VIDEO: Weirdest Circus Freaks

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Humans have a very strong sense of wonder. We like seeing weird things and we enjoy watching people that are… different.

There was a time when people could actually watch other people in circus – just like in the fourth season of “American Horror Story” – and the latter were called “freaks”.

This video presents the top ten weirdest circus sideshows and freaks.

The most shocking and impressive one is for sure Myrtle Corbin – the woman with four legs!

According to Wikipedia, Josephine Myrtle Corbin was an American sideshow performer born a dipygus. This referred to the fact that she had two separate pelvises side by side from the waist down, as a result of her body axis splitting as it developed.

Each of her smaller inner legs was paired with one of her outer legs. She was said to be able to move her inner legs, but they were too weak for walking.

Corbin’s parents were William H. Corbin, aged 25 at the time of his daughter’s birth, and Nancy Corbin, aged 34.

Both parents were described by physicians who examined the infant shortly after her birth as being very similar in appearance, “both having red hair, blue eyes, and very fair complexion”; in fact, they looked so similar that the physicians felt compelled to point out that they were not “blood kin”.

The Corbins had four sons and four daughters in total, including a daughter from Nancy’s first marriage.

The infant Myrtle’s birth was not marked by anything “peculiar about the labour or delivery” according to her mother, which was itself a stroke of luck: doctors who examined the child shortly after her birth noted that a breech presentation “would have proved fatal to the infant, and possibly to the mother.”

Corbin soon showed herself to be a strong child, weighing 10 lbs three weeks after her birth, and it was reported in a journal published later that year that she “nurses healthily” and was “thriving well”

Corbin entered the sideshow circuit with the moniker “Four-Legged Girl from Texas” when she was 13 years old; one of her first promotional pamphlets described her as being as “gentle of disposition as the summer sunshine and as happy as the day is long.”

Her popularity in this industry was such that other showmen turned to exhibiting four-legged gaffs (falsified performances) and once Corbin herself was no longer performing, there were several phony four-legged women to whom audiences could turn. At the age of 19 she married James Clinton Bicknell, and she would go on to give birth to four daughters and a son.

The pregnancy caused Corbin to become gravely ill, and after consulting with colleagues, Whaley decided to perform an abortion eight weeks after her initial examination.

She was, reportedly, between three and four months pregnant at the time. She made a full recovery, and the procedure (as well as her unique anatomy), did not prevent her from successfully carrying future pregnancies to term.