Odd this day
An editorial in The Times “deplores the credulity of Londoners”, and in particular takes aim at a sudden fashion: the rumour that a gentlewoman was living in the capital at that time who was otherwise unremarkable, but had a pig’s head.
Apparently, she was a woman of means, employing a lady’s maid on a salary of 1,000 guineas a year. This vast sum for a servant presumably reflected the fact that she had to cope with an employer whose only language was grunts, and who ate from a silver trough. We know this because she resigned her position and sold her story to the press. Or, at least, that’s how the story went. The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square prompted several satirical prints — of which the above is one, now owned by the Horniman Museum in south London (and presumably drawn by someone who was better at cows than pigs).
The Times, perhaps, was frustrated at people’s gullibility because this wasn’t the first time such a rumour had been heard — and was destined not to be the last. In December 1639, it was a known fact, apparently, that a young lady from Holland called Tannakin Skinker was residing in the capital. Living before the age of satirical prints, she gave rise to ballads, portraits and a book, A Certaine Relation of the Hog-Faced Gentlewoman.
She was in Britain seeking a husband because — well, of course — she had been cursed while in the womb. Her pregnant mother had turned away a woman begging for alms, and the curse would only be lifted if she married. Her husband would get a dowry of £40,000.
In the early 18th century, there had also been hospital benefactor Griselda Steevens, who was somewhat reclusive, and usually appeared veiled. There could, of course, only be one possible explanation for this: pig’s head. Bound to be. Her mother, too, had encountered a beggar woman, but she’d told the woman “take away your litter of pigs!” — so: asking for it.
The porcine-featured gentlewoman of 1815 was also moneyed, apparently, and also seeking a suitor. The Times had been prompted to act partly because a young woman had actually placed an advert in the paper advertising herself as a suitable new maid — but also because a young man (presumably equally stupid), sent an advert in, with £1, offering himself
A single Gentleman, aged thirty-one, of a respectable family
as a suitor. The editor got very cross indeed, set fire to the advert and gave the pound to charity. The Morning Chronicle printed it.
It remains the case today, of course, that what motivates newspaper editors most is not outrage, moral indignation, or even the opinion of the proprietor — it’s the opportunity to have a pop at rival editors. The man in charge of The Times lived up to the newspaper’s nickname and thundered in print. There had been a pig-faced woman at large in London in 1764 as well (after Griselda Steevens’ day), he said, and a man had offered to make her an ivory trough. So ludicrous was this new story, he suggested, that the pig-faced woman of 1815 was perhaps the daughter of recently deceased self-proclaimed mother of the Messiah Joanna Southcott.
This, in turn, made the editor of the Morning Chronicle rather tetchy, and he defended himself in print. The story had been around for months, and could be true, he suggested — although he did concede that the extent of her deformity might have been exaggerated.
One explanation for all these pig-faced women might be our approach to animal welfare and fashions in entertainment at the time. Someone wrote in to Notes and Queries in 1861 to ask if anyone had any memories of the pig-faced lady, and got a response from someone who had seen such a person exhibited in Wakefield in 1828 or 1829. The sight
has haunted me ever since.
Given that most pig-faced women in travelling fairs were in fact drugged, shaved bears who were poked with sticks in order to make them grunt once for yes and twice for no to questions such as “are you an heiress?”, and “do you eat from a silver trough?”, this seems hardly surprising.
