4 HUMAN ODDITIES
Large and Small

WITH AN INCREASED UNDERSTANDING OF GENETIC and other causes of deformities, the word freaks has given way to such euphemisms as anomalies, mistakes of nature, abnormalities, curiosities, and phenomènes. In London in 1898, some members of the Barnum & Bailey sideshow troupe held a meeting to protest being called freaks. Among them were bearded lady Annie Jones and an armless wonder, who recorded the minutes by writing with his foot. They finally settled on prodigies, but that label failed to catch on in America, and it has been suggested that “the whole affair may have been dreamed up by the Barnum and Bailey public-relations staff”(Fiedler 1993, 15). Frederick Drimmer (1991) expressed his own preferred euphemism in the title of his book, Very Special People, but glossed it in the subtitle: The Struggles, Love and Triumphs of Human Oddities.

Nevertheless, freaks is the usual circus and carnival term, and a freak show is one where freaks are exhibited and where “freakish working acts [are] performed” (Keyser 2001). The esteemed literary and cultural critic Leslie Fiedler (1993, 23–24) notes that the word freak is perhaps “as obsolescent as the Freak show itself,” but he finds that it still has a certain “resonance.” Although there are disabled people who evoke primarily pity rather than awe, he says:

The true Freak, however, stirs both supernatural terror and natural sympathy, since, unlike the fabulous monsters, he is one of us, the human child of human parents, however altered by forces we do not quite understand into something mythic and mysterious, as no mere cripple ever is. Passing either on the street, we may be simultaneously tempted to avert our eyes and to stare; but in the latter case we feel no threat to those desperately maintained boundaries on which any definition of sanity ultimately depends. Only the true Freak challenges the conventional boundaries between male and female, sexed and sexless, animal and human, large and small, self and other, and consequently between reality and illusion, experience and fantasy, fact and myth.

In this chapter we look at oddities who primarily challenge our concept of scale: giants, fat people, living skeletons, dwarfs, and midgets. Like other oddities, they help define what those who encounter them think of as “normal.” According to William Lindsay Gresham in his Monster Midway (1953, 101), “Any variation from the norm can serve as a side-show attraction.”

Giants

Throughout literature, giants have provoked feelings of wonder and terror. In the Old Testament, the Philistine champion whose name became a synonym for giant, Goliath, challenged the warriors of Israel's King Saul to individual combat. When none responded, David came forth, armed only with a sling, and toppled Goliath with a pebble (1 Samuel 17:1–58). Although the Authorized (King James) Version gives Goliath's height as “six cubits and a span” (about nine feet nine inches), other texts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, state four cubits and a span (about six feet nine inches).

Many of the giants of fairy tales are ogres, like the one in the popular children's story of Jack the Giant-Killer. So, typically, are those of literary works, such as the Cyclops in Homer's Odyssey; Nimrod, leader of a group of “horrible giants” in Milton's Paradise Lost; and even the man-made monster in Mary Shelley's horror classic Frankenstein. In contrast are the typical giants of advertising, such as the “fakelore” figure Paul Bunyan, who was largely the contrivance of a lumber company ad executive (Dorson 1959), and, of course, the Jolly Green Giant of canned and frozen vegetable fame. More ambiguous is the temperament of the alleged man-beast—known variously as Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, and other appellations—who appears less frequently in folklore than in “pranklore” (Nickell 1995).

Imaginary giants aside, true gigantism is a rare condition characterized by overgrowth of the long bones. Its usual cause is overactivity of the anterior pituitary gland (often caused by a benign tumor), occurring before normal tion is complete. After maturity, a syndrome called acromegaly may occur, resulting in enlargement of the head, hands, and feet. Still later in gigantism, there may be a coarsening of the facial features, with protruding jaws and excessive spacing of the teeth (Taber's 2001; Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960, s.v. “Gigantism”).

Historically, giants were used as soldiers, displayed (since Roman times) in arenas, and stationed (chiefly in England) as show guards at palace gates. One of these palace guards was Walter Parsons, who served in that capacity for King James I. Born in Staffordshire, he was apprenticed at a young age to a smith but grew so tall that he had to stand in a knee-deep hole in the ground to keep him on a par with the other workmen. Apparently standing more than seven feet tall, Parsons found a more appropriate station in life at the tall gates of royal palaces. After James died, he continued as porter to Charles I, reportedly dying about 1628. It was said that “if affronted by a man of ordinary stature, he only took him up by the waistband of his breeches and hung him up upon one of the hooks in the shambles [butchers’ stalls], to be ridicul'd by the people and so went on his way” (quoted in Thompson 1968, 144).

The supply of giants could not meet the royals’ demand. Indeed, according to Fiedler (1993, 108):

Frederick I of Prussia was particularly unscrupulous in his methods of impressment, shanghaiing anyone seven foot or over he could find and kidnapping women of appropriate size to couple with them and produce a second generation. Hearing, for instance, of an outsize carpenter called Zimmerman, Frederick sent an agent to him to commission the building of a coffin large enough to fit someone just his size. It was, the agent explained, for a recently dead soldier too large for any standard box. When the job was done, he expressed doubt about whether even the huge coffin Zimmerman had produced would be adequate, asking him to stretch out in it himself to make sure. Once his dull-witted victim was safely inside, the recruiter nailed the lid shut and shipped him off by carriage to Potsdam, where he arrived dead of suffocation. But that scarcely mattered, since even the bones of a Giant were enough to please the ruler, apparently as proud of the seven-foot-one skeleton in his closet as of the eight-foot-three living Scotsman who was the tallest of his elite corps.

It is unknown when the first giant was exhibited in the tradition of sideshows, but certainly the practice was common in seventeenth-century London. For instance, a “Monstrous Tartar” from Hungary was exhibited in 1664 at “Ye Globe in the ould Baily.” Described as “a creature of extraordinary strength and valour,” he had been captured during a battle with Christians after expending all his arrows. A comely twenty-three-year-old giantess from northern Ireland, who stood seven feet tall without shoes, was shown in London in 1696 and at the fair in Montpelier, France, in 1701 (Thompson 1968, 149–50).

Anatomists coveted the skeletons of giants, none more so than that of Charlie Byrne (1761–1783), known as the Irish Giant. Aware that his skeleton was sought and that physicians and their agents surrounded his house like vultures, the dying Byrne made his friends promise that they would weight his body and bury it in the Irish Sea. Nevertheless, the celebrated English anatomist John Hunter obtained it for a reported 500 pounds, boiled it to obtain the bones, and exhibited the skeleton in the Hunterian Museum. Today it is in the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where it stands just under seven feet nine inches tall.

In an exaggerated fashion that would become standard for giants, Byrne had been exhibited as “the Tallest man in the world,” with his height represented as “eight foot two inches and in full proportion accordingly” (Drimmer 1991, 222–26). It was common in sideshow presentations—following the exaggerations of the banners—for the talker and lecturer to add a foot or more to a giant's height. (For a chart of famous giants’ claimed versus actual heights, see McWhirter 1981, 14.) Standing on the platform, often in high-heeled boots, the giant seemed to be as tall as the claimed height. Other tricks included cutting giants’ shirts large to make them appear wider, and making the cuffs too short so that it would seem impossible to obtain a shirt with sleeves that were long enough. Sometimes women wore headdresses with plumes; a man might wear a “40 gallon” cowboy hat to go with his boots, or he might be a “goliath” with a tall helmet (Minor 1996) (figures 4.1 and 4.2).

