A Huge Humbug.
--The New York
Express prints a column of the history of an attempt by
a Dr. Perkins, of
Oneida, Madison county, to gull the public in the city with an extraordinary
lusus watura, in the shape of a ‘"carbonized woman. "’ The subject is a
Miss Perry of
Oneida, a lady of thirty-seven years, who has been it seems for fourteen years past turning into charcoal so silently and unostentatiously that persons beyond her immediate neighborhood knew nothing of the strange occurrence till
Dr. Perkins introduced her to the scientific world.
During the fourteen years, it is said, whatever the maiden has eaten or drunk — and she not been stinted in food — has exuded from her skin in a charcoal form till now her left side, arm, and leg were covered with a charcoal skin, and her face was charcoal.
Recently, the
Doctor and his patient visited the
Metropolis, with a view to her introduction to an ‘"astounded and delighted"’ public for a reasonable compensation per head.
First she was introduced to a broker of speculative turn of mind, and afterward ‘"to the faculty,"’ who instituted a scientific examination of the wonderful woman.
The result of the examination was the discovery that
Miss Perry's charcoal skin was manufactured at
New York Mills, covered with charcoal dust, and gummed tightly over the natural epidermis; in fact, the maiden was peeled, and stood before the grave physicians with no peculiarities to distinguish her from the rest of womankind.
The history concludes with this paragraph:
There has never been so great an imposition attempted in this city; and the only mistake of
Dr. Perkins was in calling in the New York faculty, and not applying directly to
Barnum.
Mrs. Cunningham's "bogus baby performance was thought to have immortalized New York city, but the
Oneida charcoal skin, got up in the rural districts, beats us Metropolitans out-and-out.
