The Real Tom Thumb: History's Smallest Superstar

Today, we're all just a cellphone selfie away from worldwide exposure.

We live in a culture that worships fame

and is addicted to instant celebrity.

Of course, it wasn't always this way.

The fever began in mid-19th century America, with the emergence

of the first showbiz star to go truly global.

General Tom Thumb.

He was just 25 inches tall.

He sang, he danced, he acted.

Over the course of his life, he was seen by over 50 million people.

One admirer was President Abraham Lincoln, no less.

He was just as big here in Britain.

Queen Victoria adored him

and he often popped into Buckingham Palace for tea.

His real name was Charles Stratton.

Aged just four, he was thrust on stage

by the legendary showman P T Barnum.

Barnum created Tom Thumb, manipulating the press,

staging a celebratory wedding and even producing a fake baby.

The intelligentsia were horrified.

One rival artist was even driven to suicide.

Charles Stratton became famous and rich,

but he had no choice in his career, which meant being

stared at by millions of people who regarded him as a freak.

Was this a great success story or was it exploitation?

And don't think this is just a Victorian fascination.

Throughout the 20th century,

little people continued to get big laughs on stage and screen...

I'm here to entertain you with my little handsies.

..while today, we remain fascinated by performers with unusual bodies.

I've been in entertainment all my life but, for me,

Tom Thumb is the best showbiz story of them all.

I want to find out how he achieved such dazzling fame and at what cost.

So, roll up, roll up, for the extraordinary story of

The Real Tom Thumb.

In 1842, a showbiz hustler was on his way to New York

when the Hudson River froze over.

He was forced to spend the night here in Bridgeport

where his brother ran a small hotel.

His name was P T Barnum.

And in time, he'd be famous from Chicago to Calcutta.

Mr Entertainment, the world's greatest showman.

But in 1842, he was less renowned.

He was a purveyor of hair tonic for men,

exhibits in glass cases and freak shows.

Phineas Barnum was both respectable and a conman.

He had seen that the public craved freaks of nature

and he was happy to give nature a little helping hand.

His hoaxes over the previous decade included a cat dyed purple

and a 161-year-old woman.

But his biggest draw was the Fiji Mermaid.

His adverts promised the public a genuine nymph of the South Pacific.

The reality was a little different.

Ah, here she is.

The Fiji Mermaid. Crikey.

Kathy, do you mean to tell me that Barnum got people to pay

to look at this creature?

Barnum got people to pay to look at this creature.

But it was calculated.

He had... There were steps that he knew.

He had to prepare the public's mind.

And Barnum took months to calculate

an advertisement promotion

where he had friends in Alabama and Washington write letters,

so completely far apart in the country, to New York newspapers

to get the public's interest up, to excite them all.

Really? Sort of viral marketing we would call it today.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely, in 1842.

They were expecting... All of the promotions show a beautiful mermaid,

something that you would think of in your imagination

and then when people actually got a glimpse of it, they were horrified.

Do we know what she's made of?

We do, actually.

Well, this is a reproduction, but the original was really

the body of an orang-utan or a monkey

and then the tail and the fins and the scales of a fish.

The fishy mermaid netted Barnum a hefty fortune.

How to follow that?

Stranded in his Bridgeport hotel that freezing winter of 1842,

Barnum unexpectedly had time to do a bit of talent scouting.

He'd heard whispers about an extraordinary local boy

and that night his brother brought the parents to the hotel

with the boy.

Meet Charles Stratton,

four years old and exactly 25 inches high,

but with a big future.

Charles' parents, Sherwood and Cynthia Stratton,

were fully grown but poor.

Doctors couldn't explain why their son was so small.

Barnum offered them a few dollars and signed the boy on the spot.

The kid might grow, but his mum and dad had said

he hadn't put on an inch since he was five months old

and if he didn't grow, he'd be the kind of freak that people

would queue round the block to see.

Barnum could smell the money.

In 1842, that money was in New York.

Not the glamorous destination of today,

but a raw, rough, crime-ridden boom town.

A third of a million New Yorkers thronged the streets

and they were hungry for entertainment.

Barnum's plan was to exhibit Charles at his flagship attraction,

The American Museum.

Thank you.

It stood at the south end of Broadway.

Today, a rather grim office block,

but back then one of the most exciting addresses in the city.

It wasn't a museum as we know them, more like an early Disneyland.

Inside its heaving rooms you could find exotic animals,

human automata, a working model of Niagara Falls

and an aquarium.

All packaged by a savvy Barnum as respectable family fun.

This was a great day out for the citizen who paid 25 cents

and expected to be enthralled.

You might be shocked, but you'd learn something at the same time.

Education, information, titillation.

I suppose it's a kind of Victorian internet run by a great showman

who was interested in anything legal that would sell.

But the museum's most intriguing attraction

was the Hall of Living Curiosities.

Here, the public could brush shoulders with giants, dwarves

and all manner of weirdly shaped persons.

It was the world's first mass appeal,

fully commercialised freak show,

and the four-year-old boy's new home.

At one extreme were, sort of, the very exotic freaks -

wild people who were described as cannibals or savages or missing links

who were somewhere between human and animal.

And at the far other extreme of the spectrum were the respectable freaks

and I would certainly put Charles Stratton in that category.

These were individuals who had very, very unusual bodies

and so part of what was fascinating about them

was there they were decked out

in suits and they had good manners and they could speak well.

And so there was that jarring contradiction between respectability

and then the highly unusual nature of the body.

It sounds to me like a frightening place for a child.

However, in this dark place, he positively shone.

Shortly after putting little Charles in the Hall of Curiosities,

Barnum made an amazing discovery.

The kid was wasted in the freak show.

He was natural born performer and only incidentally a freak.

It would have been a light-bulb moment if they'd been invented.

At the heart of the American Museum was a vast theatre.

Barnum had one of his crazy ideas.

Could his tiny star command this massive space?

Scenting more profits, he followed his instincts.

In December, 1842, his new act stepped out onto the stage.

Mr P T Barnum is proud to announce he has imported from London

to add to his collection of the most extraordinary curiosities

from all over the world, the rarest, the tiniest,

the most diminutive dwarf imaginable!

IMAGINED APPLAUSE

But I want you to imagine this is his very,

very first time on a stage.

He looks out at the auditorium, much bigger than this.

