| Krao Farini | |
| Birth Date: | 1876 |
| Birth Place: | Laos |
| Death Place: | Brooklyn, New York, US |
| Other Names: | The Missing Link |
Krao Farini (1876 – 16 April 1926) was an American sideshow performer who was born with hypertrichosis and took part in 19th-century exhibition tours in North America and Europe.[1] [2] She was adopted by William Leonard Hunt, also known as Guillermo Antonio Farini, who exploited her appearance. Throughout her life she was falsely advertised as a primitive human and billed as the missing link between humans and apes.
Accounts from her early career have Krao Farini being born in Laos, then a province in the northern Rattanakosin Kingdom.[3] As is the case with biographic accounts of most sideshow performers, it is unclear how much of her known life is fictitious.
It is claimed that in January 1881, Krao and her parents were captured during an expedition conducted by the explorer Carl Bock to what is now northern Thailand and Laos. An anthropologist named Dr. George Shelly was part of the expedition and took charge of Krao.[4] Krao was described as being part of a primitive tribe of humans called Kraos-monink, all of whom were covered in hair and lived in trees.
The Siamese had to be bribed by Bock and Shelley into capturing them because of the belief that it was bad luck to kill or capture the Kraos-monink. Krao's mother was detained in Bangkok and her father died from cholera.[5] They were said to lack the knowledge of fire and survived upon fruits, fish, and nuts. Krao's name was said to mean "ape" in Siamese. She was also described as having several anatomically unusual features in addition to her body hair, including an extra thoracic vertebra, an extra pair of ribs, cheek pouches, hypermobility of her joints, and a lack of cartilage in her ears and nose.[6]
Another early account of Krao's origins was given by Dr. George G. Shelly. He claimed that about 1874 Carl Bock had been travelling in British-ruled Burma on behalf of William Leonard Hunt, known as "Guillermo Antonio Farini", in search of unusually tall people. At the court of Thibaw Min, the king, he encountered the grandchildren of a hairy couple; the couple had previously been encountered by European explorers at the court a generation before. Bock discovered that they had been gifts to the court from the king of Laos. He offered the king of Burma $100,000 for them but was denied.
In 1882, Shelly and Bock went on several expeditions in search of 'hairy people'. They met at Singapore and traveled to the Rembau District in Malaysia in search of a race of ape people called "Jaccoons". Failing in Malaysia, they continued onwards to Yangon and then Bangkok. There they were provided with an escort, twenty elephants, and letters of introduction to the king of Laos. Four months later they reached the Laotian capital of Vientiane. The king of Laos provided them with a military escort into swamps deep into the interior of the country. There they captured and abducted Krao and her parents. They then returned to King Thibaw Min, who refused to let Krao's mother leave the country. The entire expedition came down with cholera at Chiang Mai, where Krao's father, Schua Mayong, died.[7]
A later account recorded Guillermo Antonio Farini as having become aware of the Krao people after a conversation with naturalist Francis Trevelyan Buckland about such people being kept in the court of the Konbaung dynasty. Farini engaged the son of Queen Victoria's jeweler to capture and transport some Krao people from the king of Burma. The king refused due to the belief that his reign would come to an end if the Krao people left the country. Krao's father Schua Mayong was being held at the court along with her and her mother. They had been given to the Konbaung king as a gift from the Lao royal family.
Farini then arranged for an expedition to be led by Carl Bock to find the Krao people. He encountered thirty to forty of them but was unable to capture any. Bock returned to the king of Burma, who eventually agreed to let Bock take Krao and her father. The entire expedition came down with cholera at Chiang Mai and Krao's father died there. Six weeks after recovering, the expedition reached Bangkok. The king of Siam tried to prevent Bock from taking Krao to Europe. Prince Kronoiar intervened as Bock had done a service for him. Bock was allowed to leave on the condition that Farini would adopt Kher.[8]
Krao, Shelly, and Bock arrived in London in October 1882. By 1883, Krao was being exhibited in Europe as an example of a missing link between humanity and apes and proof of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. There she learned German and some English. During that time, she was exhibited by Guillermo Antonio Farini at the Royal Aquarium in Westminster. She was given the surname of Farini at some point after her capture by sideshow promoter Guillermo Antonio Farini when he adopted her. In early November 1884, she arrived in Philadelphia and was said to be eight or nine years old at the time. She was still under the care of Dr. George Shelly at the time.[9]
She spent several decades exhibiting herself.
In 1899, Krao did a tour of the British Isles that included appearances in Cardiff and Edinburgh.[10]
She lived the last few years of her life in Brooklyn at 309 East Nineteenth Street. When out in public but not on display she wore a veil. She died from influenza on April 16, 1926, in Manhattan. She requested her body to be cremated in order to avoid her corpse being gawked at.[11]