*****Freak show stars******

I was thinking before about Gods/deities and monsters, then i found this website, phreeque.com. It has lots of photos and stories from freak show stars. It started me thinking that so called "Freaks" would probably come under the same category. These were some of those who stared in these traveling shows, from the 19th and 20th centuries.

"Louise L." was born in 1869, one year after the famed four-legged woman Myrtle Corbin. Hers was a case of dipygus parasiticus; attached to her pelvis she had the atrophied lower half of a parasitic twin. She had some passive motion of the parasite, but the joints were ankylosed and immobile. Two vestigial breasts were attached near the junction of the twin with Louise's body. She could feel where the twin was touched, except for in its feet. She was married and had two daughters.

"Violetta's accomplishments in overcoming the unkindness of Mother Nature are astounding. She rarely needs the assistance of anyone, and is able to get about with remarkable facility. She can dress herself, comb her own hair, thread a needle, sew, and perform other feats apparently bordering on the impossible."

William "Bill" Durks was born on April 17, 1913, in Jasper, Alabama to normal parents, and had four normal siblings. As Ward Hall wrote in My Very Unusual Friends (1991), Bill "looked like he had been hit in the face with an axe". He suffered from frontonasal dysplasia, a birth defect that occurs when the two halves of an embryo's face fail to come together completely. He had a deeply cleft lip and palate and a bifid, or double, nose - each half having only one nostril. In addition, he was born with both eyes sealed shut and had them surgically opened when he was a small boy, and most accounts indicate that he was blind in one eye.

Born in 1860, Fanny Mills was the daughter of English immigrants who settled near Sandusky, Ohio. She had a condition called Milroy disease, which restricts development of the lymph vessels in the legs and causes fluid build-up. Fanny was a petite woman who weighed but 115 pounds, yet she wore size 30 shoes, each pair made from three goat skins, with pillowcases as socks. Each foot was said to be 19 inches long and 7 inches wide, although photos clearly show that they were not the same size. Her exhibition career began in 1885, when she entered the museum circuit, accompanied by a nurse, Mary Brown. Brown helped Fanny move from place to place, as her large feet made walking very difficult. Fanny's promoters offered $5000 and a "well-stocked farm" to anyone willing to marry the big-footed girl. Eventually she did marry, to William Brown, the brother of her assistant. When she came down with an unknown illness in 1892, she retired from show business, returning to her family's farm with her husband. She died the same year.

All text and images from Phreeque.com