It is thought that the smallest living woman is Miss Isabella Pinder, of Spanish Wells, on the Bahama Islands. She is 35 years of age, 36 inches tall, and weighs less than 50 pounds. She is said to be perfectly formed. She is now visiting her cousin, “General” Abe Sawyer, who is 31 years old, 41 inches tall and weighs 55 pounds.
Well, Miss Pinder doesn’t have much of a web presence, and there are a couple of other sources that indicate she may not have been so small after all.
For instance, Mr Samuel MacMillan of Washington County, Pennsylvania records the “smallest woman in the county” (Louisa Armstrong Interment Hickory) at 2 feet 6 inches, stating that in 1911 she was 59. Therefore, in 1895 (at 43 years of age) she was smaller than Miss Pinder.
Another erroneous “smallest woman” was Miss Lizzie Forbes of Humbolt County, California, reported by The Ferndale Enterprise as a story from the San Francisco Examiner in 1896.
Now that we have the Guiness World Records, you’d think we’d know for sure who the smallest living woman is. However, the GWR site doesn’t have an entry for that category, so I don’t know if this woman in South Africa is truly the smallest. The Short Persons Support website seems to think so.
One of the smallest women living at this time (mid-1895) was Mercy Lavinia Bump, wife of “General Tom Thumb.” Hmmm… is it a coincidence that Miss Pinder was visiting her cousin “General Abe”?