[Bearded Woman]

 Jane Barnell
 "Madam Olga" "Lady Olga"

Barnell with her first or second husband? Circa 1915.

History : Born 1871 in North Carolina, Barnell's father was an itinerant Russian-Jewish buggy- and wagon-maker, and her mother a half-Catawba Indian, 
half-Irish girl from York County, South Carolina.  At birth Barnell's chin and cheeks were covered with down, and by two she had a beard.  Her 
superstitious mother believed she was bewitched, and subsequently when Jane was four, and her father was away on business, Jane was given
away to six-wagon circus, called the Great Orient Family Circus and Menagerie.

The Orient Circus made its way to Europe, where in 1876, Jane took sick with typhoid fever and was expected to die.  Abandoned by the circus,
Jane recovered, was found by her father and returned to the Carolinas where she grew up on her Indian grandmother's farm.  Educated by a
missionary woman who worked among the Catawbas, Jane learned to shave with a razor and when she was seventeen got a job as a student nurse
in the City Hospital of Wilmington, NC.  An unpleasant incident at the hospital caused Jane to return to her grandmother's farm, where in the spring
of 1892 she met William Heckler, who owned a farm near her grandmother's.

Heckler helped Jane to get a job with the John Robinson Circus, where she stayed for fourteen years.  She married a German musician in the circus 
band, with whom she had two children, both of whom died in infancy.  Her first husband died soon after.  Leaving Robinson's for Forepaugh-Sells 
Brothers' Circus and Menagerie, she married a balloon ascensionist who was killed a year later.  Her third marriage ended unhapily until she met her 
fourth husband Thomas O'Boyle.

O'Boyle, a former clown, later became an inside talker at Hubert's Museum.  Barnell and O'Boyle met and married after working together in the
Johnny Jones Exposition during the 1931 season.

Barnell appeared with Hagenbach-Wallace, World of Mirth Carnival, Royal American Shows, Rubin & Cherry Exposition, Beckman & Gerety Shows, 
and finally appeared with the Ringling Sideshow from 1933-38, before retiring from the road to work Hubert's Museum and Sam Wagner's World Circus Sidehsow 
Coney Island.  

Perhaps best known for her role at the Bearded Lady in Tod Browning's movie Freaks in 1932.  Barnell later commented that she hated the film, and
found it to be "an insult to all freaks everywhere."

(Most of the above freely adapted from Joseph Mitchell's "Lady Olga" chapter from his collection Up In The Old Hotel)