WILLIE & GEORGE MUSE – The Men From Mars

The Muse brothers had an incredible career. The story of the two black albino brothers from Roanoke, Virginia is unique even in the bizarre world of sideshow. They were initially exploited and then later hailed for their unintentional role in civil rights.
Born in the 1890’s the pair were scouted by sideshow agents and kidnapped in 1899 by bounty hunters working in the employ of an unknown sideshow promoter. Black albinos, being extremely rare, would have been an extremely lucrative attraction. They were falsely told that their mother was dead, and that they would never be returning home.
The brothers began to tour. To accentuate their already unusual appearance, their handler had the brothers grow out their hair into long white dreadlocks. In 1922 showman Al G. Barnes began showcasing the brothers in his circus as White Ecuadorian cannibals Eko and Iko. When that gimmick failed to attract crowds the brothers were rechristened the ‘Sheep-Headed Men’ and later, in 1923, the ‘Ambassadors from Mars’.
As the ‘Men from Mars’ the two traveled extensively with the Barnes circus. Unfortunately, while they were being fed, housed and trained in playing the mandolin, they were not being paid.
In the mid 1920’s the Muse brothers toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In 1927, while visiting their hometown, their mother finally tracked them down. She fought to free her sons, some 20 years after their disappearance. She threatened to sue and the Muse brothers were freed.
The brothers filed a lawsuit for the wages they earned but were never paid. They initially demanded a lump-sum payment of 100,000. However, as time passed the Muse brothers missed the crowds, the attention and the opportunities sideshow provided. Their lawyer got them a smaller lump-sum payment and a substantial contract with a flat monthly wage. The pair returned to show business in 1928.
During their first season back they played Madison Square Garden and drew over 10,000 spectators during each of their performances. They made spectacular money as their new contract allowed them to sell their own merchandise and keep all the profits for themselves. In the 1930’s they toured Europe, Asia and Australia. They performed for royals and dignitaries including the Queen of England. In 1937 they returned to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for several years and finally ended their career in 1961 with the Clyde Beatty Circus.
The brothers returned to their hometown and lived together in a house they originally purchased for their mother. Neither brother married, though they were well known for their many extravagant courtships.
George Muse died in 1971 and many expected Willie to quickly follow his brother. Those people were wrong as Willie continued to play his mandolin and enjoy the company friends and family until his death on Good Friday of 2001.
He was 108 years old.

FEDOR JEFTICHEIVE – Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy

In 1873, Europe became acquainted with a wolf man. A 55 year old Russian man named Adrian Jefticheiev, covered in hair, began to appear at various exhibitions. He was accompanied by his equally hairy illegitimate son. The ‘Wild Man from the Kostroma Forest’ was billed as being the product of an affair between a bear and a Russian peasant woman. In reality he was a man afflicted with hypertrichosis very much like his predecessor Petrus Gonzales. However, while Gonzales was a gentle civilized soul trapped within an animalistic body Adrian lived up to his wild appearance. Early in his life, Adrian fled his village and became something of a forest hermit. His taste for alcohol spiraled out of control and he was, by all accounts, a cruel drunk. Many visitors to his exhibition were disgusted by his unkempt and debauched appearance. His appearance was in stark contrast to that of his toddler son, Fedor. The young boy, his features not yet obscured by a thick growth of hair, charmed audiences with his impish attitude and inquisitive nature. He relished speaking to audiences in their native languages.
As quickly as they appeared, the pair disappeared. Nearly a decade later a young man billed as Theodore Petroff appeared and began a long career in sideshow.European audiences were told that hunters found young Theodore in the wild, captured him, taught him to be civilized and set him on to tour the world. In reality he was Fedor Jefticheive. His father, after returning from his 1873 European tour, promptly drank himself to death with his earnings.
In 1884 the wolf boy met one of P. T. Barnum’s many talent agents during a tour of Liverpool. He saw great profit in joining Barnum in America and did so that same year. It was there that he was given the name Jo-Jo ‘The Dog-Faced Boy’. During his time with Barnum he was billed as ‘The most prodigious paragon of all prodigies secured by P. T. Barnum in over 50 years’. At his first public unveiling he was met with audible gasps from the assembled media. His animalistic looks contrasted the neatly pressed and ornate Russian cavalry uniform he wore. Barnum fielded questions and, after members of the press were affirmed that Jo-Jo did not bite, they lined up and took turns tugging on his facial hair.
At times Jo-Jo lived up to his namesake by growling and snapping and members of the audience. A bite from Jo-Jo would have been nothing serious as his form of hypertrichosis robbed him of all but two teeth. At other times he was quiet and dignified. He was known to be a gentle and generous man. He was described by the New York Herald as being as playful as a puppy with his audiences and ‘the most absorbingly interesting curiosity to ever reach these shores’. He was an avid reader and spoke as many as five languages. Following his stint with Barnum he continued to tour the world. He briefly returned to the United States to join up with the Barnum and Bailey’s Circus.
In 1904, during a tour of Greece, Jo-Jo contracted pneumonia. He died shortly thereafter at the age of 35 with no heirs or romances of note. However, when new of his passing reached the United States he was mourned by sideshow performers and enthusiast everywhere.

image: Jo-Jo during his time with Barnum and Bailey.

