Fedor Jeftichew — ‘Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy’
Wikimedia Commons Left: Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy and his father. Right: A portrait of Jo-Jo.
Fedor Adrianovich Jeftichew was born in 1868 in St. Petersburg, Russia. From the beginning, it was clear that he was different.
Jeftichew had been born with hereditary hypertrichosis (aka werewolf syndrome), which causes an excessive amount of hair growth over the entire body. His father had the same condition, and both performed in European circuses during the 19th century. But while Fedor’s father sadly drank himself to death, Fedor was ultimately recruited by P.T. Barnum in 1884.
Back in the United States, Barnum advertised Fedor Jeftichew as a “dog-faced boy” and claimed that Jeftichew and his father had been captured by a hunter while living in a cave in the forest. Though Jeftichew was described as gentle, his father was depicted as a “savage” who was unable to be tamed and was thus killed by the hunter. Barnum claimed he had succeeded at taming Jeftichew himself. During shows, Jeftichew would bark and grow, although in reality he was very intelligent, and spoke multiple languages.
Public DomainThe sideshow performer Fedor Jeftichew in the 1880s.
Billed as “the most prodigious paragon of all prodigies secured by P.T. Barnum in over 50 years,” Jeftichew became one of the most popular sideshow performers in the United States. The New York Herald described him as being as playful as a puppy and “the most absorbingly interesting curiosity to ever reach these shores.”
Tragically, Fedor Jeftichew died of pneumonia at age 35 on January 31, 1904, in Greece. When news of his death reached the United States, he was mourned by fans and other sideshow performers all over the country.
