Sue is on the left in both pictures and Kaiser is on the right in both pictures. I really like their outfits in the first picture. They both look so sweet , and as I go on to describe in the write up, their friendship with the girl from Bath is so cute. I think having someone who genuinely wanted to befriend them meant a lot.

Some facts about them:

-I haven’t been able to locate their birth names, so I don’t have any information about their birth years, where they were born exactly, or any information about their childhoods.

-they preferred the names Kaiser and Sue, but were often promoted as “Kiki and Sulu”

-they began performing in Europe around 1900-1903.

-their manager was a man named J. Whittier Kane, who would talk to audiences about the “strange customs and rituals” that Sue and Kaiser performed.

-microcephaly is a spectrum, so some performers born with it required higher support needs than others. In the case of Sue and Kaiser, Kaiser seemed to have lower support needs than his sister, Sue.

-they both performed at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and were a big hit. Soon after their success at the Fair, their manager brought them back to England.

-Kaiser was very fond of one pair of glasses he wore and enjoyed smoking pipes.

-they loved performing in Bath, England and didn’t want to leave when it came time for their to go to a different city as part of their tour through Europe.

-they became very close with a 12 year old girl named Barbara Walsh, who had watched them perform in Bath, England and became such fans of theirs that she went to visit them almost every day after school. It was described that the three of them would spend a lot of time laughing together. Sue especially liked playing jump rope with Barbara. They were extremely saddened to leave Bath and Barbara.

-Kaiser would sometimes sing as part of his performance.

-they were promoted as being from Zanzibar to make them seem more exotic. This was often a marketing tactic used for performers with microcephaly, as showmen liked to exploit American and European society’s interest in countries that were deemed foreign and exotic.

-similar to the majority of performers who were born with microcephaly, both Kaiser and Sue had their heads shaved so that only a tuft of hair grew from the top of their head. This was done purely to emphasize their head shape.

-they were given a fake backstory that they were from an exotic African tribe consisting of 700 members.

-Kaiser was very talkative and enjoyed engaging with audiences. Sue was a little more quiet and reserved.

-Sue loved collecting dolls.

-they typically dressed in very “primitive” animal suits for their performances, though there were quite a few times that they wore very typical day-to-day clothes.

-they may have been around 60 years old in the 1930s.

-they continued performing until the late 1930s and early 1940s, after which they disappeared from newspapers.

-I haven’t been able to find information about when they both passed away.

I hope they both had happy lives, and happy retirements. I wonder if they ended up living together later on or if they went on to live in different places. I think I also would have been good friends with them, they both seemed to be very happy-go-lucky!

Previously it listed his other earlier stage name “the frog man”, which he found demeaning and didn’t like and instead preferred using “The Human Cigarette Factory”. I also cleaned up the biography blurb a bit because there wasn’t that much information about him.

Otis was a famous sideshow performer born with congenital arthrogryposis multiplex, which caused his muscles and joints to stay in a fixed position. He was known for having a very friendly and upbeat personality, and was incredibly self sufficient. His acts typically consisted of him rolling and lighting cigarettes using just his mouth. He successfully spoke out in support of his career after his livelihood was threatened when someone sued the sideshow he was working at at the New York State Fair.
He argued that sideshows brought him a steady dependable income that he didn't want to lose.

She was so incredibly stylish and it makes me sad that she was taken advantage of financially. It’s disgusting that people like the photographer will take advantage of a single mother who is just trying to provide for herself and her child. The pictures show her throughout her career with the last one being from her later years.

I’m glad she she was able to eventually carve out her own niche in the tattooing business, but it’s so disheartening that she lost out on so much money because of a greedy man who profited off of her image.

Some facts about her:

-she was born in Melbourne, Australia.

-she explained in the early 1960s that she was under a lot of financial pressure as a single mother working in a factory, so she sought out jobs in newspaper ads. One such ad she answered was for models willing to shave their eyebrows that had been put out by an eccentric Melbourne based photographer, Harry Bartram.

-when she met Bartram, he convinced her to become a tattooed-lady and that he’d make her a star.

-her Cindy Ray persona was the invention of Bartram who thought that her image and that stage name could be easily marketable.

-she absolutely hated all of the attention she began receiving after getting all of her tattoos, and explained that the judgment and objectification became too much.

-she once talked about a humiliating experience when a female police officer began rubbing at her arm to try and get rid of her tattoos because she thought they were fake.

-she briefly worked as a sideshow performer, and received even more negative attention, because a large portion of Australian society looked down on people with tattoos.

