WEBVTT - Sideshow 5: Whisked Away 0:00:00.880 --> 0:00:04.040 Hey, folks, Aaron here Before we begin, just a heads 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.640 up that today's episode contains the story of a traumatic birth. 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:19.599 Listener discretion is advised. Tinkering In his small shop just 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.720 off Broadway, Joseph Trust was busy concocting skin creams and 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.360 making promises. He was going to make women beautiful after all, 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:30.600 and himself rich in the process, and he would do 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:35.319 both of those things through manipulation and deceit. Joseph did 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:39.600 this by transforming himself into an alter ego Felix Gurad, 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:43.479 a chemist and doctor. But behind this sophisticated facade was 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.840 a difficult snake, oil salesman and general scoundrel about town. 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:51.040 To those who really knew him, and there weren't many, 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.240 he was less of a superman and Clark Kent and 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:58.040 more of a jackal and hide. One of his items, though, 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:01.160 was a canary in the coal mine or the Changing Times. 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:04.960 On August eighth of eighteen forty, he advertised a woman's 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:07.320 hair removal powder on the front page of the New 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:10.840 York Daily Herald. He wrote, we could never think of 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:13.839 falling in love with a woman whose fuzzy face bears 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:16.319 a resemblance to the back of a half picked goose 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:20.600 and wonder how anyone else ever could. But ladies removing 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:23.600 their body hair wasn't anything new, of course, and can 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:27.199 be traced back thousands of years to civilizations across the world. 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.720 Egyptian women sometimes removed their head and pubic hair, Elizabethan 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.880 women did away with their eyebrows. Ancient Romans used a 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:37.560 myriad of pumice stones and tweezers that were at a 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.880 lady's disposal. In America, though, female hair removal had yet 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:46.319 to be commodified and institutionalized. But then that all started 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:50.600 to change. In eighteen eighty, the King Camp Gillette Company 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.680 created the first modern razor. It appeared at a time 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.600 when the upper and middle class continued their efforts by 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:00.920 separating themselves from the working class. Personal hygieing was utilized, 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:05.200 arguably weaponized at times, to fight against what was considered 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.600 to be improper. By the early nineteen hundreds, to be 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:13.160 clean shaven was a basic expectation of good breeding, and 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:16.560 so here Joseph Trust was tapping into a veritable gold 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:20.679 mine of class anxieties uppercross Victorian Americans. You see, were 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:23.200 in the habit of clinging to any life raft that 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.480 would keep them floating above the masses. Codd advertising language 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.080 meant that women weren't directly asked to do something as 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:33.519 masculine as getting rid of their five o'clock shadow. Instead, 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.680 they were just smoothing their surfaces out, dissolving the rough bits, 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:42.560 and bleaching away their nonconformity. And of course, manufacturers knew 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:45.919 that many women, an established economic force by this time, 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:50.160 would be drawn in blade refills. New designs and fancy 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.000 creams kept them coming back for more. Charles Darwin too 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.280 weighed in on the body hair issue with a hot 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.320 take in his book The Descent of Man. He claimed 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.519 that humans have less fur than their ape ancestors because 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.480 less hairy mates are more sexually attractive. We evolve out 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:10.000 of hair. Following that logic, he believed that excessive hair 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:14.720 puts a person in closer proximity to a primitive state. Closer, 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:18.760 to use his words, to the savage, it seems that 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.679 women who wore their hair wild and untamed were being 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.760 boxed out of proper society. But if proper society wasn't 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:28.520 going to take them, there was another place that would 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.200 welcome them, for better or for worse, with open arms. 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:39.560 The stage I'm Aaron Manky. Welcome to the Side Show. 