THE HAIRY MAID AT THE HARPSICHORD

Her name was Barbara Urslerin, and she really did play the harpsichord. When John Evelyn saw her being exhibited in London in 1657, the great diarist was amazed by her strange appearance:

The Hairy Maid, or Woman whom twenty years before I had also seene as a child: her very Eyebrowes were combed upwards & all her forehead as thick & even as growes on any woman’s head, neatly dress’d: There comes also two locks very long out of Each Eare: she had also a most prolix beard & moustachios, with long locks of haire growing on the very middle of her nose, exactly like an Iceland Dog: the rest of her body not so hairy, yet exceedingly long in comparison, armes, neck, breast and back; the colour of light browne, & fine as well dressed flax.

Barbara Urslerin was born near the village of Kempten, not far from Augsburg in Germany, in February 1629. As she told John Evelyn and other visitors, none of her family had been hairy. She was married and had one normal child, of which she was very proud. Evelyn approvingly stated that the Hairy Maid was "for the rest very well shaped, plaied well on the Harpsichord &c."

Records agree that she had been exhibited from a very early age. In 1639, the celebrated anatomist Thomas Bartholin saw her in Copenhagen, writing that her parents were taking her all round Europe to display her for money. Bartholin examined the lively little girl, and found that her entire body was covered with soft, blond hair. She had a luxuriant beard, and even from her ears grew long, beautiful curls of hair, all handsomely dressed.

In 1655, Barbara came to London for the first time. According to a note quoted by James Caulfield in his Portraits, Memoirs and Characters of Remarkable Persons, a man named Vanbeck (or van Beck) had married ‘this frightful creature’ only to make money by putting her on show. In 1660, Barbara was touring France. When they came to Beauvais, her husband, the German Johann Michael van Beck, applied to the local bailiff for permission to exhibit a strange prodigy of nature, a woman with a hairy, bearded face and moustaches. He did not mention that the woman was actually his wife. The local police allowed van Beck to proceed with the strange exhibition, as long as he promised that it was a decent one and that it would be closed down in good time in the afternoon.

The last thing we know about Barbara Urslerin is that in 1668 she was seen in London by the Dane, Holger Jacobsen. He suggested that the Hairy Maid must be the loathsome result of copulation between a woman and a humanoid ape, a hypothesis which was already outdated in his time. He ended his brief description of this ‘Monstrous hairy girl’ by emphasising that the length and softness of her hair was excessive all over the body, and that he had thoroughly examined her genitals to see if they had any similarity with those of a monkey. For further discussion, see Classical Corner in FT195:23.

THE WILD MAN FROM THE CANARIES

Petrus Gonzales, the hero of this strange tale, was born in the Canary Isles in the year 1556. At this time, there was a widespread belief in a particular race of hairy savages or ‘wild men’, so the discovery of an infant whose face and body were covered in hair caused quite a sensation. Little Petrus Gonzales, of whose parents we know nothing, was in fact lucky to escape being killed as a monster or demon by the superstitious country people; instead, he was taken to Paris on the express order of King Henri II of France, who wanted to study this prodigy at close quarters.

Petrus Gonzales’s entire body was covered with long, soft, wavy hair, and his face resembled that of a terrier dog. Astounded that this extraordinary ‘wild boy’ seemed intelligent and alert, the King ordered that he should be taught Latin and given a good education. Henri II’s successors honoured this agreement scrupulously, and Petrus spent his entire youth at the French court. His hairy face, resembling that of a shaggy dog, looked even more amazing when he was dressed in his richly embroidered court costume, but the King’s hairy ‘savage’ was intelligent and well-informed, and spoke excellent Latin. In 1573, Petrus was given permission to marry a young French lady. Whether this match was made according to his own choice, or arranged as some court festivity, is not known, but Gonzales and his wife remained united by wedlock for several decades, and had at least four children.