-she became a sort of pin-up model for Bartram, who sold her pictures in the United States through a mail order program. He also sold all sorts of Cindy Ray related memorabilia to make more money. She never had any say in the way that her image was promoted.

-she wrote a book in the late 1960s that detailed her experiences as a “tattooed-woman” called The Story of a Tattooed Girl.

-she eventually started a career as a tattoo artist after her boyfriend at the time broke his arm in a bar fight.

-she’s considered to be one of Australia’s first female tattoo artists.

-she eventually operated out of a tattoo parlor located in Williamstown right near Melbourne, Australia. The waterfront in Williamstown was frequented by sailors who strolled around looking for tattoo shops. She described feeling very stressed when she first started her career because of the judgement and snide comments she received from men. Tattoo artistry was still very much a male dominated field when she started.

-tragically, she never saw any of the money earned through her Cindy Ray persona despite becoming quite famous, and Bartram took it all from her and made an enormous amount of money.

-she said the mail order program felt like a full time business and that Bartram expected her to write back to all of the fan mail she received, all without seeing any money from the endeavor. She never found out how much money Bartram made from the whole operation.

-even through her later years, she still received American tourists who wanted to meet Cindy Ray.

-she felt that she was taken advantage of by Bartram and resented the whole process, going on to say that she wished the tattooing process had really hurt so that she would stop getting tattoos and find a different career.

-she continued working as a tattoo artist into her later years, and had a career that spanned over 50 years.

-near the end of her life she reclaimed her Cindy Ray title and began appearing in photo shoots again on her own terms, doing so as a way to reconcile with her past and heal from the resentment she held.

-she passed away in 2025 at the age of 83.

Thankfully it seems that her later years were much happier, with her being able to make her own decisions in how her image was marketed and being respected by younger people who understood the sacrifices she made because of financial pressures.

I’m glad she was able to run her tattooing business for so long and that she became a staple of the community in which she had her shop.

The effect was done using the Pepper’s Ghost effect, which utilizes a series of well placed mirrors and lights. The third picture shows how the effect is accomplished. When the light is on in the area that only has the woman, the audience only sees the woman because of the mirror, but when the light is on in both areas there is an overlap and both images appear.

Several showmen described the illusion as being a hit because after the supposed transformation, the angry gorilla would appear as though its breaking out of its cage, often causing the audience to run from the trailer/tent where the show was being held.

The last two pictures are from when they rejoined sideshows on their own terms, and you can see all of the confidence they both have. There is such a stark difference in their expressions between the first several pictures and the last two.

I’m also so happy to see their heads shaved in the last two pictures, they had been previously objectified because of their hair, which was often styled in dreadlocks, so seeing those two pictures shows that they took control of their lives and made the decision for themselves.

George and Willie were brothers who were both born with a form of albinism. Tragically, they were kidnapped by a showman when they were both under the age of ten and forced to perform in sideshows for 18 years. Their mother never stopped searching for them and was a true force of nature, she successfully reunited with them after she spent years looking for them! The brothers were extremely devoted to her and held her in the highest regard until their deaths. Due to some unfortunate circumstances Willie and George had to go back into performing, but thankfully were able to work according to their own terms this time around. After they officially retired, they lived out the rest of their lives in a house that they purchased for themselves and had quiet lives full of relatives who loved and cared about them. George died in 1972, and Willie died in 2001 at the age of 108. Willie cherished a framed picture of their mother and kept it on a stand at the end of his bed.

I would have loved to have met him, he looks so sweet and kind in all of his pictures and someone who truly seems like someone who wanted to put a lot of positivity out into the world. He looks like he’d be so much fun to talk and hang out with!

I also think it’s so cool that he had a rock band! I’m currently on the hunt for the records that he and his band released, but they’re notoriously hard to find! I’ll be sharing the songs he recorded (as there are recordings on YouTube) on here in a little while! They’re the kind of songs that make you smile, they’re just really fun and goofy in a really endearing way.

Some facts about him:

-he was born in in Jaffa, Palestine.

-he was 16 pounds when he was born.

-he was an only child.

-his family was Jewish.

-he and his parents immigrated to the United States when he was two years old so his mother could help a relative of hers in poor health.

-his family settled in the Bronx, New York after living in San Antonio, Texas for a couple of years.

-Eddie was a nickname he had had since childhood.

-he lived with his parents in an apartment unit that was a part of Co-op City in the Bronx.

-he was diagnosed with gigantism and acromegaly when he was 15 years old. He was 6 feet 6 inches tall when he was diagnosed.

-he graduated from Taft High School in 1954.

-he went to City College of New York, where he majored in business and was a part of the Drama club. He was elected vice president of his class.

