On a cold February day in 1844, a small group of travellers disembarked their ship at the port of Liverpool in England. There was no welcoming party, no bands nor banners, and the visitors slipped silently away to their hotel. Amongst them were the American showman P. T. Barnum and his protégé Charles S. Stratton, known as General Tom Thumb. Both were little-known in England at that time, but this would mark the beginning of a three-year-long tour of the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Fêted by crowned heads, Queen Victoria included, the tour would bring both Barnum and Stratton international fame and fortune.
Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in July 1810 in the small American town of Bethel, Connecticut. His early years passed fairly unremarkably, although he was always interested in money-making schemes. Having an aversion to farm work, his father set him up in business as a store clerk. When his father died in 1826, with little provision for his wife or family, Barnum continued as a store clerk but now conceived of a lottery scheme to make more money. This was perhaps his first ‘deception’ played upon the public. There were no cash prizes, only goods to the value of the stated prize – and those goods would be surplus stock items. He had obtained many empty glass bottles which he needed to move on, and all prizes included a few, or many in some cases, of these.
By 1828, Barnum had opened up his own retail confectionary and fruit store in Bethel, with the help of his grandfather. This, and the lottery he was still running, generated a substantial income, enough to support a wife. In the summer of 1829, he married a local girl named Charity Hallett. By the age of twenty he was married and had become a successful entrepreneur, with a good income and property.
His next venture was as a newspaper editor. He bought a printing press, and in October 1831 the first edition of the weekly newspaper The Herald of Freedom was published. It was widely distributed throughout Connecticut and the neighbouring states. Three times during his time as editor he was taken to court for libel, the last occasion bringing a fine of $100 and imprisonment for sixty days. He had already sold his retail business in 1831, and the newspaper business was sold in 1834. Although he had made a significant amount of money, he had frittered most of it away, and so decided to move his family to New York city. There, he tried several low-paid jobs, but always in the back of his mind was to have his own exhibition space.
In 1835, Barnum ‘acquired’ an aged black woman who was being exhibited as the 161-year-old nursemaid of George Washington, the ‘father of the country’. Her name was Joice Heth, and Barnum exhibited her at Niblo’s Garden1 in New York. Visitors flocked to the exhibition, which was covered in many newspapers, even in Britain (although quite low key and matter of fact):
NEGRO LONGEVITY – A female negro slave, of the name of Joyce Heth, is now exhibiting in this city, who had attained the extraordinary age of 161 years. A visit which we paid her yesterday has removed whatever doubts we previously entertained as to the facts confirmatory of this extraordinary instance of longevity
Pittsburgh (United States) Advertiser, 27 August 1835)
But all was not as it seemed. When Heth died in 1836, a public post-mortem examination concluded that the woman could have been no more than 80 years old. It was reported that Barnum had made somewhere in the region of US$10,000 from this hoax, and he had even sold tickets for the post-mortem.
By 1841, Barnum had acquired Scudder’s American Museum, which he opened as Barnum’s American Museum in 1842. One of the earlier exhibits that excited interest was ‘The Feejee Mermaid’. To Barnum, it was not important as to whether people believed that they were going to see a real mermaid, but that they believed that they might see a real creature. With careful planning and clever publicity, Barnum sold the popular imagery of a mermaid and created a ‘must see’ event – even if the actual exhibit little resembled that image. In fact, as Barnum described,
the animal was an ugly, dried-up, black-looking, and diminutive specimen, about three feet long. Its mouth was open, its tail turned over, and its arms thrown up, giving it the appearance of having died in great agony.2
Perhaps his biggest money-making scheme came with the discovery of the dwarf child Charles S. Stratton. In November 1842, Barnum engaged this five-year-old boy to appear at his museum. Stratton was billed as ‘General Tom Thumb, a dwarf of eleven years of age, just arrived from England!’ There were three deceptions in this one sentence. Barnum had upped Stratton’s age to make it clearer that he was a dwarf; he claimed that he was from England, thereby tapping into the concept of the ‘exotic’; and he had given him the name of Tom Thumb, a well-known character in English folklore. ‘General Tom Thumb’ became a great attraction, and Barnum schooled the child in singing, dancing, and recitation. But he had greater ideas for his protégé: he planned to take him to England and Europe, in the hope that such a tour might produce a great financial return and establish him as a great showman.
