Fred Roper and his wonder midgets.

This is a souvenir postcard printed in black on white card showing Fred Roper standing at the front of a line of 28 midgets in front of a half-timbered 'midget town' theatrical front. Potted ferns hang above from a glass ceiling above. Fred Roper and the troupe had enjoyed twelve years of success putting on vaudeville shows in Britain and South Africa during the 1920s and 1930s, moving to America for Morris Gest's "Midget Town" at the 1939 World's Fair in New York with its full strength of thirty midgets, three ponies, and two baby elephants, having two prosperous summers at the Fair, filling in the intervening winter with vaudeville dates before fortunes began to take a tumble. The troupe were part of a heritage dating from the Victorian and Edwardian freak shows which were very popular, travelling around the country putting on shows in local theatres. In addition to very small people there would have been others who were extremely fat, thin, tall or with various sorts of physical deformity (Siamese twins etc.) as well as full body tattoos, the most poular incorporating disability with novelty performances. Circuses and carnivals would have had tents where the 'performers' would sit and be stared at by the viewing public as they passed through. Souvenir postcards were a way of the shows making more money and give us a record today of growth and weight disorders at the time, as well as other physical disabilities.