Dear Sir, - Truth is always proving itself stranger than fiction - even my sort of fiction! While out in the States recently, I went inta a "Wonder Museum" in Philadelphia, and there I saw on exhibition probably the most amazing woman now living, a sheer impossibility, if one had not seen her with oners own eyes. She was about forty-five and quite handsome in a big, Junoesque manner. She was billed as a "Beautiful Living Torso," but she wasn't even a complete torso.
Her body finished a little above he line of the waist, and she was thus not only completely without legs, but without the normal lower part of the body. Her magnificently modelled shoulders, which were left quite bare, merged into two large but well shaped bulbs, actually not stumps of her missing arms, but the rounded-off shoulder-ends.
She was, of course, German - practically all the limbless women I have seen on show have been, for some extraordinary reasons, Germans - and we were told that she had only two ribs on each side instead of the usual number, and that her stomach and the accompanying organs, all of which functianed normally, were placed above the waist, and her heart right up in line with her shoulders.
Her body was neatly finished off at about the waist line, without any scar or deformity, and was furnished with a natural cushion of soft flesh, on which she rested comfortably. She was, of course, completely helpless, and relied entirely on her pretty, uniformed nurse.
She rested while on show on a pedestal, on the cushioned top of which she was afterwards carried round among the audience to prove that she was really a living human being - though even that hardly made one believe one's eyes!
She was loaded with showy, artificial jewellery - three or four heavy necklaces, long, hanging, diamond earrings, pendants, Jlittering diadems in her stylishly dressed hair, etc. Her face .Ras brilliantly made-up, and her bare, armless bust was carefully rouged and powdered. And her whole attitude, whether real or assumed, was one of immense complaisance and pride in her unique appearance.
The amazing thing was that this incredible fragment of a woman - so we were informed - had not only been married three times, but had actually been divorced, a lover having stolen her from the house of her first husband! Surely a nice problem in sexual psychology for the medical experts!
It is probable that this amazing woman will be exhibited in London during the X-mas holidays.
Yours faithfully
W.W. S.
(Perhaps the best-known limbless woman of modern times was Sarah Biffen, who became famous as a miniature painter to Queen Victoria. She was born entirely without limbs, and was originally exhibited as a "Limbless Wonder" in country fairs. She was well educated, and was taught to draw and paint, which she did by holding a brush in her mouth. For many years she earned her living by painting miniature portraits, and died at the age of 75 in 1859. In "Nicholas Nickleby" there is an allusion to Miss Biffen by Mrs. Nickleby. - Ed.)