THE GREAT WALDO – The Regurgitating Geek

Did you know that the word ‘geek’ has its historic foundation in sideshow? Historically, a geek was a sideshow performer who ate bizarre or unexpected things. Waldo’s talent was unique, certainly unique enough to be called ‘Great’.
Waldo was not the typical geek as he didn’t really eat the items he swallowed. Instead he would swallow and regurgitate the items, including live animals. In the image above, Waldo is performing his signature regurgitation, swallowing a white mouse and then bringing it back up alive and unharmed after a few moments. In the middle image, Waldo is puffing on a cigarette and smiling at your disgust before regurgitating the mouse. What a showman! Waldo’s act was very real, he did swallow the rodent and his act was no illusion.
Waldo was born in 1920 in Germany and as a child he loved the circus and its sideshow. He would visit each time the circus was in town and he marveled at the human marvels he saw there. He yearned to join them but he was, unfortunately, born completely average. Not content to live his live as a regular man, he trained his stomach muscles to regurgitate items he swallowed. At first the objects were inanimate: pocket change, watches, rings and keys. In the late 1930’s he began to swallow and regurgitate living animals. He began with fish, moved on to frogs, then mice and eventually he was able to swallow rats.
In 1938, when Hitler invaded Austria, the Jewish Waldo fled to Switzerland. While performing in a nightclub there he was discovered by an American sideshow talent agent and quickly brought to the United States.
Waldo always dressed as a distinguished gentleman. This appearance was in direct contrast to the look of geeks previous. The majority of those geeks were usually dressed as savages and their acts consisted of tearing live animals apart with their teeth. Waldo was elegant and gentle. When swallowing fish and frogs he would first swallow copious amounts of water so the animals would have a water to swim in.
His muscular control was so absolute that Waldo was able to swallow several different colored balls and regurgitate them in whichever sequence the audience demanded. He was able to swallow a locked padlock, then the key, and unlock the padlock. When a member of the audience doubted the authenticity of his act he would invite them onstage, swallow their watch and invite them to listen to the ticking emanating from his belly.
During his career The Great Waldo worked many shows including Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey as well as Hubert’s museum in New York. The legendary Anatomical Wonder, Melvin Burkhart, once called Waldo’s act the ‘most amazing’ act he had ever seen.
Unfortunately his unusual talent made finding romance a nearly impossible task. Waldo committed suicide, by gassing himself, in his home after a particular infatuation went sour and unfulfilled.
Little actual film of Waldo exists today and all is currently under copyrite. There have been few acts like Waldo’s. His modern equivalent is Stevie ‘The Regurgitator’ Starr. Starr recently did away with his trademark sequenced costuming and adopted attire more in tune to that worn by The Great Waldo, perhaps as a tribute to Waldo. Mr. Starr’s act consists mostly of inanimate objects; however his finale has always included a live goldfish.

