Mothers will often go to any lengths to keep their children healthy, safe, and sound. Mary Ann Webster was one of them, facing mocking, ridicule, and laughter all for their kids.
Mary’s life started out simply. She was born in a poor, large family in London and began work at a young age as a nurse.
When she was 29, she married Thomas Bevan, had 4 children, and lived her dreamed life of having a large family.
She was an attractive woman and she was endlessly devoted to her children.
Then, Mary began to develop issues with her health. Her joints and muscles ached, and she began to get migraines.
Doctors couldn’t figure out the issue, and she didn’t take time for her health because she needed to be there for her family. Then another symptom arose: facial distortion.
Her face began to swell and grow, and her appearance soon changed to the point where she looked nothing like her previous self.
Eventually, the disease was identified: acromegaly.
This disorder of the neuroendocrine variety leads to excessive growth hormones being formed within the body, causing the enlargement of tissue, bone, and organs.
Now, this can be cured – but back then, in just the start of the 20th century, there was no way to treat it.
Mary’s husband continued to love and support her, but 11 years after they married, he passed away. Mary now had barely any money and needed to take care of her children.
She tried to get jobs, but her appearance put people off so she couldn’t get any good work, and people would make fun of her when they saw her on the street.
Then, one day, Mary heard about the World’s Ugliest Woman competition, which awarded a huge monetary payout.
She joined the contest and won, but then the media began crafting negative stories about her that she couldn’t bring herself to read.
A new source of income arrived in 1920, when the Dreamland show on Coney Island invited her to work with them in the United States.
She agreed, and she joined a motley crew: dwarfs, bearded women, Siamese twins, and more.
She would dress in ways to highlight her unattractive features and make her look more masculine so that more people came to laugh at the freak shows.
It wasn’t long before Mary became one of the most famous of the actors there.
For the rest of her life, Mary’s stable income from the surface allowed her to provide for her children.
She stayed in America – only returning to Europe once to visit Paris for an exhibition of a similarly humiliating nature – until her passing in 1933, at the age of 59.
Her young age of passing is attributed to her disease. She requested to be buried in her homeland of England, to which her children, of course, obliged.
Through all the hatred and ridicule, Mary endured the suffering.
She just wanted to provide for her kids, and she definitely did just that.
