They called her the most ugly woman in the world

Mary Ann Bevan was born in London in 1874. As a young adult, she worked as a nurse, and at 29, she married Thomas Bevan with whom she had four children. Thomas died in 1914, and this was when the symptoms of her disease first began to show
she was a pretty young woman
Bevan started exhibiting the symptoms of acromegaly soon after she was married, around the age of 32.[3] She began to suffer from abnormal growth and facial distortion, which led to her "homely" appearance, along with severe headaches and fading eyesight. After the death of her husband in 1914, she no longer had the income to support herself and her four children. Bevan decided to capitalize on her appearance and entered a "Homeliest Woman" contest which she lost.

In 1920, she was hired by Sam Gumpertz to appear in Coney Island's Dreamland sideshow, a form of freak show, where she would spend most of the remainder of her life. She also made appearances at the World's Fair for the Ringling Brothers Circus until her death

Though she was maligned in her own time, she has since become an inspirational figure for people suffering from acromegaly, for whom life is often still quite difficult. As modern medicine allows us to understand and treat such diseases, we must make an effort to treat their sufferers better than Mary Ann ever was. So that she can raise her children and spend on them and teach them

If there was a measure of human beauty, Maria would have been the most beautiful woman in the world