Biography
Born in Plaistow, London, England as one of eight children, Bevan worked as a nurse for much of her younger life. In 1903 she married Thomas Bevan with whom she would have four children.
Bevan started exhibiting the symptoms of acromegaly soon after she was married, around the age of 32. She began to suffer from abnormal growth and facial distortion, which led to her "homely" appearance, along with severe headaches and fading eyesight. When her husband died in 1914 she no longer had the income to support her family and had to find work herself. In 1920 she was hired by Sam Gumpertz to appear in Coney Island's Dreamland sideshow, a form of freak show, where she would spend most of the remainder of her life. She also made appearances at the World's Fair for the Ringling Brothers Circus until she died in 1933. When she died she weighed 12 stone (168 lbs or 76 kg) and measured 5 feet 7 inches (170 centimeters)–not excessive for someone with acromegaly.
Read more about this topic: Mary Ann Bevan
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)