Mr. Thomas Day was the reputed father of the dwarf family, and exhibited himself as small enough for a great wonder; as he was. He was also proprietor of the show; and said he was thirty-five years of age, and only thirty-five inches high. He fittingly descanted on the living personages in whom he had a vested interest. There was a boy six years old, only twenty-seven inches high. The Wild Indian was a civil-looking man of colour. The Giant Boy, William Wilkinson Whitehead, was fourteen years of age on the 26th of March last, 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, thirty-one inches round the thigh, and weighed twenty-two stone. His father and mother were “travelling merchants” of Manchester; he was born at Glasgow during one of their journies, and was as fine a youth as I ever saw, handsomely formed, of fair complexion, an intelligent countenance, active in motion, and of sensible speech. He was lightly dressed in plaid to show his limbs, with a bonnet of the same. The artist with me sketched his appearance exactly as we saw him, and as the present [engraving] now represents him; it is a good likeness of his features, as well as of his form.
The Giant Boy.
Show XVIII.
“Holden’s Glass Working and Blowing.”
This was the last show on the east-side of Smithfield. It was limited to a single caravan; having seen exhibitions of the same kind, and the evening getting late, I declined entering, though “Only a penny!”
Show XIX.
This was the first show on the south-side of Smithfield. It stood, therefore, with its side towards Cloth-fair, and the back towards the corner of Duke-street. The admission was “Only a penny!” and the paintings flared on the show-cloths with this inscription, “They’re all Alive Inside! Be assured They’re All Alive!—The Yorkshire Giantess.—Waterloo Giant.—Indian Chief.—Only a Penny!”
An overgrown girl was the Yorkshire Giantess. A large man with a tail, and his hair frizzed and powdered, aided by a sort of uniform coat and a plaid rocquelaire, made the Waterloo Giant. The abdication of such an Indian Chief as this, in favour of Bartholomew Fair, was probably forced upon him by his tribe.