Midget exhibit - images from the heyday of dwarf display

In the mid-1800s, inveterate showman/salesman P. T. Barnum introduced a real-life Tom Thumb and spawned a huge movement of midget exhibits. Little people were paraded en masse throughout Europe and the New World, earning fame and fortune as the central attractions in a freak show phenomenon that lasted well over a century. Explore this little world in postcard mementoes from an era when the unabashedly curious feasted their eyes on the unusual.