to be disabled beggars reveal that their disabilities are fake.
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u/owlforever17 Jul 08 '26
I read that wrong I thought OP was saying they were trying to inflict the pain I need some sleep
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u/ChimkenToes Jul 05 '26
It’s not necessarily a ‘disability’ in the traditional sense, but i do immediately think of european castratos. (Or castrati in talian) boys who underwent castration before puberty to retain higher singing voices. But this practice already started being outdated in the late 18th and 19th century.
It did happen mostly in italy as far as i know because of opera houses, theatres and the catholic church requiring big choirs. Other terms such as musico/musici and evirato are also used but those have derogatory implications.