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.840 All we know for sure is that Julia Pastrana only 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.800 ever wanted to be loved. It's evident from the few 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:59.240 words that she left behind. Her complete life story has 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:02.520 been a treasure hunt for contemporary scholars as they've tried 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.920 to find clues scattered across the pages of history. But 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:10.000 sometimes the dead have their way of keeping secrets. Our 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:13.640 story begins on a quiet day in Sinaloa, Mexico. It's 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.080 a state that occupies a narrow stretch of land that 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.440 sits between the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain range to the 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.120 east and the Sea of Cortez to the west. The 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.240 terrain is carved with peaks and valleys and covered in 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:29.360 fertile soil. In eighteen thirty four, Sinalo was recently freed 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.880 from Spanish rule, but for the previous three hundred years, 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:37.000 the indigenous population had been squeezed by colonization and ravaged 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.280 by disease and war. It's here that we meet our 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:44.240 two hunters, or as some claim, they were herders, walking 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:47.720 a familiar worn path up a mountain, tracking their game. 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.360 Just up ahead sat a cave. It's rocky Mouth, daring 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.440 them to enter. So they did, and what they found 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:58.440 there startled them. They found a woman, haggard, half feral, 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.200 and captive. But she wasn't being held by just anyone. No, 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.080 she told them she was being imprisoned by a bear. 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:08.560 She pleaded for their help, but the hunters were ill prepared, 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.560 so they told her that they would come back with assistance. 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:14.880 Just as they turned to leave, though they were thwarted, 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.840 the bear had come home. The surprise left them with 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.680 no choice. They had to act fast, but then they 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:24.280 saw something else. The bear was holding a cub in 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:27.840 his arms. Legend tells us that the cub was this 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.960 woman's daughter, the product of this inner species hostage situation, 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:34.800 and the baby was nothing like the hunters had ever 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:38.760 seen before. Black fur covered her face and body. Although 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.000 she cried and cooed like any other human infant, it 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:46.359 seemed that she was half person and half beast. The 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.359 infant Julia, was taken from her mother and brought to 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.479 the city, violently altering her life path and the woman 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.560 she would become. You see, women are often treated as 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:58.279 blank slates for the stories of men, and the tale 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.479 of Julia Pastrana would be no print for her. This 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.520 was just the beginning. What we do know now is 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:09.040 that she was born with two congenital conditions, hypertrichosis terminalis, 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.640 which caused dark hair to grow all over her body, 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:16.960 and gingerble hyperplasia, which caused overgrown gums. Some scholars believe 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:18.560 that she could have been a member of the a 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.239 Coxy people. Promotional materials from later in her life would 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.400 claim that she was a member of a root digger tribe, 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.800 a derogatory term given to a number of culturally separate 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:32.280 and distinct communities in the region. Julia came to live 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:35.760 in the home of Pedro Sanchez, one of Sinaloa's governors 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:39.200 and a man with a penchant for curiosities. There she 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:41.919 became a servant and also was said to have taken 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:44.960 on the role of liven entertainer. We know that she 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.920 left his home in eighteen fifty four, although the details 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.240 of that exit are hazy, but it said that she 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:54.440 eventually came into contact with three men, Miguel Ritez, Francisco 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:59.240 sepel Veda, and most famous of all, Theodore Lent. We 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.000 don't know the act details of their arrangements or how 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.200 she came under their employ Newspapers tell us that in 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.000 the company of her male comrades, she boarded the S 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.280 s Or Above and left Vera Cruz for New Orleans. 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:15.320 She arrived in the Ports city on October eighteen fifty four, 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:18.679 took a steamership up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:21.640 and then finally went on to New York City. And 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.600 it's here that we meet her again, reincarnated as someone new. 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:30.040 According to promotional posters, she had become known as the 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:34.600 Marvel Hybrid and the Bear Woman. She debuted at Gothic 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:37.520 Hall on Broadway, a tiny form in a red dress, 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:41.800 dancing to a tinkling piano. According to the New York Tribune, 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.800 the eyes of this Lucius Natura beam with intelligence, while 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:51.920 its jaws, jagged, fangs, and ears are terrifically hideous. Nearly 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.320 its whole frame is coated in long, glossy hair. Its 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:59.760 voice is harmonious, for this semi human being is perfectly 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:04.760 stile and speaks the Spanish language. The papers compared her 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:08.240 arrival to the spectacle of Joyce Heth and claimed that 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:13.160 Barnum himself was being well out. Barnumed Theodore, though, decided 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:15.680 that he would get the upper hand over all of them. 