Phrenology chart for M. Lavinia Warren, dated June 29, 1871. The full title is "A Phrenological Chart and Analysis of the Character and Talents of [....] Given by J. Hume." Lavinia Warren was a little person and entertainer, more commonly known by her stage name, "Mrs. General Tom Thumb." Phrenology was a pseudoscience involving the study of people's heads, specifically the measurements of the skull and "cranial morphology" or bumps on the head, which were thought to define a person's character traits and intellectual abilities, even determining criminal tendencies. Phrenology was very popular in the latter half of the 1800s; it is discounted as quackery today. This chart functioned like a form that the phrenologist filled out, assigning points to traits in a list. A legend explaining the meaning of the numbers is at the bottom of the chart. Lavinia Warren had the phrenological examination done in Liverpool, England, while she was on a three-year world tour. She and her husband, Charles S. Stratton (Gen. Tom Thumb), her sister Minnie Warren, and another little person performer, George Washington Morrison Nutt (Commodore Nutt) traveled around the world, giving hundreds of performances. It is unknown if she sought out the phrenological examination from personal interest, or had it done for publicity or performance purposes. M. Lavinia Warren was a well known entertainer, whose career spanned the 1860s to the early 1900s. She was born Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump on October 31, 1841, in Massachusetts. She married fellow entertainer Charles S. Stratton on February 10, 1863, and following his death in 1883, she married an Italian entertainer of a similar stature, Count Primo Magri, on April 6, 1885. Warren was a schoolteacher originally but soon began her performance career on a river boat at a time when exhibiting people with dwarfism was profitable. Warren signed with showman P. T. Barnum at age 21, along with her younger sister Minnie (Huldah) Warren, who also had dwarfism. After her marriage to Stratton the two toured the country and around the world giving performances, becoming America's first international celebrity couple. During Warren's second marriage, she and her husband also toured for many years and later operated a roadside stand in Middleboro, Massachusetts, her birthplace. Lavinia Warren Stratton Magri died on November 25, 1919, and was buried beside Stratton at Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
