“At one, the child of black farmer was being displayed with her four legs in New York Museum”
Betty Lou Williams was history’s highest-paid human oddity. She Has 4 Legs! Born Lillie B Williams on January 10, 1932, in Albany, Georgia, she was a normal girl except for the miniature twin growing out of the left side of her body.
The daughter of a poor farming family and the youngest of twelve children, Williams was attached at the side to a parasitic sibling that had two legs, a developed arm with three fingers and another tiny arm-like appendage.
The twin’s body was formed from her waist down and was embedded deep within her abdomen.
Nevertheless, doctors said that Williams was very healthy and could definitely live long. Her parasitic twin would later help her to earn a large living.
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William’s rise to fame began when she was just a year old, after being discovered by a professional showman called Dick Best.
Best changed her name to Betty Lou for reasons not known and started displaying the child in his New York Museum.
Through that, Williams caught the attention of Robert Ripley, of Believe it or Not?! fame.
After negotiations between Ripley and Best, it was agreed that Betty Lou, then aged two, would be shown for $250 a week at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not?! Odditorium at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1934.
Betty Lou’s earnings quickly soared as she matured, and began earning as much as $1000 a week.
Out of her large finances, she purchased a 260-acre ranch for her parents and succeeded in sending all her eleven siblings to college.
Many attributed her rise to fame and huge income to her beauty and kindness. Betty Lou attracted a lot of male suitors, and at the age of 23, she got engaged to one of them.
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Her husband-to-be, however, disappointed her as he turned out to be a thief who absconded with a huge amount of money belonging to her.
Soon after this, Betty Lou, despite assurances by doctors that she was healthy and could live long, died from an asthma attack at her home in Trenton, New Jersey at the age of 23.
Many people believed that she died of a broken heart.
Source: Face2Face Africa
