James Paris du Plessis explained

James Paris du Plessis (c. 1666 in Pithiviers, France – c. 1735 in 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Births: of Dwarfs, Sleepers, Giants, Strong Men, Hermaphrodites, Numerous Births, and Extreme Old Age, &c.”, an unpublished manuscript he produced between 1730 and 1733 that is preserved in the British Library in London.^[1]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]}

According to the novelist Charles Dickens, 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]}

Notes and References

1. British Library Sloane MS 5246 (text) and Sloane MS 3253 (illustrations).http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=IAMS040-002115637&indx=1&recIds=IAMS040-002115637&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&dscnt=0&frbg=&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BL%29&tab=local&dstmp=1378510932152&srt=rank&mode=Basic&dum=true&vl(freeText0)=james+paris+du+plessis&vid=IAMS_VU2 Retrieved 22 September 2013.
2. Sarah Carson, "Coleraine 400's 7ft celebrity travelled the world", Coleraine Borough Council, Northern Ireland, 18 June 2013.http://www.colerainebc.gov.uk/news/news_item.php?id=1714 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. Web site: http://www.marie-angelique.com/sources . www.marie-angelique.com . 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 https://archive.org/stream/diaryandcorresp00magoog#page/n282/mode/2up. Retrieved 22 September 2013.
6. [William Evans Burton]
7. [Charles Dickens]
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.http://aha.confex.com/aha/2012/webprogram/Paper7905.html Retrieved 22 September 2013.