Saarti Baartman was born in 1789 into the Khoisan tribe in Southern Africa. In 1810 she was sighted by William Dunlop, a British doctor. He was said to have been ‘fascinated’ by what Europeans dubbed her ‘unusual shape’ and took her to London, where he made money by exhibiting her as a freak show. She was regularly subjected to degrading acts of performance and at one point was displayed completely naked in a cage in Piccadilly, London. She was later sold to a French businessman who took her to Paris. There she fell into alcoholism and prostitution and died in 1816. In 2002, her remains which had been used for scientific study by the French, were returned to South Africa where she received a proper burial.