Their arrival in England was very unlike their departure from New York. This was marked by a procession preceded by a brass band, with thousands of onlookers to wish them bon voyage. England was an unknown land to Barnum, and social attitudes towards human ‘curiosities’ were markedly different. Such exhibitions had largely been attractions at fairgrounds, but Barnum’s exhibition of General Tom Thumb would create a ‘respectability’ to such displays. Briefly performing in Liverpool, Barnum took Stratton to London, where he knew that he could draw a larger crowd – and make more money. Public performances by the General were held at the Egyptian Hall, a suite of exhibition rooms on the Strand, but Barnum also had the business acumen to hold private soirées at their residence on Grafton Street. To these he invited newspaper editors, knowing that publicity was the best way of drawing crowds to the public exhibitions. He also invited members of the aristocracy and other wealthy influential people to these events, knowing that endorsement by this stratum of society would promote the respectability of his exhibition. At these events Stratton would sing and dance. He would also impersonate Napoleon Bonaparte as well as present pose plastique of classical figures. Valuable gifts were showered upon both Stratton and Barnum, which Barnum then exhibited at the Egyptian Hall. To supplement entry takings at the exhibitions, pamphlets and prints of Tom Thumb were sold at a shilling each, and in receipt he offered to kiss the lips of any lady who so wished, as here described in the Buxton Herald,
The song finished, the little monkey [Tom Thumb] was furnished with some books (his life), and prints of himself, which he proceeded to sell at a shilling, giving to each lady purchaser a kiss, being what he called a ‘stamped receipt’; and it made me disgusted with my own inches to see with what rapidity the creature got rid of his wares; in a moment there were a hundred hands, each with a shilling, and as many mouths, each eager for a kiss stretched towards him
(Buxton Herald, 7 September 1844)
In his time, Stratton claimed to have kissed the lips of thousands of ladies in America and across Europe. This does raise some questions as to the ethical behaviour of Barnum and Stratton in this matter. Here was a child of around six years old, being exhibited as a twelve-year-old and then being schooled to behave as if he were a young adult. To what degree was Barnum guilty of exploiting the child Stratton for his own profit that of the female portion of his audience?
By ingratiating himself with influential people, it was not long before Barnum had engineered an invitation to Buckingham Palace to meet with Queen Victoria. On the 23rd of March 1844, Barnum and Stratton had an audience with the queen, which she recorded in her diary,
After dinner we saw the greatest curiosity, I, or indeed anybody ever saw, viz: a little dwarf, only 25 inches high & 15 lb in weight. No description can give an idea of this little creature, whose real name was Charles Stratton, born they say in 32 [1832], which makes him 12 years old. He is American, & gave us his card, with Gen: Tom Thumb, written on it. He made the funniest little bow, putting out his hand & saying: ‘much obliged Mama’. One cannot help feeling very sorry for the poor little thing & wishing he could be properly cared for, for the people who show him off tease him a good deal, I should think. He was made to imitate Napoleon & do all parts of tricks, finally, backing out the whole way out of the Gallery.3
This visit was to be the first of Barnum’s three unprecedented audiences with the queen. With such a royal seal of approval, his visit to Britain was assured of success. For the remainder of 1844, he went on to tour Tom Thumb throughout the United Kingdom, before spending the following year touring France and other parts of Europe. In this leg of the tour, he was received by the king of the Belgians in Brussels, the French royal family (twice) in Paris, and he even managed to meet with the Queen of Spain on a brief visit to Pamplona. December 1845 saw them back in London, and then a further tour of the United Kingdom for 1846, returning triumphant to America in early 1847. Their departure was unlike their arrival: bands played, notable worthies were there to wave them off, and thousands of people thronged the dockside to cheer them on their way.
Barnum’s three-year tour had been a huge success. Both he and Stratton had amassed a small fortune, but, perhaps more importantly, it had gained them international recognition that would further both their careers.
Steve Ward is a researcher, author, and speaker. He has a PhD for his research and writing on the social and cultural history of the circus. A full list of his published books can be found on www.steve-ward.weebly.com. His latest book, By Royal Command; Barnum in Europe was published by Modern Vaudeville Press in January 2025 www.modernvaudevillpress.com/barnum/.
Notes & References
Header image: P. T. Barnum and Tom Thumb c.1845 (Library of Congress)
- Niblo’s Garden was a pre-eminent ‘pleasure garden’ and theatre built by William Niblo on Broadway and Crosby Street.
- Barnum, P. T., (1855) The Life of Barnum; Written by Himself. Redfield. New York
- Queen Victoria’s Journals. Princess Beatrice’s copies. Saturday 23rd March 1844. Online at; Queen Victoria’s Journals – Journal Entry (queenvictoriasjournals.org)17 (1st January 1844 – 31st July 1844) Vol. page 93