FIGURE 4.1. A giantess names Mariedl from the Tirol region of Austria posed with her sister for this postcard photo. Note the large headdress. (Author's collection)

For publicity photographs, giants were typically shot from an especially low angle so that they seemed to tower above the viewer. Another ploy was to stand them beside midgets (see figure 4.2). Barnum had giantess Anna Swan pose with his Lilliputian King sitting in her outstretched hand (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 174). Giants could also be posed beside ordinary but relatively short people or next to specially made, undersized furniture (Minor 1996). It was common for giants to be under contract not to allow themselves to be measured (McWhirter 1981, 14).

Barnum exhibited a number of giants at his American Museum, including the Arabian Giant (Colonel Routh Goshen) and the Belgian Giant (aka the French Giant, Monsieur E. Bihin) (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 175). In his autobiography, Barnum (1927, 131–32) related a story about the two men, showing that they had ordinary human foibles. According to the great showman, the giants generally got along with each other, despite some jealousy. One day, however, they had a quarrel and traded racial epithets. They ran to Barnum's collection of arms, one grabbing a war club and the other a crusader's sword. The disturbance brought Barnum from his office. He pretended to think that their fighting was a grand idea, as long as it was duly advertised and promoted. “No performance of yours would be a greater attraction,” he told the two, “and if you [want to] kill each other, our engagement can end with your duel.” In Barnum's Own Story he recalled, “This proposition, made in apparent earnest, so delighted the giants that they at once burst into a laugh, shook hands, and quarreled no more.”

FIGURE 4.2. A carnival giant enhanced his height by wearing a tall hat and posing beside a midget. (Author's collection)

These behind-the-scenes incidents in the lives of giants and other oddities tell us much more about them—and about us—than do their sideshow appearances. Take the case of Anna Swan, one of Barnum's favorites. Anna came to him from Nova Scotia when she was seventeen. Her father, a Scottish immigrant, was just five feet four inches tall, and her mother stood only five feet tall. Anna, the third of their thirteen children, weighed a whopping eighteen pounds at her birth in 1846, and at age six she was as tall as her mother. By age fifteen she had reached seven feet and was still growing, eventually adding another five and a half inches. A friendly and intelligent woman, she lectured on giants to the museum's patrons.

Like Barnum's other performers, Anna lived in the museum and was there when fire swept through it in 1865. A reporter published a detailed account of her rescue. Supposedly, her huge, 400-pound body would not fit through any door, and a loft derrick was used to remove her through a hole made in an outer wall by enlarging a window. Barnum, who had had nothing to do with creating the exaggerated account, termed the report “facetious.”

Later Anna toured the West and, in 1869, Europe, appearing before Queen Victoria (Drimmer 1991, 231–35). Among Anna's companions on the European tour was another giant, Captain Martin Van Buren Bates. Born in Whitesburg, Kentucky, in 1845, Martin Bates was known locally as the Giant of Letcher County. Although all ten of his brothers and sisters were, like his parents, of average height, Bates was six feet tall by age fifteen and eventually reached a height of seven feet two and a half inches. He was attending college in Virginia when the Civil War began, and he joined the Confederacy by enlisting in the Fifth Kentucky Infantry. He became a first lieutenant and later a captain. After the war, he began to capitalize on his stature and toured in exhibitions across the United States and Canada. In New Jersey he met Anna, who was three inches taller than he.

FIGURE 4.3. P. T. Barnum's giants—Anna Swan and Captain Martin Van Buren Bates—made a distinctive wedding couple.

While they were on tour, the Nova Scotia Giantess and the Kentucky Giant decided to marry (figure 4.3). The wedding took place in London on June 17, 1871, with Anna wearing a white satin gown decorated with orange blossoms. This had been a gift from Queen Victoria, who also gave her a cluster diamond ring and presented Captain Bates with an engraved watch. Less than a year later, Anna gave birth to a baby girl weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches. Tragically, the giant infant died at birth (Kleber 1992, 59–60; Bogdan 1990, 206–7; Drimmer 1991, 235–37).

Eventually, the couple retired to a farm at Seville, Ohio, where they built a house “the like of which,” according to Drimmer (1991, 237), “had not been seen since the days of Jack the Giant Killer.” The eighteen-room mansion had a main wing with twelve- to fourteen-foot ceilings and doors eight and a half feet tall. The local Baptist church built a large pew especially for the couple.

In 1878 Anna became pregnant again. On January 15 of the next year she began to have labor pains, but it was thirty-six hours before they became serious. Reports Drimmer (1991, 239):

Late in the afternoon of January 18, the bag of waters burst. Six gallons of fluid poured out. Then the baby's head appeared. But it moved no further. Anna's abdominal muscles had stopped their action.

Dr. Beach took out his forceps. The head was enormous, with a circumference of nineteen inches. Although most of it emerged, the baby was caught by its great shoulders.

Then,

Realizing he needed help, Dr. Beach wired another physician, Dr. Robinson of Wooster. He arrived the next morning. After a vain attempt at using the forceps again, the two doctors slipped a bandage over the infant's neck. One of them pulled the baby to the side, and the other finally managed to draw out an arm. More careful manipulation and the shoulders came free. At last the baby had been delivered.

Dr. Beach reported the infant boy's weight as twenty-three and three-quarters pounds and his height as thirty inches—taller than the midgets Anna had performed with. Sadly, however, he did not survive a full day. His gravestone reads, simply, “Babe.”

The giants made no further attempts at parenthood. But for years, Seville residents would recall how, as children, they had been held in Anna's great lap or had been quieted by the otherwise gruff Captain Bates, who would hold his huge watch to their ear.

In 1888, just a day short of her forty-second birthday, Anna died suddenly. Her funeral was delayed while the captain obtained a large enough casket. When his own death came in 1919, the funeral director made a necessary decision: the six pallbearers Bates himself had named were relegated “honorary pallbearers,” and eight strong men were chosen to carry the coffin. It protruded from the hearse, whose doors were held together with rope around the box's end (Drimmer 1991, 238–41).

Other noted giants included the “other” Irish Giant, Patrick Cotter (1760–1806), who used the name O’Brien. He stood nearly seven feet eleven inches, although he claimed to be taller. A journalist reported: “Mr. O’Brien enjoyed his early pipe and the lamps of the town afforded himself an easy method of lighting it. When at the door of Mr. Dent in Bridge Street, he withdrew the cap of the lamp, whiffed his tobacco into a flame and stalked away as if no uncommon event had taken place” (quoted in Drimmer 1991, 227).

There was also Chang Yu Sing, the Chinese Giant, described in an 1891 Barnum ad as “Tallest Man in the World” and “The Unquestioned Goliath of the Century.” He was “Nearly 9 Feet High in His Stocking Feet,” the ad stated, although he was probably a foot shorter. He had a penchant for expensive clothing and wore robes of embroidered silk and other finery (Bogdan 1990, 99; Parker 1994, 165; Gardner 1962, 137).

The tallest person who ever lived, whose height was unquestionably verified, was American Robert Wadlow (1918–1940). He stood eight feet eleven and a half inches when he was measured not long before his untimely death at age twenty-two (Guinness 1998, 96). Like many giants, Wadlow—who weighed 439 pounds—had leg trouble and walked with a cane. A new brace scraped his ankle, causing an infection that led to his death (Drimmer 1991, 251–52).

