Pastrana was not alone in her fate. Find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out. It's not easy being under all that scrutiny all the time. She was said to be a skilled performer, who could dance, sing, act and speak multiple languages. [13] Francis Buckland stated that she was "only a deformed Mexican Indian woman". Marie Bartel, billed as the younger sister of Julia Pastrana. Voted up more and sharing, great job! Thank goodness this exploitation is not allowed today. Recently, she was reburied . Since birth, Julia was diagnosed with a harsh genetic condition - generalized hypertrichosis lanuginose and it was unknown at that time. He reportedly treated her horribly, and she ultimately left Sanchezs custody in 1854 when she was purchased by Francisco Seplveda, who brought her to the United States. Julia Pastrana was billed as The Ape Woman and drew crowds all over the United States and Europe. But exploitation did occur, and I think Julia is a case in point although there are still complexities. I guess, some people are born with sad stories and she is definitely one of them. Pastrana, an indigenous woman from Mexico, was born in 1834, somewhere in the state of Sinaloa. At the Regent Gallery Pastrana could be seen three times a day, for the price of 3 shillings from the stalls, 2 shillings from the area and 1 shilling from the gallery. According to Dr Woolf, the embalmed corpses had a very strange career. So, finally, that was done. Then, unexpectedly, Lent had a mental breakdown and ended up in the towns local mental sanatorium. :). I'm glad they finally laid Julia to rest. She was believed to have been born within a small tribe of Native Americans on the western slopes of Mexico. I hope this gets out to more people. Read one of your commenters said she was finally laid to rest in a glass coffin. A wonderful article but so sad all the suffering she had to endure. Julia Pastrana was a talented Mexican singer and dancer of Indigenous background. Nineteenth-century audiences recoiled at the sight of Julia Pastrana, the sideshow performer better known as the Ape Woman. One theater critic called her a semi-human being while another referred to her as a Baboon Woman.. During a tour in Moscow, Pastrana gave birth to a son, with features similar to her own. But Julia Pastrana, of course, was no beast. I feel we still have much to learn from Julia Pastrana, Barbata affirmed. And so, death didnt free Pastrana from public gawking. The things that money makes one do. Thanks for sharing her story and giving her the honor she deserved! Looking at the image of Julia she looked like an African cross bread with an Indian. After Lent's death, Julia's body would change hands numerous times and be exhibited all over the place by a variety of fairs, circuses, and cabinets of curiosities. Voted up. Jools Hogg from North-East UK on September 01, 2012: Nell, great hub - fascinating and heartbroken in equal measure. For our final Iconic Corpse of the year, the tragic tale, and (somewhat) happy ending for the body of performer Julia Pastrana.Here is the interview mentione. I'm glad Julia is finally at peace. Images in The Eye of the Beholder show Pastrana in elaborate costumes, and holding flowers, all part of the attempted shock at contrasting these hyper feminine accessories to her hairy face. its 4.20 in the afternoon here, with grey clouds and rain! Thanks for sharing! I remember watching a documentary piece 20/20 or some such and the whole family had the disorder. The newspapers couldn't get enough of her and when they realized that not only was she a very good singer but she could also speak several different languages, including Spanish and English, they were astonished. I am so pleased that at last, she is at peace. In that last year, when another theft occurred, Julias corpse was stolen. Julia's preserved body was stolen in 1979, but stored at the Oslo Forensic Institute after the body was reported to police but not identified. What a shame that Julia was subjected to such treatment during her lifetime and even afterward. I admire her dignity . How Did a Moai Statue End Up in a Lagoon? The prodigious Julia Pastrana was known by many monikers during her life and perhaps just as many names in death.Both her life and her death are rather. They looked nothing like the pictures displayed outside their cubicles. Sadly, Pastrana didnt survive either, dying a couple of days after her baby. The Sleeping Girl of Turville: The True Story of a Girl Who fell asleep for Nine Years.. "An Artist Finds a Dignified Ending for an Ugly Story", "Behold! Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). I never heard of Julia until now. Love, lust or money? In 1855, Pastrana was married to Theodore Lent, who saw her as a path to fortune and fame. Billed as the missing link between apes and man, Julia Pastrana was checked out by several physicians who produced certificates which were displayed wherever Pastrana went on tour stating that she was not really a woman at all, but rather a new species of half-human, half-ape hybrid. In 1976 and 1979, the fairground in Oslo was broken into and the corpses damaged. Someone must have cared enough about her to educate her, and teach her to sing and dance, don't you think?? Julia Pastrana was an indigenous Mexican woman treated as a spectacle in life, and death. I read about Julia some time ago. . [2] Hundreds of people attended her Catholic funeral, and her remains were buried in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town