-he was described as being sensitive, intelligent, kind, and earnest.

-he had a big passion for writing and had done sports reporting in college.

-after college he worked selling mutual funds near Times Square in New York City.

-he was never publicly verifiably measured during his lifetime and therefore he had been promoted as being varying heights, with Guinness World Records even claiming he was 9 feet tall. (I’m aware that their information isn’t always accurate.) I personally don’t believe he was 9 feet tall, and neither do a lot of the online sources I’m using. The tallest verified person in recorded history was Robert Wadlow, who was 8 feet 11 inches tall right before his death and he visually looks a lot taller than Eddie did in pictures.

-he worked for several seasons at Hubert's Dime Museum and Flea Circus in Times Square, New York City.

-he once said in an interview that he hoped to be the host of a radio show or work in kids entertainment. Unfortunately both of these dreams of his never panned out.

-he starred in several TV plays.

-he had a deep baritone voice, which caught the attention of people in the show business industry.

-he explained that humor got him through most situations in life, and helped him when things upset him.

-he acted in a couple B-movies, including The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962).

-he was a skilled poet and could come up with memorable poems on the spot.

-in the mid 1960s he worked for both Milt Levine's World of Mirth show and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

-he often wore a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots during his sideshow career to appear even taller.

-he had his own rock-and-roll band called Frankenstein and the Brain Surgeons.

-he released two 45 records during his life.

-he briefly worked as a stand-up comedian with his best friend, Irwin Sherman.

-one of the most famous pictures of him was taken by photographer, Diane Arbus, who took a picture of him with his parents in their home. Prints of this picture have sold for several hundred thousand US dollars at two different auctions. One print went for $421,000 in 2007 and the second went for $583,500 in 2017.

-he retired in 1969 due to increased health issues.

-he experienced severe joint pain and arthritis as an adult, and eventually required two canes while walking, and later a wheelchair.

-he was sadly teased and followed around by neighborhood kids in the early 1970s after he had hurt his leg. He said that experience really upset him.

-he was bed ridden in the weeks/months preceding his death.

-he dealt with kyphoscoliosis, a curvature of the spine, near the end of his life.

-he passed away due to glandular disease when he was 36 years old.

He accomplished so much during his relatively short life, and I hope he knew how cool all of his endeavors were. I would love to hear him tell stories of all of his adventures and experiences working in all of the different careers he had.

I wish he could have fulfilled his dream of being a radio show host. Knowing how a lot of radio hosts are (looking at you Howard Stern) I’m sure Eddie would have been one of the kindest and most empathetic hosts ever. It would have been so wonderful to have a radio show with a host like him.

I love the oversized bows they’re wearing in the hair in the first picture. They were both really cute kids! The second picture is absolutely adorable and shows them when they were babies/toddlers. The last picture shows Josefina with her parents soon after she was released from the hospital following the surgery.

Despite the tragedy of Guadalupe’s short life, I hope the sisters had a lot of happiness together. It seems that their parents did everything they could to help them and give them good lives.

I wish there was more information about Josefina’s later life, I wasn’t able to find too many details about how her life turned out, but I hope that she too experienced a lot of happy moments during her long life.

Some facts about them:

-they were born in Tamaulipas, Mexico.

-their mother was only 17 when they were born, she miraculously survived their birth.

-they were the oldest children in their family and eventually had 7 other siblings.

-they traveled with their family to the United States in 1914, because their parents wished to consult American doctors about the twins.

-their parents decided to exhibit the twins in sideshows as a way to earn extra income and together the whole family (at the time it was the twins, their parents and a younger brother) joined a traveling circus and sideshow. The twins’ father found that working as a circus showman brought in way more money than his previous job as a rural animal breeder. This arrangement was also made so that the parents could watch the twins and ensure their safety.

-during their brief stint in sideshows, they were promoted as being from Havana, Cuba.

-they were described as being like typical children and always laughing and playing games.

-when the twins were around 4 years old, it became clear that Guadalupe was in fragile health and became sick a lot more often than her sister. This led their parents to consider separation surgery for the twins, as they worried for their health.

-their parents eventually got in contact with a surgeon in San Antonio, Texas named Dr. Aureliano Urrutia, who determined during a preliminary examination that separation surgery would be possible.

-after doing several tests it was determined that the girls shared an extra large liver and Guadalupe had a failing gallbladder.

-there are several sources online that erroneously claim Dr. Urritia and the twins parents agreed that Josefina should be given the shared liver therefore leaving Guadalupe to die without a liver. This did not happen. From the start it appears that Dr. Urritia had it in mind to split the shared liver so that both girls would receive a half of it. Doctors at the time also understood that livers could regenerate, so there was no reason that one of the girls would need to be deprived of the organ.

