"The casket was lifted carefully out of the hearse by as many men as could well get under it to lend a helping hand."

Life didn’t last long for large ladies who were sideshow attractions at dime museums during the nineteenth century. The demise of such women was the subject of the following reports, which were written with the usual sensitivity of journalism of the period.

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“A Huge Weight,” London Telegraph (August 29, 1890): “One of the biggest women on record has died in Paris. She was known as the Phenomenal Female, her real name being Victoire Tauntin and age only 19. Mlle. Tautin was not a giantess in height, but her girth was enormous and it took eight strong men to lift her out of her chair when she used to be conveyed for an exhibition to a music hall. The individual who engaged her found that she did not pay her expenses, owing to the cost entailed by her transit to and from the cafe concert, so Victoire retired from public life and lived quietly with her parents. Lately she had an attack of erysiplas, to which she succumbed. Her funeral was the event of the day in the suburban locality wherein she resided, and great interest was manifested by the neighbors in watching the lugubrious preparations for the poor phenomenon, whose remains were carried to the hearse and afterward to the grave on the shoulders of ten of the most robust men in the employ of the company  of metropolitan undertakers.”

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“The Giantess,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (March 15, 1884): “The remains of Mrs. Jessie Reed, nee Waldron, the giantess who has for two years been on exhibition by Mr. Bunnell, were taken from Samuel Waldron’s undertaking shop on East Sixty-fourth street, New York, to-day, to the Union avenue Baptist Church, Greenpoint. The hearse was drawn by two stout horses, and was surmounted by plumes. The massive casket, which was three feet, six inches wide and three feet deep, was filled with flowers, the offerings of friends. A great crowd of persons awaited the arrival of the body, many of them being old friends and schoolmates of the giantess. The casket was lifted carefully out of the hearse by as many men as could well get under it to lend a helping hand.

‘Oh I hope they don’t let it fall. It would be fearful if they did,’ several women and young girls whispered to each other timidly, as they saw the men staggering under the weight of nearly 500 pounds.”

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“The Death Is Announced Today,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (February 19, 1879): The death is announced to-day of an amiable young woman who occupied a more or less public position in the world as a giantess. She was a Mrs. Flandran, and the very physical condition which made her a museum curiosity produced fatal results. She was six feet high and suffered from obesity to such an extent that she weighed at the time of her death no less than 516 pounds. There was nothing very extraordinary about either her life or death, except her height, for her bulkiness was due to disease, and fat people die every year by scores of fatty degeneration of the heart. But apart from her physical state she seems to have been an unusually interesting young woman, for her gentleness, amiability and kindness won for her in her pseudo-professional career many warm friends. An obituary notice of the unfortunate invalid–for that appears to have been the case for many years–intimates that honorable gentlemen of all classes sought her hand in marriage. Of course it is only fair to suppose that many of these proposals had their origin in that prurient ambition to associate oneself with distinction. But doubtless more than one, and especially those in her own sphere, appreciated at their true value the gentle qualities of mind and heart which distinguished the circus curiosity.”