Lavinia Warren

Medical condition

Lavinia Warren and her younger sister Minnie Warren had proportionate dwarfism, a condition caused by a disorder of the pituitary gland. Unlike many other forms of dwarfism, proportionate dwarfism results in a body that remains in normal proportion, differing primarily in overall size. During the nineteenth century, this appearance was considered especially desirable by sideshows and dime museums because performers retained the proportions of an average-sized adult in miniature. As an adult, she stood tall.

Personal life

Though their fame afforded Warren and Stratton a life of luxury, it came with downsides. They were presented as childlike to the public by P.T. Barnum. This was an advertising strategy to make the audience feel sympathetic for them in order to sell more tickets. Though they were some of the most famous people in America at the time, due to the way they were presented, people treated them like children.

Many people Warren met wanted to pet her and hold her. She wrote in her autobiography "It seemed impossible, to make people understand at first that I was not a child; that, being a woman, I had the womanly instinct of shrinking from a form of familiarity which in the case of a child of my size would have been as natural as it was permissible."

Warren and Stratton were married on February 10, 1863, at Grace Episcopal Church in New York City. Their wedding became one of the biggest social events in nineteenth-century New York. At the reception, held at the Metropolitan Hotel, the newlyweds greeted guests from atop a grand piano while Warren's sister, Minnie Warren, served as bridesmaid. Showman P. T. Barnum sold reception tickets for $75 each (equivalent to about ) to the first 5,000 applicants. The marriage brought Warren even greater fame. She and Stratton were later received at the White House by President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, and Tiffany & Co. presented the couple with a silver coach. During their 20-year marriage, they amassed a fortune. Death Warren died on November 25, 1919, at the age of 78. She is buried next to her first husband with a simple gravestone that reads: "His Wife".