During a search for news about Francesco Lentini, a legendary sideshow performer with three legs, I came across a story from January 1915 that’s even weirder than I’d hope to find about the three-legged wonder. It discussed a case of a man who, instead of having three legs, had only one. Actually, two one-legged men were involved.
The first one-legged man co-owned a two-seat barber shop in Wiggins, Mississippi, with a club-footed man. At the back of the shop the local justice of the peace rented space to use as an office and a courtroom. The judge had no legs, having lost both in a train wreck years earlier.
As the article continued, it described a skirmish in a neighboring town involving another one-legged man who “became a little unruly and assaulted a one-arm man with a three-leg stool.”
So the one-legged man who used a three-legged stool as a weapon was brought before the no-legged judge on assault charges against the one-armed man, with a separate one-armed man serving as a witness in the building owned by another one-legged man and a club-footed man.
Go ahead, take a breath.
The offending one-legged man was sentenced to thirty days at the county farm.
And if you’re curious about Lentini, the three-legged man I was originally researching, he also had a fourth foot and a second penis. For more on him, check out my book, American Sideshow.
