William Durks, the Man with Two Noses and Three Eyes.
William Durks was known as the Man with Two Noses and Three Eyes. He was born in 1913 in northern Alabama with a harelip and grew up on a farm without an education.
Adding to his misfortune, Durks suffered from frontonasal dyplasia, which worsened his cleft palate by creating a cleft through his entire face. This gave the impression of two noses.
In my book, American Sideshow, showman Ward Hall described him as looking like “he had been hit in the face with an axe.”
Durks left the farm by the age of 14 and began exhibiting his most unusual face in sideshows and later at Hubert’s Museum in New York City.
In Arthur Lewis’s book, Carnival, Durks said, “None of the kids or teachers could ever look at me, and my mom and pop didn’t have no money to give me for a private education. So what could I do?”
To add to his bizarre look, he painted a third eye in the gap between his real ones. By the 1960s he was earning as much as $100 a week.
Aside from finding a livelihood on stage, the two-nosed man also found love and married Mildred the Alligator-Skinned Woman.
