INFORMACIÓN, FORMACIÓN DE LOS TRABAJADORES

63 H.E. RoUins (ed,), ThePack o f Autolycus... (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1927), p. 8. 64 Jan Bondeson, The Two-Headed Bay, and other Medical Maruds (Ithaca, N Y , ComeU University Press, 2000). 65 From the Norwich Mayors’ Court Books, 21 Dec. 1639, quoted in: J.T. Murray, English Dramatic Comparues, 1538-1642 (New York: Russell and RusseU, 1963, 2 vols), vol. 2, p. 359.

for his sight, sum less sum mair. A n d after there was so m uche collectit as culd be gottin, he w ith his servandis, shortlie left the toun, and w en t southuard agane.

A picture emerges of a comfortable if peripatetic life for Lazarus, at the expense of his twin: A n d if y o u nip it by the arme.

O r doe it any little harme,

(this hath been tride by many,) It like an infant (with voyce weake) WiU cry out though it cannot speake.

A s sensible o f paine. W hich yet the other feeleth not...

Visitors were invited to try this simple experiment in order to gain information about the extent to which Lazarus and John-Baptiste were separate individuals, a question that provoked hvely disputes:

I w ill onely remem ber unto you a very handsom e young man, late ^f n ot now ) iu T ow ne [London], w h ose picture hath been pubHckely set out to th e com m on view , and himselfe to be seene for moneys w h o from one o f his sides hath a tw in brother growing, w hich was h o m e w ith him, and living still; though having sence [sensation] and feeling, yet destitute o f reason and understanding: w hence m e thinks a disputable question might arise, w hether they have distinct lives, so they are possessed o f tw o soules; or have but on e imparted betwixt th em both...

Boaistuau wrote of a similar case; a man, aged 40 in 1530, with a parasitic twin attached at the umbilicus. He carried the twin’s body in his arms and ‘great troupes’ came to see him. He too travelled and was seen in Valence, Paris, and Montleheiy. According to Boaistuau he later appeared whole and was asked what had become of the monster. Perhaps a small parasite could have been removed surgically (by a brother who had earned enough to retire?) but we do not have enough details to be sure.

Paying to see a person with a malformation enabled the visitor to satisfy his curiosity to the limit. Infants were picked up and palpated and some died from excessive handling. Adults were questioned - James Paris DuPlessis asked Lazarus CoUoredo and the Yorkshire hermaphrodite ‘many questions’ - and sometimes submitted to intimate examination: ‘its viril

66 Rollins, op. c it, p. 9; see also Wilson 1993, cp. c it, p. 180; Bondeson 2000, op. cit 67 Parker, Two insepercibleBrothers, reprinted in Rollins, (p. c it, p. 13.

Herge did Erect by Provocation... ’ DuPlessis noted of the hermaphrodite.^^ In spite of these intmsive examinations, the evidence that we have indicates that adults with congenital malformations who were able to provide for themselves were regarded with interest and perhaps admiration. There is nothing to suggest that they were feared or ridiculed, as some historians have suggested.^° The tendency was for their accomplishments to be emphasised. The skill of Thomas Schweiker, a man bom without arms, at writing with his feet was his stock in trade during life (he was depicted writing ‘Blessed be God in all his woiks’) and a sheet of parchment said to have his writing on it was on display at the mint at Worms more than a centuiy after his death, when his calligraphy was still praised as ‘very Beautiful.’ This was a typical description of the work of individuals with this type of deformity, who were said to use their feet ‘marvellously well’ (Appendix 1, 1528). A child bom without lower limbs ‘jumps, dances and shows artfull tricks that any other person can do with thighs and legs. He speaks divers different languages as High Dutch, Low Dutch, Sclavonian, French and English.’ The linguistic abilities of people with deformities were noted: ‘A Man with a Head Growing out of his Belly... spoke and Rit Several Languages as Latin, French, Italian High Dutch and Pritty good E n g l i s h . A s well as showing a favourable, even exaggerated, regard for the intellectual abilities of people with malformations, their linguistic proficiency suggests that they were widely travelled. The physical beauty of monstrous births is also given remarkable emphasis: conjoined twins ‘...were so well made in all the other Members, that the Painter, who was employed to draw them, affirm’d, that if they were done in Ivory, he would have paid any money for them.’^^

In a sermon delivered in 1635, the clergyman Thomas Bedford, preaching on the birth of a pair of thoracopagus conjoined twins in his locality, inveighed against those who exhibited malformed children for money, or who bought or sold the body of a child for exhibition. However, by prohibiting Christian burial for unbaptised children, including all stillbirths, the church was inadvertently encouraging the sale of their bodies, which would otherwise have been handed over to the midwife for disposal:

If any childe be dead-bom , y ou yourselfe shall see it buried in such secret place as neither hogg nor dogg, nor any other beast m ay com e u n to it, and in such sort done. 69 D u Plessis, A Shon H isto)y o f Human Pmdiffous & Monstrous Births... (1730) BL Sloane 5246, pp. 33-4, 61. 70 For example, Semonin, op. ciL, pp. 78-80: T hey [monsters] were characters of comic horror intimately connected to an ancient tradition of folk humour... The monsters in the marketplace of early modem England embodied elements of an ancient comic tradition.’

71 DuPlessis, op. cit., pp. 31-2, 58. The manuscripts of Du Plessis do not suggest that he had an expert knowledge of these languages.