near her birthplace. It is not a coincidence, for instance, that the degrading of Pastranas gender and race happened at a time in the 19th-century when the rights of women and non-white people were under debate. Their lives were exposed, much in the same way as todays reality stars are gawked at and scrutinised and Pastrana captured the publics fascination in the worst way possible. Julia Pastrana's remains were returned to Mexico from Norway An indigenous woman exhibited in 19th-Century Europe as the "world's ugliest woman" has been buried in her native Mexico some 150. Eventually, Lent got fed up of It and hired her out to the person who would pay the most for the privilege. The Sad Story Of Julia Pastrana, The Ape Woman Sideshow Performer. In this version, Pastrana lived with her mother until her mother passed away, after which, her uncle sold her to the circus. What were the dynamics of their life and marriage? I will be back to read more of them. lol! Used with the permission of the publisher, Pegasus Books. In the mid-1850s, she set off to travel and perform across the United States and Europe. Why they married we dont know for sure. After lying to that womans family that he would never exhibit her for money, he renamed her Miss Zenora Pastrana and similarly exploited her appearance. This not only reveals how people processed freak displays but also how the freak never engendered a similar response it depended on your outlook. Her handler or owner was named as a Mr M. Rates and he saw the potential in her the second he found her, working as a servant girl to the governor of Sinaloa Mexico. I am sharing.. In 2013, over a century after she left the Sierra Madre Mountains for a career in the United States, Pastrana finally returned home. I didn't know who Julia Pastrana was prior to reading this. Integrating techniques of Islamic art with branding, Saj Issa examines globalizations impact on intersecting identities. Mme Fortune Clofullia, another bearded lady who featured in Barnums museum from the 1850s, also had a husband as well as a son who would sometimes appear with his mother onstage. It must have been pretty confusing because the animal was capable of singing and speaking in different languages to cook and sew and dance. While giving birth, doctors had to use forceps to deliver her baby, resulting in several severe lacerations. One doctor, Alexander B. Mott, M.D., certified that she was specifically the result of the mating of a human and an "Orang hutan". One doctor, Alexander B. Mott, proclaimed that she was part human and part orangutan. An illustration of Julia Pastrana, a Victorian stage performer who toured Europe, Canada, and the United States billed as the Bearded or Hairy Lady, the Nondescript, the Ape-Woman, the Marvelous Hybrid or Bear Woman. cfin from The World we live in on May 04, 2014: This is so sad. Sheila Brown from Southern Oklahoma on June 18, 2012: This is a very well written and interesting story. Something went way wrong in the chromosome department when she was conceived. Fig. He named her Zenora Pastrana. lol! N skal Julia Pastrana endelig begraves", "Roll up, roll up, and see the bearded lady", "Julia Pastrana, the 'extraordinary lady', https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julia_Pastrana&oldid=1140909925, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Bear Woman, The Apewoman, The Nondescript. I don't know when I have read more interesting info. A more likely origin story, however, is the one shared by the villagers of Ocoroni in Sinaloa Mexico. Nell Rose (author) from England on July 01, 2020: I totally agree with you Alvene. A top police boss sent a scathing email to officers after their state force became embroiled in a series of 'drink-driving, drug use, family violence and sexual and predatory behaviour' incidents. [6] At first, Pastrana performed under the management of J.W. By this time, curiosity had begun to turn towards admiration, and she was invited to the Horticultural Society and the Boston History society. In another version, which is based on the words of indigenous villagers in Ocoroni, Mexico, Pastrana was a local girl whom they referred to as "wolf woman." She appeared again in Hitlers Germany where she was put on display in the occupied territories. . A musical Pastrana by Australian writers Allan McFadden and Peter Northwood was performed by Melbourne's Church Theatre in 1989. So pleased her journey has ended though. But even when dead, white men continued to profit off of her body. But maybe Julia could distance herself from such claims. :). [20] Filmmaker Eva Aridjis filmed the burial for her feature documentary "Chuy, The Wolf Man", a portrait of a modern-day Mexican family with congenital hypertrichosis. HubPages is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. But The Liverpool Mercury marveled, she is good-natured, sociable, and accommodating, pointing out that Julia was bilingual and could dance, sing, sew, cook, wash and iron.. In the early 1850s, Julia Pastrana somehow came into the custody of Pedro Sanchez, the then-governor of Sinaloa. Wikimedia CommonsJulia Pastrana was billed as The Ape Woman and drew crowds all over the United States and Europe. When Lent remarried another bearded lady, Marie Bartel, he got back the corpses and had his new wife perform alongside his old, embalmed family. A more likely origin story, however, is the one shared by the villagers of Ocoroni Sinaloa. 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