Krao Farini
| Krao Farini | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1876 Laos |
| Died | 16 April 1926 Brooklyn, New York |
| Cause of death | Influenza |
| Other names | The Missing Link |
Krao Farini (1876 – 16 April 1926) was an American sideshow attraction, who was born with hypertrichosis, who took part in 19th-century exhibition tours in North America and Europe. She was adopted by Guillermo Antonio Farini.
Accounts from her early career have Krao Farini being born in Laos, then a province in northern Siam. As is the case with biographic accounts of most sideshow performers, it is unknown how much of her known life is fictitious.
It is claimed that in January 1881, that 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. 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. Her parents were also captured. 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 Kraos-monink. Krao's mother was detained in Bangkok and her father died from cholera. They were said to lack the knowledge of fire and survived upon fruits, fish, and nuts. Her name was said to mean "ape" in Siamese. She was also described as having a number of anatomically unusual features in addition to her body hair including an extra Thoracic vertebrae, an extra pair of ribs, cheek pouches, hypermobility of her joints, and lacking cartilage in her ears and nose.
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 Burma on behalf of Guillermo Antonio Farini in search of unusually tall people. At the court of the King of Burma, he encountered the grandchildren of a hairy couple that had been previously encountered by European explorers at the court a generation before. Bock uncovered 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. Then in 1882, Dr. Shelly and Bock went on several expeditions in search for 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 Rangoon and then to 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, which Shelly called "Kjang-Kjang". The king of Laos provided them with a military escort into swamps deep into the interior of the country. There they captured Krao and her parents. They returned to the king of Laos who refused to let Krao's mother leave the country. The entire expedition came down with cholera at Chiang Mai and Krao's father died there.
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