Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall.
—H. P. Lovecraft, Dagon
This page collects reports about creatures that are, at least allegedly, part human and part anuran, that is, frog-human hybrids and toad-human hybrids. However, confirmation of the actual existence of such hybrids would require genetic testing of an actual specimen.
The best-known fictional human-anuran—if we leave deities, such as the ancient Egyptian frog-goddess Heqet out of the picture—is probably Beatrix Potter’s Jeremy Fisher, pictured here. Like so many of her other characters, he was a strange mix of human and animal characters, which allowed her to produce amusing sentences filled with ordinarily impossible juxtapositions like this one:
Mr. Jeremy put on a macintosh, and a pair of shiny goloshes; he took his rod and basket, and set off with enormous hops to the place where he kept his boat.
But nonfiction reports about such creatures, at least that purport to be nonfiction, exist as well. For example, the following appeared in the Salida, Colorado, Mail (Dec. 18, 1888, p. 1, cols. 5 & 6):
A Strange Monstrosity
A horrible child was born to a respectable married lady of Goshen, Indiana, Saturday night. The production was quite small and bore a strong resemblance to a frog. The feet were flat and the toes webbed, while the arms assumed unnatural positions and the fingers were also webbed. There was no neck and the head was drawn back. The face was more like a frog’s than human. There was no spine and the offspring appeared to rest more naturally when placed upon hands and feet.
The next report is from the Carbondale, Kansas, Independent (Sep. 20, 1883, p. 3, cols. 2 & 3). The Republican, a newpaper published in Washington D.C., originated this report.
The Frog Child
A Curious Freak of Nature One of the Most Extraordinary Monstrosities Ever Seen
Washington Republican
A reporter of the Republican visited the frog child, Matthew Perry, who is now on exhibition on O street, near Seventh Street, northwest, yesterday afternoon, and beheld one of the most extraordinary monstrosities on record. This child is said to be thirteen years of age, weighs nineteen pounds, and is eighteen inches in height. Most monstrosities present an unsightly appearance, but in this case the child is so bright and lively, being naturally smart, that the general feeling of disgust is not felt. The forearms and hands, as well as the feet and legs below the knees, are exactly like those of a frog.
The face and head are slightly deformed, one eye being larger than the other, while the mouth is that of a frog. When the child opens its mouth it has the appearance of a frog's mouth. The palate is just beginning to form. The ears are small, round and ill shapen, and the child hops as near like a frog as possible. The feet are cold and clammy as a frog's, while the remainder of the body emits the same heat as other human beings. The child is observant and quick to understand and see all that is passing about him. A doll was placed at the further end of the table upon which he was sitting, and he would then hop for it just like a frog. He seems to enjoy throwing away everything given him. Everything amuses him, and his antics are comical to a laughable degree. A lady present took his hat saying: "I am going to take your hat away if you don't stand on your head." The child gave her a quizzical look and then put his thumb upon his nose and expanded his fingers, forming the significant and well-known sign, "You can't come it." The cause of this very peculiar malformation, as stated by the father, is that the mother, shortly before giving birth to the child, was digging in the garden and dug up a toad, which fell upon its back and commenced kicking in its effort to right itself.
The child, when on its back, makes motions similar to the frog, when in a like position.
The father has four children besides this one, but they are all right physically and mentally. Showmen have made him offers, but they are not large enough to induce him to exhibit his child. Many people were present to see this odd piece of humanity.
The following report appeared on page 9, columns 1 and 2, of the April 2, 1887, issue of the German-language newspaper Znaimer Wochenblatt, which was published in Znojmo (Znaim), a town that at the time of the report’s publication lay in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but is now what in the Czech Republic:
A Horrific Monster. From Stockerau: Last Saturday in Niederfellabrunn, a 32 year-old unmarried maidservant Franziska H. gave birth to a hideous monster alive. The child was like a human being with respect to its torso, that is, its shoulders, chest and upper abdomen. But the head and the lower belly were those of a large—toad. In addition the hands on its little arms exactly resembled the feet of the animal just named. The mother, who already had one normally developed child, attributed the present monstrosity to an accident that had happened to her the previous summer while she was out picking flowers. She had received a huge shock, she said, when a toad suddenly sprang out at her. The mother was so horrified by this monstrous creature that she at once stamped it to death. The authorities were notified of the case by Dr. Jakob, who stated that the child’s face was not that of a human being, so no charges were brought.† [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original German.]
