PRINCESS  IDA

MARIA MANNING TOLLET

Some entertainers in show business start at a very young age and continue appearing well into adulthood but for some reason never become very well-known.    Such a one was Maria Tollet. Born in the U.K. in 1878, she started in the business at the tender age of three.    Maria was managed by her Dad in those early years but I've failed to read or hear anything of her act then.    Maria's first appearance in the U.S was in 1921 to appear at Sam Gumpertz' Coney Island sideshow. Maria was billed as "Princess Ida", arriving with fellow Brit Alice Bounds who became "Ursa, the BearWoman."    She reprised her role in 1923, appearing at the Dreamland Circus Sideshow for six months.     Maria had brown hair and hazel eyes and was born in Shipton, England. She was 4'10" tall

Photo from the author's collection

There was a time, principally in the 18th and 19th centuries, when people, mostly women, gained notoriety (and attention) by acts of extreme fasting.  Some women even went so far as to claim they could and did live without any food or drink at all.  As the card above suggests, Maria as "Ida" was the only "Freak of Nature" to attempt such a feat, that is, what Maria was attempting should be considered as even more spectacular, given her disabilty.    For a more in depth discussion see "Fasting Women, Living Skeletons and Hunger Artists: Spectacles of Body and Miracles at the Turn of a Century" by Sigal Gooldin and     "Fasting Women: Bodily Claims and Narrative Crises in Eighteenth-Century Science" by Karen Hollis

Maria in 1927 or '28 when she was with the vaudeville show "A Night at Coney Island".  That's her on the floor, front and center.  Her right arm is hidden behind "Spider Boy's" shoulder. For more about this photo and "Spider Boy" see BULSON It looks to me that Maria was a "flapper" in those days.