3,000 seats, every one of them filled.

Put yourself in his shoes for a moment,

which, incidentally, were only three inches long.

You're four years old. You're this small.

You've only just come to the city.

The biggest crowd you've ever seen is probably a few farmers

at the cattle market.

And your manager, whatever that means,

a few weeks ago reckoned you were pretty bashful.

What are you feeling like at this moment?

Mr Barnum taught you to pose like a statue out there

in the exhibition hall alongside the two-headed snakes in the bottle.

But in here he wants you to play characters from history.

He wants you to dance little dances.

He wants you to sing Yankee Doodle Dandy.

And now there are two-handed skits like this one.

I say, what dress is this?

It's my Oxonian dress.

It is the dress presented by the students at Oxford.

What do you represent now?

A fellow.

I understand, a Fellow at Oxford.

No, a little fellow.

IMAGINED LAUGHTER

Well, not exactly Shakespeare.

But what was important was that Charles Stratton

not only understood the words, but had a gift for comic timing.

The Barnum spin had begun and it started with a change of identity.

The name, Tom Thumb, came from an old English fairy tale

where little Tom fought great battles mounted on a mouse.

Barnum's choice of name was brilliant branding.

The press took the bait.

'General Tom Thumb Junior, the dwarf, exhibiting at the American Museum

'is by far the most wonderful specimen of a man

'that ever astonished the world.

'The idea of a young gentleman, 11 years old,

'weighing less than an infant at six months, is truly wonderful.

'He is lively, talkative, well proportioned

'and with all quite a comical chap.'

He builds him up in the press.

He says he's from England, because someone from England would be exotic.

Someone from Bridgeport wasn't really that exotic

for the people in New York.

He gave him the title General,

which is a sort of classic celebrity status enhancement, right, you know?

Really?

Yeah, you know, Prince or Madonna or Elvis, 'The King', you know.

-Duke Ellington.

-Duke Ellington.

-Count Basie.

-That's right.

But for him it was also funny because he was so small.

Now, there must have been a concern in Barnum's mind

that the public might say,

"Well, he's only five. How big do you expect him to be?"

Right, well, he tricked them

by saying that he was seven years older than he really was.

Oh, he said he was 12?

He was 11 and then later 12 to make him seem even smaller.

-Even more incredible.

-That's right, that's right.

And the surprising thing to me about that was

that all these people are meeting him,

the Mayor of New York, and nobody questions the age.

And so that means he must have been a really intelligent child.

General Tom Thumb's act was a mixed bill.

He'd pose in a white body stocking impersonating classical statues.

He'd banter with straight men in little skits...

..and he'd bring the house down by dancing a miniature hornpipe.

Audiences went wild.

Barnum had understood his public.

Tom Thumb combined two magic ingredients -

fascination with the strange and cheap laughs.

The boy was now set to work, regardless of his age

or what we'd call his disability.

It sounds like a tale of Dickensian exploitation.

Yet I grew up in a world that wasn't that different.

The Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang!

APPLAUSE

In comedy then, small was still beautiful.

LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER

Well, I learnt as a kid, going to the variety theatre,

that small was funny.

There were so many small people on the variety stage

making thousands and thousands of people laugh.

I can think of Jimmy Clitheroe, obviously,

and his predecessor, Wee Georgie Wood.

Arthur Askey was no giant,

and then there were the speciality acts.

Morton Fraser and his Harmonica Gang, Johnny Puleo.

They all used very, very tiny people to get cheap laughs.

Screams and gales of laughter are guaranteed every time you saw them.

And what about today?

Smallness is still big box office.

Like Mini-Me in Austin Powers,

a smash hit with audiences who laughed, not at his jokes,

but at the slapstick comedy of his tiny body.

But what is this like for the performer?

How does it feel to make your size your selling point?

-Hi, David.

-Hey, how are you?

-How you doing?

-Good, good, good.

-Good to see you. Grab a chair.

'David Funes is an entertainer whose career began in a similar way

'to that of Charles Stratton.'

-What was your first job?

-I worked as Cupid.

-As Cupid?

Yeah, I dressed up as Cupid.

In what?

-I was in a diaper and the funny thing is, is that...

-In a diaper?

-Yes.

So I just invented a costume out of the blue.

I had toilet paper wrapped around me as a banner.

And was it a play or was it a musical?

No, it was a, what you call, a club, yeah.

-A club?

-Yeah.

I just basically danced, like, as a go-go boy type thing.

But when they said, when you got the job and they said they wanted you

to play Cupid and wear a diaper, a nappy,

did you at any time feel you were being exploited?

-Yes.

-You did.

-All the time.

-But you just thought of the money?

Since the beginning of the gig till the end of the gig

I would feel like I was being exploited all day

and I was thinking to myself, "What am I doing?"

Like, "Do I want to do this? What is going to come out of this?

"What is the money going to come out?

"What are people's reaction?

"What are my parents' reaction going to be?"

But I just saw this as, "You know what, I'm going to do it.

"I'm going to become better at what I do."

So there was a moment where you actually came to terms with it

and said, "Actually, it's a job?"

-Yes.

-But are you still doing the diaper act

or you've moved on from there?

-No, I've moved on from the diaper act.

-What was the next job?

-Er, the next job was St Patrick's Day.

-St Patrick's Day?

-Doing what?

-Yes, as a leprechaun.

-As a leprechaun?

-Yeah, that's our favourite time of the year.

An Argentinean leprechaun, yes.

What do you feel about being typecast in those sorts of roles?

You know, the phone rings and you're, "OK."

Erm, yeah, that's how it is.

I'm just, like, "OK, you know what, it's time to do this,"

and everything like that.

But then when I get on the stage it's such a different feeling.

-It's such a euphoric feeling.

-Really?

Yeah, I feel very excited.

-I feel like there is such an energy...

-A buzz?

-You get a buzz from an audience.

-Yes.

-I actually feed off the audience.

-Uh-huh.

If you're going to have a negative outlook on how you see it,

you're never going to be able to succeed in this business.

So, I always keep it positive.

'If David had been scared at first,

'the four-year-old Charles's debut must have been terrifying.'

But I was also beginning to understand how

success for a little person on stage could start to be addictive.

That success was coming very quickly for Charles Stratton.

For much of his fifth year he was on the road, or rather on the railroad.