† The town of Stockerau and the village of Niederfellabrunn lie just north of Vienna across the Danube.
The Common Spadefoot Toad, the anuran that a resident of central Europe would, perhaps, be most likely to meet.
Another Austro-Hungarian newspaper Hebammen-Zeitung reported a similar birth a little over a decade later. In this case, however, the “child” had no neck and a head, which sat directly upon the shoulders, that was “fully similar” to that of a toad, but was otherwise normal.
Another report about a toad-human appeared in Die Presse (Apr. 8, 1868, p. 5, col. 2), a newspaper published in Vienna. It reads, “In Luk, a village in Bohemia, the wife of a poor farm worker recently had the misfortune of giving birth to a truly horrible monstrosity. The body of the little monster had the complete appearance of a toad.”
The following is the most detailed report about a supposed amphibian-human hybrid that extensive search has yet revealed. It appeared on the front page, columns 5 and 6, of the June 5, 1886, issue of the St. Paul Daily Globe, a newspaper published in St. Paul, Minnesota (source). This same story appeared in many other newspapers around the U.S. that year.
Killed His Child
Because it Was a Monstrosity, and Couldn’t Walk
Special to the Globe. Macon. Ga., June 4.—A strange case came to light in East Macon. Henrietta Cook, a negro woman, well known on the east side of the river, appeared before Justice Subers for the purpose of swearing out a warrant against her son-in-law, one Joe Kitchens, who had threatened her life. Joe married Henrietta’s daughter in 1880. In that year he found a negro named Gus Johnson talking to his wife, and without much ado he shot Gus in the head, killing him rather instantly. Joe was sent to the penitentiary for ten years, but was pardoned out after serving five years in the Dale coal mines. Shortly after his retirement to the penitentiary a child was born to him, who proved both a monstrosity and a prodigy, being half human and half frog, withal, exceedingly bright in mind. The child was so horribly misshapen that the mother did not like to keep it, and it was taken by its grandmother, who became very much attached to it. The child grew to be nearly 6 years old, but never walked. His hands and feet were turned outward,
SIMILARLY TO THOSE OF A FROG,
and his method of locomotion was by hopping. His jumps were prodigious, jumping from two to six feet. There were no ribs on the left side and he slept with the left foot around his neck, Behind the ears and under his chin was a thin membrane which filled with air while he talked. While he could speak distinctly, during his sleep he uttered a sound similar to that of the croaking of a frog. He was such a curiosity that he was kept confined in the house to prevent curious people from seeing him, though he was well-known to the people who live in the locality. Last October Joe returned and saw his child for the first time. He took the child away from the grandmother and carried him to his house in the country, almost a mile from town. According to Henrietta’s statement Joe ill-treated the child, and on last Sunday was so angered with him because he could not walk that he gave him a tremendous kick in the stomach, sending him across the room. On Monday evening the child died. Joe then made his wife measure the child and go after a coffin. This she did, carrying the coffin on her head. Yesterday the coroner was notified of the facts, and had the corpse disinterred, and last night the jury returned the verdict of willful murder.
Another frog-human was reportedly born at about the same time as the Macon, Georgia, “child” just described—and in the town of Butler, Georgia, only fifty miles away. The story, originally published in the Butler Herald, appeared in many papers, but the following is taken from the Columbus, Georgia, Daily Enquirer-Sun (Apr. 14, 1882, p. 1, col. 6):
STRANGE FREAK ON NATURE
Butler Herald.
One of the most wonderful of the many strange freaks of nature occurred in the lower part of this county on the 6th inst. [April 6, 1882]. For obvious reasons we withhold the names of the parties, except that of the attending physician, Dr. George Gostin. Dr. Gostin informs us that a lady on the day mentioned, gave birth to twins. One of the twins from the waist down was a perfect child, but from that point upward was in the language of the doctor, “a perfect bullfrog.” The other child was born with a “hare lip,” two front upper teeth, the right leg badly drawn up and both feet badly deformed, and the bowels, liver, and in short, all the intestines, except the heart and lungs, were found growing on the outside of the body of the build [sic typo?]. These remarkable twins Dr. Gostin has preserved in alcohol, and they may be seen any day by any one who will call in the doctor’s office.