By 1581, Petrus was the father of two children. Although his wife was perfectly normal, both children were as hairy as their father. This marvellous hairy family was Europe’s greatest curiosity of their time. Many princes and noblemen wanted to see them, and they were sent on an extended tour of Europe. In early 1582, they came to Munich, where their life-sized portraits were painted at the order of Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria, who was known as a lover of curiosities. These portraits were later given to Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, who installed them in his famous Kunst-Kammer at Schloss Ambras outside Innsbruck. One of these portraits (seen below as an engraving) shows the whole Gonzales family. The children – a daughter of five or six years and a son of three or four – are dressed in rich garments, forming a startling contrast to their hairy faces and making them resemble little animal dolls dressed up in human clothes by their childish owner. Petrus’s wife is pretty and demure, and her clothes are Dutch-looking in style, while Gonzales himself is dressed in a rich ankle-length garment like a cassock. His face is as hairy as ever, and at the age of 26 he has a venerable-looking beard, but the expressive look in his brown eyes seems to say: "I am not what you think I am".

The next account of the Gonzales family is that of Count Ulysses Aldrovandi. In the mid-1590s, he had met and examined Gonzales’s eight-year-old daughter, whose face was covered with thick, soft hair just like her father’s. Aldrovandi ordered an artist to draw the entire Gonzales family: the 44-year-old father, the 20-year-old son, and the two daughters of eight and 12. It is very likely that this grown-up son was the same little boy depicted on the Ambras pictures, though the fate of the elder sister and Gonzales’s wife is unknown. What Aldrovandi’s drawings indicate, though, is that Gonzales had fathered two more children, both girls, who shared his excessive hairiness.

Another remarkable memorial of the Gonzales family is an engraving of the Medusa-like head of a hairy young girl by the artist and engraver Giacomo Franco. The caption states that this is the portrait of Tognina, the young daughter of the hairy man from the Canary Isles. Another portrait of Tognina (left) was the work of the celebrated portrait painter Lavinia Fontana, and is today in the art gallery of the famous Château de Blois in France. Tognina later married during her stay at the ducal court in Parma, and lived there for many years, having several children of her own, at least some of whom were as hairy as she was.

THE HAIRY FAMILY OF BURMA

It was to be a long while before the world witnessed another hairy phenomenon like Barbara Urslerin or Petrus Gonzales and his family; indeed, from the 1630s to the 1820s, no novel instance of excessive hairiness was described either by scientists or by lovers of curiosities. Had these two famous 16th- and 17th-century cases not been detailed by the leading medical scientists of the world, and painted from life by several celebrated artists, these hairy celebrities of yesteryear would probably have been considered as mere fancies of a previous age. Even so, many were confused by these extraordinary descriptions of hairy 'wild people'. In the Eccentric Magazine, published in London in 1813, there is an engraved portrait of Barbara Urslerin taken from an old print. According to the caption to this illustration, great doubts were entertained as to whether she was really a human being. The magazine’s editor managed to resolve this controversy, however. He had seen an old print of Barbara Urslerin, formerly in the collection of Mr Frederich, a bookseller in Bath. It had the following brief but telling note written on it: "This woman I saw in Ratcliffe Highway, in the year 1668, and was satisfied she was a woman. John Bulfinch."

In 1826, a mission of the Governor-General of India, led by John Crawfurd, visited the court of the King of Ava, a province in Burma. In a published account of this mission, Crawfurd described meeting a 30-year-old hairy man named Shwe-Maong. At the age of five, he had been given to the King by the local chief of his district and, since then, had lived within the palace as a curiosity and court entertainer. He was very accomplished at acting the buffoon, dancing and making the most terrible grimaces. When he was 22 years old, having attained puberty only two years previously, a wife was chosen for him by the King from the beautiful women in his retinue. The union produced four children, all female, only one of whom was abnormal, a girl named Maphoon, who was covered with hair just like her father, and resembled an elderly bearded man.