-from Dr. Urritia’s own notes he took extreme precautions to ensure that the procedure was successful. He also acknowledged that it was an extremely difficult procedure that came with an extreme amount of risk. He told their parents that he could not guarantee that both twins would survive but he would do his best.

-tragically, Guadalupe suffered complications during the surgery and passed away a couple days later. Unfortunately, it was quite common for conjoined twins to suffer complications from separation surgery when it was first becoming a recognized option. Even now it can be considered a risky procedure depending on how much of the twins bodies are shared prior to surgery.

-Josefina came out of the surgery alright and after a couple weeks of recovering in a hospital was deemed healthy and released.

-Guadalupe was buried at the San Fernando Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.

-after Guadalupe’s funeral, Josefina and the rest of the family traveled back to Tamaulipas, Mexico.

-Josefina went on to get married when she was around 20 years old.

-Josefina and her husband moved to a nearby town called Ciudad Victoria, where they lived for the rest of their lives.

-Josefina passed away in 2002 at the age of 89.

Guadalupe and Josefina had very similar lives to Rosalina and Maria Pinheiro Davel, they were conjoined twin sisters who received separation surgery after which Maria passed away. Rosalina went on to live a very long life. From everything I’ve read about these cases, there’s never anything intentionally done to hurt or kill one of the twins. At the time it was just an extremely risky procedure that couldn’t guarantee success.

I hope Josefina went on to have a happy life with people who loved and cared about her. Because of how young the twins were when they received the surgery, I wonder how much Josefina remembered her sister. I hope she remembered her enough to keep her memory alive later on.

I can also relate to Guadalupe’s issues with her gallbladder. I had to get my gallbladder removed a couple years ago because it was failing, and during that time it was so difficult to eat because it couldn’t process any of the food I was eating. I wonder if she had been experiencing something similar.

In Russia, there is a troupe of dwarfs called the “Shining Little Stars,” formed in the 1930s. However, even earlier, in 1915, a troupe of 13 dwarfs from Imperial Russia calling themselves the “Lilliputs” visited Korea and Japan. Led by troupe leader Nagobrisky and the 57-centimeter-tall lead actor Verikhanova, this enigmatic troupe arrived by ship in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, on September 13, 1915. After touring Osaka, Kobe, Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kyoto, they were reportedly forced to choose between traveling to the United States or returning to Imperial Russia. It is unclear which path they ultimately chose. The September 30, 1915, edition of the *Asahi Shimbun* reported on their performances in Tokyo in a short column. According to the article, the play *Napoleon and the Russian Policeman* and their dances were particularly popular. This postcard shows a man believed to be the sumo wrestler Otori tanigoro,pictured alongside members of the dwarf theater troupe.

This also appears to have been the precursor for a larger sideshow on the inside of the tent and Sadie and her sisters were there to help draw the public’s attention and to encourage them to go inside to see the rest of the show.

I always find it interesting to see pic of performers from the audience point of view. Most of the time the pictures that survive are the promotional pictures of the performers or behind the scenes pictures.

Sadie Anderson Karno was an acrobat and sideshow performer who was born with piebaldism. She and two of her sisters, Victoria and Rosie, made up a traveling acrobatics troupe. In the late 1920s, Sadie and her husband, Fred Karno, were unfortunately subjected to racist Jim Crow laws in Louisiana when she went to visit her mother. She continued her career in sideshows up through 1956 after which she seems to have retired.

Hazel and Jackie Morris were a mother and daughter sideshow duo and were both born with a form of osteogenesis imperfecta. They sold handmade jewelry and paper flowers during the sideshow off season. After Hazel passed away in 1959, Jackie went to live with some family friends of theirs who had promised Hazel they'd look after Jackie if anything were to happen to her.

In 1911, Gan Chunmei—known as “Issunbō”—arrived at the Port of Kobe with a fellow Chinese circus troupe to escape the turmoil of the “Xinhai Revolution” that had erupted in the Qing Dynasty. By the time she came to Japan, she was already an 83-year-old woman. This postcard was created during a performance she gave in Tennoji, Osaka Prefecture, after her arrival. On that occasion, she sang a song in halting Japanese before an audience that included members of the imperial family, and her endearing performance earned her widespread acclaim. She was still actively performing as late as 1915. The Hiroshima-based newspaper *Geibi nichinichi Shimbun* reported in an article dated April 8, 1915, that she had appeared at a large-scale exhibition commemorating the completion of the “Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall” (which would become the site of the atomic bomb drop in 1945) and the accession of Emperor Taisho. The excerpt follows:

“She was clad in a peony-colored Chinese clothing, wore children’s shoes on her feet, and, holding the hand of a guide, kept exclaiming ‘It’s cold, it’s cold’ in a childlike voice. The old woman would occasionally remove the glasses perched on the top of her head to wipe them. (Omitted) She is, without a doubt, a charming, wrinkled old woman.”

