The Freak Show and Victorian medicine: The strange case of Millie and Christine McCoy
Credit The Millie-Christine sisters, conjoined twins, standing. Photograph, c. 1871.Credit Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Millie and Christine McCoy were African American conjoined twins, born into slavery in America’s Deep South in 1851. They were stolen from their family at an early age, and trafficked around North America and Europe until being discovered on exhibition in Birmingham. This talk by Helen Davies explores their extraordinary life, and focuses upon the sensational coverage of their rescue in the Birmingham local press. What can the strange case of Millie and Christine tell us about attitudes towards gender, race, and bodily difference in the context of medicine and the Victorian freak show?
With thanks to Helen Davies, we are pleased to be able to offer this talk for free.
Please register to receive your link to the online event, which will take place on Zoom. Tickets are available until 4pm on the day of the event. If you have not received your link by 5pm on Tuesday 27 October, please email louise.price10@nhs.net.
Helen Davies
We aim to provide a form of closed captioning for this zoom talk.