By WIN EVERETT
As you roll by the battered old hunk of what was once Village Hall either in your car or in a New Haven train, you can have little idea of the notable events which took place inside it during its half-century of active life as the towns Meeting place. I can think of three right off the bat and there must be many more I never heard of. One was the demonstration at a Uru-versalist church fair of a strange and still-fabulous gadget called the “talking machine-” It Was a first model Edison and the time was in the early 90’s. Another was an afternoon and evening stock-sale drive for something called the Marconi Wireless Company. It seems to me that the asking price was $2.00 a share. The third was an entertainment put on by Major Tom Thumb and his company of singers and recreationists. For this I have the facts and a veritable photograph of the internationally famous midget which was sold by Mrs. Sylvia Warren, the Major’s wife, to Mrs. Nellie May Gillooly of 120 Walpole Street when she was a 14-year-old girl. The facts and the picture are Nellie’s.
After P T. Barnum had made Tom Thumb and his wife house-hold words over the length and breadth of this land and abroad, says Mrs. Giilooiy, the tiny Major Tom did just exactly what the stage, screen and raido stars of today do—he formed his own company. He felt that the time had come for all the lettuce to go into his pocket instead of the bottomless depths of the Master Showmans bank account. Perhaps, as well might be, he had grown tired of the hard road life of the Big Top, Even though he and Mrs. Tom were pampered stars, it was a wearying existence for such little people. They were both less than three feet high, but perfectly formed and with all the bright mentality of smart actors.
The Tom Thumb company toured the entire country by railroad trains instead of by P.T.B’s jolting circus wagons and they made a lot of money. This was inevitable, because they were not only already familiar friends to the citizens of almost every village and farm, not to mention the cities. Everybody went to the circus in those days and the Tom Thumbs were Barnum’s best show bet at that time. Moreover, they had the continuing publicity of P.T.B.’s peerless brand of flamboyant advertising which they did not scruple to steal and and improve.
An example of this introduced the troupe to Norwood on October 2G, 1879- The Major had picked up an extremely diminutive Leprechaun whom he used as his coachman. This manikin was dressed from top to toe in a complete coachman’s uniform. His job was to drive a wee coach seating two, which was fitted with every feature of a full-sized, standard coach and lined with rich Spanish leather- It
was drawn by as small a Shetland pony as the Major could obtain.
The play was to have this equipage meet the train at the railroad station of the town where the company was playing. Then when they arrived, Major Tom Thumb and Sylvia Warren Thumb would climb into the little wagon amid the cheers of the crowd and be carried to the hall where the show was to be put on. It was, of course, just a Tom Thumb refinement of Barnum’s famous circus parade and achieved the same object—excitement along the streets and a big finger pointing to the exact place where the citizens could buy their tickets.
GOT A RISE FROM FAT
So this autumn morning the small pixy coachman was waiting at the Norwood depot on Railroad avenue, for “the cars” from Boston bearing his master Being, of course, a stranger to Norwood, he approached a large, burely, red-raced Irishman who was standing on the station platform and asked, most politely, how one got to Village Hall. The Irishman, perhaps a bit near-sighted, thought he was one of the town urchins with his little puckered-up face and that he was trying to get a rise out of him. Pat did, indeed, raise his voice and told the astonished dwarf just what he thought of such actions and where lie could go—and why.
Just then the train arrived. The famous Tom Thumb company alighted and the Major and his missus drove away up Railroad avenue to Village Hall.
The son of Erwin never lived that one down as long as he lived. Mrs. Gillooiy and her photographic memory states that the visiting company was composed of Major Tom Thumb, his wife, Sylvia Warren, her sister, Minnie Warren, and a pint-sized gentleman named Commodore Nutt. We asked her where he got his rating and she replied that it must have been with a fleet of English walnut shells.
Our informant tells us the Warren girls came from an excellent family in Middleboro, Mass. They were well educated and refined with a sound musical training and melodious voices. The Major and the Commodore were both good singers and the quartette was fully able to oiler a program which compared most favorably with tat of many much taller quartette which had visited Norwood with top billing. They not only sang a large number of selections but varied the evening with these stories, jokes and recitations which were so much in favor with that era.
But the thing which stuck best in the mind of this little four teen-year-old maiden was the inevitable closing act of the freak-and-side-show-tent—the sale of photographs.
Those who can remember the layout of old Vilage Hall will recall that its seats were the old-fashioned-settees divided into a middle aisle and side isles at right and left. At this Tom Thumb show, planks had been laid on top of the settees at the left and right of the middle aisle, forming two runways from the stage. The modern burlesque shows were a long while in stealing this old stunt.
Down these two runways came Sylvia and Minnie Warren in their beautiful, and ultra-fashionable dresses with long, sweeping trains graceful draped over the ladies’ arms. Thus they, with the Motor and Commodore following, sold the the same photographs of the Major and Sylvia which we reproduce with this story Mrs. Gillooly says she can still feel the thrill she received when she took hers from the tiny hand of the illustrious Major’s minute help-mate.
(All articles originally published in the Norwood Messenger)