Barnum, hearing of this phenomenon in his city, engaged him, and he was shown all over the world under his assumed name. He was presented to Queen Victoria in 1844, and in the following year he was received by the Royal Family in France. His success was wonderful, and even the most conservative journals described and commented on him. He gave concerts, in which he sang in a nasal voice; but his "drawing feat" was embracing the women who visited him. It is said that in England alone he kissed a million females; he prided himself on his success in this function, although his features were anything but inviting. After he had received numerous presents and had amassed a large fortune he returned to America in 1864, bringing with him three other dwarfs, the "Sisters Warren" and "Commodore Nutt." He married one of the Warrens, and by her had one child, Minnie, who died some months after birth of cerebral congestion. In 1883 Tom Thumb and his wife, Lavinia, were still living, but after that they dropped from public view and have since died.
In 1895 the wife of a dwarf named Morris gave birth to twins at Blaenavon, North Wales. Morris is only 35 inches in height and his wife is even smaller. They were married at Bartholmey Church and have since been traveling through England under the name of "General and Mrs. Small," being the smallest married couple in the world. At the latest reports the mother and her twins were doing well.
The Rossow Brothers have been recently exhibited to the public.
These brothers, Franz and Carl, are twenty and eighteen years respectively. Franz is the eldest of 16 children and is said to weigh 24 pounds and measure 21 inches in height; Carl is said to weigh less than his brother but is 29 inches tall. They give a clever gymnastic exhibition and are apparently intelligent. They advertise that they were examined and still remain under the surveillance of the Faculty of Gottingen.
Next to the success of "Tom Thumb" probably no like attraction has been so celebrated as the "Lilliputians," whose antics and wit so many Americans have in late years enjoyed. They were a troupe of singers and comedians composed entirely of dwarfs; they exhibited much talent in all their performances, which were given for several years and quite recently in all the large cities of the United States. They showed themselves to be worthy rivals for honors in the class of entertainments known as burlesques. As near as could be ascertained, partly from the fact that they all spoke German fluently and originally gave their performance entirely in German, they were collected from the German and Austrian Empires.
The "Princess Topaze" was born near Paris in 1879. According to a recent report she is perfectly formed and is intelligent and vivacious. She is 23 1/2 inches tall and weighs 14 pounds. Her parents were of normal stature.
Not long since the papers recorded the death of Lucia Zarete, a Mexican girl, whose exact proportions were never definitely known; but there is no doubt that she was the smallest midget ever exhibited In this country. Her exhibitor made a fortune with her and her salary was among the highest paid to modern "freaks."Miss H. Moritz, an American dwarf, at the age of twenty weighed 36 pounds and was only 22 inches tall.
Precocious development is characterized by a hasty growth of the subject, who at an early period of life attains the dimensions of an adult. In some of these instances the anomaly is associated with precocious puberty, and after acquiring the adult growth at an early age there is an apparent cessation of the development.
In adult life the individual shows no distinguishing characters.
The first to be considered will be those cases, sometimes called "man-boys," characterized by early puberty and extraordinary development in infancy. Histories of remarkable children have been transmitted from the time of Vespasian. We read in the "Natural History" of Pliny that in Salamis, Euthimedes had a son who grew to 3 Roman cubits (4 1/2 feet) in three years; he was said to have little wit, a dull mind, and a slow and heavy gait;his voice was manly, and he died at three of general debility.
Phlegon says that Craterus, the brother of King Antigonus, was an infant, a young man, a mature man, an old man, and married and begot children all in the space of seven years. It is said that King Louis II of Hungary was born so long before his time that he had no skin; in his second year he was crowned, in his tenth year he succeeded, in his fourteenth year he had a complete beard, in his fifteenth he was married, in his eighteenth he had gray hair, and in his twentieth he died. Rhodiginus speaks of a boy who when he was ten years impregnated a female. In 1741 there was a boy born at Willingham, near Cambridge, who had the external marks of puberty at twelve months, and at the time of his death at five years he had the appearance of an old man. He was called "prodigium Willinghamense." The Ephemerides and some of the older journals record instances of penile erection immediately after birth.