A few years earlier a frog-headed prodigy had been the toast of Paris. His story is taken from the Parisian newspaper Courrier de Sétif (Mar. 23, 1884, p. 3, cols. 1-2):
It was in 1866 that the Frog-Man [“Homme-Grenouille”] had his Paris debut. He was a fat little man whose face was exactly like that of a frog—bulging eyes, an enormous mouth, slimy skin—nothing was lacking. He thrilled all the city and even drew the attention of the Academy of Medicine, a delegate of which, Professor Berhaut, made a careful study of him.
Andre Bourdois—for that was the name of this freak—told Berhaut he had been born with the head of a frog because some bullfrogs at the Anvers Zoo had given his mother a fright while he was still developing in her womb. And Professor Berhaut avers there is nothing implausible in such a notion.
In about 1874, after years in France’s limelight, the Frog-Man decided to go back to his native Puyre in the Gers. He leads a respectable life there, socializing with the important people of the town, especially with the parish priest, and it seems this batrachian is now fated to end his days in the skin of a church warden. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]
The following account, which was published in many American newspapers, is taken from the Yorkville Enquirer (Mar. 4, 1858, p. 3, col. 1), published in Yorkville, South Carolina:
A frog-child. Detail from The Witches’ Sabbath (17th century) after David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690).
Singular and Awful Freak of Nature—A Child with a Frog’s Head.—A negro woman, belonging to Mr. Lawrence Smith, of Petersburg, Va., lately gave birth to a child, the physical malformations of which were of the most horrible and extraordinary character. From the waist downward the child was like others and symmetrically built, but above the middle it was moulded into a frightful resemblance to the form of a frog. The head was flat, the mouth being several inches wide, and placed underneath. The nose was entirely wanting, as the eyes stood out like goggles. No physician who saw it had ever witnessed any phenomenon to compare with it, and it was considered by them a perfectly unprecedented occurrence in the annals of embryology. It lived but a few hours. The ears were the only portion of the head which did not bear a resemblance to a frog, and these were much like those of a cat, being salient and pointed, and adding still more to the horrible appearance of the anomalous creature.
The next report appeared in The Evening Bulletin (Oct. 10, 1893, p. 4, col. 1), a newspaper published in Maysville, Kentucky:
Human Monstrosity.
Minneapolis, Oct. 10.—A report comes from St. Nicholas, Stearns County, this state [i.e., Minnesota], that a human monstrosity was born to Math Hammerding and wife, a well known German couple in that town. The deformed child has no arms, not even a sign where arms should be, and its body and head largely resemble that of a frog.
Another report appeared in The Daily Ardmoreite (Jan. 4, 1903, p. 5, col. 2), a newspaper published in Ardmore, Oklahoma:
WAS A PERFECT MONSTROSITY
Had a Head Like a Frog—Lived Only a Few Minutes
The Ardmoreite heard a few days ago that a lady in this city had recently given birth to what physicians call a regular monstrosity. The doctor attending the lady was seen yesterday by an Ardmoreite reporter and told him that it was a fact, and showed us a picture in one of his books which, he said, was a facsimile of the child.
From the neck down was a perfect form, he said, while the head resembled the head of a toad. The eyes stuck out and the head had all the other formations to make it resemble a toad.
In The Gods of the Egyptians (1904,
p. 378), Wallace Budge says that “The frog appears to have been worshipped in primitive times as the symbol of generation, birth, and fertility in general; the Frog-goddess Heqet, or Heqtit, was identified with Hathor, and was originally the female counterpart of Khnemu, by whom she became the mother of Heru-ur. The great antiquity of the cult of the frog is proved by the fact that each of the four primeval gods, Hell, Kek, Nau, and Amen, is depicted with the head of a frog, while his female counterpart has the head of a serpent. The cult of the frog is one of the oldest in Egypt, and the Frog-god and the Frog-goddess were believed to have played very prominent parts in the creation of the world.”
