For a child, a mother is the world’s most beautiful person. But for this one woman the world didn’t let her children feel the same. This heartbreaking story is about a mother who made an enormous sacrifice. This is the story of Mary Ann Bevan, a mother who took the title of ‘World’s Ugliest Woman.’ The reason she did so is an extraordinary act of love, yet it is heartbreaking.
Who was Mary Ann Bevan
According to Hektoen International, A Journal of Medical Humanities, Mary was born as Mary Ann Webster to a working-class English family in 1874. She became a nurse at age twenty and married farmer Thomas Bevan in 1902. They had four children, two girls and two boys. Till now everything was going the way any normal woman would have wanted it to go. Mary was surrounded by a loving family.
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However, tragedy knocked Mary’s door soon.
When the misfortune began
Photo courtesy: rarehistoricalphotos.com
In 1914, Mary’s husband and the father of her four children, Thomas suddenly passed away. This marked the beginning of Mary’s misfortune. When Mary Ann was about thirty-two, her facial appearance started to change, her visual fields decreased, and headaches began. She was hit by a rare medical condition called Acromegaly.
Mary suffered a rare medical condition
Mary Ann Bevan with her four children (Image courtesy: rarehistoricalphotos.com)
Acromegaly in adults is a condition caused by excessive production of growth hormone, usually due to a pituitary gland tumor. The disease took the best of her. Acromegaly slowly altered her face and body. Her hands grew larger. Her jaw widened. Her features became almost unrecognizable. She suffered from severe headaches and failing eyesight.When it got worse, the illness made it difficult for Mary to continue working as a nurse. Now along with her grieving husband, Mary was left wondering how she would feed her four children. Had Mary been a normal woman, she would have easily found any job based on her intellects. But the world didn’t see her through that lens. People started judging her appearance before she could even introduce herself. She could get no job even after long searches.
How Mary Ann Bevan got the heartbreaking title
Mary Ann Bevan in one of the “Freak Shows” (Image courtesy: rarehistoricalphotos.com)
In the western countries, “Freak Shows” were popular from the 1840s to 1940s. In these ethically awful shows, people were exhibited because of their appearances: “giants,” “dwarves,” “bearded ladies,” those with microcephaly, or other conditions that the public wanted to gape at. As disturbing as it sounds, these shows were quite a talk then. When the world rejected Mary and labelled her “unemployable,” she had no resort left to feed her four little kids. After finding a newspaper advertisement for “Ugliest Woman” contest and knowing about the prize money, Mary answered a newspaper ad and entered the contest. She had the dubious honor of winning and was hired in 1920 for a “freak show” in the amusement park district at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. She spent the rest of her life with this show.The courageous mother Mary Ann Bevan passed away in 1933 at the age of 59. During her years as a performer, she earned over 50,000 USD and managed to pay for her children’s upbringing and education, which was always her goal.
