The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-07-10 00:00:00

A GIANTESS.

THE last number of the American Phrenological
Journal contains a biography and sketch of the
character of Silvia Hardy, the Maine Giantess. We
make the following extract :—She was born in the
year 1825, in the village of Wilton, Franklin county,
State of Maine. Miss Hardy was, at birth, one of the
smallest of infants. Dr. Barker, of Wilton, who
attended her mother at the time, used to remark that
he had never seen anything, even of the twin kind, so
diminutive. Her twin brother died at a very early
age. Both together only weighed, we are assured,
three and a half pounds. Miss Hardy remained
a child of very ordinary size until she was twelve
years of age, when she suddenly took to growing
with a rapidity that alarmed her friends, and startled
all her acquaintances. As she had five sisters, one of
whom was older than herself, all of whom were rather
below than above the common stature of the sex, her
growth was the more surprising. At thirteen, Miss
Hardy was tall, At fourteen, she was a novelty. At

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fifteen, she was a wonder. She increased in this
extraordinary manner until she attained her twenty-
first year, when she remained stationary for about four
years. During this period of rapid growth, it was
impossible to make her clothing fit her with anything
like common accuracy. She seemed to alter each day.
She probably altered each week. The dress that
became her one month, was, therefore, useless the
next ; and thus, for nine years, it was necessary to
make all her apparel with superfluous tucks and folds,
in order to accommodate them to her condition. One
effect of this elongating process was, of course, con-
stant ill health. She was excessively thin, and could
not, under the circumstances, become any stouter.
She was so weak as to be almost unable to stand.
Her bones could not strengthen in substance suf-
ficiently fast for their continued expansion, and so
grew painfully brittle. In attempting to walk, there-
fore, one day, she fell to the ground and fractured her
leg seriously. Nature, however, in the celerity of her
physical developments, soon remedied the evil, and
thus the cause subsequently aided in the cure. Miss
Hardy is now thirty years of age. She has grown
about seven inches since she was twenty-one, and is
nearly eight feet high at the present moment. She
weighs three hundred and forty-six pounds, is mas-
sively proportioned, robust, matronly in appearance,
symmetrical in figure, but inclined to stoop, (as most
tall people are) a habit acquired in her native village,
where her gigantic height subjected her to a scrutiny
on the part of strangers, most annoying to her bashful
nature. Her features are large. The expression of
her face, if not handsome, is amiable ; her disposition
is mild and gentle, to a pleasing degree, Her voice
is somewhat coarse, but not unmusical. Her move-
ments are easy and graceful; although, having never
before left her village home, she is as yet unso-
phisticated in fashionable ways, and moves and acts
with a timidity that a little more acquaintance with
public life will readily remove. She is certainly one
of the most wonderful natural phenomena of the age."