Travellers' Checks | When General Tom Thumb wowed Hong Kong crowds with his little-person performance
- Plus, HK Express to launch a direct route to Japan’s Miyako Islands in July, and Lonely Planet’s somewhat uninspiring anthology of travel writing
Among the passengers listed by The Hong Kong Daily Press as arriving here from Shanghai on December 20, 1869, were “General Tom Thumb and wife, Miss Minnie Warren [and] Commodore Nutt”. The next day, a notice appeared on the front page of the same paper, announcing that for five days only, “Four of the Smallest Human Beings in the World. Perfect Ladies and Gentlemen in Miniature” would be performing their stage act at the newly opened City Hall.
This was an early stop on what was probably the first ever round-the-world tour by an international celebrity – namely General Tom Thumb, aka Charles Stratton, aged 31 and at the height of his fame. Perhaps unaware that Stratton had twice been invited to visit Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace, The China Mail reported the group’s invitation to Government House with thinly veiled sarcasm. “We are not aware that there is anything in the world of Hongkong that is at present more deserving of notice,” ran the paper’s opening editorial on December 22. “It is the most remarkable event since the Prince [Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh] has departed, and His Excellency [Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell] has no doubt been delighted at finding himself equally ‘at home’ with a Prince as with a quartette of Dwarfs.”
The Daily Press described the show as “one of the most pleasing that has ever come before the public in Hongkong,” and after several sell-out performances, and a weekend break in Macau, the group sailed away to similar acclaim in Singapore and Penang.
HK Express launches new route to Japan’s Miyako Islands
