The Headless Lady

gallery2I will be presenting the last in the Inexplicable Acts series at the Wellcome Trust this afternoon (2pm-4pm).

This time I will be joined by social historian Vanessa Toulmin (University of Sheffield), sideshow impresario Jon Marshall, and sword-swallower Dan Meyer. We have also invited a Headless Lady along, and there is some footage of her and other sideshow acts in action after the break.

Advertisement

Tags:

8 Responses to “The Headless Lady”

  1. burntbroccoli Says:

    Nooo! I was going to come but I’m not well, you wouldn’t want me hacking away in the corner. Will it be filmed at all?

  2. Jacqueline Says:

    Get well soon.

  3. englishcoach Says:

    It’s all done by mirrors.

  4. Michael Gray Says:

    ‘Tis the next career step after being sawn in half..

  5. Leslie Says:

    This makes my heart sad. Why would anyone vollonteer for this? Just because we can does not mean we should. There is no joy or fullfilment in having ones head removed. There is no childrens laughter and baby giggles in her future. There is just this, a doctor who wonders if he can do it. Yes! We can and do become monsters.

  6. Ronald Rockstead Says:

    Maybe she had relatives she didn’t want to listen to too or see anymore? I don’t know why :P

  7. ForWest Inc. Says:

    What is that?
    Is it a robot? or somekind magic trick. I guess so…

  8. Ronald Rockstead Says:

    Boy I was in a weird mood when I made that comment.
    Anyways, it’s like a magic trick, like the lady being sawed in half. They hide her head(which isn’t really removed) and you will notice that the headless lady never leaves her seat if you watch the show. I have been told sometimes they get a hairless legged guy to be “The Headless Lady” as everything above the midsection is really a fascade in some of the versions of this trick.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,306 other followers