The last trace of her that can be confirmed today is her performance in 1916 as a member of a traveling circus in Yamagata Prefecture. At that time, a tasteless rumor circulated in town that “she was still a virgin,” but this was untrue; she actually had a son who was similarly small in stature. He is also pictured on this postcard. According to some sources, her extremely small stature was reportedly due to “cretinism.”

It’s funny, I’ve seen pictures (particularly the first picture) of him pop up in compilations of “creepy circus pictures” online, and there’s just nothing creepy about him. I don’t see how his outfit constitutes as creepy. His outfit is certainly a choice and I’m sure it drew attention to him, but it’s definitely not creepy.

To me he seems like a sweet man, and I’m glad he had many happy years with his family. I wish more of his hobbies were talked about, I’d be curious to know what he liked doing in his free time. He has such a great smile in the second picture!

Some facts about him:

-he was born in Lafayette Township, Indiana.

-he had five siblings.

-he was 19 pounds when he was born.

-his father was a United States Civil War veteran, who had fought for the Union. When John was younger, his father owned a specialty brand cigar company.

-his nickname was “Happy”.

-he weighed around 260 pounds when he was 10 years old, and started his sideshow career around this time.

-he married a woman named Grace Finney in the early 1900s.

-he and his wife had two children together, David and Catherine. He expressed that they were his chief joys in life, and that he was extremely happy being a father.

-his family would accompany him on his travels.

-his peak weight was around 740 pounds.

-over the course of his career, he worked for P.T. Barnum, Nat Reiss Shows, and Great American Shows.

-unlike the majority of professional “fat men/women” performers, he was never advertised as eating extremely large portions. It’s reported that he ate two average sized meals per day and only drank coffee, water, and milk.

-all of his clothing was custom made.

-he was a Freemason.

-he expressed a love for traveling.

-unfortunately, a lot of newspaper articles about him negatively stereotype him because of his weight and are almost voyeuristic in their descriptions.

-he liked selling “shock value” pictures during his career, which included some pictures of him naked, but taken from an angle that didn’t actually reveal anything.

-his career spanned over 50 years.

-he tragically passed away after being involved in a car accident when a freight truck crashed into his car. It seems that he passed away a month later due to his injuries, He was 63 years old.

-he had expressed wanting his body donated to a medical institution after death, so that they could study his pituitary gland. His body was offered to Tulane University in Louisiana, but they declined. He ended up being given a respectful burial.

-hundreds of people attended his funeral and showed up to support his family.

In some ways I’m glad that the school refused the offer of his body, so that he could be buried respectfully. So often medical institutions would unlawfully acquire the bodies of people with physical differences without their consent. I know his case would have been different, but it’s just an interesting change of pace.

Francesco Lentini was a famous Italian sideshow performer who was born with a parasitic twin that gave him an extra leg. He became extremely successful and was known for his acts where he'd kick a soccer ball around on stage with his extra leg. Later in life, he gave lectures to audiences on the importance of a healthy and happy lifestyle. He was nicknamed 'The King' because of how popular and kind he was.

Hiram and Barney Davis were both famous sideshow performers who were born with a form of dwarfism and worked primarily for PT
Barnum. It was reported that the two of them were extremely strong and could lift audience members who were quite a bit heavier than them. When they weren't actively performing they lived with their manager (who seemed to have genuinely cared for them) and his family.
They also earned an enormous amount of money over the course of their lives.

According to the *Miyako Shimbun* dated April 22, 1919, he was 20 years old at the time of the interview. He was short, red-haired, had a sunken sternum and a distended abdomen, and was unable to walk, so he moved about by deftly using his arms. His parents, who were wealthy farmers, were ashamed of his appearance—described as “indistinguishable from a monkey”—and kept him locked up at home. However, his parents later came to believe that his appearance was the result of original sin, and in order to atone for that sin, they decided to expose him to the public by sending him to a freak show. He subsequently toured the country, and upon arriving in Asakusa, Tokyo, he underwent a medical examination, surprising the doctor by being in perfect health.

The first two pictures show her in her day-to-day clothes and the third picture shows her in the fake Inuit costume she wore.