In 1855, a second mission visited Ava, and Captain Henry Yule described the now 31-year-old Maphoon, now married to a normal Burmese man and the mother of two boys. Maphoon’s father had been murdered by robbers, and she had been brought up in the King’s household. The story told of her marriage was that the King had offered a reward to any man who was willing to marry her. Finally, an individual who was bold enough or avaricious enough ventured forth. In spite of this unpromising start, the marriage was blessed with at least two sons, one of whom was hairy. This son, whose name was Moung-Phoset, reached adulthood and himself had several children, one of whom, a daughter named Mah-Mé who died at the age of 18, was as hairy as her father.

In 1885, there was a revolution in Burma, leading to the so-called Third Burmese War; the King’s palace was set on fire, and its inhabitants were driven away or killed. The hairy family managed to escape into a forest, Moung-Phoset carrying his fragile mother Maphoon on his back. An Italian officer, Captain Paperno, later suggested that the hairy Burmese should make a tour of Europe, to be exhibited for money. During the summer of 1886, the family appeared at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, where they were seen by Mr JJ Weir. He described Maphoon as a blind old woman, but lively and full of fun, and an inveterate chewer of betel in spite of her few teeth. He suspected that her hairy growth had thinned somewhat due to age, as Moung-Phoset had much more hair on the face and ears. He certainly presented a grotesque appearance, his features being hidden by the mass of hair, which he combed over his face. Moung-Phoset’s entire body was clothed with soft hair some inches in length, which he had cut from time to time; furthermore, he was tattooed from below the waist to above the knees. Weir described Moung-Phoset as a well-educated and decent man. Importantly, he also stated that the hair of both Maphoon and Moung-Phoset was soft, wavy and of a brownish colour, quite unlike the hair of an ordinary Burmese. From London, they went on to Paris, where they appeared at the Folies Bergère. In 1888 or 1889, they went to the United States, where they worked for PT Barnum under the stage name the ‘Sacred Hairy Family of Burma’. Their ultimate fate is unknown.

JO-JO, THE DOG-FACED BOY

Some of Charles Darwin’s more radical followers postulated that hairy people shared primitive characteristics with mankind’s early ancestors. According to the so-called recapitulation theory of embryology, advanced creatures like humans repeat the adult stages of their ancestors during their embryonic development. The study of anatomy and teratology was, according to this theory, a useful tool to unravel the secrets of the evolution of mankind. A tailed or hairy child was thus considered to have reverted to a lower stage of development, and these characteristics were relics of the primate ancestors of human beings. The great majority of people in the 1860s and 1870s knew very little about such theories, but this didn’t discourage them from visiting the hairy phenomena on show, particularly if these human curiosities were ostentatiously advertised as ‘The Missing Link’ and lurid Darwinian claims were made about their various beast-like characteristics.

In 1873, the European public had an opportunity to make the acquaintance of two hairy ‘missing links’ – the 55-year-old Russian Adrian Jefticheiev and his illegitimate son Fedor. The public attitude towards hairy men and women had not changed much since the 16th century; if anything, it had become even more saturated with superstition and fanaticism. After all, Joris Hoefnagel and others had treated Petrus Gonzales with some respect, and acknowledged him as a learned man, but Adrian was presented as ‘The Wild Man from the Kostroma Forest’, the loathsome product of a short-lived and illicit amour between a bear and a Russian peasant woman. Adrian, with his curious yellow eyes and unhealthy grey skin, was like a man half changed into an animal, a spectacle guaranteed to strike horror into 19th-century audiences.

As a young man, Adrian had fled into the woods to escape the derision and rough treatment of his fellow villagers, developing a taste for drunkenness during this period of solitary life considered excessive even by his fellow Russian peasants. The showman claimed that ever since he had first put Adrian on show before the curious in St Petersburg the year before, the hairy man had vowed to return to his native village as soon as his tour of the European capitals was over, and spend all the money he had earned entirely on strong drink.