Charles was born as the steam age took off.

And the new trains meant his fame could be spread in ways

impossible just a few years ago.

For the next year, Charles toured to Boston and around New England,

his fame steadily growing.

His eyes forever on his box office,

Barnum knew image was everything

and this began with Charles's wardrobe.

We have a very early piece that belonged to Charles Stratton

and was actually given to the museum by P T Barnum.

It's a little...jacket.

MICHAEL GASPS

-Oh my!

-A little tailcoat here.

Very tiny, as you can see.

He was about 25 inches tall when he would have worn this.

'It wasn't just the size that mattered, Barnum made sure

'Charles's clothes were made of the most exquisite materials.'

This is all bespoke, isn't it?

-Every one of these is handmade...

-Of course.

-..for him.

Aren't they beautiful?

'Barnum so cleverly used clothing to boost Charles's age

'and his social standing.

'He became not just a man, but a gentleman.'

There are two hats in here.

Oh, my goodness. They're tiny.

-Yes.

-They're like thimbles.

Now this pair we think are really the most special.

-I mean, it's just exquisite.

-Goodness me.

I mean, these are beautiful.

He could afford the best, and did.

-And these are the best. This is...

-These, yes.

-..top of the range.

Barnum had tailored the perfect image for Charles...

..but how could his star be seen beyond the railroad tracks?

Luckily mid-19th century America was the right place at the right time.

Previously, all original publicity images

had to be created by an artist by hand.

Yet all this was to change.

Photography arrived in 1839, making it one year younger than Charles.

Now everyone could see his incredible dimensions for real.

Ever ready to exploit any means to boost Charles's fame,

Barnum rushed the boy into the studio.

That goes in there.

'I'm being photographed the Victorian way.'

To let the light in and then...

You go whoosh!

1,000 elephants, 2,000 elephants, 3,000 elephants.

So the equivalent of a shutter today

is when you just take the lens cap off?

That's correct, and you're going to be typically,

in this light, probably three minutes' exposure.

-Right.

-That's how long.

Right.

-You want me to go and pose?

-If you wouldn't mind.

Not difficult for me.

-I brought my top hat with me.

-OK, that's fortunate.

-Lovely.

'Photography accelerated Charles' fame and the arrival

'of its latest product brought him into the family home.'

So we go, 1,000 elephants,

2,000 elephants, 3,000 elephants...

'Part calling card, part publicity shot, part football sticker,

'the carte de visite enabled his fans

'to buy a souvenir Tom Thumb to keep.'

The scale of the carte de visite was absolutely phenomenal.

Queen Victoria, for example, there were between about three

and four million cartes of her produced between 1860 and 1862,

so she was incredibly popular.

And those were ending up in people's family albums,

in individuals' houses.

And they were collecting the whole of the royal family

and politicians and artists and clergymen,

and all these people, to put in their own albums.

Was there a roaring trade in carte de visite of the abnormal,

the curiosities, as Barnum used to call them?

You found pictures of people like Stratton,

people with particular medical conditions,

and people like Chang, the giant, who was collected,

photographed in the UK and on tour when he was exhibited.

And for a lot of people then, they were seeing these

types of people in exhibitions for the first time

so they would take them back and show them to their friends.

And Barnum, I think, understood this because they would then come back to

the exhibition and pay an entrance fee to go and see them in person.

So the pictures were his best marketing tool.

Right, well, good news.

-Oh, did I keep still?

-Perfectly.

Oh, wow!

That's very distinguished.

150 years late but...

"By Royal Appointment, portrait from life."

Oh, I love that. My own carte de visite.

Photographs made Charles visible

and railroads made him widely accessible.

By the time he was six, he had toured the eastern cities for a year

and had added new routines,

like dragging up as a little girl called Our Mary Ann.

The people couldn't get enough of him.

One wag even wrote a poem in praise.

"The streets were un-peopled, All business was done,

"Absorbed in the interest Of General Tom Thumb."

Barnum was making a fortune with Charles in the USA,

but he was a risk-taker.

Across the Atlantic lay Europe,

the cradle of civilisation and the home of vaster audiences.

Barnum scented even more money

but he'd have to start from scratch.

On January 19th, 1844, Charles, his parents, and Barnum

boarded the steamship the SS Yorkshire

and set sail for England.

It was a brave time to make the trip.

Just 30 years earlier, the two nations had been at war

and the Brits had left the White House a burnt-out shell.

To many Victorian Britons, Americans were just a bunch of uncouth hicks.

After three weeks at sea, Charles, Barnum and their entourage landed.

With little idea of what was in store,

they headed for the biggest city on earth.

London.

A population of nearly two million

made the city over four times bigger than New York.

Crammed with theatres, opera houses, fleapits and exhibition halls,

this was a town ravenous for the latest sensation.

And what they liked most were the freakish and the strange.

There is a sense that this is a form of entertainment

that is booming.

Punch magazine announced that

the country has been gripped by 'deformatomania'.

So there's a well-developed public appetite

for this kind of entertainment, and circuits are forming, you know.

Acts are travelling the country.

What sort of exhibits would there be?

I mean, were there people with genuine deformities or were there,

you know, faked bearded ladies and scams?

It's a very mixed economy, this.

But if, for instance, you had gone to see a pig-faced lady,

well, you might be seeing a bear chained to a chair,

put in a crinoline and shaved strategically

to look more human-like.

So there were all kinds of games in this business.

But it was a moneymaking enterprise and the public was fascinated?

The public was fascinated.

The public had an insatiable curiosity for human oddity.

Where does that come from, do you think?

Is that a Victorian thing or has it always been there?

There's an immense history to this.

I mean, if you'd have gone to Bartholomew Fair,

if you'd been around in the Middle Ages,

there would have been entertainment like this.

What happens in the 19th century

-is that it becomes rather more organised.

-Commercialised?

Absolutely, yes, yeah. I mean, this is business.

This is business in which contracts are issued,

in which arrangements are made.

The Princess Theatre once stood here on Oxford Street.

On 20th February, 1844, and just turned six,

the General first stepped out on to the London stage.

That night the bill was offering vaudeville, farce

and Italian diversions.

Tom Thumb was squeezed in between Acts II and III

of a cut-down version of Donizetti's opera, Don Pasquale.

