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A real-life Tyrion Lannister

In Kingsnorth Gardens is this statue of Sir Jeffrey Hudson. He was an English dwarf at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria and commonly known as "The Queen's Dwarf" or "Lord Minimus". He fought with the Royalists in the English Civil War and fled with the Queen to France but was expelled from her court when he killed a man in a duel with pistols. He was captured by Barbary pirates and spent 25 years as a slave in North Africa before being returned to England. Apparently he was given to a French Queen inside a pie and may once have been employed as a spy.

 

You can read more about his interesting life and see a portrait of him with the queen here

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Hudson

 

He looks like just a boy in the painting to me, he must have been very young then.

 

Hudson was in fact a midget rather than a dwarf, i.e. a proportionate dwarf, a person with normal proportions but who has an abnormally short stature. It’s likely that he suffered from a growth hormone deficiency caused by a pituitary gland disorder. Back in the 17th century the word ‘dwarf’ was used to describe both a ‘dwarf’ and a ‘midget’.

 

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Uploaded on November 22, 2019
Taken on November 22, 2019