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The Pig-faced Lady of Manchester Square and the Spanish Mule of Madrid, an 1815 cartoon print by George Cruikshank depicting a pig-faced woman and contrasting her with the unpopular Ferdinand VII of Spain. At this time, rumours had spread that such a woman was living in fashionable Manchester Square, and various newspapers (such as the Morning Herald and Morning Chronicle) reported this as fact. Eyewitness accounts, marriage proposals, and tales of attacks by the woman further fanned the flames, and the rumour was recollected as fact as late as the 1860s.
Stories of pig-faced women originated in the late 1630s; the last significant work to treat their existence as genuine was published in 1924.Print: George Cruikshank