The Unusual Story of the Real-Life Tom Thumb

How P. T. Barnum turned Charles Stratton into a worldwide celebrity

Daguerreotype of Phineas Taylor Barnum & Charles Sherwood Stratton (General Tom Thumb), National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The 17th Century English fairytale about Tom Thumb featured a boy who was no bigger than his father’s thumb. That fanciful story was brought to life in the 19th Century when legendary showman P. T. Barnum discovered Charles Stratton and transformed him into “General Tom Thumb.”