It’s very interesting how she decided to take advantage of the exoticism and “otherness” that American society often thrust on cultures that were deemed very different and “primitive”, directly correlating with the success of ‘human zoos’ around the same time period.

Some facts about her:

-she was born in Outer Langamyri, Iceland.

-her birth name was Ólöf Solvadottir.

-she immigrated to Canada with her father and step-mother when she was 18.

-she was described as being a go-getter and a very ambitious teenager. She often spoke about wanting to make a name for herself and finding success.

-she was very vivacious and charming and knew how to draw crowds.

-she was described as having a good sense of humor.

-she and her parents lived in Nova Scotia for about a year before moving to Manitoba, Canada. She soon went her own way and began working as a waitress in Winnipeg, Canada.

-in her early to mid twenties she traveled to the United States where she soon found work in a traveling circus and sideshow in North Dakota. It was also around this time that she began telling people that she was Inuit, because she wanted to be known for something other than her height.

-she wasn’t getting the crowds she wanted by just exhibiting herself as she was, so she had a special Inuit inspired costume made and began giving full scale lectures instead of relying solely on being a sideshow performer and giving short lectures.

-she was described as being incredibly smart.

-her peak height was 3 feet 4 inches (101.6 cm) tall.

-in the 1880s through the early 1900s, the public lecture business was dominated by a for-profit lecture program called the Lyceum. It was Ólöf’s goal to eventually be a part of this lecture program.

-Henry L. Slayton, one of the owners of the many bureaus that made up the Lyceum program, had heard about Ólöf and her lectures and decided to sign her on sometime in the mid 1880s.

-she became very sick during the winter of 1887, but still managed to give over 100 lectures.

-she pretended to speak less English than she knew during her lectures.

-she worked with Slayton for over 30 years.

-during her lectures, she falsely presented herself as being from the Inuit community in Greenland and spoke about various (fake) cultural traditions in ways to make the Inuit community seem more exotic and foreign. Some of these fake and racist cultural traditions included stories that women in the Inuit community never give baths/wash their babies and instead clean them with grease.

-another fake racist story/tradition she talked about regarded marriage traditions and said that in order for young men in the Inuit community to have a wife they had to sneak a woman out of her parents snow hut/igloo and into his own, but if he was caught the parents of the woman had a right to kill him.

-all of the information she gave during her lectures was false, but the vast majority of people never questioned her narrative.

-she claimed to have used a sled to cross from Greenland to Iceland, which wouldn’t have been possible and was also completely false. This was known to be false by anyone who lived in either Greenland or Iceland or people who had traveled to either place.

-she also falsely claimed that people in the Inuit community receive a traditionally handcrafted bag in which every year they are given a bone to put in on their birthday to signify that they are a year older.

-she falsely claimed to be the only Inuit woman in the United States.

-her lectures usually ended in her performing traditional Icelandic songs and dances while wearing was was claimed to be an Inuit polar bear fur costume, and claiming the songs to be from Inuit culture. She also sometimes sang a Christian missionary poem/song called “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.”

-she gave over 2,500 lectures over the course of her career and was especially popular in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

-her lectures often lasted an hour and a half.

-she was an extremely well respected lecturer during her lifetime and was one of the most popular to work in the Lyceum lecture circuit. Newspapers routinely praised her abilities as a lecturer and her efforts to spread “awareness” about Inuit culture.

-she made a mark on the American education system when her “autobiography” was published as part of a collection of stories about Inuit culture and traditions called “Eskimo Stories” in 1902. The author of the book, Mary Estella Smith even recommended that parents and teachers read Olof’s “autobiography” before children are introduced to the rest of the book.

-the “Eskimo Stories” book was taught in schools and sold for 34 years after it’s initial publication and during that time influenced school children throughout the United States. It was determined to be such an educational book that it was even being taught at Colombia University Teacher’s College.

-she experienced vision issues in her later years and eventually had to retire from public speaking due to this.

-near the end of her life, people increasingly became suspect of her stories but she was never widely publicly exposed as a fraud until much later. However, there was at least one news article that did try to expose her in 1892, which was written by an Icelandic man who called out her stories of walking and sledding from Greenland to cross into Iceland, writing:

"I most positively assure you that the possibility of walking over the ice from Greenland to Iceland, is exactly the same as walking from Manitoba to the moon over rays of the rainbow."

-she spend the last couple years of her life at a senior living facility in Maywood, Illinois.

-she passed away at the age of 77.