Wadlow's parents had tried to give him as normal a life as possible. He traveled for a shoe company using his great height—and size thirty-seven shoes—to attract crowds. He rationalized that he was in advertising, not being exhibited as a freak. He did agree to appear with Ringling Brothers at Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden, but only in the center ring, never in the sideshow. He refused a Ringling request to wear a top hat and tails, and he challenged overblown reports—such as one claiming that his food intake was four times that of an average person—as “deliberate falsehoods” (Bogdan 1990, 272–74; Packard et al. 2001, 36). Therefore, concludes Drimmer (1991, 274), “Although very tall, he was not a giant.”

An anecdote further illustrating this distinction concerns Jack Earle. His extreme height brought him to the attention of Ringling Brothers sideshow manager Clyde Ingalls in the mid-1920s. “How would you like to be a giant?” the showman is said to have asked, indicating the important difference between merely being noticeable and being a sideshow star (Bogdan 1990, 2–3, 25). Earle had visited the circus in El Paso, Texas, to view the giant Jim Tarver, who was some three or four inches shorter than Earle. Soon Earle became the Texas Giant and replaced Tarver as the reigning “Tallest Man in the World,” being decked out in western attire with high-heeled boots, tall cowboy hat, and a red outfit trimmed with gold braid (Fiedler 1993, 104; Drimmer 1991, 245).

Before his sideshow debut, Earle—born Jacob Ehrlich in 1906—had had a movie career. Hollywood producers changed his name and featured him in nearly fifty comedies. Then, a fall from collapsed scaffolding during filming resulted in a broken nose and blurred vision, followed by blindness. He was found to have a benign tumor on the pituitary gland, and it was pressing against the optic nerve. Months of X-ray treatment shrank the tumor, restoring his sight but also ending his growth at a height of seven feet seven and a half inches. Earle never resumed his Hollywood career.

Earle was an introspective man who wrote melancholy poetry. (Near the end of his life he published a volume of poems titled The Long Shadows [Earle 1952].) A shy man, he had found his movie career—and now circus life—challenging. Nevertheless, he had good friends in the Ringling Brothers show, especially among the midgets. He seemed to exemplify Gresham's (1953, 100) generalization: “While midgets are traditionally pugnacious, giants are usually gentle with a tendency to melancholy. In side shows a giant and a midget will often become inseparable friends, complementing each other in character traits.” That certainly seems to be true in the case of Jack Earle. As Drimmer (1991, 244) relates: “A familiar sight in the circus was the giant walking between the tents, his big voice booming in reply to a high-pitched remark from little Harry Doll or some other midget who was perched on his shoulder. In Jack's first season with the circus, Harry, in particular, was very helpful to him. When Jack felt ill at ease the midget pointed out to him that there were more ‘freaks’ in the audience than there were on the sideshow platform.”

Earle finally left the sideshow at the close of the 1940 season, and he embarked on a third career as a salesman for a wine company. Naturally, he was billed as the World's Tallest Traveling Salesman. He lived to the age of forty-six, dying in 1952.

Another later Texas Giant was Dave Ballard, who was with the Hall & Christ Show until he suffered a terminal illness in the fall of 1968. Once, a woman approached Ward Hall at a fair in Berea, Ohio, and asked if he would employ her nineteen-year-old son. Recalls Hall (1981, 55): “We could use another ticket seller so I agreed. She said, ‘I don't think you understand; he is a rather tall boy.’ My ears perked up as I asked, ‘How tall is he?’ To which she replied, ‘He is seven foot eight and would like to travel with your show.’ And so he did.” As Hall continues: “Since I had Dave Ballard, the Texas Giant featured, we dressed Bob Collins in a Roman outfit with a high helmet, and sat him on the outside stage [the bally platform] with a sign reading, ‘My name is Bob. I’m 7’ 8” but if you think I am tall see the Texas Giant inside.’ It created a lot of interest and really stimulated business.”

Still another famous giant was Johann K. Petursson, who was born in Iceland and later toured Europe's vaudeville theaters with two midgets until World War II. He was performing in Copenhagen when the Nazis came, and he spent the rest of the war as a shipyard worker. In 1948 Petursson was brought to America by the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, where he was transformed from the Icelandic Giant, a gentleman wearing formal dress and a top hat, into the Viking Giant, a bearded figure with cape and plumed helmet. He reportedly stood eight feet nine and a half inches tall and weighed over 400 pounds; however, a knowledgeable source gives his height as just over seven feet eight inches and his weight as nearly 360 pounds. In any event, his home, trailer, and vehicles, as well as his furniture and clothing, were fashioned to accommodate his great size (Hall 1991, 6–7; “Tallest Man” 2003; Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 13–15).

Among other sideshow giants was African American Tyrone Reeder. He was slightly shorter than Petursson, with whom he appeared in 1973 at a Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus sideshow in Washington, D.C. (Petursson came out of retirement for the exhibition.) Ward Hall and Chris Christ produced the sideshow and decided to give Reeder “a more exotic aura,” so they had a special costume made and billed him as Abdul the Egyptian Giant. Wishing to be helpful, Reeder jumped up when the lecturer introduced him, and the purported Egyptian drawled, “‘Hi Ya’ All, Hi Ya’ All’” (Hall 1991, 7). Except for the lecturer, says Hall, everyone was amused.

Fat People

While giants are measured by their height, other sideshow attractions are characterized by girth and weight. Obesity, or corpulence, is the excessive accumulation of fat beneath the skin and in and around certain internal organs. It results from an imbalance between the amount of food eaten and the energy expended. It may be due to a number of complex factors, including genetics, hormonal imbalance, neurological influences, overfeeding (especially on fats and carbohydrates), overimbibing of fluids (particularly beer and sweet wine), and a sedentary lifestyle. Health is threatened because exercise becomes difficult and the functions of the thoracic and abdominal organs are affected (Taber's 2001; Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960, s.v. “Corpulence”).

Fat people have been variously regarded in different places and eras. In biblical times, fatness could be a sign of prosperity tending to ungodliness (Deuteronomy 31:20) or a symbol of pride (Psalms 119:69–70). In general, the ancients were contemptuous of fat people, although the Chinese had a different view, believing that in the Celestial Kingdom physical bulk indicated proportional intellectual endowment. Some humanists in the Middle Ages regarded obesity as an outward, visible manifestation of the inward, invisible indolence and apathy that were characteristic of some decadent clerics. Some Western rulers—including William the Conqueror, Charles the Fat, and Pope Leo X—were corpulent, along with at least one saint, Thomas Aquinas, who, despite weighing some 300 pounds, was alleged to levitate (Fiedler 1993, 126–27).

Not until the eighteenth century did fat people begin “to come into their own as show Freaks for the popular audience,” according to Fiedler (1993, 127–28). The most famous such person of that time was Englishman Daniel Lambert (d. 1809), who was described by a contemporary as “a stupendous mass of flesh, for his thighs are so covered by his belly that nothing but his knees are to be seen, while the flesh of his legs, which resemble pillows, projects in such a matter as to nearly bury his feet.” Lambert weighed 739 pounds and measured nine feet four inches around (Fiedler 1993, 128).

FIGURE 4.4. A fat lady poses for a cartes de visite photo in the second half of the nineteenth century. (Author's collection)

Guinness lists no fewer than ten men who weighed over 800 pounds, the heaviest of whom may have been Jon Brower Minnoch (b. 1941). His weight was estimated by an endocrinologist as “probably more than 1,400 pounds” before he began dieting and diminished to 450 pounds. The largest “precisely measured weight for a human,” according to Guinness, is 1,069 pounds accorded to Robert Earl Hughes (1926–1958). When he died of uremia, he was buried in a coffin the size of a piano crate, which was lowered into the huge grave by a crane (McWhirter 1981, 20–22).

