Mary Ann Bevan: the heroic story of the “ugliest woman in the world”
The world has always been a cruel place.
One may think that humanity has developed new levels of cruelty compared to the more gentle times of yesteryear, and it may even be understandable to think that way. However, that’s more likely to be down to two core facts about modern life. First is the fact that information is easier to access via the internet now than it’s ever been. We know more about the world than ever before, and thus we can see more examples of human cruelty than ever.
The second is that, because of that, information might actually be easier to manipulate than ever before. Often, you are having the world’s worst events manipulated and then shoved in your face to get you angry and disgusted with a completely unrelated set of people. That may sound like a modern phenomenon. However, the truth is that’s just the latest in a long line of misinformation tactics designed to keep people down.
In fact, one of the most effective misinformation tactics is and always has been that life was simpler and kinder back in the day than it is now. All we have to do is return to a vaguely defined time before where people valued community and sense and were just all-around better than the terrifying reality of today. All we have to do is fucking rally together, bring back those times, and we can Make (insert any goddamn country here) Great Again.
Yeah, turns out it’s all bollocks. People are bastard coated bastards now, sure, but they were also bastard coated bastards back then, too, just in a different fucking way. In terms of sheer, pointless, schoolyard-level cruelty, the story of Mary Ann Bevan might just exemplify this better than most.
Who was Mary Ann Bevan?
Born in Plaistow, East London, on December 20th, 1874, as one of eight children in a working-class family, Mary Ann Webster grew up like hundreds of thousands of women did in that area. She had a childhood much like anyone else of her age, went into nursing after completing her education, and married Thomas Bevan in 1902. It wasn’t a particularly glitzy life, but she had a trade and a family, and that seemed to be that for her. Then she started getting headaches.
Not the kind that are solved with two paracetamol and a lie-down either, the kind of excruciating affairs that took her out for days at a time. Then some even more terrifying things started to happen. Her eyesight began to fade. She began to grow and, most noticeably of all, her face began to distort. Her cheekbones protruded at an alarming rate, her jaw swelling, and her brow drooping over her eyes. A stay in hospital confirmed that this was Acromegaly, and these changes would be permanent.
As was her way, Bevan pushed on through it, going back to work as much as her body could allow it. After all, she and Thomas had four kids to feed. Unfortunately, Thomas died in 1914, stuck for ways to provide for her family, Bevan found something that was still in vogue barely a century ago. An ‘Ugliest Woman’ contest. Bevan won. This lead to a second life for Bevan, providing for her family with a lucrative jaunt around the freak-show circuit, the high point being a long-term stint in Coney Island’s Dreamland sideshow.
This was the universe that Bevan lived in up until her death in 1933. While it’s an industry built on a truly staggering level of cruelty, at the very least, it paid well. Well enough to put her kids through school and to set them up in a better sphere of life than she grew up in. Perhaps that’s the key, then. The world will always be goddamn cruel, and if you can learn to exploit that cruelty, you’ll laugh all the way to the fucking bank.