A brief notice about a woman giving birth to a bullfrog appeared in column 1 of page 3 of the May 23, 1893, issue of The Progressive Farmer, a newspaper published in Winston, North Carolina (source):
A white woman living at King’s Mountain, Gaston County, [North Carolina], gave birth to a remarkable freak of nature last week. The monster has the head, body, limbs and color of a large bull frog.
Similarly, there are news stories about a Zimbabwean woman, Precious Nyathi, who in 2017 was widely reported as having given birth to a frog in a hospital in her home district of Gokwe. One such report appeared in the British newspaper the Daily Mail.
A child was born in Birmingham, England, on Sept. 20, which bears a strong resemblance to a frog. Its skin is warty and cold and clammy to the touch; when it cries it makes an unearthly croakiug noise. There are three fingers on each hand and four toes on each foot. Besides the points enumerated it has many other characteristics of a frog, even to huge, knotty looking, lidless eyes. The parenta are almost distracted over the occurrence and hourly pray for it to die.
There are two other "frog child" cases on record, one the offspring of Piute squaw in Nevada, which was born about ten years since, the other a monstrosity which first saw the light of day at Goshen, Ind., in January, 1889.—St. Louis Republic
Five miles southwest of Kenton, Tenn., on the Mobile and Ohio railroad is the greatest monstrosity of the age—a human being who resembles a frog. He is the son of R. Newell, is twenty-six inches high, weighs forty-eight pounds, and was born in Obion County, Tennessee, March 12, 1875. His body and arms are regularly formed and well developed, his fingers are short, and the manner in which they are set on his hands give them the appearance of a frog’s feet; his legs are small and are set at right angles with the regular line of walk; his feet are small and badly formed; his face is eight or nine inches long and makes an angle of sixty-two degrees with the base of skull (facial) angle; his head is almost conical; his eyes are small and without expression; his upper jaw projects far over the lower one; his lower jaw is small and has a superabundance of flesh attached, which renders him very froggy. He can’t talk. If you throw a nickel on the floor he will light on it like a chicken on a June-bug. He can’t walk, but what is wanting in walking is made up in jumping. I saw him jump eight feet after a dime; if a tub of water is placed near him, he will jump into it like a duck. In rainy weather he goes to the door and leaps out, and remains outdoors until the rain is over. Obion County has given birth to the following: The female dwarfs, the mud-negro, the sleeping beauty, and the frog-child. She is justly entitled to the appellation, “Mother of Monstrosities.”
There was a monstrosity born at the head of South Fork, in this county, last Sunday night [Nov. 16, 1879], in the shape of a child with a frog-shaped head. From the neck down the child was perfectly formed, but above the shoulders looked like a frog's head. It was still-born. Through respect for the feelings of the parents we refrain from giving their names.
Another frog-human hopped onto the pages of the Woodsfield, Ohio, Spirit of Democracy (Jul. 8, 1879, p. 2, col. 7):
Birth of a Human Frog
Bellefontaine, July 2.—The wife of a resident of this city was delivered this morning of a human frog. The parents reside in the western part of this city.—The child’s head apparently grows right from the shoulders—no neck. The face is right on top of the head, with mouth and eyes precisely like a frog. The arms and legs are also an exact counterpart of that animal’s, being bent in the position assumed when swimming, the hands and feet terminating in long claws. The umbilicus is situated on the back, and a well defined heart and liver attached to the back of its neck. A rudimentary arm also sprouts from each side of its head. The human monstrosity was born dead, although living to within a few minutes of its delivery.†
† Bellefontaine, where this birth supposedly occurred, is a town in Logan County, Ohio.
In his introduction to Grimm’s Household Tales, Andrew Lang (1884, p. lxxii) says a belief exists among the Tsimshian (above), an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest coast, that they are descended from a frog. In the same place, he mentions that tales of human beings marrying frogs are told in Germany, Scotland and Russia.
