Does the viral picture display the real four-legged woman Josephine Myrtle Corbin? Read more
Claim
Josephine Myrtle Corbin was a woman born in Lincoln County, Tennessee, in 1868. She was born a dipygus, which means she had two pelvises side by side. She had two smaller and underdeveloped legs attached to the second pelvis, and she walked using her stronger pair of legs.
Rating
Explanation
In the viral tweet, we can see a woman with two pairs of legs standing at the entrance of someplace holding a bouquet of flowers in her hand and widely smiling. The post claims that the woman shown in the image is Josephine Myrtle Corbin born in Lincoln County, Tennessee, in 1868.
The user further adds details like she was born a Dipygus, which means she had two pelvises side by side. She was often a circus performer and was billed as “The Four-Legged Girl from Texas,” even though she wasn’t from Texas. She married and had four children, and she died in 1928 at the age of 60. Isn’t that a fascinating story? This same viral image was shared by some users with similar claims in 2019 and 2020 which can be seen here and here. In the above various claims, one user even said that she was born in 1897. When we read all these tweets with different stories, we decided to investigate and bring the facts to our readers.
What’s the truth and how Weekly World News contributed majorly to this sensational news?
When started our reverse search with relevant keyframes, initially, we came across many articles published by Weekly World News with the similar viral image of the woman. In those articles, what was contradictory is the name they used “Ashley Braistle” but with the same viral image. When we read the whole article we came to an understanding that in the 1994 April issue, Ashley told the news, that she is looking for a husband and in response, she received some 8000 plus proposal letters. According to the article, she also finds a husband, the man of her dreams, a Houston plumber contractor namely Wayne among all the men who proposed to her. The article was titled “Four-legged lovely Ashley Braistle has found the man of her dreams- thanks to Weekly World News”. This was published in the 23 August 1994 issue which can be seen on pages 40 and 41.
Later, the same news outlet has even published an article claiming Ashley was dead in an accident while skiing in Switzerland. This was published in 4 June 1996 on page 3 at Weekly World News.
Adding more suspicions, the Weekly World News published a piece of news saying that, “Ashley was reported dead in a skiing accident in 1996, but those reports prove to be incorrect. “I don’t know where they got the story from” says Ashley. This was published in 2 October 2001 on page 22.
What’s more interesting in this whole repeated articles by Weekly World News about the four- legged woman is that, no other news outlets have covered this fascinating story at least for once in all these years. Rather, there is a half-truth to the Weekly World News made up whole fiction. Yes, there was a four-legged woman but not the one you see in the viral image or the image posted by Weekly World News and she is not called as Ashley either. The funny part is she didn’t approach Weekly World News nor she did marry Wayne, a Houston plumber contractor. All these information shared by Weekly World News is a hoax.
Who is this real four-legged woman?
The real four-legged woman is called Josephine Myrtle Corbin born in Lincoln County, Tennessee, in 1868. She is a circus performer and her condition was incredibly rare. The tiny body of her twin was only fully developed from the waist down and even then it was malformed – tiny and possessing only three toes on each foot. Myrtle was able to control the limbs of her sister but was unable to use them for walking and she herself had a difficult time getting around as she was born with a clubbed foot. Technically, the ‘Four-Legged Woman’ only had one good, usable leg. Rather than having a parasitic twin, Myrtle’s extra legs resulted from an even rarer form of conjoined twinning known as dipygus, which gave her two complete bodies from the waist down.
While she was a circus performer, there were advertisements in two newspapers promoting the “four-legged girl” that was published in 1885 in Minnesota’s St.Paul Globe and Boston Globe.
When we searched more for Josphine Myrtle Corbin’s picture we got some from the article published by Sideshow World.
This proves that, the image displayed in the tweet is false rather the information shared by the user is correct. Weekly world News has created this captivating fiction with the viral image which was circulated later by many users who chose to use the picture but not their story.
Conclusion:
Therefore, there was a four-legged woman named Josephine Myrtle Corbin who was circus performer but the image showcasing her in the post is a hoax.
