Little Women

Two years ago Professor Harold Benjamin Fantham and Dr. Annie Porter, McGill University zoologists, came upon a Quebec "family of little women" none of whom was more than four and a half feet tall. They were all well-proportioned, strong, vigorous and promiscuous. For cohabitants they invariably selected little men by whom they bred little children. This family drew a report in last week's Eugenical News.

Generatrix is Charlotte, now 56, 4 ft. 11n., "a pleasant spoken little woman [who] has had six daughters by five different fathers. She considers that she has 'done no harm to no one and I've got to live.' " She makes a meagre living with her embroidery. Her daughters, all unmarried, have seven daughters, three sons.

Zoologists Fantham and Porter "have been trying to improve their status and to keep various members out of trouble." Most exasperating are Generatrix Charlotte's twins Genevieve and Albertina, who are 25 or 26 years old, 3 ft. 11 in. tall. "No amount of coaxing, flattery or bribery will induce them to let us take photographs or to sketch them. An explanation of this dislike of photography perhaps may be that provided by Albertina. . . . She flashed on the writers and announced: 'Give you my picture? A photo? Not me! The last chap I gave my picture to showed it to the police and they run me in.' "

Albertina and Genevieve "are close companions and, while simple in many ways, exhibit a certain amount of sharpness and craftiness of an unexpected type. . . . One of these twins has an illegitimate baby girl of 2 years, but neither the other members of the family nor any outsider knows which twin is the mother. The only remark that can be elicited from the pair of them is: 'We have one baby between us."

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