Barnum, P(hineas) T(aylor) (1810-1891)

A photograph of Charles Sherwood Stratton, who was employed by P T Barnum, the US circus proprietor. Stratton was only 64 cm/25 in tall when first found by Barnum, and was exhibited in Europe in 1844 at the age of six years. It was Barnum who gave him the circus name of ‘General Tom Thumb’.

US showman. In 1871 he established the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’, which included the midget ‘Tom Thumb’, a circus, a menagerie, and an exhibition of ‘freaks’, conveyed in 100 railway carriages. In 1881, it merged with its chief competitor and has continued to this day as the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

In 1850, in an attempt to change his image to that of an art promoter, Barnum managed the hugely successful US concert tour of Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, whom he dubbed ‘The Swedish Nightingale’.