THE FEEJEE MERMAID – The Famous Fake

 The history of The Feejee Mermaid was, and continues to be, one of the most unique and enduring of all sideshow frauds.
As the picture above illustrates, The Feejee (Fiji) Mermaid did not represent the popular ideal of the mermaid of folklore. Far from being a beautiful fish maiden, The Feejee Mermaid was essentially a disgusting abomination of taxidermy often described as a ‘salmon with sagging breasts’. The face, while moderately human in appearance, carried an indescribable look of horror that terrified many an observer.
The great P. T. Barnum is often credited as being the originator of The Feejee (Fiji) mermaid. The creature was not entirely his creation but he was responsible for popularizing the sapien-fish during the crux of Darwinism.
The first man to exhibit the mermaid was an American sea captain named Samuel Barret Eades. The mermaid was first brought to his attention by a merchant in the Dutch West Indies territory and it was purported to have be caught off the coast of Japan. The merchant demanded such a high price for his bizarre discovery that Captain Eades actually sold his ship to raise the funds needed to purchase it.
His venture to exhibit the mermaid never really got off the ground. First, after booking passage back to England with his purchase in tow, the mermaid was confiscated by customs. When it was returned to him he ran several ads in local papers purporting his mermaid as the most important discovery ever made. The ads drew a great deal of attention, including the attention of the man who purchased his ship and financed the procurement of the mermaid. The buyer was dissatisfied with the vessel he bought from Eades and he sued for the return of his money. Eades was, of course, completely broke at this time. To add insult, the ads also drew the attention of naturalists who determined that the mermaid was a fraud.
The ‘human’ portion of the mermaid was determined to be the body of an orangutan and the bottom belonged to a large salmon. While the taxidermy appeared to be quite gruesome, it was actually masterfully done and no seams were visible to the naked eye.
Despite this revelation, Eades continued to show the creature as real. However, the public was not very interested. His exhibit ran from 1823 to 1825 before closing and Eades spent the rest of his life trying to pay of his large debt and legal fees.
In 1842 Moses Kimball, curator of the Boston Museum, was contacted by an unknown Englishman who had inherited an unusual item from his father. When Kimball saw the specimen he bought it for a very small sum. He then contacted his good friend P. T. Barnum.
Barnum leased the creature, the Eades Mermaid, from Kimball and went into publicity mode.
Barnum named the creature The Feejee Mermaid and created a story involving its capture in the Fiji Islands. The reason for the spelling of Feejee is unknown, but is assumed to be due to a misprint in a various newspaper articles. In what would be a very famous publicity stunt, Barnum visited every newspaper in the area and presented each with a woodcut of a beautiful and bare-breasted mermaid. He told each paper that the image was exclusive and that it depicted his mermaid discovery. Each paper, believing that they had an exclusive story ran the image and article on the same day. Thus, all of New York was a buzz with news of the discovery, a discovery so legitimate that every paper in the city found it necessary to make mention of it.
When the exhibit opened, to huge crowds, the mermaid was accompanied by Dr. J. Griffin a naturalist and member of the British Lyceum of Natural History. Dr. Griffin proclaimed the mermaid to be authentic. In reality, Dr. Griffin was really a man named Levi Lyman and he was in the employ of Barnum. There was no such society as the British Lyceum of Natural History. Lyman was not even English.
Despite being a huge initial success, the novelty of the exhibition quickly wore of and New Yorkers became indifferent to the mermaid exhibition. Barnum eventually moved on to other fantastic displays. For the next twenty years the mermaid split its time between Barnum’s museum in New York and Kimball’s museum in Boston. It did have one unsuccessful tour of the south and one tour or London which also proved uneventful.
Today, The Feejee Mermaid is lost. No one is quite sure as to its whereabouts. Its last documented location was in Kimball’s museum in 1859. Common theory supposes that the mermaid was destroyed when Barnum’s museum burned down in 1865 or when Kimball’s did the same in 1880. There are several sideshows and private collectors claiming possession of the original mermaid most notably Canada’s Carnival Diablo’s World of Wonders Freakshow and Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
The term ‘Feejee Mermaid’ now essentially refers to any gaffed mermaid, of which there are now many.

GEORGE LIPPERT – Three Legs, Two Hearts

George Lippert was born in Germany in 1844. In addition to being born with three legs, he was also born with two functioning hearts although that condition was unknown until is autopsy in 1906.
His third leg was fully formed and even possessed an extra toe, giving Lippert a total of sixteen. The leg was not functional. Lippert claimed that his leg had been fully functional until it sustained a fracture. Whether this is a fact or not remains a mystery, but during his career the leg hung motionless.
Early in his career George was billed as the ‘only Three Legged Man on Earth’ and he proved to be quite an attraction. Lippert even worked an exhibit with P. T. Barnum. However evidence indicates that he may not have been the easiest person to do business with. No photographs exist of George Lippert. The pitch card above shows only a painting of Lippert and remains the only pitch card ever used by Lippert. Considering that his career spanned decades and coincided with a great boom in sideshow photography, this is highly unusual and raises several red flags.
Furthermore, when another three legged man appeared in 1898, Lippert was quickly pushed aside and the new prodigy rose to great fame. The Three Legged Man was replaced. By 1899 Lippert was penniless and homeless. He eventually found a benefactor in a florist named Mary Riggs and Lippert cohabitated with Riggs in Salem, Oregon for seven years.
In the summer of 1906 George Lippert died of tuberculosis at the age 62. The autopsy revealed his two hearts and also showed that one heart died two to three weeks before his eventual death. Doctors declared that if Lippert had not had tuberculosis he could have easy lived on for many years. He would have been sustained by his secondary heart.

