SOCIETY OF DWARFS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 57, 5 September 1934, Page 3

SOCIETY OF DWARFS

lii Hungary, a soeety of 250 dwarfs, •with a leader who is 2ft 7in high, lias announced that it is not enough to show lack of inches in order to gain admission to this brotherhood of freaks. "In future no one will be considered a true dwarf who cannot trace his ' dwarf - dom' back as far as his grandparents." Yet it is a fact, says the "Manchester Guardian," that, in the case of historical dwarfs, one does not read of their grandparents, but only of their parents, who are invariably said to have been of normal height. The smallest person in recorded history is Jeffrey Hudson, who was only 18in high at 30, and was once served up to Charles I in a pie. At the ago of 30 he surprisingly sprang up to 3ft 9in, where he stopped. The most authentic of modern dwarfs was the American "General" Tom Thumb, whose exhibitions in London drew a wail of anguish from Benjamin Haydon, the artist. The failure of Haydon's picture "Banishment of Aristides" to draw a crowd in Piccadilly against the superior attractions of Torn Thumb wag the final blow that crushed the poor artist. One of the last entries in his dairy before his suicide was, "Tom Thumb was 12,000 last week, B. E. Haydon 1334 <tha half a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!"