Mary Ann Bevan, a mother of four in England in the 1900s, got acromegaly and became known as “the ugliest woman in the world” to support her children. This is her sad story, which shows how cruel the world can be.
The World’s Ugliest Woman wasn’t always the ugliest person in the world. Before she got acromegaly, Bevan was a pretty woman in her early years.
The pituitary gland makes too many growth hormones, which can make adults start to grow again all of a sudden.
The bones in the face change shape, which can make the hands and feet expand. Bevan’s pretty face turned ugly as her brow and lower jaw stuck out and her nose got bigger.
Bevan’s better days started in East London, where she was born Mary Ann Webster in 1874. She became a nurse and married Thomas Bevan, a farmer from Kent, in 1903.
The couple was very happy and had four healthy kids. Bevans was doing well until Thomas died suddenly in 1914. Some reports say that his widow’s acromegaly started after he died, while others say that the disease had already started.
Acromegaly is one of the less common pituitary disorders, although it can be treated if it is found early enough. But because medicine in the early 20th century was limited, Bevan couldn’t treat or stop the disease, and her features quickly changed beyond recognition.
Bevan chose to use her worsening looks to help maintain her big family. She entered a local contest called “The Ugliest Woman” and beat out 250 other ugly women.
The first ad, which was put up by a British agent for Barnum and Bailey’s circus, said, “Wanted: Ugliest woman.” Nothing ugly, hurt, or broken. Successful applicants will get good income and a long job. “Send a recent picture.”
Bevan got a job in the sideshow, even though he had a bad name. Doctors told her that she would keep getting ugly, so the job sounded safe.
In 1920, Sam Gumpertz hired her to work at Coney Island’s Dreamland sideshow, a type of freak show. She worked there for most of the rest of her life.
People were urged to ogle at “the 154 pounds she carried on her 5′ 7″ frame, as well as her size 11 feet and size 25 hands.”
For years, she put up with the unpleasant eyes of onlookers so that she could feed and educate her kids. She sometimes showed guests pictures of her lovely family and bragged about her son’s job in the British navy.
Bevan eventually reached her aim of taking care of her kids. During her time performing in New York, she made $50,000, which is almost $800,000 in today’s money.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show also included the World’s Ugliest Woman. Bevan fell in love with Andrew, the giraffe keeper for the show, while playing at Madison Square Garden in 1929.
The sideshow star and the giraffe keeper got along well, and most significantly, the giraffe keeper didn’t find the sideshow star disgusting. Bevan, on the other hand, decided to jeopardise her job and obtain a new look. A beauty parlour in the area hired professionals to work their magic on her.
Some people thought that the manicure, massage, permanent, and other treatments made her seem better, while others told a newspaper that “the rouge and powder and the rest were out of place in Mary Ann’s face like lace curtains on the portholes of a dreadnought.”
The woman, who was still ugly, said, “I guess I’ll have to get back to work” after viewing the effect for herself. Her job was safe. There is no news about how the giraffe keeper felt.
Bevan kept showing herself for the next few years, even though the condition made her more and more blind and painful.
When she died in 1933 at the age of 59, she lost her distinction as the World’s Ugliest Woman. As she wanted, she is now buried at the Ladywell and Brockley Cemetery in South London.
The Hallmark Controversy
Hallmark Cards developed a birthday card in the UK in the early 2000s that had Bevan’s picture on it. The card mentioned the dating show Blind Date, and the “joke” was that Mary Ann was the blind date.
A Dutch doctor complained that it was rude to a woman whose body had been changed by a sickness.
Hallmark said it would cease selling the card, but it would not take back any of the cards that were already out there. “Once we found out that this woman was sick instead of just ugly, we took the card back right away because it would have been wrong to make fun of someone who was sick,” said Lisa Palillo, Hallmark’s communications manager.
Wouter de Herder, a consultant endocrinologist at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, said he was horrified when he noticed the card for sale while on vacation in the UK. He remarked, “I knew right away that the picture was of Mary Ann Bevan because I had just written an article about her.” “She used to be a pretty young nurse in London, but then she got a painful disease called acromegaly.”
“This caused bones and faces to become misshapen, which couldn’t be effectively corrected back then. Because her husband had died, the only way she could support her four kids was to be in a freak show and be labelled the ugliest woman in the world.
She was in a lot of performances in England and then later in the US, but she had a terrible, awful life. I don’t think it’s ethical to use her picture to make a nasty birthday card in 2006. I think this card is rude to everyone who has the same problem.
(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / Flickr / Pinterest / American Sideshow By Marc Hartzman / American Philosophical Society).
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