A brief account of the life of John Chambers

the long version

Booklet showing John Chambers playing the accordion with his feet on the cover. Interior illustrations show him planing a piece of wood with his feet and sawing a piece of wood with his feet. He was born in June 1850 without hands or arms, was an excellent scholar and married, producing a large family (between 2 and 14 years old when the leaflet was written. Chambers was known on stage (in Victorian freak shows) as The Armless Carpenter, enjoying a period of fame in the 1880s. The leaflet includes an article from the Lancet (19 October 1850) by R. Davies, M.R.C.S. putting forward the theory that this was due to a shock his mother had when she was 6 weeks pregnant upon seeing a child with a similar deformity.