Her name was Julia.

Julia Pastrana could speak three languages.  Those who saw her perform said she could sing and dance with rare skill.  Her appearance and intelligence, along with that talent made her a sensation all over the United States and Canada.

Doctors who examined her concurred that she was very much a woman, and most agreed that she was human.

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Not a lot is known about Julia’s early life and much of that is likely false, made up to romanticize her story and pique the interest of potential oglers.

Though no birth certificate or baptism records have surfaced, she is believed to have been born in 1834 to a group of American Indians in the mountains of the Sinaloa de Leyva region of Mexico.

Poor Julia was born with two rare physical afflictions that wouldn’t be accurately diagnosed until a century after her death.  Because of congenital generalized hypertrichosis terminalis most of her body was covered with hair.  Gingival hyperplasia caused a thickening of lips and gums.

In one of the rare photos that have survived her body is shapely and womanly.  However, her face resembles nothing more closely than that of a mountain gorilla.

Her appearance would lead her to be billed as “the Ape Woman,” “the Bear Woman,” and “the Baboon Lady.”  At least one showman called her, “The ugliest woman in the world.”

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The Sinaloan historian Ricardo Mimiaga cites oral histories from the area which suggest that Pastrana was treated like a monster at home. According to these accounts, she was not allowed to use mirrors and, after her mother died when she was young, her uncle sold her to a traveling circus.

The stories indicate that Pastrana was taken in by the governor of Sinaloa, Pedro Sanchez, who treated her as a curiosity to show off to visitors, but also as a child who should be cared for and was taught to read and write.

At some point she left, or was sold (as I said, stories differ) and entered the United States by way of New Orleans.  By the time she arrived in New York, she had a manager named J.W. Beach, who advertised her in the New York Times thus: “THE HYBRID, OR SEMI-HUMAN INDIAN FROM MEXICO”.  She was to appear at a Manhattan museum called the Stuyvesant Institute. “Christmas Holidays cannot be more agreeably passed attending the Levees of JULIA PASTRANA, whose dulcet voice enchants the ladies,” the ad said. “Dr. (Alex) Mott’s impressive epistle concerning the duality of ‘La Mujer Osa'” – the bear woman – “astounds the public. The Troglodyte of ancient days is recognized – ‘four feet (actually four feet five inches) in height, with eyes like the owl, and gifted with speech — the link between mankind and the ourang-outang.'”

This was the middle of the 19th century, the era of the freak show, as exemplified by P.T. Barnum whose venues exhibited both real and manufactured oddities, not to mention the genuine ones whose stories were sometimes greatly embellished to gain more attention.

Of Julia, Doctor Alex B. Mott, M.D. said, “She is a perfect woman – a rational creature, endowed with speech which no monster has ever possessed. She is therefore a Hybrid, wherein the nature of woman predominates over the brute – the Ourang Outang. Altogether she is the most extraordinary being of the day.”

Another quote, from a man identified as the former curator of comparative anatomy at the Boston Society of Natural History, said, “The looks, anatomical conformation, abnormal growth of hair upon the person, sufficiently show that Julia Pastrana belongs to some of the Indian Tribes, supposed to be of Asiatic origin…She is a perfect woman, performing all the functions of the sex.”

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P.T. Barnum heard about Julia and sent a representative to see if she actually was, “as frightful as she was said to be.”  Unfortunately for Ms. Pastrana, the showman was outmaneuvered by a rival.

History has been a little unfair to Mr. Barnum.  We’ve all heard the quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” which has been attributed to him.  That has never been proven.  What is certain is that he improved the lives of some of the special people who joined his show.  Many of them led happy lives and earned a comfortable income, something their infirmities might not have allowed them to do in the private sector.

Other showmen were not as conscientious as P.T. Barnum.  Theodore Lent was one of those.

When Mr. Lent discovered Julia, he saw a chance to exhibit her and make a lot of money.  According to my research, when it looked like other showmen might lure the hirsute lady away from him, he proposed marriage.  She accepted.

You see, in those days, a woman was legally considered the property of her spouse.  In other words, as her husband, Theodore had more power over Julia than as her manager. 

Again, reports vary, but some indicate that Mr. Lent was less the loving spouse and more the over-ambitious manager, but more about that in a minute.

Julia was popular enough that the couple was able to charge about $7 apiece to see her.  She would talk to customers in Spanish and English; dance the Highland Fling and polka; and, in a mezzo-soprano, sing romantic tunes. “Where ever she is exhibited, she becomes the pet of all ladies and gentlemen,” according to one newspaper advertisement.