Fat ladies (figures 4.4 and 4.5) have included some over 800 pounds. That was the maximum weight that hospital scales could register when Mrs. Percy Pearl Washington (1926–1972) was weighed, although she was thought to be about 880 pounds. An earlier weight record of 850 pounds had been achieved by another woman. However, Ida Maitland's (1898–1932) alleged 911-pound weight is unsubstantiated.

Along with fat ladies and fat men, there were fat children, such as Barnum's Highland Mammoth Boys, three brothers exhibited in the 1840s. Currier and Ives produced a lithograph with an exaggerated depiction of Barnum's seven-year-old Vantile Mack, who supposedly weighed 257 pounds and had a sixty-one-inch chest (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 38–39, 73–74). Among fat adult siblings were the Carlson sisters, known as the Wrestling Fat Girls, who were photographed at Coney Island about 1925 (Barth and Siegel 2002, 14, 43). The world's fattest brothers were Billy and Benny McCrary (alias Billy and Benny McGuire), who were born in 1946 and came to weigh 743 and 723 pounds, respectively. They dwarfed the minibikes they rode. In 1979 Billy fell from his bike and died soon afterward of heart failure (McWhirter 1981, 20, 22).

FIGURE 4.5. A German fat lady, Jlona, reportedly tipped the scales at 485 pounds. (Author's collection)

Johnny Meah (1996) provides this serious assessment of the sideshow genre of fat people:

Although I readily acknowledge Fat People as a popular attraction, I’ve never regarded them in the same way I regard Midgets and Giants. A Midget, Dwarf or Giant has a course charted for them at birth by their pituitary gland. Most professional Fat People (mind you, I say most), are self-made freaks who have literally eaten their way into the spotlight. I’ve worked with at least twenty sideshow Fat People and with the possible exception of one, never knew any of them to suffer from any type of glandular disorder. This is not to say they weren't overweight to start with, but, in most cases, a problem correctable by proper diet and exercise. These people aspired to super corpulence to enable them to exhibit themselves. One man freely admitted to drinking copious quantities of sugar water in an effort to become “The Fattest Man in The World.” Another man, tiring of the “Fat-For-A-Fee” business, returned to his original occupation as a musician and dropped to a relatively normal weight of two hundred and fifty pounds.

Meah (1996) suspects that whoever first yoked together the words jolly and fat had probably “never spent much time around Fat People; however these two words have enjoyed the longest marriage ever recorded.” Daniel Lambert was known as the Jolly Gaoler of Leicester. Others have been billed as Happy Jack, Jolly Irene, or Happy Jenny (see figure 4.6). No doubt, many have fit the stereotype, although Carrie Akers, who performed in the 1880s as a dwarf fat lady (allegedly thirty-five inches tall and about 300 pounds), acquired the sobriquet Quarrelsome Carrie (Fiedler 1993, 128–30; Bogdan 1990, 165).

Certainly, fat folk are often billed in humorous fashion, with names like Jolly Dolly, Alice from Dallas, Baby Ruth, Tom Ton, Tiny Brown, and so on. Comic elements may be used in the banners, bally, and lecture. Fat ladies often dress in dainty, little-girl outfits. One banner depicts “Sweet Marie” devouring a feast with a fork in one hand, a spoon in the other. A banner bullet claims “643 lbs.” Another banner, headed “Oh My! But She Is Fat,” portrays a huge woman in a skimpy bikini. Still another, for “Ruth the Acrobat,” shows a corpulent woman in an unlikely contortionistic position (Fiedler 1993, 130–31; Bogdan 1990, 114; Barth 2002, 42–43; Nelson 1999, 119–20; Johnson et al. 1996, 83–91). (See figure 4.7.)

FIGURE 4.6. Fat lady Happy Jenny sits on a special chair for her pitch card photograph. (Author's collection)

Ward Hall (2001) talks from the bally: “They're here, they're alive, and they're performing on stage. Here's where you see the biggest, fattest, funniest man in the world: Harold Huge. He's alive. He weighs 712 pounds. Alive! The biggest, fattest man on earth.” And Bobby Reynolds (2001) spiels: “Frrrreaks! Fat Alice from Dallas. She's so big and so fat it takes four men to hug her and a boxcar to lug her. And when she starts to dance, she quivers like a bowl of grandmother's jelly on a cold frosty morn. Hell, it must be jelly ’cause jam don't shake like that. That's right, 532 pounds of female pulchritude. Mmmm boy! She's a big one.”

As part of the billing, fat people's size was often exaggerated by up to 200 pounds (Meah 1996). For their photographs, their garments were sometimes “stuffed with rags to add to their size.” Written on the back of one 1880s photo of “The Ohio Fat Boy” (R. J. James) were instructions for a retake, using looser clothing to make him appear larger (Bogdan 1990, 13). In addition, “A fat lady used to be paid in proportion to her weight; if she added pounds to her girth, the management added dollars to her salary” (Drimmer 1991, 272–73).

FIGURE 4.7. The pitch card of Miss Peggy boasts a weight of 558 pounds. She poses in front of her huge banner, which has her resembling a pig. (Author's collection)

Jolly Dixie was with the Nat Reiss Shows in 1927 when she was photographed standing beneath her double-width banner. It proclaimed her weight as 603 pounds, but she looked little more than half that (Barth 2002, 42). Another fat lady, Jolly Dolly (Joann Winters of upstate New York), was also a lightweight; worse, she seemed to be losing pounds when she joined the Ringling Brothers sideshow in 1973. “Finally,” says Hall (1991, 29), “when a customer walked up to her and asked her where the fat girl was, it was decided to transfer her to the ticket department.”

The story of Baby Ruth illustrates the difficulty of “normal” life for a fat lady. She had been born to a Ringling Brothers sideshow fat lady and had obviously inherited her mother's glandular imbalance, weighting sixteen pounds at birth and fifty on her first birthday. She attempted to lead an ordinary life as a secretary but, drawing too many gawkers, soon surrendered to the sideshow and for a time appeared with her mother. She married circus balloon man Joe Pontico and enjoyed star status with Ringling, where she was advertised with a claimed weight of 815 pounds.

One day, she decided to visit her girlhood home, Muncie, Indiana, and see her sister. A specially built ramp permitted her to board a railroad baggage car for transport and, at the other end, to disembark. She used the ramp again to reach the back of a piano mover's truck for the ride across town. At her sister's house she managed to cross the rickety porch, which had been hastily reinforced for her visit. All seemed well until, suddenly, Baby Ruth plunged through the floor of the living room and landed, relatively unhurt, in the basement. A derrick had to be used to lift her by cable through a large hole sawed in the roof. According to a brief biography by Ned Sonntag (1996, 142), “Baby Ruth left her childhood home in Muncie with no further celebration, and,” he adds pointedly, “fled back to the blessed safety of the circus.”

Life for a sideshow fat person can have its funny moments. According to Hall (1981, 46) regarding the 1965 season: “The fat man I had that winter used to sleep a lot while on exhibit, so I had a sign made with a large pin attached to it which read, ‘If the fat man is asleep, stick him with this pin. He will wake up and entertain you.’ It worked once and then sign and pin mysteriously disappeared.”