If many visitors to the exhibition were disgusted or horrified by the debauched, unkempt spectacle of Adrian, all were charmed by his little son Fedor. Although just three years and four months old, Fedor was more intelligent, and far more sprightly and vigorous, than his wretched father. The growth of down on his face was not yet so heavy as to conceal his features, but the medical men who saw him did not doubt that he would one day become just as hairy as his father. He liked to travel and to meet new people, and was already becoming spoilt and petulant. He spoke French and, in spite of his tender age, gave rational replies to questions from the audience. After their triumphal tour of Europe, Adrian and Fedor seemed simply to disappear.

But just a few years later, a Russian boy billed as Theodore Petroff, and later as ‘Jo-Jo, The Dog-Faced Boy’, began his long career in show business, becoming one of the most successful human curiosities of all time. The story of Jo-Jo’s origins was that he had been found at a tender age by huntsmen in the Kostroma forest of Russia. He was accompanied by some kind of strange monster, hairy like himself, who acted as his father. The huntsmen took these two hairy savages with them to the civilised world, where the ‘father’ soon died. The boy was named Jo-Jo, from some sounds he made when he was first found, and sent to school, where he learnt to speak and read both Russian and English. He then set out to tour the world.

All these circumstances hint that Fedor and Jo-Jo were one and the same, but what clinches the matter is that in 1884, when Jo-Jo was exhibited before the Anthropological Society of Berlin, he was introduced as Fedor Jefticheiev! Many of the Berlin anthropologists were delighted to see him again, since they had made his acquaintance 11 years earlier. Fedor alias Jo-Jo was now 14 years old. He was a sturdily built, clever lad, completely normal except for his extraordinary hairy growth and defective dentition. His impresario, the Russian Nicholas Forster, said that Adrian had returned to Kostroma after the successful tour of 1872-1874, and had rapidly drunk himself to death.

In 1884, Jo-Jo was exhibited in Liverpool, where he was spotted by one of PT Barnum’s agents; Forster was soon persuaded that far greater profit could be gained on the other side of the Atlantic.

Upon arrival, Barnum’s agents set up a press conference for Jo-Jo, where he was advertised as: "The most prodigious paragon of all prodigies secured by PT Barnum in over 50 years". The assembled newspapermen looked on aghast when the dog-faced boy came to greet them; never, in their entire lives, had they seen anything remotely like him. Barnum’s reputation as a hoaxer meant that no human or animal specimen exhibited by him could be taken at face value, however. After a polite question to the impresario as to whether the dog-faced boy might bite was answered in the negative, the entire press corps took turns to pull his facial hair to make sure it had not been fastened by artificial means. In spite of this ludicrous treatment, Jo-Jo remained polite and affable, and the press did much to help advertise him. He was as full of play as a puppy, they wrote, and they thought that his voice resembled the barking and growling of a dog. The New York Herald described him as "the most extraordinary and absorbingly interesting curiosity that has ever reached these shores."

In the 1880s, Jo-Jo was widely famous, and he was photographed many times, often in the clothes of a trapper, and carrying a long rifle. Other photographs depict him dressed in Russian garb or wearing a cavalry uniform. He later toured the world, but returned to the United States to rejoin Barnum & Bailey’s circus. He was an intelligent man and an avid reader, who spoke four languages fluently, although according to some historians of the American sideshow Jo-Jo sometimes used to act the part of a dog on stage, and to snap, growl, bark and chew bones. He died from pneumonia during a tour of Greece in early 1904, and was mourned by many American sideshow enthusiasts.

