The embalmed bodies of Julia Pastrana and her infant son. Pastrana was a mid-19th century singer and
The embalmed bodies of Julia Pastrana and her infant son. Pastrana was a mid-19th century singer and dancer in the circus, billed as “The Ugliest Woman in the World”. She was an indigenous Mexican woman, fluent in three languages, born with hypertrichosis. Doctor, Alexander B. Mott, M.D., certified that she was specifically the result of the mating of a human and an “Orang Outang”. Another, Dr. S. Brainerd of Cleveland, declared that she was of a “distinct species”. In an effort to maintain control over her professional life, her manager Theodore Lent persuaded Pastrana to marry him. He had initially bought her from a woman who “might” have been her mother. While still on tour, she bore him a son (also affected by hypertrichosis) who only lived for six hours. Pastrana herself died five days later, age 26. Her husband/manager—unwilling to forfeit his financial investment—had his wife and her child stuffed, mounted, and put on display to exhibit in shows throughout Europe and the U.S. He later found and married a woman with similar features to Julia. Lent named her “Zenora” and became wealthy from exhibiting her as he had Julia. He was committed to a Russian mental institution in 1884, where he eventually died. On 2 August 2012 it was reported in Aftenposten that Julia Pastrana would finally be buried in Mexico at an unspecified date. In February 2013, with the help of Sinaloa state governor Mario López Valdez, New York-based visual artist Laura Anderson Barbata, Norwegian authorities, and others, the body was turned over to the government of Sinaloa and her burial was planned. On 12 February 2013, hundreds of people attended her Catholic funeral, and the remains were buried in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town near her birthplace. -- source link
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