Julia Pastrana was a Mexican Digger Indian that was born to a family that lived in a cave who ate roots and tree bark to survive ... she was four and a half feet tall ... her whole face
and body was covered with straight black hair (congenital, generalized hypertrichosis terminalis) ... her
ears and nose were extraordinarily large ... her teeth were irregular and abnormal ... according to one account she
had a double row in each jaw ... though a recent examination of her mummy says otherwise.
She was discovered by a man named Theodor Lent who began exhibiting her worldwide ... her act displayed the fact
that she was an accomplished dancer and singer ... she eventually married Lent and even to her deathbed truly
believed that he loved her for her own sake ... she died from complications of childbirth in 1860 ... her similarly
hairy and deformed baby boy lived for three days and she died shortly thereafter ... after their death Lent allowed
a Professor Sokoloff to mummify her and her baby then he resumed the tour continuing to exhibit them both ...
Lent eventually died of a brain disease ... one of his final acts was to run around on a bridge throwing money into
the river.
For many years, Julia's mummy was believed to have been lost ... But ... The mummies ended up in Norway in 1921 and were on display until the mid-1970s when Norwegian authorities threatened confiscation ... The mummies were stolen in 1979 ... then recovered by police from a dump and stored ... in 1990 it was discovered at the Oslo Forensic Institute a little the worse for wear ... Julia was by all accounts a bright, sweet and interesting woman ... she loved to read ... exhibiting herself saved her
from the grinding poverty of her birth home and allowed her to see the world!
Clayton Glover and
Glenn Smith wrote a song that they have titled
Julia's song© ....
you can listen to song here that they have submitted for a movie that is now being made about Julia Pastrana.
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