FIGURE 4.8. Fat man Bruce Snowden. (Photo by author)

When I met the Hall & Christ Show's “Harold Huge,” Bruce Snowden (figures 4.8 and 4.9), he seemed understandably bored. Sitting by the exit with his pitch cards, he was reading a book. Asked about his act, Snowden sloshed his great belly “like a waterbed,” and replied:

FIGURE 4.9. Snowden's banner at the Hall & Christ Show, York, Pennsylvania, 2000. (Photo by author)

I have a routine about how I eat 50,000 calories worth of food at a time. I probably only eat about twice as much again as you do. You might be able to eat one TV dinner with dessert. Instead, I’ll eat two TV dinners. But I don't eat 25 chickens and a barrel of beer, thirty pancakes, two dozen eggs, sixteen pounds of bacon. That could kill a sperm whale, never mind a human being. Two things: Yes, I do like to eat too much and I’m not very active. I also have a tendency, of course, to “be heavy.” I probably am the heaviest man who ever lived in my family, but not by more than a century. My father used to bounce up and down from 250 to 350 and back again. And when he was on the way down, life in that family was hell. He was one of those people that, if he was miserable, he wanted everybody else to be miserable. If there's a bitchy type of human being, it's somebody on a diet. You're driving down the street and you cut somebody off, you just drive in front of them, they might snarl at you. But every now and then, it's a lot worse. They're the ones on the diets. (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 84)

Daniel Mannix (1996, 36) asked one fat lady, who worked the blowoff, if she were happy. She replied: “Oh, sure. On a carny lot, everybody is different from ordinary people, so I’m all right. And I guess you get a kick out of doing anything you can do real well. I’m a real good freak and I know every night there's hundreds of people willing to pay money to see me.” She continued: “I bring in more people than any ordinary act and I know it. The other carnies appreciate it. Instead of just being a freak, I’m somebody important. That's a good feeling.” No doubt she spoke for many.

Living Skeletons

In 1870 Barnum's famous fat lady Hannah Perkins, who reportedly weighed in at 688 (or 700) pounds, married fellow circus sideshow attraction John Battersby, a “living skeleton” who supposedly weighed a mere 40 (or 45) pounds. They appeared in sideshows together for many years. Another such union was the later marriage of Ringling Brothers’ living skeleton, 58-pound Pete Robinson, to 467-pound (allegedly) fat lady Bunny Smith, with the ceremony taking place at Madison Square Garden (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 154; Bogdan 1990, 210).

Such romantic storybook pairings recall the seventeenth-century nursery rhyme by Mother Goose:

Jack Sprat
Could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean;
And so betwixt them both,
They lick'd the platter clean.

Indeed, in a Ringling publicity photo, Bunny Smith is shown feeding her thin husband, capitalizing on their respective stereotypes. Marriages like these were promoted by showmen as one more gimmick to create interest in their attractions (Bogdan 1990, 210). However, according to Fiedler (1993, 134), “Most reported marriages of Fats and Thins turn out, in fact, to have been fraudulent inventions of public relations men.”

Also called “human skeletons,” the more aptly named “living skeletons” were usually men who appeared to be emaciated. Distinguished from anorexia nervosa (a psychological aberration that affects mostly teenage girls and young women), their condition was physiological: many suffered from a condition called acute muscular atrophy, which resulted in withered, limp arms and legs but normal heads. This condition seems to have afflicted Frenchman Claude Seurat (1797–1826), who was so thin that spectators “were alarmed, amused and amazed actually to see his heartbeats!” Although feeble and having a weak voice, he was otherwise perfectly healthy (Parker 1994, 181–83). (See figure 4.10.)

Harry V. Lewis, called “Shadow Harry,” was a truly sick man. Born in Iowa in 1895, he began to notice a weakness in his shoulders and hips and eventually wasted away to seventy-five pounds, although he stood a normal five feet seven and a half inches. Lewis was diagnosed with “the juvenile form of generalized muscular dystrophy” and, to keep from losing strength in his muscles, was instructed to spend as much time on his feet as possible. Obediently, according to Drimmer (1991, 287), “He spent about eleven or twelve hours of that time on the sideshow platform, standing, it seemed, in one spot.” He even read and ate while standing.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records (McWhirter 1981, 20), “The thinnest recorded adults of normal height are those suffering from Simmonds’ disease (hypophyseal cachexia), which can produce weight losses of up to 65% in the case of females.” Emma Shaller (1868–1890), who was five feet two inches tall, weighed just forty-eight pounds.

FIGURE 4.10. Living skeleton Claude Seurat amazed English audiences with his emaciated appearance.

Isaac W. Sprague was a living skeleton at Barnum's American Museum in the 1860s. While temporarily out of work following the burning of the museum, Sprague took the opportunity to court and marry a Massachusetts woman, Tamar Moore, and subsequently raised three boys. All were, he stated, “well developed, large and strong” and showed “no signs of the malady…which distinguished me.” Sprague's photo pitch card bills him as “Age 38 years. Height 5 feet 5½ inches. Weight 46 pounds.” Standing beside his normal-appearing family, Sprague is dressed in the usual fashion for the type, with short sleeves and tight-fitting pants to show off his remarkably spindly limbs (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 275). According to a contemporary circus fan (quoted in Drimmer 1991, 286): “He used to lecture on himself and said he had never had a sick day in his life. He would stand up during this lecture to show he was strong and would close his talk putting up his fists in fighting position and offer one thousand dollars to any man of his size and weight that he could not whip. This always caused a laugh.”

Among other Barnum living skeletons was fifty-four-pound Alexander Montarg, who entertained by playing the violin. He measured just four inches through the chest, and his arms were reportedly only slightly more than an inch in diameter (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 161).

One of the most famous thin men was J. W. Coffey, who began his career in Chicago dime museums in 1884. Billed as the “Ohio Skeleton,” he later had a makeover. Dressing as a swank gentleman in formal (but, of course, very close-fitting) attire—complete with monocle, waxed mustache, and cane—Coffey cleverly reinvented himself as the “Skeleton Dude.” Playing the role of a dapper bachelor, he flirted with the ladies in the audience and punned self-deprecatingly, “Most women don't like their Coffey thin.” In his circa 1890 publicity photograph—taken by Charles Eisenmann, celebrated photographer of freaks and other notables—Coffey posed with his “valet” in a posh setting. Coffey's presentation was copied by others; at least one, Edward C. Hagner (1892–1962), alias “Eddie Masher,” even lifted the sobriquet “Skeleton Dude.” He allegedly weighed just forty-eight pounds while standing five feet seven inches tall (McWhirter 1981, 20).

Hall (1991, 26) provides this portrait of another such attraction:

Slim Curtis, known as “The Human Skeleton,” wasn't much more than skin and bones. He wore black tights to show his skinny legs, plus top hat, white tie and tails. A friendly humorous gent, he carried a cane. His voice didn't fit his appearance. He had a powerful deep voice. Slim was the show's M.C. He was the kind of drinker who sipped all day. As the day wore on, his drink would increase in size, while his voice would become steadily weaker. The late-night shows would find him unable to mutter even a whisper. Unable to announce the acts, he would bang his cane on the stage and wave at the act—staggering from stage to stage.

FIGURE 4.11. John Shouse, billed as the “Stone Man.” (Author's collection)

Sometimes a living skeleton was billed as the “Cigarette Fiend” (Nelson 1999, 119) or other imaginative name. A banner depicted one such bag of bones playing tennis with a normal-size person; it read, “Age 38 years / Weight 68 Lbs.” (Johnson et al. 1996, 38).

Perhaps the tallest thin person was Baltimore's Slim the Shadow. His claimed size, according to a Ripley's compendium (Mooney et al. 2002, 74), was seven feet tall with a weight of only ninety pounds, which he reportedly maintained for sixteen years. He posed for an advertising photo in tights and a top hat (no doubt to increase his tall appearance).

