There was a Polish gentleman named Joseph Borwilaski, born in
1739 who was famed all over Europe. He became quite a scholar,
speaking French and German fairly well. In 1860, at the age of
twenty-two, and 28 inches in height, he married a woman of
ordinary stature, who bore him two infants well conformed. He was
exhibited in many countries, and finally settled at Durham,
England, where he died in 1837 at the almost incredible age of
ninety-eight, and is buried by the side of the Falstaffian
Stephen Kemble. Mary Jones of Shropshire, a dwarf 32 inches tall
and much deformed, died in 1773 at the age of one hundred. These
two instances are striking examples of great age in dwarfs and
are therefore of much interest. Borwilaski's parents were tall in
stature and three of his brothers were small; three of the other
children measured 5 feet 6 inches. Diderot has written a history
of this family.
Richeborg, a dwarf only 23 inches in height, died in Paris in
1858 aged ninety years. In childhood he had been a servant in the
House of Orleans and afterward became their pensioner. During the
Revolution he passed in and out of Paris as an infant in a
nurse's arms, thus carrying dispatches memorized which might have
proved dangerous to carry in any other manner.
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