History

Miss Kilmansegg is inspired by the main character in Thomas Hood’s narrative poem Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg, which was first published in instalments from 1840 to 1841. In this poem, Miss Kilmansegg demands an artificial leg made of solid gold after she has a leg amputated following a horse-riding accident. Compound fractures resulting from riding accidents were a leading cause for lower-limb amputations among the social elite in the nineteenth century. For more on Miss Kilmansegg and how her leg was used by real-life prosthesis makers in their advertising materials, see chapter 3 of Ryan Sweet’s free 2022 book Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture.

Backstory

Daughter of a lord, who broke her leg in a riding accident. The local doctor had no other choice but to amputate.
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