Venus in tears

Saartjie Baartman, who performed under the name of ‘the Hottentot Venus’, became one of the most famous theatrical attractions of Georgian London. Exhibited like an animal for the entertainment of a paying crowd (‘two bob a head’), she was routinely obliged to suffer sharp prods in the buttocks from her curious audience who ‘wished to ascertain that all was nattral’. Tears would roll silently down her heart-shaped face. The deathly sighs she emitted on stage became as great a wonder as her Venusian form.

Saartjie was born in the Eastern Cape in South Africa in 1789. Her Afrikaans name translates into Little Sarah, an apt choice for a girl who would grow no taller than four foot six and a half inches. Murderous Europeans blighted her childhood by slaughtering the male members of her peaceful, cattle-herding family. The 12-year-old girl was captured and taken to Cape Town. There she worked as the unpaid servant of a villainous freed slave named Cesars, who was in turn the servant of Dunlop, a roguish English naval doctor.