Josephine Myrtle Corbin was born on 12th of May 1868 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, United States.
She was the daughter of William H. Corbin and Nancy Corbin.
She was born with two different pelvises beside each other from the waist down.
According to Myrtle’s doctor, the extra legs was supposed to be her separate twin. Her case was seen as a rare form of conjoined twinning called “Dipygus”.
Each of her smaller inner legs were paired with one of the outer legs. Although the inner legs with three toes each were too fragile for walking but she was able to them.
Technically, she struggled to walk because she had only one usable good leg as the inner ones were paired with the other.
See photo of the inner legs below.
Josephine Myrtle Corbin was a natural beauty. Various doctors that carried out several tests on her confirmed that she was very healthy and could operate like every other normal human being.
She had four other siblings that were born normal.
Josephine Myrtle’s birth took the world by surprise because she was born with four legs and two functional genitals (reproductive organs).
Residents were curious of Josephine’s rare look, so the father decided to make money from it by charging them a token to look at his four-legged daughter.
When she was thirteen, Josephine travelled to different towns in the company of his father for sideshow performance which earned them a lot of money.
Despite her deformity, she didn’t allow her view of life to be affected. She lived her life to the fullest.
She was an American sideshow performer.
At age 19 and about 5ft tall, she got married to a doctor named “James Clinton Bicknell”.
See wedding photo of Myrtle and Clinton below.
The couple had five children together (4 girls and 1 boy).
It was alleged that three of her children were born from one set of her reproductive organs and two were born from the other.
Josephine Myrtle Corbin died on 6th of May 1928 at the age of 59 after suffering from a streptococcal skin infection which there was no treatment for in the 1920s.
After her death, physicians and showmen were willing to pay a lot of money for her dead body but the parents rejected their offers.
The family members of Josephine Myrtle watched her grave for days until the concrete was dried enough to avoid their daughter’s corpse being stolen by grave thieves.
See other photos of Josephine Myrtle Corbin below.
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