Another cabinet card of Lavinia Warren Stratton Magri and the Magri brothers, Baron Littlefinger and Count Rosebud. I don’t know why I find them so fascinating, but they are. Just the notion of the cult of celebrity going back that far when we think of it as being a modern (at least a 20th century) thing.
Here is a cabinet card from the mid 1890s of Lavinia Warren and the Magri Brothers (Baron Littlefinger and Count Rosebud). After Tom Thumb passed away in 1883, the widow Thumb met the Count and (his alleged twin brother) Baron Littlefinger. His real name was Primo Magri. She went on to marry him in July, 1885. They continued performing into old age to the point of appearing in a silent movie in 1915, five years before the Count’s death. Lavinia Warren died in 1919 at the approximate age of 77 (her birth date is unrecorded, so it is possible she was 78 at the time of her passing).
My latest CDV of a circus sideshow midget. What was it with the circus and fake military ranks or titles? Major Houghton, Admiral Dot, Major Atom (although there’s a wee (pardon the pun) bit of irony in that one), Commodore Nutt, General Tom Thumb, Baron Littlefinger and Count Rosebud and just to name a few. Even when folks weren’t given fake titles, they often got dressed up in military-esque uniforms, like my photo of Landon Middlecoff, or some of the other giants I’ve seen.
dcphotoartist 