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:19.119 He would marry Julia in secrets and become her legal 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:23.320 guardian with all the rights that afforded him and Mary. 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:27.200 They did on November nine of eighteen fifty. Her other 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.200 managers were furious, but Julia stood by and made it 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.000 clear that it was her choice. She wouldn't give up 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:35.920 her husband for anyone, she said. But as we know, 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:39.200 the idea of choice in these situations is often an 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.640 attempt to mitigate harm or side with the lesser of evils. 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.400 It has been reported that Julia truly loved Theodore and 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:48.880 felt that he saw her for who she truly was, 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:52.360 but some scholars have speculated that he also saw dollar 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.160 signs when he looked at Julia and only wanted to 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:58.280 possess her for his own gain. And this is how 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:02.360 things went. For a good long while. Theodore kept recreating Julia, 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:07.480 further embellishing her act with songs and dances and costume changes, 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.400 and in all of it, her advertisements teased that she 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.959 was nothing more than a domesticated beast. One man Dr 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:18.959 Alexander B. Mott wrote a letter of certification for Julia, 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.760 claiming that she was a hybrid of a human and 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:26.200 an orangutan. He called her a mysterious animal and mused 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:30.559 over her missing tail. So while her contemporary white bearded 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:35.040 ladies were marketed as beacons of Victorian propriety beautiful oddities 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.960 if you will, her suit women of color were often 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:41.400 billed as freaks of nature. Not only was her womanhood 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.400 in question, but her very humanity. And it was upon 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:48.280 this platform that she toured all over North America, her 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:53.000 story and body being exploited at every turn. Whereas the 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:57.080 paper's new Barnum dealt in humbuggery and hoax, they believed 0:09:57.080 --> 0:09:59.880 that Julia was the bona fide real deal. It's a 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.200 that her audiences were largely content with, believing that she 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.440 was something less than human, and as they looked at 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.960 all the cash that flowed in, Theodore couldn't have been 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:22.760 more pleased. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about Julia's looks, 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:25.880 so much so that she was shut down for obscenity. 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:29.320 On November five, eighteen fifty seven, she took the stage 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.520 as the star in a play in Berlin, but unbeknownst 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:35.480 to her and Theodore Lent, spies from the German police 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.160 were in the audience, and unlike other places Julia had 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.600 traveled to, German authorities were on guard against displays that 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:46.840 they considered to be tasteless, degrading monster shows. The police 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:51.319 called her appearance immoral and quite literally feared for their children. 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:56.000 Obstetricians in Germany weighed in, worried that pregnant women would 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.000 miscarry at the sight of her. They also tossed around 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.240 threats of maternal impression, the idea that those in the 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:06.120 family way were infinitely susceptible to any kind of upset, 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:09.120 and that those anxieties would manifest in the body of 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.200 the child. The authorities were afraid that more babies would 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:16.240 be born looking like Julia. This, of course, caused her 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:18.880 great pain. It was when people saw her as a 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:23.400 full person that she felt truly animated, truly alive and actualized, 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:26.640 But so often this wasn't the case. A friend once 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:29.320 noted that there was always a light fog of sadness 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.319 that hung over her, resigned to a life and narrative 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.160 that kept her humanity locked away in the shadows. After 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:39.640 the backlash in the press, Theodore reimagined the performance as 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:42.880 a set of short song and dance numbers, A burlesque 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.360 act and private meetings, all for a fee. Of course, 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.880 Julia attracted the attention of hermann Otto, a sympathetic German 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:54.079 circus showman. He wrote that for those who knew her, 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.680 she was warm, thoughtful, and spiritually gifted, with a sensitive 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:00.880 heart and mind. It affected her very deeply in her heart, 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.160 having to stand beside people instead of with them, and 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.000 to be shown as a freak for money, not sharing 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:10.000 any of the everyday joys in a home filled with love. 