And then we have another report about a frog-baby that appeared on page 4, column 1, of the September 21, 1882, issue of the Weekly Expositor, a newspaper published in Brockway Centre, Michigan (source):
A few weeks ago, Mary Schaek, a young unmarried woman, residing with her father and brothers about three miles northeast of Minden,† gave birth to a lifeless monstrosity, having the limbs and body of a human being, with a perfectly formed bullfrog’s head and neck. Doctor Johnson, the attending physician, attempted to obtain it as a specimen for the medical museum at Ann Arbor, but the mother’s permission could not be obtained. The doctor says it was the most hideous object he ever beheld, and as a freak of nature, is a curiosity of no common order.
† Minden, now Minden City, is a village in Sanilac County, Michigan.
Another report alleges that a frog-human in North Carolina was able to speak. It appeared in the Raleigh, North Carolina, Farmer and Mechanic (Sep. 5, 1878, p. 167, col. 6).
A Monstrosity
The frog-like negro child of Jackson Township,‡ of which some mention has already been made, was seen by Dr. I. H. Blair a few days ago, and from him we learn the following. It is now about four years old; its back and legs very much resemble those of a frog, while its arms and head are human in shape. It has very good sense but does not talk much. Its crying resembles the croaking of a frog, and its movements somewhat resemble the jumping of one. Monroe Enquirer‡
‡ Both Jackson Township and Monroe are in Union County, North Carolina.
Article continues below
Above: A news notice about a frog who cried like a human child (source: Daily Independent, Elko, Nevada, July 6, 1891, p. 4, col. 1). Given that cases described in the reports collected here vary along the spectrum from human to anuran, one might wonder whether it might be possible for this cross to sometimes produce individual hybrids near one of the extreme ends of that spectrum, for example, ones who look like a frog, but retain but a single human trait, the ability to cry?
Anencephalic cases
Some accounts describe frog-like infants in which the brains are absent. Known as anencephaly, this condition seems to occur at elevated rates in distant hybrids. For example, the next report appeared in the Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, Juniata Sentinel and Republican (Jun. 9, 1880, p. 2, col. 4):
On Saturday two weeks ago, a lady was delivered of a monstrosity, a child without a head, but otherwise fully developed. It weighs about seven pounds, and is considered a splendid pathological specimen. There is an excrescence protruding from the top of the trunk between the shoulders where the neck ought to be, which has two large eyes, a nose and mouth, with hare-lip. There is [sic] no occipital or parietal bones and no brains. In a sitting position the child resembles a huge frog, which was the cause of a fright to the mother some months ago.
A colored woman living not far from Waxhaw [North Carolina] has given birth to what the doctors pronounce a “monstrosity.” It has the body and limbs of a fairly well developed infant, but its head is very much like that of a huge frog. The head is almost flat at the back, the eyes being large and in the top of the head. Its face has somewhat of an owlish appearance, but is perhaps more like that of a frog. Drs. H. C. Houston and J. V. Hunter made an autopsy and found that it had no brain whatever, its spinal column extending clear up the back of the head. It had no neck at all. Photographs of both the front and side views were made and will be preserved.—Rock Hill Herald.
The following notice, which also seems to fit the anencephaly profile, appeared on the front page, column 1, of the March 3, 1868, issue of The Daily Phoenix, a newspaper published in Columbia, South Carolina (source).
A Human Monstrosity.—One of the most remarkable freaks of nature which we have witnessed lately is embraced in the following report, which we can vouch for being true: A Mrs. Darnel, who resides in this place [i.e., Petersburg, Indiana], gave birth to a child last Saturday, whose head and eyes were similar to a frog’s head and eyes, while its body was as perfect in form as flesh could be. This strange freak is supposed to have been occasioned by the lady having, while engaged in weeding her garden last summer, dug up a frog, which she accidentally struck with a hoe, cutting a deep gash in its head, which alarmed her so as to cause her child to be born with a head like a frog, and in which the gash showed very distinctly [clinically, a large open "gash" in the head at birth would be described as anencephaly]. The child lived but a few moments after birth. Petersburg (Ind.) Tribune.
Probable appearance of anencephalic specimens described above.