FEMALE OPERA SINGER TRILLS

The press was not kind.

The Illustrated London News called Tom Thumb

"a little monster, who provided melancholy proof of the low state

"the legitimate drama has been reduced to."

Well, I think it would be fair to say it wasn't a roaring success.

It's not the right kind of venue for him because people

don't listen hard enough, people don't pay attention properly.

You didn't have to behave yourself in this sort of environment.

Barnum had hoped to set the West End alight

but the great premiere had turned into a damp squib.

This was a pivotal moment for Barnum.

As he stood in the wings and watched America's biggest star, his star,

failing to wow the audience, he must have thought

he'd left his magic touch somewhere in mid-Atlantic.

He needed to come up with something, and quickly,

and he had a genius idea.

Barnum decided to market Charles to the upper classes.

The Yankee had instinctively grasped the aspirational nature

of the British class system.

He knew that aristocratic endorsement

would quickly sway the mass market.

The first thing he needed

was to invite the right callers to the right address,

so he splashed out on the rental of Number 13, Grafton Street, Mayfair.

Barnum set about pursuing anyone and everyone in the upper echelons,

and issuing invitations, and they were intrigued.

The Dukes of Buckingham, Bedford and Devonshire came by.

Sir Robert and Lady Peel popped in.

And when he saw Charles give him an impersonation of Napoleon

at a private audience,

my dear, they couldn't get rid of the Duke of Wellington.

Knight led to lord, lord led to duke, further on up the ladder

until, as Barnum had hoped, they reached the summit.

On 9th March, a soldier of the Lifeguards arrived at Grafton Street

to invite Charles and Barnum

to an audience with Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

This was the big gamble. It was make or break.

Success could make them both rich for life.

Failure, the end of Barnum's global ambitions.

Once again, the great showman

put all his chips on a single spin of the wheel.

Resplendent in their new hand-tailored court suits,

on March 23rd, 1844,

Barnum and the six-year-old Charles arrived at Buckingham Palace

to meet the most powerful woman in the world.

Picture the scene.

The Queen sits at one end of a very long State Room.

With her is Prince Albert,

some ladies-in-waiting and assorted courtiers.

Charles and Barnum make their entrance,

beautifully dressed in their brand-new black velvet court attire.

The Queen is dressed simply in black.

There are flunkies everywhere, dressed in black,

not unlike a funeral.

Anyway, Charles marches towards the Queen and opens with,

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen."

Not exactly protocol, but the Yanks have made their entrance.

Charles launched into his routine, singing cheeky songs

and rattling off a few impressions.

It was risky stuff.

The court was officially in mourning for Prince Albert's father.

But no-one kicked them out

and, after a quick finale, they prepared to depart.

Barnum has been well briefed on the Royal protocol.

Never turn your back on the monarch.

So he starts to reverse out, bowing as he goes.

Charles tries to keep up with Barnum but his little legs won't let him,

so he turns and runs, and stops and bows,

and he turns and runs, and stops and bows.

All this sets off a royal spaniel.

The dog is the same height as Charles.

It leaps forward and starts barking and barking.

Spontaneously, and this is genius,

Charles pulls out his tiny ceremonial sword

and starts pretending to fence with Fido.

The room erupts into hysterical laughter.

The Queen IS amused and they get invited back.

It was a triumph.

Two more visits to the Palace soon followed.

There's a rather affecting sort of intimacy about this relationship.

The Royal children are introduced to him.

There's a lot of comparison of heights.

So he's brought within, really, the very core of that family circle.

They're like some strange, elevated, odd, distorted version

of the ordinary Victorian middle-class family.

Victoria and Charles may seem like an odd pairing,

but she was only doing what many rulers had done before.

For centuries, dwarves had been Royal entertainers.

Just look, for example,

at Velazquez's paintings of the court dwarves of Philip IV of Spain.

I wonder if there wasn't a certain kind of identification

between freaks and royalty.

On the one hand, royalty have the world at their fingertips.

Everything is available to them.

At the same time,

there must be a certain sense of loneliness and isolation.

It's an incredibly rarefied position to find one's self in.

And there's no anonymity,

no possibility of simply mingling with the public at large.

And so I wonder if there wasn't a kind of recognition

between these very elite royals

and the freaks who came to see them,

in a sense that, in some way,

they occupied a similar position socially.

Whatever the Queen's motivation, Barnum had worked his magic again.

After Victoria, anyone who was anyone had to see Tom Thumb.

In London, he was the talk of the town.

Here at the Lyceum Theatre, it was standing room only.

Charles Dickens dragged a few of his friends here

to see him hiding in a daisy and popping out of a nut

in a play entitled Hop O' My Thumb.

Riding on the wave of Queen Victoria's approval,

Barnum took Charles on a European tour,

playing Belgium, Spain and France.

Charles was developing as a performer.

Up to now, he was doing songs and sketches and impressions.

But then two French dramatists wrote a play especially for him,

which he learnt in French.

And he was very good at it.

Barnum described him "smashing audiences, killing them."

So now our lad was doing his whole act, plus two plays in French,

every single day.

Well, he was eight years old!

After his shows, the boy in adult clothing, lit by limelight,

met his public.

It was noticeable that women were always first in line.

Women had very interesting reactions to him.

He was a very cute kid.

But we think of him as a kid, but they thought of him as much older

because, remember, Barnum is inflating his age.

There were many women who looked at him

with a sort of motherly affection, but there were others

who took a more, you know, erotic interest in him.

And it became quite inappropriate at times.

In what way?

Well, when they're selling souvenirs after the show,

he would stand there and give kisses,

or what he called his "receipts",

to anyone who bought a souvenir.

And so women would apparently line up around the block

to get these kisses from him.

You know, they'd buy a photograph and then they'd get a kiss,

they'd buy a book of Barnum's and they'd get a kiss.

And some of them would just peck him on the cheek

but some of them would not.

So it became a little bit of an issue

and there are reports from men who are very upset that their wives

and daughters are, you know, spending all their money

on getting kisses from Charles.

Wow.

By 1846, Barnum had decided it was once again time to move,

back to America.

He posted bills for a series of farewell shows

at London's prestigious Egyptian Hall.

It was here that Tom Thumb would finally collide head on

with the Victorian cultural establishment,

who had reason to see themselves

as the defenders of civilisation itself.