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:13.640 But then something happened that held the potential to change 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.000 all of that. In eighteen fifty nine, she and Theodore 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.440 were in Moscow. Their tour was keeping them busy in afloat, 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.760 but she was starting to feel strangely different. It wouldn't 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:28.160 be long before she realized why she was pregnant. Now, 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:30.400 instead of Julia being told that she was a risk 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.600 to expect it mother's, she was becoming one. Obstetricians grew 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:38.120 concerned with this news. They feared that her particularly narrow 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.440 pelvis would prove to be dangerous. At best, birth is 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.600 a physically traumatic experience. At its worst, it can be deadly. 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.040 Her labor began on March eighteen sixty and she was 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.160 attended to buy a handful of doctors. What we do 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:55.680 know is that the doctors use forceps to help the 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.280 baby out. We can imagine that they were clamped to 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.880 his skull or to his shoulders, crushing him, and around 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.840 four in the afternoon he was born, and as the 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:07.880 doctors held him for the first time, they were horrified. 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.720 The baby's body was covered in thick black hair, just 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:16.520 like his mother. Tragically, the baby, unnamed in the history books, 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:20.559 died thirty five hours later, and Julia would fare no better. 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:24.520 First came the chills, and then the shaking. An intense 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.960 pain in her abdomen was followed by unbearable swelling and 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.200 finally a fever. It said that a crowd of spectators 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:35.320 gathered around Julia's deathbed. If Theodore sold tickets, we don't know, 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:37.600 but could we put it past him. It said that 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:40.720 her last words were, I die happy. I know I 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:45.200 have been loved for myself. Julia followed her baby into 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:49.800 death on March eighteen sixty. According to the Romantics, she 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.160 died of a broken heart. This, of course, is nonsense. 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:56.440 A broken heart theory was just yet another story about 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.840 her that became repeated just another tale that was tacked 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:03.840 on to her body's canvas. In the end, doctors listed 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:06.920 her official cause of death as inflammation of the uterine 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.559 membrane and the lining of the abdominal cavity. It wasn't 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.120 a beautiful death in which Julia slipped away gracefully. It 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:19.200 was brutal. Theodore, however, was not one to mourn. Instead, 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:27.120 he had an idea. Death is usually the end for 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:30.240 most of us, but the longest stretch of Julia's career 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:35.400 was just beginning. The unscrupulous Theodore Lentz, committed to never 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:38.200 losing a dime, sold the bodies of his wife and 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:42.120 child to a professor at Moscow University. Whether they commanded 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:44.280 a high price or not depends on how you determine 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.400 their value, but they lined his wallet with the equivalent 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.320 of about eighty four thousand dollars in today's currency. In 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.400 the lab, Julia and her son's body were subjected to 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.320 a top secret cocktail of embalming liquids. It was reported 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.000 that since the child's body was quite fresh, it was 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.880 easy to mummify. Julia, on the other hand, proved to 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:07.640 be more difficult. She had to be injected several times 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:10.240 over a long period in order to mask the smell 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:14.040 of decay. All the while, the professor took photographs and notes, 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.840 recording diligently as the human husks on his table changed 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.600 color and shape. After six months of work, it was 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.880 time for the postmortem debut at the University of Moscow's 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:30.000 Anatomy Museum. In life, just as in death, Julia Pastrana 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:34.440 became a sensation. The embalming process also had a curious 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.840 side effect. It seemed that her dissection had finally proven 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.640 her humanity. The papers were surprised to report that, after 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:46.240 a grueling internal examination, her body was indeed human. She 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:50.160 wasn't an ape after all. The widower, Theodore length, though, 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.000 stuck around it, said that he liked the mummies so 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.840 much and was so impressed by that Moscow University professor's 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:59.360 work that he bought back the bodies of his wife 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.440 and son for nearly twice what he'd sold them. And 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.680 like most showmen of that age, Theodore already had his 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.920 next destination in mind, Piccadilly Circus in London, home to 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:14.120 curious wonders from all over the world. In the early 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.000 months of eighteen sixty two, he set up shop, he 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.200 dressed his dead bride in a Russian dancing dress she 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.280 had made herself, and his son in a sailor suit. 