My Dearest Witch

Spidora

5/4/2024

This is a topsy turvy tale in which two very odd things happen. This isn’t a tale for the weak stomached folk. There is a grimy underbelly to the sideshow, a certain brutality that is made palatable over time and retelling. The sideshow of old, made it ok to look at things we pretend not to see in civilized society. This is the story of Spidora.
Cicley Smith was born into a cage of existence. She had one very profound advantage to the plight of the caged life. She was born with an extra pair of arms and an eye for seeing a way though the tightest of spots. She was a natural entertainer. A star, right from the beginning. Back in those days, people exhibited anything, so when an honest to goodness, physical spectacle was on exhibition, the towns folk would line up, down the midway to satiate their appetites for some unbelievable thing. A little wonder they could store in their coat pockets and in the corners of their mind.
Cicley was destined for the sideshow. When her parents learned of this lucrative and interesting way their daughter’s freakery could contribute in elevating their lifestyle, a velvet map was laid at Cicely’s feet and she only had to put one foot in front of the next. Her mother and father seemed a bit too eager to see her little suitcase disappear on the back of a wagon, but they were cheered by the weight and jingle of the coins they were given by the showman. Their little monster would illuminate the stage as “Spidora, The Human Spider.”
Spidora was a natural born, gifted by God himself, with a perfectly working extra pair of arms. She traveled with Bartholomew and Golden’s Human Curiosity Show, Until her untimely death. From birth Human oddities like Spidora were worth a large sum in death to physicians and showmen. Oftentimes, when they died, the human oddity would leave death ritual instructions for their caskets to be covered with cement. An eternal veil of security against thievery and ill intent.
Spidora left no such set of instructions, her death was sudden. As you see here, she remains on display an anatomical marvel. Folks would often contemplate the inner working of an entertainer with physical abnormalities. Some were subjected to public autopsies after death, the public paying to witness the scene. Another common atrocity inflicted on the sideshow dead was mumification, and then they were put in a travelling exhibition. The showman was not above collecting as many coins as he could, ever after death.
There is a long history of the body of the side show performer laid bare, forever on exhibition. The performer captured in a cage until one day when they are repatriated. This piece serves as a homage to all those that were a fingertip away from escaping the cage. Those who found no sleep in death; the physical wonders who were milked of their magic and were given no moon and no stars.
Édouard Beaupré, (January 9, 1881 – July 3, 1904) was a Canadian circus and freak show giant, professional wrestler, strongman, and star of Barnum and Bailey's circus. He was one of the tallest men in recorded history, with a reported height of 2.52 m (8 ft 3 in). Édouard Beaupré was born in the southern Saskatchewan town of Willow Bunch on January 9, 1881.
Beaupré signed a contract on July 1, 1904, with the Barnum and Bailey circus to appear at the St. Louis World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. However, just two days later on July 3, 1904, he died at age 23 of a pulmonary hemorrhage, a complication of tuberculosis. At the time of his death, he was 2.49 m (8 ft 2 in) tall
At the circus' request, the undertaker embalmed Beaupré's body. However, the circus refused to pay, so they decided to preserve the body which they then put on display in St. Louis. Through an unknown connection, the body made it to the Museum of Eden in Montreal and was put on display there, but the exposition drew such a crowd that the authorities shut it down. The body was then passed on to a Montreal circus, but they quickly went bankrupt and dumped the body in a warehouse. It sat there until 1907, when two kids came across the body as they were playing in the warehouse. The Université de Montréal claimed the body, and, after doing some research and an autopsy, mummified Beaupré's body and placed it in a glass display case in the university.
The family only discovered Beaupré's body was in Montreal in 1967, and so in 1975 began the process to try to return the body to Willow Bunch for a proper burial. The university refused and claimed rights over the body, saying that they wanted to continue to perform research and did not want the body displayed anywhere else. In 1989 the family once again tried, this time bringing the media with them as well to put some pressure on the university. This time the effort worked, and so the university decided they could cremate the remains, to prevent anyone from grave-robbing the body. It took two big urns to contain Beaupré's ashes. Finally, in 1990, the body of le Géant Beaupré or le Géant de Willow-Bunch was brought back to Willow Bunch. The family had a memorial service, and his remains now lie in front of the Willow Bunch Museum.

Julia Pastrana (August 1834 – 25 March 1860) was a performer and singer during the 19th century who had hypertrichosis. Pastrana, an indigenous woman from Mexico, was born in 1834, somewhere in the state of Sinaloa.
During a tour in Moscow, Pastrana gave birth to a son, with features similar to her own. The child survived only three days, and Pastrana died of postpartum complications five days later.
After Pastrana's death, her showman and husband Theodore Lent sold her body and their son's body to Moscow University who permanently preserved them. Her body was taxidermically preserved. The process was a blend of taxidermy techniques and embalming chemicals.
For over a hundred years, the bodies of Pastrana and her son were displayed around the world in museums, circuses and amusement parks. They appeared in Norway in 1921 and toured the US as late as 1972. Later that year, a tour of Sweden drew considerable public opposition, leading to the bodies being withdrawn from public view. Vandals broke into the storage facility in August 1976 and damaged the baby's body. The remains were consumed by mice. Julia's preserved body was stolen in 1979, but stored at the Oslo Forensic Institute after the body was reported to police but not identified. It was identified in 1990 and for many years rested in a sealed coffin at the Department of Anatomy, Oslo University. In 1994, the Norway Parliament recommended burying her remains, but the Minister of Sciences decided to keep them, so scientists could perform research. A special permit was required to gain access to her remains.
In February 2013, with the help of Sinaloa state governor Mario López Valdez, New York-based visual artist Laura Anderson Barbata, Norwegian authorities, and others, the body was turned over to the government of Sinaloa and her burial was planned. Hundreds of people attended her Catholic funeral, and her remains were buried in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town near her birthplace.

Sarah Baartman (Afrikaans: [ˈsɑːra ˈbɑːrtman]; c.1789– 29 December 1815) was a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe
Saint-Hilaire applied on behalf of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle to retain her remains (physicians had preserved her brain, genitalia and skeleton), on the grounds that it was of a singular specimen of humanity and therefore of special scientific interest. The application was approved, and Baartman's skeleton and body cast were displayed in Muséum d'histoire naturelle d’Angers. Her skull was stolen in 1827 but returned a few months later. The restored skeleton and skull continued to arouse the interest of visitors until the remains were moved to the Musée de l'Homme, when it was founded in 1937, and continued up until the late 1970s. Her body cast and skeleton stood side by side and faced away from the viewer which emphasized her steatopygia (accumulation of fat on the buttocks) while reinforcing that aspect as the primary interest of her body. The Baartman exhibit proved popular until it elicited complaints for being a degrading representation of women. The skeleton was removed in 1974, and the body cast in 1976.

Her remains were repatriated to her homeland, the Gamtoos Valley, on 6 May 2002, and they were buried on 9 August 2002 on Vergaderingskop, a hill in the town of Hankey over 200 years after her birth.

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