Court dwarf
[1] Julia, the niece of Augustus, had a dwarf named Conopas 2 feet 4 inches (0.71 m) high, and a freed-maid Andromeda who measured the same.
Emperor Wu Di, who reigned during the Western Han dynasty, imported numerous dwarfs to act as slaves and jesters.
[5] As the courts of Europe were constantly competing not only in politics but also in terms of representation, the rulers and nobles tried to command as many dwarfs as possible.
A favourite dwarf of Peter the Great received a state funeral including miniature horses and a "small priest".
He is said to have been put to strange use in the French Revolution—passing in and out of Paris as an infant in a nurse's arms, but with dispatches, dangerous to carry, in Richebourg's baby-wrappings.
Of historically documented English dwarfs, the first appears to be John Jarvis 2 feet (0.61 m), who was a page to Queen Mary I.
The little fellow followed the fortunes of the court in the English Civil War, and is said to have been a captain of horse, earning the nickname of "strenuous Jeffrey" for his activity.
[6] He fought two duels—one with a turkey-cock,[clarification needed] a battle recorded by Davenant, and a second with Mr Crofts, who came to the meeting with a squirt gun, but who in the more serious encounter which ensued was shot dead by little Hudson, who fired from horseback, the saddle putting him on a level with his antagonist.
Twice was Jeffrey made prisoner—once by the Dunkirkers as he was returning from France, whither he had been on homely business for the Queen; the second time was when he fell into the hands of Turkish pirates.
His sufferings during this latter captivity made him, he declared, grow, and in his thirtieth year, having been of the same height since he was nine, he steadily increased until he was 3 feet 9 inches (1.14 m).
Gibson was from Cumberland and began his career as a page, first in a "gentle", next in the royal family, died in 1690, in his seventy-fifth year, and is buried in St Paul's, Covent Garden.
Of European court dwarfs, the most famous were those of Philip IV of Spain, the hunchbacks whose features have been painted by Diego Velázquez.
She was far from the only one, and the Queen's Household employed several, among them Juana de Aunon, the sisters Genoveva and Catalina Bazan and Bernarda Blasco.
[12] The Polish princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526–1583), married to the Swedish John III, duke of Finland and later king of Sweden, had a close confidante in Dorothea Ostrelska, a dwarf woman.
Court dwarfs were a part of the Swedish Royal Court during the entire 17th-century, often as jesters, and several are noted, such as "Narrinnan Elisabet" ('Elisabet the Female Jester'), employed with queen Maria Eleonora, Annika Kollberg (or 'Little Midget Annika') employed with queen Hedvig Eleonora,[13] and Anders Luxemburg with Charles XII of Sweden.
The court dwarfs were normally not given wages but only clothing, food and room: however, in individual cases some of them, such as the African court dwarf Carl Ulrich, could be given schooling and training in a proper occupation and formally employed as chamber servants or stable boys and thus given proper wages,[14] and at least one, Anders Been, was ennobled.
