“Julia Pastrana is as great a curiosity now as when she was alive.”

A bearded lady who was an attraction at dime museums managed to have an even odder “existence” after her death, as revealed by this article in the March 28, 1862 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Julia Pastrana, the ‘Bearded Woman,’ who was exhibited for some time at Barnum’s Museum, and subsequently in various parts of this country and Europe, died in Moscow in 1860. A London  paper gives the follow strange particulars of her posthumous career:

‘On the following day she was embalmed by her medical adviser at the request of her husband, on the understanding that she should be his property, he paying the process of embalming. A dispute arose subsequently as to his right to the body, which rendered it necessary for him to produce the marriage certificate, which he went to America to fetch, and having transmitted the necessary documents to his agent here, he died in New York. The body thus fell into the hands of his agent, and after being shut up for two years, it is now exhibited at the Burlington Gallery, Piccadilly. The figure is dressed in the ordinary costume used during her life, and her bust, face and arms present pretty much the appearance of a well-stuffed animal.

The embalming is effected by injecting a fluid at an opening in the chest. The limbs are plump and round as in life, with the the exception of the fingers, which are somewhat shriveled, and as a specimen of the art of preserving a human body, Julia Pastrana is as great a curiosity now as when she was alive. Her child, which lived thirty-six hours, is also exhibited; its flat nose and thick hair on the head give it an appearance which is most unpleasant to contemplate.”