Because another very different attraction

had booked into the famous venue at the very same time.

Benjamin Robert Haydon, RA, was a friend of Keats and Wordsworth

and a painter of morally uplifting canvasses.

Through his art,

he believed he could reform the taste of the British people.

Here at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool,

they have one of his smaller works on display.

Christ Blessing the Little Children.

But for the Egyptian Hall,

he planned something even more ambitious...

a series of huge moralistic paintings

depicting good and bad government.

Haydon believed passionately in high art, especially his own.

He'd have been struck by the irony of Tom Thumb's Goodbye Show,

a dumbed-down mass entertainment,

being booked into the Egyptian Hall just a few doors down the corridor

from his own exhibition of paintings,

with subjects grand, classical and refined.

This was his last chance to reform the taste of the English public.

This is the man who wrote in his diary in 1814,

"Oh, Almighty God, one request more.

"Spare my life till I have reformed

"the taste of my country."

He believed that the greatness of Great Britain

would be enhanced by his work.

So Tom Thumb is up at the Egyptian Hall

-and the two attractions are on at the same time.

-Yeah.

In one week, 17,000 came to see Tom Thumb,

each paying a shilling.

In the same week...

..133½ people come to see

Benjamin Robert Haydon's great works.

The half was a little girl.

The terrible thing was that the queue to General Tom Thumb's room

went right past Haydon's room.

Two months after the catastrophe, Haydon bought a pistol.

Standing before an unfinished canvas glorifying British justice,

he pulled the trigger...

..and failed to kill himself.

He had to finish the job with a razor.

The press were appalled at the death of a man

they had decided was a great artist.

The Times sneered,

"The display of a disgusting dwarf attracted hordes of gaping idiots,

"who poured into the yawning pockets of a Yankee showman

"a stream of wealth, one tithe of which would have redeemed

"an honourable English artist from wretchedness and death."

Haydon's friend, the poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

was more succinct.

"The dwarf slew the giant."

The Comic Almanack printed a cartoon by George Cruickshank

that summed up the anger felt towards Charles.

Haydon was the tragic artist.

Tom Thumb was the indolent freak,

lounging on a sofa.

It was called, Born A Genius...

..Born A Dwarf.

No-one helped Haydon when he was alive,

but now he was dead, he was a useful symbol.

High art needed protection from the rising tide

of mindless popular culture.

That sounds familiar!

Today, that job falls to the Arts Council.

Yet, it's current chairman was, in his former life,

the TV producer who brought the world Big Brother.

Why does he believe certain arts should be protected by the state,

while the mass market, with its freakish tastes, fends for itself?

The justification of supporting art with public money, broadly speaking,

is to back the next generation of talent and to take risks,

that you get behind talent which becomes, sometimes,

commercially successful later on.

New talent, taking risks.

Today's outrage is tomorrow's mainstream.

Do you think the public's appetite for the unusual

is satisfied these days by some reality TV,

the worst end of reality TV?

Well, you could be making a reference here

to the Big Brother television programme which I was let off,

you know, time off for good behaviour, about six years ago.

But early on in Big Brother, there were quite a few winners

and runners-up who were, you might say, stereotypes.

There was a sufferer from Tourette's Syndrome who won a series.

There was a transsexual who won another series.

And these were treated by the tabloid newspapers,

when they first appeared in the programme,

in a Tom Thumbish sort of way, as objects of sensation.

As the series went on and people watched them interact

with the other people in the house,

they discovered the actually delightful personalities

behind this stereotype.

And perhaps one way of judging them is whether the end of the product

is whether we're merely being astonished at, if you like,

a freak show or whether it ends up being sympathetic.

And I'd even say the same about the people who went to see Tom Thumb.

If, at the end of it, they came out sympathetic to him,

was it altogether bad?

And sympathetic the British were.

Even the press were eventually won over.

One newspaper said,

"Scarcely any exhibition within our memory has excited such

"interest among all circles as the General Charles S Stratton."

Not Tom Thumb, but his own name in print.

The Brits had finally taken him to their hearts.

Of course, it was all thanks to Barnum.

After a shaky start,

the Yankee showman had quickly grasped what made the British tick.

Then, as now, there was a great respect for authority and tradition,

but just as great a love for the joker

who poked fun at the establishment.

It was a very British sweet spot

and Barnum had positioned Charles to hit it perfectly.

The Tom Thumb entourage returned in triumph

to New York in February, 1847.

Charles Stratton went straight to the American Museum,

where an orang-utan, a fortune teller

and a model of Napoleon's funeral weren't exactly doing the business.

He played four straight sell-out weeks, usually five shows a day.

A former Mayor of New York saw the show and commented afterwards

that he thought Tom Thumb had "increased in littleness".

Well, he hadn't, in fact, grown, but he was maturing.

And no wonder.

At nine years old, Charles had seen more of America

than most Americans had seen.

He now had a collection of bespoke carriages,

driven by Shetland ponies.

And wherever the Tom Thumb Tour went,

he would drive through the town ahead of time, creating publicity,

put more bums on more seats.

Charles's family began poor.

Now his earnings bought them a large villa

containing his own apartment with miniature furniture.

He put his sisters through private education.

He could have retired aged nine.

Yet, for the rest of his life, he kept on touring.

Was it just the money that pulled him back to the stage?

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen,

prepare to be taken to heaven and back

by the skills of Sealo, The Seal Boy!

AUDIENCE CHEERS

Mat Fraser is a writer, actor and comedian

who has a successful career on stage and screen.

Good day to you, folks.

My name is Stanley Berent,

but mostly I am known by my professional name of

Sealo, The Seal Boy.

A connoisseur of the freak show,

he even performs a recreation of an early-20th century freak act -

Sealo, The Seal Boy.

IMITATES SEAL BARK

'I perform all over the place, in plays, you know, live art,'

cabaret, burlesque, striptease, comedy.

You know, I like to...

I'm a jack of all trades and master of none.

And was it a difficult choice, early on, to kind of shine a light

on your disability or did that just feel like a natural thing to do?

As a disabled person, you're stared at all the time,

24/7, 100% of the time.

But you have no agency, you have no power in the exchange.

You know, I can walk down the street and be stared at by a group of people

and not have any power in that exchange.

But if you put me on stage,

I'm A, paid for the experience, and B, I get to talk.

