Charles Sherwood Stratton (January 4, 1838 – July 15, 1883), better known by his stage name "General Tom Thumb", was an American with dwarfism who achieved great fame as a performer under circus pioneer P. T. Barnum.

Childhood and early life

thumb|left|upright=0.5|Stratton at 10 years of age

Stratton was born January 4, 1838, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of a carpenter named Sherwood Edward Stratton. Sherwood married his first cousin Cynthia Thompson, daughter of Joseph Thompson and Mary Ann Sharpe. Charles Stratton's maternal and paternal grandmothers Amy and Mary Ann Sharpe were stated to be small twin girls born on July 11, 1781 or 1783, in Oxford, Connecticut.

Charles was a relatively large baby, weighing at birth. He developed and grew normally for the first six months of his life, at which point he was tall and weighed . Then he suddenly stopped growing. His parents became concerned after his first birthday when they noticed that he had not grown at all in the previous six months. They showed him to their doctor, who said that there was little chance that Charles would ever reach normal height.

By late 1842, Stratton had grown only at age 5 from when he was six months old, and he had not gained any weight. Apart from this, he was a completely normal, healthy child, with several siblings who were of average size. His body was proportionate and functional.

Adoption by Barnum

thumb|The Fairy Wedding group: Stratton and his bride [[Lavinia Warren, alongside her sister Minnie and George Washington Morrison Nutt ("Commodore Nutt"), entertainers associated with P. T. Barnum]]

Phineas T. Barnum heard about Stratton, and after contacting his parents, taught the boy how to sing, dance, mime, and impersonate famous people. Barnum went into business with Stratton's father, who died in 1855. Stratton made his first tour of America at the age of five, 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. To market the act, Barnum gave Stratton the name General Tom Thumb, naming him after the popular English fairy tale. The tour was a huge success and soon expanded.

A year later, Barnum took young Stratton on a tour of Europe, making him an international celebrity. Along with Barnum, Stratton appeared before Queen Victoria. <!-- trivia: On one occasion, Stratton was attacked by Queen Victoria's pet poodle after a performance at Buckingham Palace. To someone of Stratton's size, the dog would have seemed a large and threatening animal.--> He met the three-year-old future King Edward VII, at that time the Prince of Wales. In 1845, he triumphed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville (France) in the play Le petit Poucet<!--()--> of Dumanoir and Clairville. The tour was a huge success, with crowds mobbing him wherever he went. After his three-year tour in Europe, Stratton began his rise to stardom in the United States.

On his return home from his second tour in 1847, aboard the SS Cambria, he attracted the attention of the explorer John Palliser who "was not a little surprised, on entering the state-cabin, to hear the most unnatural shrill little pipe exclaiming, 'Waiter! bring me a Welsh rabbit'." During the voyage, General Tom Thumb contributed to a collection for the relief of famine victims in Ireland.

Stratton's first performances in New York marked a turning point in the history of freak show entertainment. Before Stratton's debut, the presentation of "human curiosities" for entertainment was deemed dishonorable and seen as an unpleasing carnival attraction. However, after viewers were introduced to Stratton and his performances, he was able to change the perception people held toward freak shows. Stratton's lively and entertaining performances made these types of carnival shows one of the most favored forms of theatrical entertainment in the United States.

Marriage and later life

thumb|left|The wedding couple as they appeared on February 21, 1863, cover of [[Harper's Weekly magazine]]

thumb|Tom Thumb wedding gift photo album

His marriage in 1863, to Lavinia Warren, and a steam yacht, and he had a wardrobe of fine clothes. He also 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.

In January 1883, Stratton was staying at John F. Antisdel's 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. In 1885 Stratton and his wife were engaged at a new dime museum in Boston called the World's Museum, Menagerie, and Acquarium.

Death and legacy

upright=0.5|thumb|Stratton's grave at Mountain Grove Cemetery

Six months after surviving the Newhall House fire, Stratton died unexpectedly of a stroke. He was 45 years old. Over 20,000 people attended the funeral. P. T. Barnum purchased a life-sized statue of Tom Thumb and placed it as a gravestone at Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport, Connecticut. When Lavinia Warren died, more than 35 years later, she was interred next to him, with a simple gravestone that read "His Wife".

In 1959, vandals smashed the statue of Tom Thumb. It was restored by the Barnum Festival Society and Mountain Grove Cemetery Association with funds raised by public subscription.

The cause of Stratton's extreme shortness, then unknown, is referred to today as pituitary dwarfism. X-rays were not discovered until 1895, 12 years after Stratton's death, and the medical techniques of the day were unable to ascertain the pathology underlying his diminutive size.

He was buried with Masonic honors by Saint John's Lodge. He became Master Mason in St. John's Lodge No. 3 at Bridgeport, Connecticut, on October 8, 1862. He received the Commandery degrees of Masonic Knight Templar in Hamilton Commandery No. 5, at Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1863.

Screen portrayals

  • George Brasno portrayed General Tom Thumb in the 1934 film The Mighty Barnum.
  • Jimmy Clitheroe portrayed General Tom Thumb in the 1967 film Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon.
  • Paul Miller portrayed General Tom Thumb in the 1986 TV film Barnum!
  • Sandor Raski portrayed General Tom Thumb in the 1986 TV film Barnum.
  • Ed Gale portrayed General Tom Thumb in the 1995 TV film Tad.
  • Josh Ryan Evans portrayed General Tom Thumb in the 1999 TV film P. T. Barnum.
  • Sam Humphrey portrayed General Tom Thumb in the 2017 musical film The Greatest Showman.

See also

  • Stamford Museum, where a suit of his clothes is displayed for comparison with those of Daniel Lambert
  • Tom Thumb House (Middleborough, Massachusetts), his summer house
  • Middleborough Historical Museum, which exhibits a large collection of Tom Thumb memorabilia

References

Further reading

  • Lehman, Eric D. Becoming Tom Thumb: Charles Stratton, P.T. Barnum, and the Dawn of American Celebrity (Wesleyan University Press, distributed by University Press of New England; 2013) 276 pages; scholarly biography
  • American Sideshow: An Encyclopedia of History's Most Wondrous and Curiously Strange Performers (Tarcher/Penguin 2005), by Marc Hartzman.
  • "Sideshow Ephemera Gallery: General Tom Thumb" by James G. Mundie – biographical essay with photos
  • Harpers portrait and report on General Tom Thumb's Wedding
  • Details of a museum in Middleboro, MA, a town where they made their home
  • "Tom Thumb" at the Disability History Museum
  • The South Dakota Music Museum, where a violin given to him, purported by P. T. Barnum to be a Stradivarius, rests in the Everist Gallery