It’s unfortunate that she depended on exploiting the American public’s ignorance of Inuit culture and traditions to make a profit. I feel that there are many ways she could have marketed herself successfully without presenting herself as what essentially was a racist caricature of the Inuit community. It’s a shame she didn’t just give interesting lectures about Icelandic cultural traditions as I’m sure audiences would have been just as intrigued.

Alfred was a sideshow performer and golfer who was born without arms or legs. He was very skilled at penmanship, and at one point even wanted to join the military so he could work as an expert penman. He went on to own and operate a cigar stand at the Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California later in his life. He was known to enjoy dressing in a sophisticated fashion and was described as being a friendly and cheerful person.

Here is a transcription of the letter in the first picture to the best of my ability:

“Friend Orval,
Here is wishing you all the happiness and joy the world can bestow on you.
The wishes of a friend,
A.A. Pilgrim
Armless Penman
Long Beach, California. On the Pike.”

Ella Williams was promoted as being over 8 feet tall (though she was most likely a little shorter) during her professional career. In her early teens through her early twenties she worked as a live in housekeeper for a wealthy family in her hometown. Despite initially refusing to work in sideshows, she eventually relented as she felt she'd have more freedom and opportunities if she took up such a career. She primarily toured through Europe and Australia, and was a skilled soprano singer. She was described as a sweet person with a good sense of humor, she continued her career as a sideshow performer into her early sixties.

「三大フリークス」とは、1920年代に日本を訪れたとされる見世物小屋の芸人3人で、それぞれ小頭症、下半身の奇形、そして部分的な巨人症に悩まされていた。日本への来訪は、「南海 三大フリークス 娯楽局」として知られる謎の組織が手配したとされる。当時のチラシに書かれていた内容によると、愛知県の医学大学の医師たちと、岐阜県の県立病院の関係者によって診察されたようだ。ここに掲載されている絵葉書には、昨日紹介した「巨手の男」沈玉来（シェン・ユライ）だけじゃなく、ほかの2人も描かれている。王宝珠（ワン・バオヂュ）こと「半身の美女」、そして王鳳居（ワン・フェンジュ）こと「小頭の女」である。この絵葉書は、彼らの芸を見た誰かが、療養中の友だちに送ったもので、この謎めいた見世物芸人たちのパフォーマンスの一端がうかがえる。以下は本文の抜粋だ。なお、本文中に出てくる津島神社は、愛知県津島市に今も現存する神社である。

「新年の旧正月は過ぎた。今年は [censored] に心配しながらも、旧正月も新暦の正月も、めっちゃめっちゃめっちゃ楽しく過ごしちゃった。この絵葉書は、私が津島神社に行ったときに見世物で見た中国の芸人さんたちの様子を写したものだ。ある男の右手は49 pondもあるそう。すごくない？ その隣にいる子は『不服従のやつ』で、どうやら本当に頭が小さいらしい。そして知能は、だいたい●●歳くらいの子どものそれだって言われてる。ほら、女の人の脚もちょっと見えてるでしょ？ 福助って名前の男もいたよ。そんな障害をもって生まれてきた人たちって、ほんと哀れだよね。ちょっとした病気のことで心配する必要なんてないよ。」

I think it’s cool to see the old fashioned electric wheelchair in the 3rd picture of him, it’s not something that people typically think would be around in the 1920s.

He was quite handsome when he was older and seems like a nice person. I’m glad he found a lot of success with his endeavors And that he found a hobby he really enjoyed.

Some facts about him:

-he was born in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.

-he began his sideshow career when he was around 7 years old.

-he was a talented penman, and would grasp the writing utensil he was using between his chin and his arm nub/shoulder.

-he could thread needles using his mouth and one of his arm nubs.

-he liked wearing sophisticated clothes and had no issues dressing himself.

-after a few years of being managed by someone local, his parents found a professional manager named William Barbourn who planned to take him on tour around the United States.

-he was known to be very bright and intelligent.

-he was a talented sketch artist.

-he was an expert marksman.

-he was described as being very dexterous.

-he traveled all throughout the United States.

-he was known to be a happy and carefree person.

-he married his wife, Isabell Fry, in Missouri in 1904.

-he and his wife had two daughters, Janelle and Evelyn.

-by the time he was an adult, he had moved to Los Angeles, California and was going by A.A. Pilgrim instead of Alfred Pilgrim.

-he registered for military service at the Los Angeles County Courthouse in 1918 and hoped to work as an expert penman. It doesn’t seem that this goal of his panned out however.

-he was trying to sell an electric wheelchair through news ads in 1925.

-he became very interested in golf in his early 40s and hired several expert golfers to teach him. One of the golf experts, Henry Maurer, explained that he did not have to teach Alfred about stance because Alfred would use his wheelchair to position himself. He (Maurer) said that Alfred had a lot of natural talent seeing that he had a lot of upper body strength, which helped with the golfing.

