Comprachicos

Common card · No. 285926

Comprachicos are groups in European folklore who were said to physically cripple and deform children to work as beggars or living curiosities. The most common methods said to be used in this practice included stunting children's growth by physical restraint, muzzling their faces to deform them, slitting their eyes, dislocating their joints, and causing their bones to malform. The term, a compound Spanish neologism meaning "child-buyers", was coined by Victor Hugo in The Man Who Laughs, an 1869 novel which triggered moral panics over supposed "cripple factories" across Europe. The words comprapequeños, cheylas and zaghles are also used. The resulting dwarfed and deformed adults made their living as mountebanks and freak show performers or were sold into bondage as pages, jesters, or court dwarfs.

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