PECULIAR PEOPLE.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17811, 10 July 1923, Page 2

PECULIAR PEOPLE.

Some of the curious freaks of "indon I are described by W. Buchanan-'! aylor, ! who was one of the only three nonfreak members of the Half-Daft Club, | the freaks' exclusive society. The Bear Woman, who was shown at the Olympia Circus for sixpence a look; is in London. She has very short arms and tiny hands, and her legs are short from the knees, so that when she goes on all fours on a platform she looks just like a quadruped. Seme years ago a Frenchwoman was billed at the Alhambra as part of an "illusion." She sat on a swing and was swung forward into the auditorium, the "illusion" being that her legs appeared to vanish just below the hips. Tuen she was put on a pedestal aud looked like a bust. People thought it was a clever conjuring trick. But it was real. The woman had been born without legs, How oiten ana must have wished that her detormity was only an "illusion 1" Quiet recently the Ugliest Women in tne World was found in London bv C. O. Bartram, the showman, and taken to tue States. Barnum had a wonderful array, Jo-Jo, who was called both the Dog-Faced Boy and the Lion-Faced Boy, came from a community in Eastern Russia, where all the members were covered with hair like that of an English sheepdog. Russia seems to be a breeding place for peculiar people. In the Urals is a colony of people with brick-red hair' and beards. It was from them that the late Tsar recruited his Red Cossacks. They are fine men, standing more than six feet high. Bartram has made several attempts to reach the community to get a troup of them together but he cann-t get tie e. Mnrris, the Elastic Skinned Man, could take the skin of his chest arid mask his face with it; he used to stretch the skin on his biceps across his chest. The Blue Alan was an Englishman, who had caught some peculiar disease in the Straits Settlements. His health was normal, but he was coloured a dull blue all over. Annie Jones, the Bearded Lady, was a highly educated woman, and was happily married to a normal man. Her beard was black and pointed. Coffey, the Skeleton Dude, was a living skeleton, who wore a monocle and dressed in fashionable garments. He always insisted on wearing a silk hat. Billy Wells, the IronHeaded Man, had a skull three times as thick as-that of a normal man. He \*ould put a rock on his head, and wouldn't even blink when an assistant smashed the rock into fragments with a terrfic blnw by a sledge-hammer. The Half-Daft Club used to assemble at hotels in towns where the freaks were being shown, or in a tent. The proceedings were solemn. Social topi?s were debated, as well as all matters affecting the welfare of freaks—in fact, it was their trade union. Mr BuchananTaylor was proposed bv Denlo Fritz, the sword-swallower (says the "Daily Graphic"), and seconded by Zimmertaann, the expansionist, who could expand his chest to two and-, a half times its normal girth. Zimmermann could move hig heart thrpe or four inches to the right, and medical tests proved that it was not a fake.