Insemination. If these strange births actually were anuran-human hybrids, the question would remain how a batrachian might introduce his semen into the reproductive tract of a woman. Two possibilities occur:
Both frogs and toads engage in external fertilization. Therefore, at certain times of year, anuran spermatozoa abound in bodies of fresh water. Given such circumstances all that might be required would be for the woman to go for a swim at the right time and place;
In a case that supposedly occurred in 1517 in France (see illustration and accompanying information below), the woman that gave birth to the frog-faced baby was running a temperature and a friend advised her to hold a live frog in her hand to help to break her fever. This, apparently, was a folk remedy of the day. She did so and then had sex with her husband. Obviously, the frog might have urinated on her hand, and the urine of male batrachians contains sperm cells. So there would have been an opportunity to introduce the frog’s sperm into her reproductive tract while she engaged in the subsequent intercourse. Also, if belief in such a remedy was widespread, it might account for other such froggy births.
A frog-faced boy. Source: Ambroise Paré’s On Monsters and Marvels, first published in 1573, a book that has been reprinted for more than 400 years, with the latest printing in 1982.
Early Cases
Bois-le-Roi. The frog-faced boy depicted at right was first described by Ambroise Paré, personal physician to French kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Paré is remembered as a pioneer of modern surgery, forensic pathology, and battlefield medicine. His account of this strange birth (Paré 1641, pp. 658-659) reads as follows:
In the year 1517 in the parish of Blois le Roy [today Bois-le-Roi, a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France] in the forest of Bievre [today the Forêt de Fontainebleau, or Forêt de Bière], along the road to Fontainebleau, an infant was born having the face of a frog, which was seen and visited by Jean Belangier, a surgeon of the King’s artillery, in the presence of court officials from Harmois [which suggests that a procès-verbal‡ was sworn out, which may still exist in court records], namely, the Honorable Jacques Bribon, the King’s prosecutor in that place, Etienne Lardot, a resident of Melun [a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department], Jean de Vitry, the Royal Notary at Melun, and others. The father was called Esme Perit, and the mother, Magdelaine Sarboucart. Belangier, a man of good sense, wanted to know why this monster had been born, and he asked the father what could have caused it. He responded that, in his opinion, it was because his wife had been running a temperature and a woman in the neighborhood had told her that if she held a live frog in her hand it would break her fever. And she did hold a frog in her hand until it was dead. And that night, holding the frog in her hand all the while, she slept with her husband. They had intercourse, she conceived, and by the force of her imagination this monster had been produced. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]
‡ In French law a procès-verbal is a detailed authenticated account drawn up by a magistrate, police officer, or other person having authority of acts or proceedings done in the exercise of his duty. In a criminal charge, a procès-verbal is a statement of the facts of the case.
Radeberg. Jobus Fincelius (also known as Hiob Fincel), the sixteenth-century German humanist and physician, was a professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Jena. He authored a two-volume work entitled Wunderzeichen in which he lists events he interpreted as miraculous signs. He states that on the feast day of St. Paul (June 29) 1554, a woman in Radeberg, Germany gave birth to a frog-like creature (Fincelius 1559, vol. 2). Its head, which lacked ears, was like that of a frog or toad (external ears are normally absent in anurans). Its head sat sat down on its shoulders with no intervening neck, as in most of the other cases described on this page. It was also anophthalmic, a condition that seems to occur with increased incidence in distant hybrids.
Bischheim. Franci (1633, p. 51) reports and pictures a birth that occurred on May 25, 1633, at Bischheim near Strasbourg that was also of the anencephalic type, though somewhat more frog-like (see image right).
Obernau. The 16th-century German freethinker and humanist Sebastian Franck (1585, p. 1010) claims that in the year 1574, a woman at Obernau in Germany gave birth to a toad.
Trier. The early scientist, Johannes Zahn (Specula physico-mathematico-historica notabilium ac mirabilium, 1696, vol. III, p. 22) tells us that in 1393 on the Berg estate in the diocese of Trier a peasant woman gave birth to an offspring which had the hind parts (stomach, genitals, legs and feet) of a child, but the foreparts (hands, arms, neck, eyes and head) of a frog.
A half-man half-frog, as pictured in a 13th century bestiary by Zakariya al-Qazwini (Walters MS 659).