FRANCESCO LENTINI – The Three- Legged Man

Lentini was born in 1889 in Rosolini in the province of Sirocusa, Sicily as one of twelve children. Technically, he was one of 12 and a half children. His twin brother, who consisted of a leg and a set of genitals, was born attached to Francesco’s spine. While he was billed as ‘The Man With Three Legs’, Lentini actually had four feet as a small malformed secondary foot protruded from his third leg. Thus in total he had three legs, four feet, sixteen toes and two sets of functioning male genitals. Furthermore, to complicate his life further, all of Francesco’s legs were of different lengths.
As a child, Lentini hated his extra limbs and appendages. Doctors determined that because of their proximity to his spine, removal could have resulted in paralysis. Lentini was raised by his aunt after his parents refused to acknowledge him and she, meaning well, enrolled the young Lentini into a home for disabled children. While there he saw children far worse off than he. He saw children who could not walk at all and he gained a new appreciation for life. Lentini not only learned to walk, he also ran, jumped rope, rode a bicycle and even ice skate. His time at the home for disabled children was an experience he quoted for many years as his major motivation.
In 1898, at the age of eight, Lentini arrived in America and became an instant sensation. He charmed crowds with his keen wit and sense of humor. He wowed audiences with his unusual agility as well. He had amazing control over his extra appendage. During performances Lentini was well known for kicking a soccer ball about with the strange limb. As he grew older, Lentini’s performances focused on his charming character.
He would conduct interviews while propped up on his extra limb, using it as a stool. He fielded questions ranging from his innocent hobbies to the particulars of his sex life. He was also often asked about his shoes. People wondered if it was difficult to buy shoes in a set of three. Showing his mental sharpness, he always revealed that he bought two pairs and gave the extra one to a one-legged friend.
His charm did not go unnoticed and a young lady named Theresa Murray soon took a liking to Lentini. The pair soon wed and together they had four healthy children. Lentini continued touring until he died at the age of seventy-eight in 1966. His career spanned over forty years and he worked with every major circus and sideshow including Barnum & Bailey and Coney Island. Lentini was so respected among his peers that he was often simply called ‘The King’.

ANNA SWAN – The Giantess of Nova Scotia

Anna Swan was born in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia on August 6th, 1846. She was a large baby. She began her life at eighteen pounds and simply continued to grow. By the age of four she was almost five feet tall. By the time she was sixteen, Anna towered over her parents and 12 siblings. When she was done growing Anna stood a staggering seven feet, eleven and a half inches tall.
She began her exhibition career shortly after her seventeenth birthday. She started at the very top, working with P. T. Barnum in his New York Museum. Anna was often paired with the famous midget Tom Thumb, to better accentuate both of their statures.
Anna made a great deal of money under the management of Barnum. Unfortunately, her career with the famous promoter was rife with disaster. The original Barnum Museum caught fire while Anna was on exhibit there and she barely escaped with her life. Trapped on an upper floor, Firemen were unable to carry her to safety. Instead, an outside wall was demolished and a crane was called to facilitate the rescue. When Barnum rebuilt his museum, Anna returned only to lose all of her possessions in a second museum fire. Anna quit the business for a time and returned to Nova Scotia. However, in 1869, Barnum invited her on a tour of the United States.
While on tour Anna met a Kentucky gentleman named Martin Van Buren Bates. Bates had been a Confederate Captain during the Civil War. He was charming, soft spoken and eloquent. He also happened to be nearly eight feet tall. The pair fell in love and married on June 17th, 1871. The pair, billed as the ‘World’s Tallest Couple’ were showered with wedding gifts. Queen Victoria herself provided the gown and diamond ring.
The Gigantic couple settled in Seville, Ohio and used their vast career earnings to build a colossal home. The ceilings were fourteen feet high, every door was at over eight feet in height and every piece of furniture was custom build for their frames. The pair continued to tour, but only sparingly.
In 1872 Anna gave birth to her first child. The little girl weighted eighteen pounds, just like her mother had, but unfortunately did not survive long after birth. In 1879 the couple had another child, this time a twenty-two pound boy. Sadly, he too did not survive past infancy.
Despite these tragedies, the two titans lived together in their custom home quite happily in love. In 1888, one day before her forty-second birthday, Anna passed away unexpectedly. Her husband, Martin, erected a great funeral monument to his wife.
Atop her grave towers a fifteen foot statue of a Greek Goddess.
Although Martin later remarried he insisted that, upon his death, he be laid to rest next to his beloved Anna and their children. He request was granted and today they rest together.