Somewhat related to the living skeletons were so-called ossified people—those who had a condition such as cerebral palsy that gave them atrophied muscles and stiff joints. Among these were George White, the “Ossified Man” (Bodgan 1990, 54, 229); Dolly Reagan, the “Ossified Girl” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 11); and John Shouse, the “Stone Man” (figure 4.11).

Dwarfs

In contrast to giants, dwarfs (of which there are different types) define normal size at the opposite end of the spectrum. Just as nine feet is the upper limit for giants, twenty-three inches may be regarded as the lower limit for mature dwarfs (compared with eighteen to twenty inches—the average length of newborn infants) (McWhirter 1981, 15–17). Dwarfism “may result from a variety of genetic defects, endocrine deficiencies, nutritional lacks or a combination of these factors” (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960, s.v. “Dwarfism”).

Early writers did not differentiate among the various types of conspicuously small persons. The first dwarf who is known to us by name was Khnumhotou, who lived about 2500 B.C. and was keeper of the pharaoh's wardrobe. “He was probably of noble blood,” states Drimmer (1991, 191), “and his tomb was an imposing one.”

There have been races of diminutive people, notably certain tribespeople of equatorial Africa called Pygmies. Herodotus and Homer wrote of a race of small people living in a distant land to the south—indeed, where Pygmies were “discovered” relatively recently. The shortest such tribespeople are the Mbuti, who live in a remote region of the Congo (formerly Zaire). Their average height is four feet six inches for men, and an inch less for women (McWhirter 1981, 19; Thompson 1968, 185).

It is now common to distinguish two other main types of little people: midgets (discussed in the next section of this chapter), who have normal proportions, and dwarfs, whose features are disproportionate. William Lindsay Gresham, in his Monster Midway (1953, 99), gives this frank characterization:

Dwarfs are entirely different from midgets, and although medical literature tends to lump both together under the common term “dwarf,” midgets resent this classification. An achondroplastic dwarf is the result of some malfunction of the thyroid gland. His head is the size of a normal man's but has a bulging forehead. The nose is usually saddle-shaped and broad. The arms and legs are short and bowed, the fingers and toes of equal length, making hands and feet unusually broad. The spine tends to curve in, causing the abdomen to be prominent. Their voices are of normal timbre, although frequently very deep. In show business, because of their grotesque appearance, dwarfs do clown routines. They are usually intelligent people, warmhearted and generous, if they make a successful inner adjustment to the so-called normal world. Their psychological problem differs from that of the midget. No one ever mistakes a dwarf for a child, and it seems easier for a man to resign himself to being thought ugly than for him to be considered “cute.”

Attila the Hun (406?–453) might have been a dwarf. Historian Edward Gibbon described him as having “a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form” (quoted in Drimmer 1991, 192). Unfortunately, we do not know just how short he was. Fiedler (1993, 60) offers a note of skepticism, pointing out that Attila reportedly had a court midget, a Moor named Zercon, whom he had won in a battle with a Roman general. Fiedler finds it “difficult, though somehow titillating, to imagine a Dwarf ruler with a pet Dwarf.”

The early Scandinavians and Germans wove legends of mystery and magic about dwarfs, who were known in the folklore as goblins, elves, and gnomish figures called Kobolds. These supernatural dwarfs supposedly lived in caves and often kept great treasures.

Real dwarfs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe became increasingly popular as house servants and entertainers. A dwarf who was particularly clever—especially if also a hunchback—might become a court jester (Drimmer 1991, 190, 192; Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960, s.v. “Oberon”).

A diminutive strongman was Owen Farrell, the “Irish Dwarf,” who was described as “little more than half the stature of a man with the strength of two.” Born of poor parents, he became footman to a Dublin colonel in 1716. He stood only three feet nine inches but was exceptionally bulky and strong; he could reportedly carry four men at a time, two seated on each arm. Believing that he could successfully exhibit himself, he traveled, eventually reaching London. However, being “uncouth” and dressed in ragged clothing, he was often found begging in the streets. Artists did paint and engrave his image (see Fiedler 1993, 60), and before his death (about 1742) he subsisted on “a weekly pittance” supplied by a surgeon in return for his promised skeleton (now at the Museum of the University of Glasgow) (Thompson 1968, 212).

Today, many of the sideshow dwarfs and midgets—like other attractions and showmen—winter in a place known to carnies as Gibtown—actually Gibsonton, Florida, population 5,000, located south of Tampa on Tampa Bay. The Gibsonton post office installed a special low counter to be used by the little people each winter (McKennon 1972, 2:148).

Similarly scaled down was the home of at least one dwarf couple who resided in Gibtown—that of dwarf tattoo artist, magician, and ventriloquist Billy Taylor and his wife Bobbie, who was exhibited as the “Bull Dog Girl.” Explains Hall (1991, 15), “Her descriptive title was the result of a misshaped face and rather bent arms.” Billy and Bobbie's house was custom built: cupboards and other furnishings, including tables and chairs, were constructed on a scale appropriate for the couple's small size. Bobbie outlived Billy in retirement. Once, while attending a dinner at the Showmen's Club in Gibtown, she was approached by an old acquaintance. “Bobbie the Bull Dog Girl!” he exclaimed. “I haven't seen you in years.” She replied, “You still haven't seen her. I retired that act twenty years ago.”

One of the most celebrated dwarfs of the modern midway is Pete Terhurne, introduced in the preceding chapter as the six-act star of Hall & Leonard's (later Hall & Christ's) Pigmy Village sideshow. What Hall (1981, 26) calls “the bright spot of 1954” occurred in Breckenridge, Minnesota. One of the show's bally girls asked Hall if he had seen the curly-headed dwarf who lived in town, and she offered to recruit him. Hall gave her the go-ahead, and in an hour she had returned with “Little Pete” in tow. In his book My Very Unusual Friends, Hall (1991, 18) provides some background on Norbert “Pete” Terhurne: “Pete's parents were overly protective of him, to his detriment. On his first day of school, some other boys made fun of his dwarfism. He came home in tears. His mother never allowed him to return to school, resulting in his being illiterate. After a few days, the other school children would have become accustomed to his difference. He would have been accepted and educated, since the basic intelligence exists, and he learns fast.”

Terhurne was extremely shy, but he spent a week with Hall & Leonard, appearing on the bally and taking tickets. Harry Leonard dubbed him “Poobah” after the character (Pooh-Bah) in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado. Terhurne later arranged to stay with his sister in Fargo, North Dakota, so that he could work with the show when it appeared there. When they traveled back through Terhurne's hometown on the way to the South Dakota State Fair in Huron, he had Ward Hall ask his mother if he could accompany the show there as well. She agreed, but she made Hall promise to put her son on a bus home when the fair closed. Soon, however, it was obvious that Terhurne was unhappy; assuming that he was homesick, Hall reassured the young man that he would be home shortly. But the problem was just the opposite: Terhurne wanted to stay with the sideshow. Since Terhurne was twenty-four—old enough to make his own decisions—Hall agreed, and they sent his mother a telegram to that effect. At the next opening in Spencer, Iowa, however, they were paid a call by a Clay County deputy sheriff, who asked to speak privately with Terhurne. Terhurne's mother just wanted to make sure that he was all right and that he was where he wanted to be. The matter was quickly settled. Terhurne did go home for the winter, but thereafter (except for the occasional visit to Minnesota), his home was in Gibtown.