FROM THE ANNALS OF CONGENITAL HYPERTRICHOSIS

It is interesting to contemplate the varying fates of the hairy people. Our oldest case, Petrus Gonzales, fared reasonably well, and is likely to have had a far more interesting life touring Europe with his family, reading Latin to kings and princes, than if he had been a non-hairy peasant in the Canaries, but the callous exploitation of Barbara Urslerin is sad to contemplate. The exhibition of the chronically ill, debauched Adrian Jefticheiev before the unfeeling crowds must also have been a repulsive spectacle. In contrast, his son Fedor, alias Jo-Jo, who had spent all his life in show business, was an extrovert character, and intelligent enough to take advantage of his abnormal condition to make an almost unprecedented success in the international sideshow world (although, according to one account, the novelty of his act finally palled, and after 30 years on the road, Jo-Jo died a bitter and disillusioned man. Perhaps his spirit was broken when some wit among the American sideshow ‘rubes’ asked him, for the thousandth time, where he had mislaid his razor, or inquired whether he had paid the dog-tax).

While some parts of 19th-century anthropology are today categorised as pseudoscience, one of the more fruitful consequences of the great interest in the subject in the late 19th century was that many of the historical cases of congenital hypertrichosis (inherited excessive hairiness) were well described. The more gifted anthropologists knew that this kind of excessive hairiness was an inherited disorder, and although they discussed whether it might be an atavism – the reappearance of a lost character typical of the remote ancestors of mankind – they remained undecided on this issue.

Today, medical science recognises three major subgroups of inherited excessive hairiness. Firstly, there is the traditional congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa, which affected Barbara Urslerin, the Gonzales family, the hairy Burmese, Adrian and Fedor. The inheritance is autosomally dominant, from a locus on the eighth chromosome. Although most cases are sporadic, and the result of spontaneous mutations, there is one example of a three-generation pedigree (the Gonzales family) and one example of a four-generation pedigree (the hairy Burmese). Secondly, there is the syndrome of excessive hairiness with terminal hair and overgrowth of the gums, which affected the celebrated Julia Pastrana and the ‘human monkey’ Krao. This syndrome is also autosomally dominant, and clearly has variable expression. Some individuals have only mild gingival hyperplasia, others more severe overgrowth of the gums and also excessive hairiness; only the very extreme cases, like Julia Pastrana, have massive gingival hyperplasia, coarse faces and excessive hairiness. Thirdly, there is a syndrome of X-linked hypertrichosis without gingival hyperplasia, recently described from Mexico [FT56:32; FT59:21], which cannot be implied in any of the historical cases.

The question of whether excessive hairiness is an atavism is still debated today. An atavism is defined as the reappearance of a lost character, either morphology or behaviour, which is typical of remote ancestors, and not seen in the parents or recent ancestors of the individual in question. Examples of such an ancestral phenotype are hind limbs in whales and three-toed (polydactylous) horses. In humans, supernumerary nipples, the presence of a tail, and excessive hairiness have all been quoted as examples of atavisms. The model used to explain them is that the genetic and developmental information originally utilised in the production of these characteristics has not been lost during evolution, but lies dormant within the genome and can still be ‘switched on’ by a mutation. Although the majority of earlier writers have accepted the concept of congenital hypertrichosis as an atavism without question, it seems reasonable to raise a few objections to it. The fact that there are three separate genetic defects causing congenital hypertrichosis would weaken the case for this condition being the result of the reactivation of an ancestral pattern of development. The associated defects – toothlessness or overgrowth of the gums – cannot be considered as ancestral qualities. Many of the historical cases have had an extremely hairy nose, something that is not typical of primates. Nor is there any evidence of any ‘primitive’ or ‘animal-like’ characteristics in the individuals with congenital hypertrichosis. Most of them have been of normal intellect; some were remarked upon as ‘learned’ or particularly clever.

The sinister interpretation of the word atavism, with its implication that the affected individuals – a hairy child or a baby with a tail – are generally ‘primitive’ or ‘ape-like’ is completely unfounded. This unsavoury relic of 19th-century thought, with its racist overtones, is one element of early anthropology that can be relegated to the dusty tomes of old libraries.