The Old Showmen and the Old London FairsFrost, Thomas
History
The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs
Frost, Thomas
Fairs -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs
Adjoining this was another penny show, with pictures large as life on the
show-cloths outside of the living wonders within, and the following
inscription:--"_All Alive! No False Paintings! The Wild Indian, the Giant
Boy, and the Dwarf Family! Never here before. To be seen alive!_" Thomas
Day, the reputed father of the dwarf family, was also proprietor of the
show; he was thirty-five years of age, and only thirty-five inches high.
There was a boy six years old, only twenty-seven inches high. The "wild
Indian" was a mild-looking mulatto. The "giant boy," William Wilkinson
Whitehead, was fourteen years of age, stood five feet two inches high,
measured five feet round the body, twenty-seven inches across the
shoulders, twenty inches round the arm, twenty-four inches round the calf,
and thirty-one inches round the thigh, and weighed twenty-two stones. His
father and mother were "travelling merchants" of Manchester; he was born
at Glasgow, during one of their journeys, and was a fine healthy youth,
fair complexioned, intelligent looking, active in his movements, and
sensible in speech. He was lightly dressed in plaid to show his limbs,
with a bonnet of the same.
Holden's glass-working and blowing was the last show on the east side of
Smithfield, and was limited to a single caravan. The first on the south
side, with its side towards Cloth Fair, and the back towards the corner of
Duke Street, presented pictures of a giant, a giantess, and an Indian
chief, with the inscription, "_They're all alive! Be assured they're all
alive! The Yorkshire Giantess--Waterloo Giant--Indian Chief. Only a
penny!_" An overgrown girl was the Yorkshire giantess. A tall man with his
hair frizzed and powdered, aided by a military coat and a plaid
roquelaire, made the Waterloo giant.
Next to this stood another show of the same kind and quality, the
attractions of which were a giantess and two dwarfs. The giantess was a
Somerset girl, who arose from the chair whereon she was seated to the
height of six feet nine inches and three-quarters, with "Ladies and
gentlemen, your most obedient." She was good-looking and affable, and
obliged the company by taking off her tight-fitting slipper, and handing
it round for their examination. It was of such dimensions that the largest
man present could have put his booted foot into it. She said that her name
was Elizabeth Stock, and that she was only sixteen years of age. This
completed the number of shows pitched in Smithfield in 1825.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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