Hall observes that Terhurne “had been treated as a child until he joined the show.” It was “the first time he was treated like a man.” An incident underscores the difference. One Sunday off, Hall, Leonard, and Terhurne went to the movies. The ticket seller—apparently not paying attention, and so betraying Gresham's avowal (quoted earlier) that “No one ever mistakes a dwarf for a child”—asked, “Two adults and one for the little boy?” Terhurne grasped the ticket-box ledge, pulled himself up on his tiptoes, and said indignantly, “I’m no little boy. I’m a man!” And so he was (Hall 1991, 17–19).

Terhurne has been “Pete the Clown” at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey and other circuses; for theater and nightclub shows, in which he performed in comedy routines, he was billed as “Little Lord Leon”; and he has appeared on numerous television shows and had parts in several movies. For sideshows, however, he has always been “Poobah.” He also learned a variety of working-act skills, including the iron tongue act, in which the performer places a hook in his pierced tongue and lifts weights with it (Hall 1991, 17). For his one-man Pigmy Village show, Terhurne was dressed in a leopard-skin costume, but, admits Hall, he “wasn't very ferocious looking.” In addition to the iron tongue act, he has eaten fire, juggled, danced barefoot on a bed of broken glass, handled a giant snake, and let Leonard throw knives around him. (These working acts are analyzed in chapter 9.)

I first met Terhurne at the Hall & Christ sideshow in York, Pennsylvania. He was eating fire on the bally (see figures 4.12 and 4.13). As I can attest, even without his torch, his smile can light up the midway.

FIGURE 4.12. Norbert “Little Pete” Terhurne, aka “Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf,” poses with me.

FIGURE 4.13. Terhurne eats fire on the bally platform of the Hall & Christ World of Wonders sideshow. (Photo by author)

FIGURE 4.14. Nineteenth-century midget Charles Decker. (Author's collection)

Midgets

In contrast to dwarfs, whose features are disproportionate, midgets (or ateliotic dwarfs) have normal proportions. They look like ordinary people, only in miniature (figures 4.14 and 4.15). There are several main types of midget, each of which is due to a growth hormone (pituitary) deficiency:

 

•  Primordial midgets are born tiny but seem to grow at a normal pace, reaching puberty at about age fifteen. They remain well under four feet tall.

•  “True” midgets are born normal size, often weighing up to nine pounds, but between the ages of two and seven years they stop growing. Puberty arrives late for them, usually when they are in their twenties.

•  Infantile midgets remain children physically but develop an adult mentality.

•  Progerian midgets suffer from a rare disorder called progeria. They are primordial midgets who are born tiny, reach puberty in only a few years, then advance through traits of middle age to premature senility and death (Gresham 1953, 98–99; McWhirter 1981, 17–18; Taber's 2001).

 

FIGURE 4.15. In the early twentieth century, the Famous Lilliputian Company was a group of performing midgets. (Author's collection)

In earlier times, when people were generally shorter, midgets tended to be shorter as well. The shortest mature person whose height has been established was Pauline Musters (1876–1895), a Dutch midget exhibited as “Princess Pauline.” She was billed as only 19 inches tall, but a medical examination actually yielded 23.2 inches (McWhirter 1981, 17). She was, sadly, plagued by alcoholism and died in New York at age nineteen from meningitis and pneumonia (Parker 1994, 155).

The shortest male midget was Calvin Phillips (1791–1812) of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. At age nineteen he was recorded as standing twenty-six and a half inches tall and weighing just twelve pounds. He died two years later of progeria (McWhirter 1981, 18).

In the seventeenth century, inspired by the old superstition that fairies sometimes exchanged a human baby for a fairy one, showmen exhibited midgets as “changelings” or “fairy children.” In 1680, for example, a “Changling Child” was to be seen in London “next door to the ‘Black Raven.’” Nine years old, the boy was allegedly only two and a half feet tall, never spoke, was toothless, but had a voracious appetite. Another, the “Little Farey Woman”—a midget from Italy—was just “two feet two inches high and in no ways deformed.” She was exhibited at the Harts-Horn Inn in Pye Corner circa 1670 (Thompson 1968, 206).

A midget couple, the Black Prince and his Fairy Queen, were exhibited along with a miniature horse. Their seventeenth-century bill advertised the prince as “a little Black Man being but 3 Foot High and 31 Years of Age, straight and proportionable in every way,” who “has been shown before most Kings and Princes in Christendom.” A man who saw them said that the wife “could dance extraordinarily well” and that the little horse “shewed many diverting and surprising tricks at the word of command” (Thompson 1968, 199–200).

The most notorious sideshow midget was Estelle Ridley, who exhibited herself in a circus until the early 1870s, when she hit on a better scheme for profiting from her diminutive size. According to Mike Parker's Fantastic Freaks (1994, 157–58), “Using cunning make-up and child's clothes, she was able to transform herself from a hard-living, foul-speaking 40-year-old woman into a pretty, innocent-looking ‘little girl’ called Fanchon Moncare.” She regularly took ocean-liner cruises with a female accomplice, who told fellow passengers that the girl was the orphan of wealthy parents. On their return to New York, “Fanchon” would happily skip through American customs clutching her cherished china doll. No one imagined that, once she was beyond the dock, the “child” would unscrew the doll's head and pour out a fortune in stolen European gems. The jewels were destined for Chinatown's Wing To, an elderly crime figure who would fence them. Alas, Ridley was betrayed by another woman, her rival for the affections of a local gambler, and was sentenced to life in prison; she later hanged herself in her cell.

History's most famous midget was Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838–1883). He was discovered by P. T. Barnum when the showman spent a night in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1842. Barnum hired the boy, not quite five years old, accompanied by his mother, for exhibition at the American Museum. Barnum exaggerated the boy's age as eleven to make his small size seem even more remarkable, and he had bills printed advertising “General Tom Thumb,” taking the name from nursery tales and adding the comically imposing rank. Witty, lively, and talkative, “Tom” soon became a celebrity, and Barnum reengaged him, increasing his salary. When Barnum decided to take him to England, Charlie's father agreed to accompany his wife and son and to sell tickets for the performances. The “General” charmed everyone. “I feel as big as anybody,” he would say, strutting in the little uniform Barnum had had tailored for him. To show off his smallness, the showman would ask for a little boy to come on stage for comparison. “I would rather have a little miss,” Tom would say. He would subsequently dismiss the comparative giantess with a kiss on the cheek (Drimmer 1991, 155–59).

In London, little Tom charmed Queen Victoria, who took him by the hand and led him about the Buckingham Palace gallery. When it was time to leave, Barnum followed custom by backing away from the queen. Tom tried to imitate him but could not keep up with the longer-legged showman, so he would periodically turn and run a few steps, then again face the queen and continue backing out. The running midget excited the queen's poodle, who charged after him, barking and forcing Tom to hold the dog off with his little cane. Along with her companions, the queen laughed merrily (Barnum 1927).

Tours of the English provinces, France, Spain, and Belgium were followed by a return to England and then tours of Scotland and Ireland. Tom arrived at his appearances in a miniature coach that Barnum had had made especially for him, drawn by four tiny ponies and with two boys serving as coachman and footman. After three years, in 1847, Tom returned to the American Museum, then went on a tour of the United States and Cuba. He was now, says Drimmer (1991, 168) “a rich little man,” and famous in show business. He vacationed with his parents in Bridgeport, and Tom's father, a carpenter, built a special little apartment for him with small-scale furnishings. After his father died in 1855, Tom toured by himself or with his mother or other relatives.