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:26.240 Two years later, in eighteen sixty four, the bodies of 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.920 Julia and her baby were toured through Sweden. Meanwhile, Theodore 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:33.160 was off searching for another break, and in Bohemia he 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.800 found it well her He had learned about Marie Bartel, 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.080 another bearded woman. It has said that her family kept 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.840 her locked away, but somehow Theodore managed to ingratiate himself 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.720 with her family enough to seek her hand in marriage. 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:51.400 Her father obliged, but made Theodore promise that he wouldn't 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.200 show her for money, but unfortunately this was before Google 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:59.080 and background checks. Just a few days in Theodore stole 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:02.040 her shaving kits. He made grand plans to take her 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:05.120 through Europe and gave her a new name to match them, 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:09.840 Zenora Pastrana. Yes, Theodore had decided to style her as 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:13.560 Julia's long lost sister, and for a decade they toured 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:17.920 with Europe's best circuses and entertained royals. By the eighteen eighties, 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:20.800 interest in their act began to wane, so they decided 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.360 to put some roots down and open a wax museum 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.560 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Julia and her baby, though, had 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.840 been left behind on loan to a Viennese museum, with 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:34.560 Theodore being paid for the privilege. But the quiet, settled 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.760 life wouldn't last long for Theodore and his second wife. 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:40.439 It said that he began to lose his marbles and 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.600 was eventually installed in a Russian insane asylum, where he 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.679 would never be heard from again. It might sound like 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.600 a satisfying ending, but our story doesn't stop there. Free 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:54.280 from his gravitational pull, Marie now struck out on her own, 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.080 with the bodies of Julia and her baby in tow, 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:00.920 but the threesome would never be a permanent sideshow fixture. 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.600 The following year, Marie married a much younger man and 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.920 left show business, and when she did, she passed her 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:13.040 mummified partners onto a German showman. By the late eighteen nineties, 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.480 the pair was not longer of much interest to the 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.960 medical or scientific communities. We lose track of the two 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.680 for a while until they surface at an amusement park 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:25.280 in Oslo. Their home. There wasn't an anatomy museum, but 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:29.719 a chamber of horrors displayed alongside various body parts and 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.760 bottled sea monsters. Horrific I know, and this would be 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.960 Julia and Baby's story. For the intervening decades. They rotated 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:42.840 in and out of storage units, appearing at various installations 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.600 before being sent off to warehouses. Collectors came knocking over 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:51.080 the years, offering top dollar for the remains. Julia went 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.280 on one final tour, but it wouldn't last long. While 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.400 visiting a town in Sweden, local authorities used a law 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.440 from eighteen seventy five to threaten confess ation of the 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:04.040 mummies if they were put on display. After that, she 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:06.520 was sent to the winter headquarters of a fair ground 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.600 in Oslo, and it's there that she fell to pieces. 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.600 Vandals tore her dress, ripped her child's arm off, and 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.240 broke her jaw. It seems that Julia and her child 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.440 were treated in death exactly as she had been in life, 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.760 Displayed for entertainment, handled like a possession, and decorated with 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:27.919 whatever narrative sold the most tickets, And when they no 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.440 longer serve their purpose, they were locked away and left 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:36.919 a rot. Human beings seen as nothing more and sideshow prompts. 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:47.439 It's always alarming when you find body parts at the 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:51.960 town dump. It was nine in the suburbs of Oslo, Norway, 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.560 and some children who were playing in a garbage heap 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.600 found a severed, mummified arm. The owner wasn't immediately clear, 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.240 but she was soon found. Julia Pastrana stood quietly in 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:07.280 an abandoned caravan nearby, missing life and limb. Time hadn't 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.000 been kind to her, but neither had the world. She 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.280 was quite literally torn apart, stuffing exposed, and suittures popped. 