Tomasa Lugo’s child-torturing came to light in 1902. A plus-sized seamstress living in Mexico City, was a child torturer with an original bent. She abused her 6-year-old niece, Maria Consuelo González, with beatings and even burned the child’s mouth with a burning coal. But the most extraordinary torture was one that stemmed from the torturer’s vocation. When teachers noticed little Maria was clearly ill and seems to suffer great pain from walking. But they assumed the condition was the result of some conventional malady. It was on the day Maria fainted, July 21, 1902, that the source of her suffering was discovered. Maria regained consciousness, yet every touch from the teacher who had helped her up and tried to comfort her made the child scream in agony. The reason was that her aunt had sewn her clothing onto her skin – at the waist, hips and thighs.
At night Lugo would remove the threading and allow the girl
to sleep and in the morning perform her cruel sartorial ritual. When the girl
complained she was beaten directly where her wounds were. Maria was rescued and
treated at the hospital and eventually healed. The monstrous aunt, called in
the press La Costurera Bejarano, was packed off to prison,
where she had to be kept isolated from fellow prisoners who, given the chance,
would have torn the sadistic child torturer limb from limb.
Robert St. Estephe (based on”Tomasa
Lugo ‘La Costurera,’” Escrito con Sangre, Apr. 2010)
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Other
sources :
Augustín Sánchez
González, Un Dulce Sabor A Muerte :
De La Bejarano a la Miss México un siglio de mujeres criminales, Editorial:
Planeta, 2009
Augustín Sánchez
González, Terribilísima : Historias
de Crímenes y Horrores : en la Ciudad de México en el siglo XIX, Ediciones
B México, 2006
James Alex Garza, El Lado Oscuro Del
Porfiriato: Sexo, crímenes y vicios en la Ciudad de México, Aguilar, 2009
El libro rojo,
Continuacion, V. I: 1868-1928, Gerardo
Villadelángel Viñas, 2008
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Illustration: This image has been published online as an
illustration to an article on Lugo, yet its source is not identified.
[978-10/4/21]
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