When Barnum suffered financial reverses over a failed investment, Tom Thumb wrote him a letter, characteristic of both his wit and his deep friendship:

My dear Mr. Barnum, I understand your friends, and that means “all creation,” intend to get up some benefits for your family. Now, my dear sir, just be good enough to remember that I belong to that mighty crowd, and I must have a finger (or at least a “thumb”) in that pie….

I have just started on my western tour, and have my carriage, ponies and assistants all here, but I am ready to go on to New York, bag and baggage, and remain at Mrs. Barnum's service as long as I, in my small way, can be useful.

Although Barnum (1927, 272–73) declined the offer, he reconsidered a year later—in 1857—and invited his tiny friend to again tour Europe with him. Capacity houses during the three-year tour put the showman back on his feet.

As a man in his twenties, Tom stood two feet eleven inches tall, weighed fifty-two pounds, and sported a mustache. In 1863 he became smitten with a new attraction at Barnum's museum, a pretty midget named Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 164–65). Born in 1841, Lavinia Warren (Barnum persuaded her to drop her last name) was thirty-two inches tall and weighed only twenty-nine pounds when Tom met her. He hurried to the office, quite excited, and said: “Mr. Barnum, that is the most charming little lady I ever saw, and I believe she was created on purpose to be my wife! Now,” he continued, “you have always been a friend of mine, and I want you to say a good word for me to her. I have got plenty of money, and I want to marry and settle down in life, and I really feel as if I must marry that young lady.” Barnum (1927, 338) got a rise out of Tom by saying that Lavinia was “engaged already,” but then confessed that it was to him, for exhibit purposes. Barnum agreed to help but insisted, “You must do your own courting.” And he warned Tom of a jealous rival for Lavinia's affection, another midget named “Commodore Nutt” (George Washington Morrison Nutt).

Matters between the rivals—the General and the temperamental Commodore—eventually boiled over, and one day the two had a scuffle. The lithe, wiry Nutt threw the older, heavier Tom on his back. Nevertheless, Tom persevered, making frequent visits to see Lavinia, and he finally asked Barnum to invite them to his home in Bridgeport. Tom arrived with his mother, who apparently had no inkling of what her son was up to. After dinner, Mrs. Stratton left, Barnum's family retired early, and the little couple was left alone. Upon learning that Lavinia wanted him to accompany her on her upcoming tour, Tom became emboldened and finally proposed marriage. She agreed, subject to her mother's consent. Soon, as Barnum (1927, 347) recalled, “Tom Thumb came rushing into my room, and closing the door, he caught hold of my hand in a high state of excitement and whispered: ‘We are engaged, Mr. Barnum! We are engaged! We are engaged!’ and he jumped up and down in the greatest glee.”

Lavinia's mother withheld her consent until she was persuaded that the marriage was not a publicity stunt, and then the event was announced. It was good for publicity—and business. Barnum observed that for weeks Lavinia sold her cartes de visite (visiting-card-size photos)—the usual pitch cards of the period—at the rate of over $300 worth daily. Museum receipts each day were often more than $3,000 (Barnum 1927, 350)—and that was when a dollar was a significant sum.

The wedding, on February 10, 1863 (figures 4.16 and 4.17), was such a social affair that wealthy persons offered tidy sums for admission. However, Barnum proudly said of the event—which he thought suitably lavish for a prince and princess—“not a ticket was sold.” Legally, the wedded couple was Charles and Lavinia Stratton, but to the world, they were “Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb.” On their honeymoon they were received by President Lincoln at the White House (Barnum 1927, 352). Lincoln was struck by Lavinia's striking resemblance to Mrs. Lincoln—albeit in miniature. Standing beside Tom, the tallest president in history remarked to his son Tad, “God likes to do funny things; here you have the long and the short of it” (Drimmer 1991, 178).

In due course, the little couple became the parents of a normal-sized baby—or did they? The birth is reported as fact by some reference sources, such as the Dictionary of American Biography; actually, however, Tom and Lavinia merely posed with a baby, provided by Barnum, for a publicity photo taken by Mathew Brady (figure 4.18). The picture was widely sold. When they toured Europe, they “exhibited English babies in England; French babies in France; and German babies in Germany.” Eventually, they announced that the child had died of a brain inflammation. Lavinia admitted the pretense in an interview in the May 4, 1901, Billboard. Whether the couple was infertile or chose not to risk the dangers of childbirth for a woman of her size is not known (Lavinia's midget sister would suffer a painful delivery in 1878, resulting in the death of both mother and infant daughter) (Bogdan 1990, 157).

FIGURE 4.16. The wedding of P. T. Barnum's midgets Charles Stratton (“General Tom Thumb”) and Lavinia Warren in 1863 was a great social event. The honeymooning couple was even received by President Lincoln at the White House. (Author's collection)

FIGURE 4.17. The bride and groom: General and Mrs. Tom Thumb. (Author's collection)

FIGURE 4.18. The “Tom Thumb Family” was a scam. Barnum had the childless midget couple pose with various borrowed babies. (Author's collection)

The couple toured as part of the “General Tom Thumb Company,” which included Commodore Nutt and Lavinia's sister Minnie. The entourage sang and danced and performed skits and impersonations. By 1883 the General—who had reached the height of forty inches—looked portly, tired, and old, although he was only forty-five. On July 15, Charles Stratton died of a stroke. He was buried in a four-foot coffin in the Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport. Not far away, Barnum was buried in 1891, and Lavinia (who later married another midget, Count Primo Magri) followed in 1919, buried beside the General. Her headstone reads simply, “Wife.” Until her death, she wore a locket bearing a picture of the man she called Charles and whom the world knew as General Tom Thumb (Bogdan 1990, 157–59; Drimmer 1991, 180–82).

Barnum's promotion of Tom and Lavinia had been, if not entirely original, brilliantly carried out. Few midgets enjoyed the success of General and Mrs. Tom Thumb, who led remarkable lives full of financial rewards and admiration. Yet when she wrote her memoirs (never published), Lavinia would lament, “If nature endowed me with any superior personal attraction it was comparatively small compensation for the inconvenience, trouble, and annoyance imposed upon me by my diminutive stature” (quoted by Drimmer 1991, 182). She might have been speaking for little people everywhere.

In sideshows before and after, however, midgets found a ready niche. Indeed, a perusal of old circus and sideshow photographs by Edward J. Kelty (Barth and Siegel 2002) shows that—while dwarfs were invariably cast as clowns in the big top—midgets, usually juxtaposed with giants, dominated the sideshows. Photographing them with giants was only one way to enhance their smallness; more subtly, a midget might be posed beside an ordinary but tall person or stood in an oversized chair (Minor 1996). Of course, the size of a midget is always exaggerated downward, and many have claimed to be the “World's Smallest” (see figure 4.19).

 

Times change, and with them, so do the meanings of words. At its most dispassionate, freak meant simply “freak of nature” (Fiedler 1993, 19). Today it is called “an ugly word” (Drimmer 1991, xii), even judged to be “taboo” (Stone and Johnson 1996, 11). But there are uglier words. From ancient history, abnormal creatures—both animal and human—were termed monstrosities. The births of these so-called monsters were often explained in superstitious, supernatural, terms. They might be thought to presage calamity and disaster, or they might be considered evidence of divine wrath. Some believed that they were the result of mating with animals (Thompson 1968, 17). These beings, like some of those examined in the next chapter, were often put to death (Fiedler 1993, 21).

FIGURE 4.19. “Little Gloria,” whom I met in 2001, is only one of many little people billed as the “world's smallest.” (Photo by author)