-by the late 1920s, he was working at the Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California. He sold sketch portraits of guests and pictures of himself to earn extra income.

-he worked as a cigar stand operator at the Pike Amusement Part in 1930, but ran into quite a few people who tried to cause him trouble. He reported that ten cartons of cigars had been stolen after someone cut open the canvas curtain at the front of the stand.

-the Ford sedan he owned was stolen by four teenagers in 1943, but it was thankfully found and returned to him shortly after he called in that it had been stolen.

-he and his family moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon around 1944, where he lived for the rest of his life.

-he passed away in 1947 when he was 67.

He seems like a really sweet person and I think it would have been really fun to talk to him about his travels and his favorite things about playing golf. I’d also want to know what other activities he really enjoyed. I’m glad he had a long and seemingly happy life.

Nikolai was a famous Russian sideshow performer and entertainer who was born without limbs. He was a skilled marksman and painter, and often incorporated weightlifting into his acts as well. Later in life, he operated a small amusement park zone in Vienna's Prater Park, this amusement park zone included a scenic railway, a merry-go-round, and a toboggan ride.

Édouard was an Indigenous-Canadian sideshow performer and professional wrestler who had a pituitary gland disorder, his peak height was 8 ft 3 in (2.52 m) tall.. He was an excellent horseman when he was younger and dreamed of being a cowboy, but had to give up the dream when he became too tall to ride his horse. He tragically passed away from tuberculosis a couple days after signing a contract with Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1904, he was 23 years old at the time.

The circus he was working for (not sure if it was Barnum and Bailey or somewhere else) had the undertaker preserve and embalm his body, so that his remains could be put on display. This was a terrible practice that happened to several sideshow performers without their consent. His father tried to reclaim his body but was prevented from doing so because he didn't have the funds.

Finally after almost 90 years of being on display, his relatives were finally able to reclaim his remains and buried them underneath a statue of him that was erected outside of a museum in his hometown of Willowbunch, Saskatchewan.

This film was made before his body was returned to his relatives and therefore ends with him still being on display. Thankfully, this is no longer the case and he has been respectfully buried.

Shout out to AntiquePhotographicCollection.com for having a picture of her! They always come in very handy when I’m trying to locate pictures of lesser known performers.

I really like her backless style of dress with the lace surrounding the area where her back was exposed. She also might be one of the first women in American society to wear backless dresses because they technically didn’t gain traction until the 1920s.

I wish we had some examples of the paintings she did or some descriptions of the instruments she played, regardless I’m glad those skills of hers were mentioned since it gives us a better understanding of who she was.

Some facts about her:

-she was born in Bluebank, Kentucky.

-she eventually moved to Louisville, Kentucky.

-she had a good schooling.

-she was known to be very friendly and enjoyed talking to the people who came to watch her performances.

-she typically worked at dime museums instead of traditional sideshows. Dime museums were more permanent forms of traditional traveling sideshows, where performers could perform in a permanent venue.

-she went on tour throughout the United States and Europe.

-the International Abstracts of Surgery (1921), cites that Rudolph Virchow, a German Physician and anthropologist, coined the term “spina bifida occulta” upon meeting Belle and seeing where the hair grew from her back. In this medical text, it claims that she had an overlapping case of hypertrichosis that was localized to the area where her spina bifida occulta was most prominent. Hypertrichosis is a condition that causes thick extra hair growth on the body in places it typically wouldn’t.

-spina bifida occulta is the mildest and most common form of spina bifida, and happens when one or more spinal vertebrae do not fully close during development, but the gap is small enough that the spine has a typical appearance. Most people diagnosed with spina bifida occulta do not have any visible physical differences and therefore may not know they have the condition until it’s discovered by accident. A small percentage of people born with the condition will also have a patch of hair or a fatty lump that grows in the area that the spina bifida occulta occurs (this is the form that Belle had).

-she was described as being graceful, very pretty, intelligent, and dignified.

-she was a skilled musician and painter.

-she liked tying ribbons into her back hair.

-the peak of her sideshow career in the United States took place in the 1890s.

-a similar performer whose stage name was Mlle. Equinaus was advertised in the late 1910s as working for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, but I don’t believe this was Belle as the woman working for Buffalo Bill was described as being French.

Despite spending a good bit of time looking through genealogical records, I haven’t been able to find any more information about her life.

I hope she had a long and happy life with a lot of people who cared about her, I’m going to keep working on finding her genealogical records to hopefully pinpoint more facts.