Anna Haining Bates
 |
Anna Haining Bates with her parents |
Anna Haining Bates,
born Anna Haining Swan (
August 6,
1846 –
August 5,
1888), was a
Canadian from
Mill Brook,
New Annan, (near present-day
Tatamagouche),
Colchester County,
Nova Scotia famed for her great height. She reportedly weighed 18 pounds when she was born and was twenty-seven inches long. Her parents were of average height and were
Scottish immigrants.
Anna was the 3rd of 13 children, all also of around average height. From birth she grew very fast. On her 4th birthday she was 4 feet 6 inches tall and at the age of six she was 5 foot 2 inches tall, exactly the same height as her mother. On her 10th birthday she stood just over six feet tall and by the age of 15 Anna Swan was a foot taller, being measured at seven feet. She was discovered in
1863 by
P.T. Barnum, by which time she had reached her full height of 7 foot 5 and a half inches tall. He first heard of her through a
Quaker.
She had to be rescued from a fire at Barnum's museum in July
1865. Anna weighed almost 400 pounds at the time or 28 stones. The stairs were in flames but she was too large to escape through a window. Employees of the museum found a loft derrick nearby, smashed the wall around a window on the third floor, and lowered the giantess by block and tackle with 18 men holding the end of the rope. Anna was taken to a hotel where she was sedated.
When visiting a circus in
Halifax with which
Martin Van Buren Bates — another enormously tall person — was travelling, Anna was spotted by the promoter and hired on the spot. The giant couple became a touring sensation and eventually fell in love and, on
17 June 1871 in
London, they married. They had two children, one born in May
1872 and the other in January
1879. The first was a girl and reportedly the same size as her mother at her birth. She was still-born. The other was a boy. He survived only a day, after a difficult birth (he was the largest newborn ever recorded, at 10.6 kg, or 22 pounds and 28 inches tall). To help take their minds off their baby's death, they rejoined touring with W.W. Cole in the
summer of
1879, and again in the
spring of
1880 for their final tour.
Anna died suddenly on
5 August 1888 in
Seville,
Ohio, just one day before her 42nd birthday. After his wife's
death, Captain Bates wired
Cleveland, Ohio, for a coffin. A standard size coffin was sent as it was believed that the wire was mistake. Furious about this, Bates wired them again telling them it wasn't a mistake and that his first wire was correct. The
funeral had to be delayed. Anna was buried not far from her son and sister Maggie, who died from
Tubercolosis in the spring of
1875 aged 22.
Bates took no chances with his funeral, and kept his coffin in a barn for when he died in January
1919. The Bates and their children are buried in Mound Hill Cemetery,
Seville, Ohio.
*
List of famous tall women*
Anna Swan, Nova Scotia's Remarkable Giantess*
A giant of a woman: Anna Haining Swan*
Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online*
A photograph of Swan
