Not long ago, I had the opp­or­tun­ity to look through a set of bound volumes con­tain­ing an incom­plete set of the Ill­ust­rated Police News from the 1870s and 1880s. This not­or­ious pub­lic­at­ion speci­al­ised in grisly murd­ers and mac­abre acc­i­dents, de­scribed with lurid and graphic ill­ust­rations. When the crime rate dipped, the Ill­ust­rated Police News had a scarc­ity of top­ical matter, which the editor remed­ied by repro­duc­ing tales from the old New­gate Cal­en­dar, art­icles on un­solved myst­er­ies of crime, and curi­ous news­paper stor­ies from all over the world.

Loosely in­serted in the issue for 7 Jan­u­ary 1882, I was sur­prised to en­count­er a fine col­oured print of an old fav­our­ite of mine: the Pig-faced Lady of Man­chester Square. This print was given away gratis to every person who could pro­duce a penny to pur­chase the weekly issue of the Ill­ust­rated Police News, a clever ploy to in­crease the paper’s circ­ul­at­ion.

The immensely wealthy Pig-faced Lady had come to London in 1815, look­ing for a hus­band. She was said to be per­fectly shaped, except that her head exactly re­sembled that of one of the porc­ine tribe. She ate from a silver trough and utt­ered a loud grunt­ing noise when in want of food. Many people be­lieved in her exist­ence and one fool­ish young man even put an advert­ise­ment into the Morn­ing Herald that he aspired to make her acquaint­ance.

The Illustrated Police News went on to claim that at the time of writ­ing (in 1882), many Irish people be­lieved that an­other Pig-faced Lady, Madam Gris­ley Steev­ens, had once been a resid­ent of Dublin. Part­ies of country people used to go to Doctor Steev­ens’s Hosp­ital, where she had ended her days, and tip the matron to be all­owed to see a port­rait of the pig-faced Madam Steev­ens and the silver trough she had eaten from.

Pig-faced Ladies were not infrequently exhib­ited at fairs and mark­ets. After a quarr­el be­tween a dwarf and the pro­prietor of a trav­ell­ing fair, which led to a mag­ist­er­ial invest­ig­at­ion in Ply­mouth, the tech­nique of this decept­ion was divul­ged in court. The rogues let a bear drink a large amount of strong ale, before tying it to a large arm­chair, shav­ing its face and neck, and dress­ing the intox­ic­ated animal in female attire, “with a vol­um­in­ous wig, ring­lets, cap, and art­if­ic­ial flow­ers in the latest fash­ion”.

For more inform­ation about Pig-faced Ladies, see ‘Snout so Queer’ in FT145:34–38 and my book Freaks: The Pig-faced Lady of Manchester Square and other Medical Marvels, Tempus Publications, 2005.