Death
Six months later, Stratton died suddenly of a stroke. He was 45 years old, 102 centimetres (3 ft 4 in) tall and weighed 32 kilograms (71 lb). Over 10,000 people attended the funeral. P. T. Barnum purchased a life-sized statue of Tom Thumb and placed it as a grave stone at Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Lavinia Warren is interred next to him with a simple grave stone that reads, "His Wife".
In 1959 vandals smashed the statue. It was restored by the Barnum Festival Society and Mountain Grove Cemetery Association with funds raised by public subscription.
The cause of Stratton's extreme shortness was and still is unknown. X-rays were not discovered until 1895, 12 years after Stratton's death, and the medical techniques of the day were unable to ascertain the pathology underlying his dwarfism.
Read more about this topic: General Tom Thumb
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid shawl and whose duration had been so extraordinarily convenient and beneficent. I felt her death much more than I should have expected; she was a sustaining symbol—and the wild waters are upon us now.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)