Madame Clofullia, “The Bearded Lady of Geneva”
Soon after Josephine Boisdechene was born in Switzerland in 1829, her parents started to worry. She was unnaturally hairy, and the problem only got worse. According to some accounts, she had a two-inch beard by the age of eight. Doctors were puzzled and her parents were distraught. They sent young Josephine off to boarding school, where she learned how to behave like a society lady. However, when she graduated at the age of 14, she decided to make the most of her looks. With her father as her agent, Josephine toured Europe.
While performing in Paris, she met her husband, an artist called Fortune. They had a son, Albert, who was just as hairy as his mother had been as an infant. All three of them, as well as Josephine’s father, moved to America in 1853. They met with P.T. Barnum, and he invited the family to appear in his American Museum in New York. Josephine was promoted as “The Bearded Lady of Geneva”. She dressed as a classic European aristocratic lady, though fashioned her beard in the style of Napoleon III. The paying public loved her and her hirsute son.
A few weeks after Josephine’s first appearance, a man took Barnum to court. He claimed that his bearded lady was really a man. Doctors quickly confirmed that this was not the case. The publicity generated by the case made Barnum’s museum more popular than ever. To this day, many still wonder if Barnum himself arranged the trial as a cheap publicity stunt. The Bearded Lady’s popularity lasted for a few more years, though after the 1850s, her fate is unknown.