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Fedor Jeftichew

Fedor Jeftichew (1868 - January 31, 1904) was a person born with a rare condition known as hypertrichosis. Known as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, he was a famous sideshow performer who was brought to the United States of America by P.T. Barnum.

Life

Born in Finland in 1868 to a hirsute performer father, Adrian Jeftichew and to a woman called Nadia Petrova, Fedor Jeftichew was first exhibited as a small boy with his equally hairy father, in Paris in 1873. After Adrien's death, Fedor became a ward of the Russian government, who appointed a man named Nicholas Forster as his guardian. The boy, sixteen years old at the time, was five feet, eight inches tall and covered with long, silky, fur-like hair that grew thickest on his face. He had just five teeth in his whole mouth. Forster took Fedor to England, where he was exhibited by a showman named Charles Reynolds. Reynolds advertised the boy as having been raised by wolves in the wilderness of Siberia.

P.T. Barnum eventually heard of this extraordinary European freak and brought him to the United States in 1884 to appear in his Barnum and London Circus, accompanied by his guardian Nicholas Forster and Forster's wife. During his time with Barnum he was billed as ‘The most prodigious paragon of all prodigies secured by P. T. Barnum in over 50 years’. Barnum created a story that involved a hunter in Kostroma who tracked Fedor and his father to their cave and captured them. Barnum made a point of stressing Fedor's resemblance to a dog, and explained that when he was upset he would bark and growl. In the show, Fedor obliged by doing so. He was typically presented in a Russian cavalry uniform, complete with rifle.

Jo-Jo's last known American booking was with Barnum and Bailey in 1901. In 1903, during a tour of Greece, Jo-Jo contracted pneumonia. He died shortly thereafter on January 30, 1904, at the age of 35 with no heirs.


Skills

Fedor was known to be a gentle and generous man. He was described by the New York Herald as being as playful as a puppy with his audiences and ‘the most absorbingly interesting curiosity to ever reach these shores’. He was an avid reader and spoke as many as five languages.