Becoming Tom Thumb: Charles Stratton, P. T. Barnum, and the Dawn of American Celebrity

At Mountain Grove

206 AtMountainGrove  I n the summer of 1883, Charles had been feeling tired, but otherwise fine. He woke on the morning of July 15 and began to dress in his bedroom on the second floor of his Middleborough home. His brother-­ in-­ law, Edward Newell, still lived in the house, and chatted with him. Newell left the room and almost immediately heard a loud thump. Returning, he found Charles on the floor, dead of “apoplexy,” an apparent stroke. He was forty-­ five years old, a year older than his own father had been when he died in 1855. Lavinia was in Brooklyn discussing business with Sylvester Bleeker, and both rushed to the Middleborough house, arriving the following morning, July 16. The shattered Bleeker was still in mourning for his own wife, but his strength through this second disaster surely helped Lavinia survive it. Meanwhile, the news of Charles’s untimely death spread, and hundreds of papers nationwide and across the seas reported on it, for days and weeks afterwards. His obituary in Harper’s covered an entire page of the magazine, saying ‘it was not Tom’s diminutiveness alone that put him so high up—that is, so low down—in the annals of dwarfdom, but his prettiness, brightness, and grace.”1 The death of Charles’s mother and the results of his estate probate were still news a year later. As often happens on the death of a celebrity, newspapers began to elaborate even further on Charles’s life. Papers as far away as the Manitoba Daily Free Press reported after his death that he had once scared off burglars at the Middleborough house. Supposedly, Lavinia begged him to let the thieves complete their work, but he did not listen . Instead, he took out a pair of revolvers, one a present from the Crown Prince of Prussia, and confronted them. “Stop that, or here’s a bullet for each of you,” he is purported to have said. The burglars, impressed with his “pluck,” fled the house. Another story follows, saying that while taking a party of friends on Long Island Sound in his yacht, a small boy fell over the side. Apparently Charles jumped in and held 207 A t M o u n t a i n G r o v e the boy above water until the rest of the party were able to turn the boat around to pick them up.2 The newspaper also included a tale of bravery at the Newhall fire to give credence to the other two stories, but they were probably just the echoing legend of his celebrity, the fairy tale taking hold. A private service was held in the Middleborough home, and friends from the town came to view the tiny casket, guarded by the local Mayflower Lodge Masons. Reverend Fairbanks from a local Baptist church conducted the service, and music was played by a quartet. Dressed in a heavy black crape drapery, Lavinia collapsed with her head on a windowsill while her surviving sister Caroline comforted her.3 P. T. Barnum was on vacation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with his second wife, Nancy Fish, and could not return in time. He sent a telegram of condolence to the shattered widow: “Dear Lavinia. YourOn November 4, 1923, Singer’s Midgets Vaudeville Troupe was in town, and “on learning that Bridgeport had been the hometown of Tom Thumb and that he and his wife were buried here, immediately expressed a desire to show their respect.” Members of this troupe went on to star in The Wizard of Oz. Courtesy of the Bridgeport History Center. b e c o m i n g t o m t h u m b 208 self and family have my warmest sympathies. Death is as much a part of the Divine Plan as birth.The Heavenly Father finally overcomes evil with good. His will be done.”4 All that remained was to take Charles’s body to his final resting place in Bridgeport, prepared so many years before. Edward Newell did not accompany the procession; perhaps his wife’s passing was still too close. But Sylvester Bleeker did go, even though his own wife was only eight months dead. The walnut casket of silver and jet arrived on the 8:59 a.m. train at the Bridgeport station, where several hundred people had gathered to pay their respects. Charles’s...