WILLIAM THOMAS GOY

"Thirty years ago there was living in Brommels Road, Clapham an entirely limbless man named William Goy.  He was very intelligent, could write well with his mouth, drive a van, and make bead work.  When he was about 56 he married a young woman and had several children."

London Life, 29 Sept 1928

Wm. Thomas Goy joined up with the Barnum & Bailey Circus for the 1915 season, arriving in the U.S. in March of that year with wife Mary Jane. He stood 2' 3", his wife 5' 6.   If Buchanan-Taylor is correct, he died in America in 1917 having been in the business only three years.

Photo courtesy "Show Freak & Monster"

"The armless (Carl) Unthan story sounds like the last word and limit. But there was another, more or less of his kind, but more so. His name was Goy,  "the Roly-Poly man ", who was legless as well as armless. Goy was called "the Roly-Poly man " because when he wanted to get from one side of a room to the other he went over on his side and rolled to his objective. When the late Claude Bartram told me about him he said: "This is an extraordinary case. I found him in Wandsworth Workhouse in 1914. He was a victim of the Boer War. I took him into the show business, and when he had been in employment for a few months he wrote me a letter in which he said:   " I have been happy since I met you, because I am now considered to be a very clever human being by the public which comes to see me and converse with me. I am happier than I've ever been."    "Goy was able to do nearly everything for himself. He could go up and down stairs unaided. In addition he made bead bangles and necklaces with his teeth and lips on a lacemaker's cushion. He was several seasons with Barnum & Bailey's Circus, and when he died in America at the age of sixty-three, he left a substantial legacy that could not have been acquired in Wandsworth Workhouse."

from "Shake It Again" by W. Buchanan-Taylor

1914