James Paris du Plessis

James Paris du Plessis (born c. 1666 Pithiviers, France; died c. 1735 London) was a servant of the famous 17th-century English diarist Samuel Pepys and the author of “A Short History of Human Prodigies, and Monstrous Births: of Dwarfs, Sleepers, Giants, Strong Men, Hermaphrodites, Numerous Births, and Extreme Old Age, &c.”, an unpublished manuscript he produced between 1730 and 1733 that is preserved in the British Library in London.[1]

Du Plessis' bizarre 320-page manuscript is illustrated with hand-coloured drawings by the author himself. These include "John Grimes, a Dwarf", "Two Sisters conjoined", "A Woman Seven foot High",[2] "A Woman with a Hog's Face",[3] "A Spotted Negro Prince" and "The Monstrous Tartar". The section headed "A Wild Girl found Near Chalons in Champagne" contains the earliest-known report in English of Marie-Angélique Memmie Le Blanc, the famous feral child of 18th-century France.[4] Shortly before his death, Du Plessis offered the manuscript and its illustrations to Sir Hans Sloane and they became part of Sloane's foundation collection of the British Museum.[5][6]

Du Plessis' fascination with human strangeness and prodigies of all kinds began in his youth when he dug up the body of a stillborn two-headed child, a cousin, in the garden of his family home at Pithiviers in north-central France.[7][8]

References

  1. ↑ British Library Sloane MS 5246 (text) and Sloane MS 3253 (illustrations). Retrieved 22 September 2013.
  2. ↑ Sarah Carson, "Coleraine 400's 7ft celebrity travelled the world", Coleraine Borough Council, Northern Ireland, 18 June 2013. Retrieved 22 September 2013.
  3. ↑ Jan Bondeson, The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square & Other Medical Marvels (Stroud, Tempus Publishing, 2006), pp. 74–75.
  4. ↑ http://www.marie-angelique.com/sources. Retrieved 22 September 2013.
  5. ↑ "Letter to Sir Hans Sloane from the Compiler [James Paris du Plessis]", Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys (6 volumes, London, Bickers and Son, 1879), volume 6, pp. 258–259 . Retrieved 22 September 2013.
  6. ↑ William Evans Burton, "Scissibles. From the Blank Book of a Bibliographer", Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (Philadelphia), volume I, no. 3, September 1837, p. 211. Retrieved 22 September 2013.
  7. ↑ Charles Dickens, "A Prodigy Hunter", All the Year Round, volume VI, 28 December 1861, pp. 331–336. Retrieved 29 September 2013.
  8. ↑ Surekha Davies, "Monsters Incorporated: Framing Anatomical Difference in Early Modern England", abstract of paper delivered to the 126th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 8 January 2012. Retrieved 22 September 2013.
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