Sarah Baartman was exhibited in human zoo's naked or scantily dressed throughout Britain, Paris, Ireland, and Belgium from 1810 to 1815 in cages alongside animals, in public places and rich clients’ private homes. She was pinched, poked made fun of, studied, sexualized, and ridiculed as part of exotic exhibitions in Europe.
The Hottentot Venus, Sarah Baartman was a South African Khoisan tribe woman from the Kalahari famous for the biggest butt the world has ever seen. Sarah Baartman became world famous as the most exotic of the four Hottentot Venuses paraded around Eroupe as well as a landmark court case.
Life, death and torture of African Hottentot Venus Sarah Baartman.
Treated inhumanly, the short life of the Hottentot Venus Sarah Baartman was one to be displayed and exhibited naked or scantily dressed at 225 Piccadilly in a cage on stage in London's Piccadilly Circus.
Unable to read or write, allegedly she signed a contract that she would receive half the profit. Other terms of her contract were that she would travel with Hendrik Cezar and Dunlop to England and Ireland to work as a domestic servant, and be exhibited for entertainment purposes could return to South Africa after five years.
She was put on display in 1810 at carnivals of human curiosities, live specimens and exotic exhibitions, Piccadilly Circus and freak shows in London and Paris, with crowds invited to look at her large booty and genitals. Britain's well to do society members gawked at, prodded and squeezed Sarahs so-called freakish human form which was paraded before them.
Sarah had a condition called Steatopygia that is a condition that produces a substantial amount of fat tissue on the buttocks and thighs. Steatopygia is common in the women of the Griqua Khoikhoi tribe which Sarah was born.
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| Britain's well to do society members gawked at, prodded and squeezed Sarah behind while attending human zoo's. |
Sarah's promoters nicknamed her the Hottentot Venus. Hottentot now seen as derogatory was used by white Europeans to describe the Khoi African peoples. Sarahs physical and economic exploitation became the rallying cry of abolitionists in London. The African Association also known as African Association for promoting the discovery of the interior of Africa was founded in 1788 and brought Baartmans case to court.
Baartman was the only Hottentot Venus whose case of exploration made its way through the courts. The law case was brought before the British Judiciary System in November 1810 were observers of the court case documented what they observed Baartman to go through day-to-day. Through this court case, today this is how the world able to trace her story in London and Paris.
Activists were appalled at Sarah's treatment and how the African women were portrayed as wild sexual creatures made shamed for having large bodies. Her employers were prosecuted for holding Sarah against her will, but not convicted, with Sarah herself testifying in their favor.
Sarahs show gradually lost its novelty and popularity among audiences in Paris and she went on tour around Britain and Ireland. A year before her death in 1814, Sarah worked for Reaux, an animal exhibitor in South Africa where she was exhibited in a cage alongside animals.
Born in South Africa's Eastern Cape in 1789, Sarah Baartman died on December 29, 1815, at the age of 26, but her exhibition continued. Baron Georges Cuvier was a French zoologist who established the sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology. He and other medical scientists codified racial difference by studying, recording and drawing Sarah Baartmans’ genitals and buttocks.
Cuvier, a naturalist obtained Baartmans' remains from local police and dissected her body. He made a plaster cast of her body, pickled her brain and genitals and placed them into jars that were placed on display at the Musee de l'Homme Museum of Man until 1974.
In 1994, President Nelson Mandela requested that the French government return the remains of Sarah. The process took eight years but on March 6, 2002, Sarah was brought back home to South Africa.
She was buried August 9, 2002, on Women’s Day at Hankey in the Eastern Cape Province. In Sarah's honor, South Africa's Eastern Cape Province Cacadu District was renamed the Sarah Baartman District in 2015.
Did you know? Born in 1789 and died in 1815, no photographs of Sarah Baartman, the Hottentot Venus exists, only drawings. Sarah may have died from the result of health problems due to suppossed alcoholism however her cause of death cannot be confirmed. No written recording of Sarah Baartman have been found., her voice and her own life story in her words were never written down.
The human trafficking and black exploitation story of Sara Saartjie Baartman life and death story continued the belief that black women are extraterrestrial sexual black nymphos because of large butts, the nature of black female sexuality and black female bodies today is still one of empowerment vs exploitation entertainment.
The Missing Meal: Sara Saartjie Baartman's Untold Food Story
We know every cruel detail of how Sara Saartjie Baartman's body was displayed across Europe. We know the measurements, the stares, the objectification. Yet, for all this obsessive recording, history is silent on the most basic human detail: what did she eat?
What stews from her homeland in South Africa did she crave while in cold London and Paris? What grains—sorghum or maize—had fueled her strength? What wild greens or roasted meats were the tastes of her childhood, the very foods that built the body Europeans found so "fascinating"?
This is the great, unsettling absence. They documented her form but erased her sustenance. They were fascinated by the iron in her display cage, but showed no curiosity about the iron-rich foods that were part of her life. In reducing her to a spectacle, they stripped away the daily human reality of hunger, meals, memory, and the simple act of nourishment. Her story is a stark reminder that to truly see a person, you must ask not just what they looked like, but what fed them.
A Note on Dignity and Return
The story of Sara Saartjie Baartman represents one of the most painful chapters in the history of how people have been treated by institutions of science and display. For decades, her remains were held far from home, studied not as a person but as a specimen.
Today, this history is understood as a profound failure of respect and ethics. After years of advocacy by the South African government and the Khoisan community, her remains were finally returned to her homeland in 2002 and laid to rest with dignity. This act of repatriation was a crucial step toward healing.
Her legacy now informs vital, ongoing efforts in museums worldwide to ensure that human dignity, community voice, and ethical care guide the stewardship of collections. It is a reminder that behind every object—and every person once treated as one—is a full human story deserving of honor.
