The Littlest Dipygus

Theme: Sad Toys Factory - Mimmo D'Ippolito

The following was recovered from the diary of the renowned and oft-resented hoax-finder Marshall Hemming-Webster, on his decision not to publicise his findings in the case of Mary Ellen Lydecker of the Wexley Brothers' Itinerant Sideshow. We publish it here pursuant to his wishes that his private matters be made public not more nor less than one hundred years from the date of his passing.

Mary Ellen Lydecker was so beloved not only of her public but among the carneys too that when she fell pregnant not even the most niggardly of money-men could be heard to utter a word of complaint for the considerable cost incurred in her upkeep during the months she was unable to perform; nor did a single member of the company question the child's paternity, though not a word was shared among them nor any contract made toward that end. Indeed, so sweet was her demeanour that no question of her character was raised, and when she passed, among the little that she left behind was found a wedding band unadorned save for an inscription bearing her name and that of the man to whom she had been wed in secret, and whose testimony I later extracted to my satisfaction that both had believed her barren prior to the union, for it was thought that one so small could scarcely deliver a child under the best of circumstances; circumstances fate, in the event, did not see fit to bestow.

For on the night of Mary Ellen's labour, a great storm blew in from the east, unaccounted for, and in the hastened disassembly of the great tent a pole came loose and struck Delmer Gosgrove, the sawbones who attended to her care the length of her pregnancy, and killed him stone dead upon the instant. It was scarcely more than an hour hence that Mary Ellen's water broke, and she was hied in great haste to the medic's trailer, whereupon it fell to the grief-stricken nurses to do all they could for the delivery. And it was said by those who recalled their attendance on that mad night that the young dwarf's howls accompanying each contraction were as sweet and as melodious as ever was her singing in the carnival, and harmonised with the howling of the gale without; though in my years I have heard many a tale embellished with romantic flourishes of similar fancy.

In the event, however, it can scarcely be credited that aught but a cacophany of wailing must have greeted the reality of that ill-starred labour; for it transpired to the great sorrow of the sad world that the baby was misoriented and could not be righted, such that, however coaxed and prodded with forceps and sundry implements, the little legs descended first amid a stream of blood and water, and then nothing, for the little girl asphyxiated even then as one hanged, her umbilical cord wrapped noose-like around her little throat, so that the lifeless little legs descended between her mother's own in the manner of a dipygus; a striking connexion with which the sideshow folk were well acquainted. And it was perhaps a mercy to her that that poor unhappy mother passed from this world in that moment, whether overcome by grief or horror or from loss of blood or other medical complaints unknown; for no autopsy was permitted, for reasons that became clear.

For the company with one unspoken thought amid the flurry of emotions saw the grim sight and, acquainted with what costs had been sunk into their beloved star, knew only, as a beaver knows to build its dam, that the show must go on despite all the horror of the world, and they began to whisper "don't they look like...?" and "how long might they be thus preserved?". And so, under the blanket of black night and darker calculations and contrivances, the little bodies were spirited hence to still another sideshow, where they gathered quite another audience in their macabre suspension. Thus it is I can confirm, though I should scarcely dream of telling, that the much-discussed exhibit purporting to show the body of the world's first confirmed comorbidity of dipygus and dwarfism was not altogether a conventional hoax, but came of a far bleaker and more melancholic provenance.