Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women & Children | Please Go To Our website www.saartjiebaartmancentre.org.za

In 1810 when Saartjie Baartman was in her early twenties she was persuaded by an English ships doctor William Dunlop to travel to England to make her fortune However as a Khoikhoi woman she was considered an anthropological freak in England and she found herself put on exhibition displayed as a sexual curiosity Dubbed The Hottentot Venus her image swept through British popular culture Abolitionists unsuccessfully fought a court battle to free her from her exhibitors Saartjie Baartman was taken to Paris in 1814 and continued to be exhibited as a freak She became the object of scientific and medical research that formed the bedrock of European ideas about black female sexuality When she died in 1816 the Musee de lHomme in Paris took