A reporter from the Morning Chronicle gushed about her performance. Wearing scarlet boots, a tight-fitting skirt, and silk panty hose, Pastrana sang an Irish melody – “The Last Rose of Summer” – and danced a bolero, looking every bit like the famed ballerina Fanny Elssler and displaying “a symmetry” that would make the most successful ballet dancers envious.”

Surgeon, zoologist, and author Frank Trevelyan Buckland described her as sophisticated and charitable, a woman who spoke three languages, had excellent taste in music, and even gave graciously to local institutions.

German circus owner Hermann Otto got to know Julia and wrote that she was, “a monster to the whole world, an abnormality put on display for money, someone who had been taught a few artistic turns, like a trained animal. (But) for the few who knew her better, she was a warm, feeling, thoughtful, spiritually very gifted being with a sensitive heart and mind… and it affected her very deeply in her heart with sadness, having to stand beside people, instead of with them, and to be shown as a freak for money, not sharing any of the everyday joys in a home filled with love.”

When P.T. Barnum met her Lent was out.  He described a woman who was dominated by her husband.  Barnum said that a thick veil covered her face which she refused to lift until her husband reappeared. “She wasn’t allowed to mix with people, so that the curiosity of the audience wasn’t diminished and her appearance wasn’t devalued.  And yet, if she felt that a person wasn’t just gaping at her, that the other person saw in her a thinking creature and not an oddity, she thawed with her childish trust.”

Barnum was taken with the gentle, intelligent lady.  He said that he and Julia became friends.

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By early 1860, Lent and Pastrana were in Moscow and she was pregnant.  As the day neared for the baby’s birth doctors grew concerned.  The infant seemed large and Julia had a narrow pelvis.

On March 20, after a long, difficult delivery, the baby boy was born.  Like his mother, his forehead, neck, shoulders, and back were covered in hair.  Due to respiratory difficulties, he survived only 35 hours. 

I could find no indication that he was ever named.

Meanwhile, Pastrana had developed a dangerous post-partum fever.  Her condition continued to deteriorate and, on March 24, she was pronounced dead.

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What Theodore Lent did after losing his wife and son sounds to me less like the grieving spouse and parent and more like a businessman worried about losing his source of income.  He paid Dr. J. Sokolov to embalm the mother and son.  It resembled the taxidermy of trophy animals rather than the embalming of loved ones.

Lent continued traveling, only now he took his preserved wife and son with him, exhibiting them in glass cases and, of course, charging admission to see them.

According to one author and historian who saw them, “Having had some experience with human mummies, I was exceedingly surprised by what I saw.”  She was atop a table, wearing a handmade red dress that she’d worn when she was alive; her limbs, chest, and face were perfectly preserved.  The author had visited the gallery with a colleague – a prominent taxidermist – who was also stunned. “He agrees with me that (Pastrana) is the most wonderful specimen of the art of preserving ever brought before the public notice, and both he and I are at a loss to know the means which have been employed.”

It appears that Julia was not the draw in death that she had been in life and by 1865, Theodore Lent was touring with another woman who resembled his first wife.  The 16 year old was covered with hair and advertised as being Julia’s sister, although she most likely was not.

When P.T. Barnum saw Lent’s exhibition of the dead Julia and her son, he was struck by a deep sympathy for the woman.  He said, “Poor Julia could not know an old friend was calling.  She could not hear or see.  She could not feel joy or pain, or want of love…and I thought how, once, she said, ‘He loves me for myself alone.’  Most people called her a monster.  I knew who the real monster was.”

It appears that Mr. Barnum was right.  Lent’s new wife, Zenora, would appear on stage with the preserved bodies of Julia and her son behind her.

Wow.

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When the couple retired from touring, Theodore went insane and Zenora had him committed.  She then sold or gave away the mummified remains of Julia and the baby.

Although Zenora and Theodore were soon forgotten, Julia and her son continued touring and being sold to different showmen.  As late as the 1970s they were touring the United States.  Around that time, the exhibition of humans fell out of favor and the two bodies were stored in Norway.  Teenagers broke into the warehouse.  They damaged Julia and stole her son.  His body was later found in a ditch, broken, soaked with water, and eaten by mice.

He was thrown in the trash.  You read that right; he was thrown in the trash.

Julia’s body was returned to storage and, in the 1990s, someone discovered her in the basement of Oslo’s Institute of Forensic Medicine.  People began to ask questions and, in 2005, Laura Anderson Barbata, a Mexico City-born, New York-based visual artist then on a residency in Oslo, began petitioning the university for the repatriation of Julia’s body.

On February 12, 2013, with Ms. Barbata in attendance, Julia Pastrana was buried in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town near her birthplace.  At last, 153 years after her death, she had gotten the respect and dignity that had been denied her for her entire life, and for many years after.

Julia, may you rest in peace…finally.

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