The Sacred Hairy Family of Burma is a family of people suffering from hypertrichosis that were displayed as sideshow performers.
Life
In 1826 an expedition led by John Crawfurd visited the court of Ava, a province in Burma. In his published account of the visit, Crawfurd described meeting a wolf man named Shew-Maong, supposedly a member of a new species, which he called Homo hirsutus. The account was the first documented encounter with hypertrichosis since Petrus Gonzales.
Shwe-Maong was born in the highlands of Laos in 1796, at the age of five, he was given to the King of Ava as a gift. He took to the role of court jester and entertained the King so completely that the sovereign presented Shwe-Maong with a beautiful wife at the age of 22. Crawfurd wrote that the union produced 4 children. A daughter, named Maphoon, was covered with hair like her father.
According to Captain Henry Yule who visited Ava in 1855, Shwe-Maong had been murdered by thieves. His daughter Maphoon, now thirty-one, was married to an average Burmese man. Her marriage was not a simple affair as the King was forced to offer a large dowry to any man who would wed her as the family was said to have been a source of good luck to all who touched them. For that reason, the King refused to let the family out of the palace. Mah Phoon eventually did find a suitable Burmese husband, and had three children: a normal son, a hairy son named Moung Phoset, and a hairy daughter named Mah Me. One report states that King Theebaw actually paid Mah Phoon's husband a retainer of 500 rupees a month to perpetuate Mah Phoon's "species". What became of the second, non-hairy son is a mystery, as he did not join his mother and siblings on tour and is mentioned only sporadically before that point.
In 1885 the Third Burmese War began. During this revolution the palace at Ava was burned and its inhabitants murdered. The hairy family of Burma managed to escape into the forest. By this time Moung-Phoset had several of his own children. He had one daughter named Mah-Me, who was also hairy, but she died either shortly before or during the escape. Maphoon was still alive but blind and invalid, thus Moung-Phoset carried her on his back to safety.
Moung Phoset worked primarily as a carpenter, and he, his mother, and his sister earned extra income by exhibiting themselves to European visitors. In the summer of 1886 the family was visited by one Mr. J. J. Weir in England and he described them in detail. He reported that Maphoon, while weak and blind, was both lively and pleasant. He also stated that not only was Moung-Phoset covered with soft, brown hair but he was also heavily tattooed from below the waist and to the knees. Weir was astounded by the level of education displayed by the family. He remarked that their appearance did not do justice to their intellect.
An Italian officer who worked for King Theebaw, Captain Paperno, found them hiding and offered to take them to Europe. Mah Me died in June of 1886, evidently while in transit from Burma to England. From England, the family moved on to Paris. P.T. Barnum traveled to England at the end of 1886 to meet this extraordinary family, with the hope of bringing them to the United States for his Greatest Show On Earth. Given the number of competitors willing to hire the prodigies, Barnum made the winning offer of $100,000 (about $2.3 million) to their English managers, Archer and Farrington, for a one-year contract beginning in March of 1887. In 1888 they appeared in the United States with P.T. Barnum. They were billed as ‘The Sacred Hairy Family of Burma’. Mah Phoon died just short of fulfilling the contract, in February of 1888. She received a traditional Burmese burial in a Washington, D.C. cemetery. Shortly afterwards, the family disappeared. Rumors pretend that they try to come back to Burma but where killed by pirates on the way.