Mysterious people who came from nowhere! Part 1:-Jerome
Although the versions of his discovery differ, the general story goes that in September of 1863, in Nova Scotia, Canada, an 8-year-old boy walking on the beach of Sandy Cove met a man who was suffering from cold and exposure. He also didn’t have any legs.
When the boy’s family took the legless man to their home, in the village of Digby Neck, they learned that he didn’t speak English. The townspeople named him Jerome, after he murmured something that sounded like that name when they asked who he was. Not only did he not speak English; he didn’t speak in words. As curious looky-loos began stopping by the house to check out the mysterious stranger, Jerome would growl at them like a dog.
When Jerome was examined, the plot thickened. It seemed that his amputations were fresh, so much that they still had the dressings on them and hadn’t yet healed. As well, it seemed that a skilled surgeon had removed the man’s legs. It wasn’t an accident.
After a while, the people of the mostly Baptist town of Digby Neck somehow decided that Jerome might be Catholic (by some accounts, because of a Mediterranean appearance), and he was shipped off to the nearby Acadian community of Meteghan. He was taken in by Corsican-Canadian polyglot Jean Nicola, who tried French on him, in addition to Latin, Italian, and Spanish. Jerome either didn’t speak them or didn’t want to.
Nicola kept Jerome in his house anyhow, caring for him for another 7 years, along with his wife, Julitte, and stepdaughter, Madeleine, for whom Jerome became a favorite. It was during his time in Meteghan that the government was notified of the unidentified double amputee and granted a 2-dollar weekly stipend for his care. Despite living with a linguist, Jerome never learned to speak any language and could only grunt and growl.
After Julitte died, Jerome was sent to live with the Comeau family in the nearby town of St. Alphonse. Jerome stayed here for the rest of his life, allowing the Comeaus to collect admission from onlookers to view him (in addition to collecting his government stipend). Jerome died in 1912, almost 50 years after he was found on the beach. No one ever figured out who he was.
, and theories on his background still abound. Some posit that Jerome was a sailor who was punished with amputation after an attempted mutiny, while others say he was an heir to a fortune who was mutilated, usurped, and then disposed of. According to a book published by Nova Scotian historian Fraser Mooney, Jr, in 2008, Jerome was an immigrant from a town in nearby New Brunswick who suffered from gangrene and was dropped off on Sandy Cove after he became too great of a burden on the town.
None of these theories have been proved—and to this day, Jerome’s identity is still a conundrum.
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