The two brothers were told that their mother Harriet was dead – a lie, as their mother was still alive and was constantly searching for them. George and Willie were prevented from contacting their family by their manager, who kept them as modern day slaves, since they were unpaid. They performed for years as sideshow attractions where they were cruelly exploited and frequently portrayed as savages from another country or Martians. The two brothers were both albinos, a feature that Willie claimed prompted a circus man to abduct the two brothers in 1899 while they worked in a field. Willie and his youngest brother George Muse growing up in Truevine, part of a sharecropping family that live in a tobacco farming community near Roanoke, Virginia. Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the American South is published by Macmillan, price £8.Willie Muse was born in Franklin County, Virginia, USA on 5 April 1893, the son of Harriet (née Dickinson) Muse and an unnamed father.
George died in 1971 and his brother Willie died in 2001. However back in the US the Eko and Iko act proved lucrative for years, keeping them in work until the late 50s They even came to London but their act was a flop as perhaps the British public - still reeling from the disabilities caused by the First World War - had more distaste for the exploitation of disability. However as part of the deal George and Willie resumed performing for the circus in the late 1920s Harriet successfully sued Ringling Brothers for the treatment of George and Willie and they were given back pay after a legal battle. She eventually found the two boys working for the Ringling Brothers circus and surprised them while they were on stage and their family was reunited. In a new book author Beth Macy writes George and Willie were unable to contact their family due to their manager and were told that their mother Harriet was dead - a lie, as their mother was still alive and was constantly searching for them. It introduced a programme that between 19 forcibly sterilised 8,000 people on the grounds of mental illness, physical deformity or even homelessness in the name of protecting the “purity of the American race”.
“Are they ambassadors from Mars?” asked one poster of the brothers hanging outside one sideshow.Īccording to the story, Eko and Iko had been spotted in 1923 climbing from a hole near the wreckage of their spaceship in the Mojave desert. One spiel about them said the brothers were descended from monkeys in the dark continent with Neanderthal heads, caveman bodies and tremendous shocks of hair that stand out on their heads like the wigs on Raggedy Ann dolls. They were billed in several ways Eko and Iko, the sheep-headed cannibals, two Ecuadorean white savages. They performed for years as sideshow attractions where they were cruelly exploited and frequently portrayed as savages from another country,
#George and willie muse series#
George, was aged six, and Willie, nine, they were not seen again by their parents, Harriett and Cabell Muse, until autumn 1927 - 28 years later.įor years after their abduction, Shelton acted as the brothers’ manager as they toured the US in a series of circuses, using the money they earned to pay for their board, lodging and clothes, but never letting them have their wages.
When Shelton came across the Muse brothers, he realised he had struck gold - the two boys were albino and took then. They were taken from a field and forced to work for their keep
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