Circus Sideshow Josephine Myrtle Corbin The Four Legged Girl 20210220

Circus Sideshow Josephine Myrtle Corbin The Four Legged Girl 20210220

Josephine Myrtle Corbin was an American sideshow performer born a... more

by Wingsdomain Art and Photography

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Circus Sideshow Josephine Myrtle Corbin The Four Legged Girl 20210220

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Wingsdomain Art and Photography

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Circus Sideshow Josephine Myrtle Corbin The Four Legged Girl 20210220

Josephine Myrtle Corbin was an American sideshow performer born a dipygus. This referred to the fact that she had two separate pelvises side by side from the waist down, as a result of her body axis splitting as it developed. Each of her smaller inner legs was paired with one of her outer legs. She was said to be able to move her inner legs, but they were too weak for walking. Corbin entered the sideshow circuit with the moniker "Four-Legged Girl from Texas" when she was 13 years old; one of her first promotional pamphlets described her as being as "gentle of disposition as the summer sunshine and as happy as the day is long." Her popularity in this industry was such that other showmen turned to exhibiting four-legged gaffs (falsified performances) and once Corbin herself was no longer performing, there were several phony four-legged women to whom audiences could turn. At the age of 19 she married James Clinton Bicknell, with whom she had four daughters and a son. -wikipedia

In the mid-16th century, freak shows became popular pastimes in England. Deformities began to be treated as objects of interest and entertainment, and the crowds flocked to see them exhibited. A famous early modern example was the exhibition at the court of Charles I of Lazarus and Joannes Baptista Colloredo, two conjoined brothers born in Genoa, Italy. While Lazarus appeared to be otherwise ordinary, the underdeveloped body of his brother dangled from his chest. When Lazarus was not exhibiting himself, he covered his brother with his cloak to avoid unnecessary attention. As well as exhibitions, freak shows were popular in the taverns and fairgrounds where the freaks were often combined with talent displays. For example, in the 18th century, Matthias Buchinger, born without arms or lower legs, entertained crowds with astonishing displays of magic and musical ability, both in England and later, Ireland.I t was in the 19th century, both in England and the United States, where freak shows finally reached maturity as successful commercially run enterprises. During the late 19th century and the early 20th century freak shows were at their height of popularity; the period 1840s through to the 1940s saw the organized for-profit exhibition of people with physical, mental or behavioral rarities. Although not all abnormalities were real, some being alleged, the exploitation for profit was seen as an accepted part of American culture. The attractiveness of freak shows led to the spread of the shows that were commonly seen at amusement parks, circuses, dime museums and vaudeville. The amusement park industry flourished in the United States by the expanding middle class who benefited from short work weeks and a larger income. There was also a shift in American culture which influenced people to see leisure activities as a necessary and beneficial equivalent to working, thus leading to the popularity of the freak show. The showmen and promoters exhibited all types of freaks. People who appeared non-white or who had a disability were often exhibited as unknown races and cultures. These “unknown” races and disabled whites were advertised as being undiscovered humans to attract viewers. For example, those with microcephaly, a condition linked to intellectual disabilities and characterized by a very small, pointed head and small overall structure, were considered or characterized as “missing links” or as atavistic specimens of an extinct race. Hypopituitary dwarfs who tend to be well proportioned were advertised as lofty. Achondroplastic dwarfs, whose head and limbs tend to be out of proportion to their trunks, were characterized as exotic mode. Those who were armless, legless, or limbless were also characterized in the exotic mode as animal-people, such as “The Snake-Man”, and “The Seal man”. There were four ways freak shows were produced and marketed. The first was the oral spiel or lecture. This featured a showman or professor who managed the presentation of the people or “freaks”. The second was a printed advertisement usually using long pamphlets and broadside or newspaper advertisement of the freak show. The third step included costuming, choreography, performance, and space used to display the show, designed to emphasize the things that were considered abnormal about each performer. The final stage was a collectable drawing or photograph that portrayed the group of freaks on stage for viewers to take home. The collectable printed souvenirs were accompanied by recordings of the showmen's pitch, the lecturer's yarn, and the professor's exaggerated accounts of what was witnessed at the show. Exhibits were authenticated by doctors who used medical terms that many could not comprehend but which added an air of authenticity to the proceedings. Freak show culture normalized a specific way of thinking about gender, race, sexual aberrance, ethnicity, and disability. Scholars believe that freak shows contributed significantly to the way American culture views nonconforming bodies. Freak shows were a space for the general public to scrutinize bodies different from their own, from dark-skinned people, to victims of war and diseases, to ambiguously sexed bodies. People felt that paying to view these “freaks” gave them permission to compare themselves favorably to the freaks. During the first decade of the twentieth century the popularity of the freak show was starting to dwindle. In their prime, freak shows had been the main attraction of the midway, but by 1940 they were starting to lose their audience, with credible people turning their backs on the show. In the nineteenth century, science supported and legitimized the growth of freak shows, but by the twentieth century, the medicalization of human abnormalities contributed to the end of the exhibits' mystery and appeal. -wikipedia

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February 20th, 2021

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