So, yeah, it's attractive to be able to have what happens in the street

anyway but be paid for it, have the power of how it happens

and to affect the minds of the people watching it.

Most people have three main bones in their arms -

the humerus, from the shoulder to the elbow and the radius and ulna bone,

from the elbow to the wrist.

Now, I don't got neither a radius nor ulna bone,

but I'm not sad, folks, no.

In fact, I think it's pretty humorous.

Does your manager ever ask you to do things, you know,

"How could you even ask me to do that?"

No, my agent is far more politically correct than I am.

So she never offers me work that I think is distasteful.

Rather, I just go off and do that work without telling her.

It's more like that, to be honest.

I think, probably, Tom Thumb got the bug,

because he seemed to be very happy to work and work and work

-for 40 years.

-Absolutely.

He was the world's first truly international superstar.

And here's the other thing that non-disabled people tend to forget.

You do your show, 1,000 people think you're fantastic.

"Thanks very much, good night, James."

Walk out the stage door,

some fella's just staring at you on the street again.

You are, bang! You're back there, you're always back there.

Of course you want to get back on the stage.

Of course you do.

I'm not here to beat you with my hands, no,

I'm here to entertain you with my little handsies.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility to think that somebody

could be addicted for life to that sort of thing.

It's a delicious power that I wouldn't know what to do without.

By the mid-1850s,

Charles was in his late teens and had been touring for over a decade.

He began appearing in Broadway plays,

revealing an ambition to become a serious actor.

He was taking more control over his own career

and displaying a canny business mind.

Barnum had taught him well.

The showman had stepped back from Charles,

letting the tours continue while pocketing a share of the profits.

Barnum's boundless energy had found new outlets,

which he promoted with all the vigour of his Tom Thumb campaigns.

America was bitterly divided over slavery

and on the brink of civil war.

Barnum joined the campaign for abolition,

bravely staging anti-slavery plays at his museum.

But principles could co-exist with profits.

Money flooded in.

He toured a Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind,

making 500,000 in old money.

And he invested heavily in property and industry...

and that's how his troubles started.

Barnum, at that point, had so much money,

I think he was kind of throwing it around a little bit too much.

Careless.

He had built his huge mansion, Iranistan,

and he keeps signing away big cheques

and suddenly he's 500,000 in debt.

And Barnum has to declare bankruptcy.

So what's he going to do?

He's got to decide how to deal with this bankruptcy.

He has to shut down his house in Bridgeport.

He moves into a small apartment in New York.

And he gets this letter from his former protege,

Charles Stratton, Tom Thumb,

and he says, "Hey, I'm still making lots of money. Let me help you out."

Charles arranged another tour

and this money helped put Barnum back on his feet.

It was a sign that their relationship had shifted.

14 years earlier, this had been a financial arrangement.

Barnum protected Charles, but dictated every step of his career.

But gradually, it had become a partnership.

By his late teens, Charles was calling the shots over his own tours

and he was the one to get Barnum out of trouble.

There must have been a touch of satisfaction in this for Charles.

He was becoming his own man.

And perhaps he needed a lady.

His financial troubles over,

it was Barnum who made a crucial introduction.

Phineas Barnum seemed to have his eye on every dwarf of note,

so when he got wind of a diminutive singer

working for a rival impresario in a museum of curiosities

that floated up and down the Mississippi,

he determined to steal her away.

Lavinia Warren Bump was 20 years old and 32 inches tall

when Barnum signed her up.

She was talented, vivacious and funny.

When Charles saw her face, he was a believer.

But he had a rival.

Enter Commodore George Nutt.

Blond and blue-eyed, he was known to the press as the 30,000 Nutt,

Barnum's alleged signing fee.

The showman had snapped him up while Charles was away on tour

and now the Commodore was nuts for Lavinia.

The rivals went head-to-head over the lady.

Charles suffered a setback

when Lavinia's mother took against his new moustache.

Things were getting desperate.

In his autobiography,

Barnum said his usually cool star was highly excited.

For Charles, it was now or never.

Well, then Barnum throws a dinner party for Lavinia,

where Charles pops the question,

with Barnum and his wife watching through the keyhole.

Suddenly there's a bang at the door.

In bursts Nutt, to find he's been pipped at the post.

CHURCH BELLS RING

MUSIC: Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn

The wedding was set for February, 1863,

at the prestigious Grace Church on Broadway.

The wedding preparations made the New York Times for three days.

And remember, this is at the height of the American Civil War.

Picture the scene.

It's February the 10th, it's 12 o'clock.

Since nine, the crowds out there have been thronging the pavement.

It takes ticket holders and Barnum, again,

two hours to get through the police cordon in their carriages.

It could have been Posh and Becks.

Yet some church regulars had been determined

this celebrity wedding wouldn't take place.

Now, we're standing pretty much on the spot

where the happy couple were.

We are standing right where it would have taken place.

Charles Stratton would have been standing probably,

you know, right about here.

And Lavinia Warren would have been standing right about here,

right in this spot.

Do you think there was a level of prejudice

about the fact that these were two very, very small people?

I think there was definitely some...

Prejudice might be the word for it.

But just that this was not a proper wedding for Grace Church.

And these people were in show business, they were, er...

It must have seemed vulgar, I suppose?

They looked at it as vulgar.

These were people who were not...correct.

They were deformed, they were tiny.

Charles Stratton anticipated what the objections might be

and he said, "I want to assure you that we are not mountebanks,

"we are not abortions.

"It is true that we are little, but we are as God made us,

"perfect in our littleness."

Wow.

-A wonderful quote...

-Wow!

..which I think has a lot of contemporary resonance

with what's going on today in the Church's struggle to understand

who can be married in the Church.

Charles's argument carried the day and the wedding went ahead.

Those who hadn't been able to get in to the church

scrambled to buy instant photos of the ceremony,

typically, staged a few days earlier by Barnum

in a photographic studio complete with a fake church set.

Commodore Nutt seemed to have buried his hatchet and served as best man.

Lavinia's sister, Minnie, just 16 years old,

was the Pippa Middleton of the day.

The press frothed over details of the decor and the dress.

News of the nuptials rolled around the globe

and Mr and Mrs Tom Thumb's fame went stratospheric.

They were even given a reception by President and Mrs Lincoln.

At the White House,

the President asked the General for military advice.

