A hush falls as the lamps dim and the benches creak beneath an eager audience.

Posters outside promise a grand and novel attraction.

It's an audience familiar with seeing giants and dwarves. People hold from the empire's

edges to be caged and displayed, features catalogued, humanity reduced to diagrams and theories.

Now they wait for Julia. As she steps into the light, the showman scans the audience for its reaction.

Murmurs ripple through the room, comparisons or whispers, doctors lean forward, notebooks ready.

Under there on blinking stairs, Julia feels the room close in.

Her body claimed by their curiosity, her humanity left unseen.

In Victorian side shows, human lives were caged and sold a spectacle. This is the story of

Julia Pastrana, a Mexican woman who was exhibited before paying audiences,

confined, scrutinized, and became the greatest curiosity of the 19th century.

In life, she was displayed as something less than human, and even in death, her body was preserved

and toured, shown again and again for profit.

From the Victorian Side Show, this'm Maddie.

And I'm Anthony.

And in today's episode, we want to look at the dark and frankly uncomfortable history of the Victorian side shows, or as they were often referred to, freak shows.

It's worth noting right away in this episode that we're going to be addressing historic racism, ableism, and we're going to be referring to language that we've used in the context of its time, which some of you may find offensive.

So if you want to skip this episode, that is completely understandable, and we look forward to your listenership on a

different episode soon. Today, we're going to take you through the Victorian side show or freak show,

as they were known, through one woman's experience in particular. She was known as Julia Pastrana.

That was her stage name. We unfortunately

don't know her birth name. And as you're going to find out, there's a lot that's missing from her

...