Julia Pastrana was exhibited as a human curiosity across the world and was not buried until 2013

historyThe Public Domain Review1834–1860 · Sinaloa, Mexico

Julia Pastrana was exhibited as a human curiosity across the world and was not buried until 2013

the gist

Julia Pastrana was born in 1834 in the mountains of western Mexico with hypertrichosis, a condition that causes excess hair growth. After being adopted by a state governor, she was taken on tour by the American showman M. Rates and later by Theodore Lent, who became her husband and manager. She made her New York debut in 1854 and went on to perform across the United States, Europe and Russia, advertised with labels such as the Bear Woman and the Baboon Lady. Some doctors claimed she was a hybrid of human and orangutan, although anatomists such as Samuel Kneeland Jr. concluded she was entirely human. Bess Lovejoy's essay for The Public Domain Review explains how Pastrana's story reveals the racial and sexual myths used to sell human curiosities. Pastrana died in 1860 after giving birth, and her body was embalmed and exhibited for years. It was only in 2013, 153 years after her death, that she was finally buried.

so what

Pastrana's story exposes how nineteenth-century science and showmanship exploited people with differences, and how their humanity was denied. Her burial in 2013 brought renewed attention to the ethics of displaying human remains.

fun fact

Julia Pastrana was advertised in London in 1857 as the Baboon Lady.

more on this

background

Julia Pastrana (August 1834 – 25 March 1860) was a Mexican singer and exhibition performer who became one of the best-known sideshow performers of the 19th century. Born in Sinaloa, she had generalized hypertrichosis and gingival hyperplasia, conditions that affected her appearance and led to her being exhibited under promotional names including "The Nondescript", "Bear Woman", and "Ape Woman".

Although frequently advertised as a curiosity, Pastrana was an accomplished professional entertainer whose performances combined singing, dancing, conversation, and public appearances. She toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, where contemporary audiences often remarked on her intelligence, poise, and musical ability.

During her lifetime, Pastrana attracted sustained attention from physicians, naturalists, and anthropologists, who debated the causes of her appearance and advanced competing theories about her origins. Her case was later discussed by Charles Darwin in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868).

From Wikipedia: Julia Pastrana (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗

see

George Wick, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Vinzenz Katzler (+ vor 1900), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mansurov, N. (Nikolaĭ Porfirʹevich), 1834-1892., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

key facts

Born: 1834
Died: 25 March 1860
Known as: circus performer
Height: 1 m

Facts: Wikidata (CC0)

Image: The Public Domain Review

source: The Public Domain Review ↗

historyThe Public Domain Review1909 · United States

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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