He told Charles, "You have thrown me completely in the shade."

Before, Charles had been celebrated as an object of fascination.

Now he and his wife were loved.

They went out on the road together

and the wedding boost made their enterprise even more successful.

Stratton certainly lived the early American dream,

but there was one thing their money couldn't buy them.

The only tiny feet they would hear pitter patter would be their own,

until Barnum fixed that, too.

In 1863, Charles and Lavinia had a new arrival.

Barnum knew the birth of a baby would spark all kinds of feelings

in the public, not least incredulity.

They went on tour to display the baby and the crowds went crazy.

And yet, it was all a lie.

Barnum rented different babies for photoshoots and live appearances.

He had manipulated Charles's image before,

but he'd never pushed it this far.

The pictures went all over America and when they went to Europe,

they rented babies of other nationalities by the hour.

When the scam had finally run its course,

Barnum casually announced that the baby had died.

Much as I respect Barnum, I think, in this case,

he really crossed the line.

Charles and Lavinia were certainly complicit in the publicity scam,

but at what emotional cost to them, holding other people's babies?

140 years ago, for people of their size to think about having a baby

could prove fatal and they certainly knew that.

Or, at least, that's the story that's been told.

Lavinia confessed to the baby hoax in her autobiography

and it's gone unquestioned for a century.

But as always with Barnum,

things are never quite as simple as they appear.

Because, in 1866, Charles and Lavinia were touring in England...

..and, very unusually for them, they started to cancel shows.

British historian John Gannon has discovered new evidence,

which he thinks explains why.

So here we have the burial register for St Gregory's Church in Norwich.

Now, at that particular time, Stratton was touring in Norfolk.

"Minnie Warren Stratton."

And then we have here...

"Daughter of the celebrated General Tom Thumb."

She was buried there on the 26th of September...

-26th of September.

-..at two years old.

Now, in order to confirm this,

we also have her death certificate.

Ah! Wow.

And, as the father, you will see,

"the daughter of Charles Sherwood Stratton."

-"Exhibitor."

-"Exhibitor."

So this really turns the whole story upside down

because this is new news.

But the story that we've been told is that they had no children,

-that Barnum provided them...

-That's correct.

..used to rent babies just for publicity.

That's correct.

But you think this says..?

I think what this says is, this was their child.

-But Lavinia did have a baby with...

-She did have a daughter,

with Stratton. This is their child.

OK, OK, in this particular article from the 29th of September...

-This is now in the Norfolk...

-This is from the Norfolk News.

This tells us of the burial of their child.

-"1,000 people congregated in the cemetery."

-Yeah.

I mean, Stratton tried to keep the event, obviously,

as kind of low key as he possibly could.

But unfortunately, they were invaded by about 1,000 spectators.

But, for me, there is so much evidence there.

-Absolutely.

-There is so much evidence.

And the fact that they were too grief stricken,

-really, to fulfil their engagements...

-Exactly.

..immediately after this child died...

This is an amazing discovery.

I am absolutely amazed.

'It's hard to know what to think.

'If the baby was a hoax,'

why was there a funeral for a child with Charles, Lavinia

and 1,000 others in attendance?

And why was Charles named as the father

on both the death and burial certificates?

Surely a publicity stunt wouldn't require that.

But there's contradictory evidence.

According to the papers,

at the time the baby would have had to have been born,

Lavinia was on stage in the Midwest.

John Gannon's evidence does prove one thing beyond doubt.

In 1866, a young girl died in England

in Charles and Lavinia's care.

She was buried under the name of Minnie Warren Stratton.

And, sure enough, forgotten for a century and a half

in a Norwich cemetery, we found this.

Minnie Warren Stratton.

Is this the grave of Charles and Lavinia's own daughter,

or is it the grave of a hired foundling?

I don't think we'll ever know for certain,

but whatever the truth, it's a fact that Charles and Lavinia,

unusually for them, cancelled performances after the funeral.

Their life was full of spin...

..but this wasn't fakery.

Their grief for Minnie Warren Stratton, this little girl,

whoever she was, was real.

But the show had to go on.

Charles and Lavinia returned to the United States

and threw themselves into work.

Once again, they hit the road, but this time in a new line-up.

The wedding had shown the public appetite for the quartet

and Charles, Lavinia, Commodore Nutt and Minnie

were soon performing together.

They were the first performers ever to travel by rail

to what was the Wild West.

There were encounters with outlaws who shot at them

and locals bemused by their stature.

In August 1869, they reached San Francisco and just kept going.

First they toured Japan, then on to India

and Charles was the first American star to tour Australia.

While they were there,

they did a free show in an orphanage in the outback

and Lavinia was amazed to find that the children already knew

who Tom Thumb was.

This was truly the world's first global celebrity tour.

All together, they covered 55,000 miles

and played 1,471 shows

in 587 cities and towns.

No performer had done so much and, until the 20th century,

none would try.

They didn't see America for three years.

But eventually, they return,

older, wiser and with a new ambition.

Charles wanted to set up home.

In 1870,

he and Lavinia came to her original home town,

Middleborough, Massachusetts, and they built big.

Set in 150 acres,

their new house was an escape from the glare of the lights

and the grind of the road.

It was a place where they could be themselves - not actors,

not celebrities, just, as they called each other,

Charlie and Vinnie.

No film crew has ever recorded their hideaway.

Eric Lehman has joined me, as he's a first-time visitor, too.

How are you?

-Very good.

-What do you think?

It's a grand mansion, isn't it?

So this is the main entrance hall.

Mmm-hmm.

And it looks like a regular house. I mean, it's very lovely.

But it's just an ordinary house, isn't it?

Except...

Well, look at the size of the stairs.

The height is very short.

Oh, my goodness, yes.

So we believe that Tom had this custom built

so he and Lavinia wouldn't have to do big stretching.

And if you'll feel the banisters,

-they're much lower than typical.

-They are.

So where are you taking us now?

OK, so right in here, we have Tom Thumb's original custom-made piano.

-Whoa!

-You can see the original work.

Oh, my goodness.

That is amazing.

Isn't that amazing?

-So in this room...

-This is the dining room.

..which is like the dining room, uh-huh.

And here are the shoes.

These are Lavinia's shoes?

These are Lavinia's shoes and we found them in a wall

-when we were doing a renovation upstairs.