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.320 Some of her skin and clothing were missing, and to 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:21.960 further compound the cruelty, so was her baby. She would 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:24.919 resurface ten years later in a janitor's closet in the 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:28.719 basement of the Forensic Institute of Oslo. It's clear that 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:30.880 no one still quite knew what to do with her, 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.080 and today we have to wonder what took so long 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:37.560 to figure it out. But by the ninety nineties, rumbles 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:42.120 could be heard through the hallowed academic halls of Oslo. Scholars, historians, 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:46.040 and activists began questioning the university's decision to keep her body, 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:48.879 and across the Pond in New York, a play was 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.880 being produced about her life. Its story shocked audiences rather 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:55.639 than entertained them, and it drummed up interest in a 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.560 petition to the Mexican embassy in Oslo to send Julia home. 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:04.199 But as was the case with Sarki Bartman's repatriation, Julia 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:07.640 and her supporters faced a long difficult battle with high 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:11.199 minded institutes that deemed themselves worthy to hold her captive 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:14.760 in the name of science. This claim was dubious at best, 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:19.879 and finally the institution relented in February of two thousand thirteen. 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:22.920 She was dressed in a traditional hupil garment and laid 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.520 in a coffin. The rods and bolts that were used 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.919 for exhibiting her body and death were removed and placed 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:31.480 at her feet, and with that she was flown home 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:34.760 to Sinaloa and greeted with the welcome fit for royalty. 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.199 There she would finally rest in a tomb, dressed in 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:41.640 a riot of flowers from well wishers from across the globe. 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:45.119 It had taken a century and a half, but the 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:49.160 world had finally seen her and loved her or who 0:21:49.240 --> 0:22:00.959 she truly was. Everyone wants to be loved, but for 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.960 the right reasons, of course, So if there's someone out 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:06.920 there who you truly appreciate, if they bring a brightness 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:09.600 to your life, maybe some joy, or they just make 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:12.800 being here a little easier. Maybe now is a good 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:15.680 time to let them know. But we're not quite done 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:18.080 here just yet. And if you stick around through this 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.399 brief sponsor break, Robin will tell us one more tale 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:23.840 from the side show and help us see what happens 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:40.360 when the drama leaves the stage and heads to the courtroom. 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:44.119 On July two, eighty three, a crowd appeared at the 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:47.560 Halls of Justice in Manhattan, a formidable complex that housed 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:50.200 both the court and a detention center for New York City. 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:53.840 Curious onlookers had heard about one of the cases on 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:56.399 the docket that day, and they were looking for a 0:22:56.440 --> 0:23:00.679 free show. William Char, you see, had a bone to 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:04.800 pick with P. T. Barnum. He had visited Barnum's American 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:08.680 Museum and was angry about it. Standing before the Justice, 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:13.240 Char recounted his experience from the previous day. After paying 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.760 his quarter for admission, he entered the museum of the 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:20.960 thousands of curiosities on display awaiting visitors. Char was there 0:23:21.000 --> 0:23:25.280 to see a brand new feature, Madame Josephine Clofolia build 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:29.359 as the bearded Lady. Madame Clofolio was a hit in 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:32.639 part due to who she was behind the beard. She 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:35.480 was a fair skinned woman of Swiss descent, born to 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:39.119 a class, which gave her access to many refined social circles. 0:23:40.880 --> 0:23:44.520 Mid nineteenth century America was a time of high gender anxiety. 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:48.040 Gender was conceived as a strict binary You were either 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.399 male or female. You performed one or the other, but 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:56.000 never neither, and certainly not both. But here she was 0:23:56.200 --> 0:24:00.879 a strikingly beautiful woman, just you know, with a beard. 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:05.200 When Char was faced with this performance, he was incredulous. 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:09.320 He quickly deemed Madam Clofolia to be an impostor. She 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:13.320 had to be a man in disguise. Char, standing amongst 0:24:13.400 --> 0:24:17.960 innumerable humbugs, decided that this gaff had gone too far. 0:24:18.800 --> 0:24:22.400 He believed he had been cheated, so he took Barnum 0:24:22.440 --> 0:24:27.000 and Clofulia to court, and there, at the place where 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:31.159 criminals and corruption rubbed elbows, Josephine Clofolia and her lovely 0:24:31.240 --> 0:24:37.600 Victorian gown stood listening to a stranger challenging her womanhood character. 0:24:37.640 --> 0:24:42.840 Witnesses were called upon to certified Josephine's legitimacy fortune Clofolia, 0:24:43.040 --> 0:24:45.960 her husband of three years, brought up the two children 0:24:46.040 --> 0:24:49.240 she had birthed, one of whom was still alive. Her 0:24:49.280 --> 0:24:54.840 own father backed him up. Barnum spoke his piece too. 0:24:55.520 --> 0:24:57.840 He claimed that he had paid her a large sum 0:24:57.920 --> 0:25:01.080