General Tom Thumb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the similarly named governor of New Jersey, see Charles C. Stratton.
General Tom Thumb was the stage name of Charles Sherwood Stratton (January 4, 1838 – July 15, 1883), a little person who achieved great fame under circus pioneer P.T. Barnum.
Contents |
[edit] Early life
Stratton was a son of a Bridgeport, Connecticut, carpenter. Born in Bridgeport to parents of medium height, he was ironically quite a large baby, weighing 9 pounds 2 ounces (4.14 kg) at birth. He developed and grew normally for the first six months of his life, at which point he was 25 inches (64 cm) tall and weighed 15 pounds (6.8 kg). Then he stopped growing. His parents were concerned when after his first birthday they noticed he had not grown in the last six months. They showed him to their doctor, who offered little hope that he would ever reach normal height. By late 1842, Stratton had not grown an inch in height or put on a pound in weight from when he was six months old. Apart from this, he was a totally normal child. His parents were reportedly embarrassed by his extremely small stature. Stratton however had several siblings who were of average size.
[edit] Under Barnum
At this time, P.T. Barnum heard about Stratton and after reassuring his parents, taught the boy how to sing, dance, mime, impersonate famous people, and perform. Barnum also went into business with Stratton's father, who died in 1855. Barnum was actually a distant relative (half fifth cousin, twice removed).[1] In 1843, at the tender age of five years old, Tom Thumb made his first tour of America, with routines that included impersonating characters such as Cupid and Napoleon Bonaparte as well as singing, dancing and comical banter with another performer who acted as a straight man. It was a huge success and the tour expanded.
A year later, Barnum took young Stratton on a tour of Europe making him an international celebrity. Stratton appeared twice before Queen Victoria. On one occasion, Stratton was attacked by Queen Victoria's pet poodle after a performance at Buckingham Palace.[2] To someone of Stratton's size, the dog would have seemed a large and threatening animal. He also met the three-year-old Prince of Wales, who would become King Edward VII, and shook hands with him. The Prince, who was of average height for his age, towered 12 inches over Stratton. This tour was a huge success and crowds mobbed him wherever he went. Stratton was also given his own carriage to travel in. It made vast amounts of money for both Barnum and Stratton's family. Later after touring England, he and his wife both toured together in Europe as well as Japan.
In 1847 he finally started to grow for the first time since the first few months of his life, but with extreme slowness. In January 1851 Stratton stood exactly 2 feet 3 inches (70 cm) tall. On his 18th birthday, he was measured and stood 2 feet 6 and a half inches (77 cm) tall. Stratton became a Freemason on October 1, 1862. Stratton, by now 2 feet 9 inches tall, was sworn in with a man 6 feet 3 inches tall.
[edit] Marriage and later life
Stratton's marriage on February 10, 1863, to another little person, Lavinia Warren, was front-page news. The wedding took place at Grace Episcopal Church and the wedding reception was held at the Metropolitan Hotel.They stood atop a grand piano in New York City's Metropolitan Hotel to greet some 2,000 guests. The best man at the wedding was George Washington Morrison ("Commodore") Nutt, another little person performer in Barnum's employ. The maid of honor was Minnie Warren, Lavinia's even smaller sister. Following the wedding, the couple was received by President Lincoln at the White House. In 1868, Stratton was 2 feet 11 inches tall and finally reached 3 feet in the early 1870s.
Under Barnum's management, Stratton became a wealthy man. He owned a house in the fashionable part of New York and a steam yacht and had a wardrobe of fine clothes. He owned a specially adapted home on one of Connecticut's Thimble Islands. When Barnum got into financial difficulty, Stratton bailed him out. Later, they became business partners. Stratton made his final appearance in England in 1878.
On January 10, 1883, Stratton was staying at the Newhall House in Milwaukee when a fire broke out which Milwaukee historian John Gurda would call "one of the worst hotel fires in American history." More than 71 people died, but Tom and Lavinia were saved by their manager, Sylvester Bleeker.[3]
Six months later, he died suddenly of a stroke. He was 45 years old, 3 foot 4 inches (102 cm) tall and weighed 70 pounds (32 kg). He had become portly in the last years of his life and by the time of his death, he looked quite different from the tiny and slim person he was from his discovery up to the mid 1870s. It seemed that he had never fully recovered from his narrow escape from the hotel fire.[3] Over 10,000 people attended the funeral. P.T. Barnum purchased a life-sized statue of Tom Thumb and placed it as a grave stone at Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport. Lavinia Warren is interred next to him with a simple grave stone that reads "His Wife".
It is very likely that Stratton's extreme shortness was caused by damage to, or the malfunctioning of, his pituitary gland. X-rays were not discovered until 1895, 12 years after Stratton's death. It wasn't until 1915 that it was determined that the pituitary gland was responsible for the Human Growth Hormone. No-one during Stratton's lifetime was able to determine the medical cause of his growth problems.
[edit] References
- ^ Notable Kin, Gary Boyd Roberts, 1999.
- ^ Fight Between Gen. Tom Thumb And the Queen's Poodle, Disability Museum
- ^ a b P.T. Barnum: America's Greatest Showman, Kunhardt, Philip B., Jr., Kunhardt, Philip B., III and Kunhardt, Peter W., Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0-679-43574-3.
- American Sideshow: An Encyclopedia of History's Most Wondrous and Curiously Strange Performers (Tarcher/Penguin 2005), by Marc Hartzman.
[edit] External links
- Charles Sherwood "General Tom Thumb" Stratton at findagrave
- "Sideshow Ephemera Gallery: General Tom Thumb" by James G. Mundie - biographical essay with photos
- Harper's portrait and report on General Tom Thumb's Wedding
- Details of a museum in Middleboro, MA. A town where they made their home. - Link points to RoadsideAmerica.com