-No way.

That is fascinating. They're so tiny.

-We found quite a few interesting things...

-Yeah.

-..in some of the walls.

-So tiny.

And I have one more thing to show you.

And it is the original wood stove.

-Great.

-OK.

-Come on, this way.

We're going down to the kitchen, right?

Down to the kitchen.

It's a miniature!

It is.

It's a real range. I mean, this is a full working stove.

We did nothing to it, we didn't even paint it.

What's fascinating to me is that they had a cook and a maid.

They were normal sized, but Lavinia clearly wanted to cook for herself,

and maybe he had it made for her

in case she wanted to cook.

I think it's really romantic that he did so many things for her,

to make sure she was comfortable, too.

The next decade passed, the tours now relieved by welcome domesticity.

Charles had started putting on weight.

The little man was filling out.

And this very public individual

had become fascinated by a deeply secret society.

Charles had become a Freemason of the Order of the Knights Templar.

Like his property ownership, it was another way of making himself

a pillar of the community, someone whose size didn't matter.

He had revealed one of his greatest ambitions -

acceptance.

But the lure of the stage was still strong

and in 1880, Barnum tempted Charles back

to appear in his latest scheme.

A circus.

Charles and Lavinia went to the Midwest with the circus

and they were treated like royalty.

But the gig didn't last for two reasons.

Barnum split the profits with Bailey

and then paid the Thumbs a salary out of his share.

But Charles and Lavinia could make a lot more money

travelling their own show in theatres like this.

You see, the stars had become richer than their producer,

which isn't supposed to happen.

But the second reason was more important.

Competitors had begun copying Barnum's freakish exhibits,

but with acts that lacked Charles' class

and his control over his own career.

Julia Pastrana from Mexico was advertised as a "bear woman".

Her manager married her and, after her death,

toured her mummified corpse.

The world of the freak show,

the world that Barnum and Charles had helped create,

was changing.

Acts were becoming a grotesque sideshow

and that would never do for Charles.

Fortunately, he was rich enough to turn his back on the big top.

Charles and Lavinia carried on touring as usual.

With them went two dwarfs

who had a marvellous act with trained canaries.

I think I may have booked them.

Anyway, all went well until disaster struck.

They were in a hotel in Milwaukee when, in the dead of night,

the whole building burned to the ground.

Between 70 and 100 people died in this terrible inferno.

The streets were littered with the bodies of guests who had jumped,

hoping to avoid the blaze.

Lavinia was carried out like a child

and Charles staggered out, very shaken.

It was to be their last tour.

Worn down by the endless shows and the traumatic fire,

Charles finally started to slow up.

He came back home to Middleborough.

Do you think that Charles, looking back on his life,

regretted that meeting, first meeting with Barnum,

or would he have looked back and said,

"Actually I've done very well out of this, I've had a wonderful life?"

Definitely the latter.

He was very pleased with the opportunities he had in life.

He had made enough money by age nine that he could have stopped

and lived a quiet life.

But I think he enjoyed it,

because he kept going back out every season and touring.

There's something distressing to this idea of someone being taken up

at a very young age and spending an entire lifetime being exhibited

for other people to stare at.

On the other hand, there was no disability rights movement,

there wasn't even a concept of disability.

That partnership with Barnum did enable Stratton

to have life comforts that otherwise wouldn't have been available to him.

When we look back on performers like Stratton,

we assume that they all died in misery, lying in sawdust somewhere.

But actually, if you look at their lives,

that didn't happen to an awful lot of them.

Stratton, you know, ended his life owning a yacht

and an enormous house.

These people had showbiz careers.

Lots of showbiz careers end in desperate misery.

A lot don't.

By the 1880s, Charles was a man of stature

and not just in the community.

He'd grown a couple of inches in his teens,

but in 1883, he was 45,

fat and 3ft 4.

Maybe it was diet, maybe it was middle age or maybe it was drink,

something he'd been fond of since before he was ten -

that and cigars!

Whisky ruined his friend, Commodore Nutt, who died in 1881.

And Charles' lifestyle probably hastened his own end, too.

Charles died on July the 15th, 1883,

suddenly, at home, in this very room.

Lavinia was away in New York on business.

Their brother-in-law, Edward Newell, who lived with them,

had seen Charles dressing and left the room,

probably through this door.

He heard a thud.

Charles lay at the foot of the bed.

He'd gone with his boots off

in his own sumptuous bedroom, and quickly.

There are worse ways.

Charles Stratton came home to Bridgeport for burial.

He was laid out in church

and 10,000 of his fans filed past the coffin

of silver, walnut and jet,

to get a last glimpse of America's first international superstar.

His memorial kept him forever young,

its statue carved from life when Charles was 19.

Lavinia grieved, but she carried the Stratton banner on

through another decade and into the 20th century.

She remarried another little man, a titled Italian, Count Margri.

But when she died in 1919,

she asked to be laid next to her first love.

And here they lie, Charles and Lavinia.

And if Charles lay close to his wife,

his other great companion wasn't far away -

P T Barnum.

He was on holiday when Charles died

and couldn't get back in time for the funeral.

He outlived his star by eight years

and when he died in 1891, he was buried within a few yards of him.

They had travelled the world together,

tens of thousands of miles,

but were laid to rest just a few paces apart.

Charles Stratton soaked up applause on five continents.

The act he'd learned as a four-year-old,

which, in some ways, hardly changed,

was eventually seen by over 50 million people.

MUSIC: Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues by Bob Dylan

# When you're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Eastertime, too... #

It doesn't need Barnum's spin to tell you

that's a lot of bums on a lot of seats.

# ..It's either fortune or fame... #

By all the rules of show business,

the relationship between Stratton and Barnum should've ended in tears.

I've seen it all too often in my 50 years in the business.

Manager signs an unknown artist on a one-sided contract

that ends up in litigation and recrimination.

That didn't happen in this case.

Barnum and Stratton were partners and friends for 40 years,

two gentlemen of the old school.

They were good for each other and good to each other.

They were separated only by two feet and eight inches.

I don't think size was ever an issue for Charles.

Major Newell, one of his fellow performers,

put on a very late growth spurt, reaching nearly 5ft,

and Charles felt sorry for him.

He said, "The poor fella, he just kept growing and growing

"until he was just like everybody else."