Old sideshow poster (circa 1900).
Hopp the Frog Boy
Samuel Parks
Accounts of freak shows on the internet, various individuals (e.g., Samuel Parks and Earl Davis) appeared under the name Hopp, or Hoppy, the Frog Boy, and supposedly had the body of a frog and the head of a human being. And in sideshow ads (see picture above) they were depicted in just that way. However, contemporary photos of Samuel Parks (see picture, right) reveal that, while he did have deformed limbs, his morphology fell well short of being truly anuran. This sort of fakery associated with sideshows makes it difficult to know, in any given case, whether the descriptions of individuals appearing in news reports about carnivals are in any way accurate. However, a few such reports are quoted here.
The following brief notice about a frog-human hybrid appeared on page 3, column 4, of the November 12, 1885, issue of the Western sentinel, a newspaper published in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (source).
In a side show at the Goldsboro fair grounds was a real monstrosity in the way of little Matthew, a colored boy 16 years of age, half frog and half human. He was born in Kershaw County, South Carolina.
At least according to reports, this same individual traveled with sideshows for quite a few years. Thus, he was also described on page 4, column 4, of the January 2, 1891, issue of the Waterbury Evening Democrat, a newspaper published in Waterbury, Connecticut (source). This is a transcript of the article in question:
THE FROG BOY
Most Wonderful Freak of Nature Ever Seen in Waterbury
Without a doubt the most wonderful freak of nature ever seen in Waterbury is the Frog Boy now on exhibition at No. 90 East Main Street. Doctors and scientific men in all parts of the country have puzzled their brains over the phenomenon without arriving at a conclusion at all satisfactory. The “Frog Boy” was born in Kershaw County, South Carolina, in 1868, and is therefore twenty-two years of age. Twelve years ago his father, an uneducated but naturally bright colored man, first placed the wonderful boy on exhibition and since then he has been examined by thousands of the most prominent people in the land. The boy’s body is formed exactly like a frog, while his head and face is like that of a man. He converses intelligently, and altogether is as bright as anybody could well be under the same circumstances. The boy stands eighteen inches in height and weighs ninety pounds. He will be on exhibition for a few days only in this city.
Another article, published 13 years later, describes a similarly composite being ("with the head of a human and the body of a frog"), however, the site of origin is not Kershaw County. It appeared on the front page, column 4, of the February 27, 1904, issue of the St. Landry Clarion, published in Opelousas, Louisiana (source).
Chapman and Boudreau will open an engagement in Opelousas on next Monday. It is the same freak show that was recently here with the Talbot-Whitney Carnival Co., but many of our people missed seeing it, tho’ it was one of the best attractions of the show. This time they come with, besides the freaks exhibited here before, a man-frog—a freak with the head of a human and the body of a frog.* Physicians from here have visited this strange freak and certify its genuineness. It was gotten near Church Point [Louisiana] and will be carried to the St. Louis Fair.
Two years later, another mention of Hopp the Frog Boy, appears here.
During the early part of the 20th century, frog-humans and all the other anomalies seen at carnival sideshows were increasingly seen in a sympathetic light. As a result, laws prohibiting the exhibition of part-humans or humans with deformities were passed in various states. The idea was to spare people with peculiar traits the humiliation of being placed on exhibition. These legal restrictions, a growing disapproval of the public toward sideshows, and the general decline of carnivals, in the face of radio, television, film and other entertainment media, has led to the near extinction of the once popular freak show.
A series of sketches connecting the human face with that of a frog, from Le Magasin pittoresque, August 1844 (
The Common Spadefoot Toad, the anuran that a resident of central Europe would, perhaps, be most likely to meet.
A frog-child. Detail from The Witches’ Sabbath (17th century) after David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690).
Probable appearance of anencephalic specimens described above.
A frog-faced boy. Source: Ambroise Paré’s On Monsters and Marvels, first published in 1573, a book that has been reprinted for more than 400 years, with the latest printing in 1982.
A child born at Bischheim in 1633 (
A half-man half-frog, as pictured in a 13th century bestiary by Zakariya al-Qazwini (
Old sideshow poster (circa 1900).
Samuel Parks