Lorett Fulkerson, the Last Performing Tattooed Lady

"To Alan, Best wishes, Lorett."

When I visited the sideshow at the York Fair in York, Pa., in the mid-1980s, I purchased this card from a tattooed woman, "Lorett," who also autographed it for me. Years later, I was able to identify her as Lorett Fulkerson, and I discovered how lucky I was to meet her.

As Amelia Klem Osterud explains in her book, The Tattooed Lady: A History (Speck Press, 2009), p. 2, "Tattooed ladies graced sideshow and carnival stages until 1995, when the last performing tattooed lady, Lorett Fulkerson, retired from the carnival circuit at age eighty."

Lorett Fulkerson was at least seventy years old when I met her at the York Fair. Sadly, she died in 2007 at the age of ninety-two.

When I posted this over on Flickr, one of Lorett's grandchildren added a comment, and another person even provided some more recent color photos of Lorett.