Admiral Dot
{{short description|American circus performer}}
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| image =Leopold_Kahn_(cropped).jpg
| caption =Admiral Dot c. 1860-1870
| birth_name =Leopold S. Kahn
| birth_date = 1859 or 1863
| birth_place = San Francisco, California, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date|1918|10|28}}
| death_place =White Plains, New York, US
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| spouse =Lottie Naomi Swartwood
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Admiral Dot (1859 or 1863 – October 28, 1918), born Leopold S. Kahn, was a dwarf performer for P. T. Barnum.
Biography
He was born in 1859 or 1863 in San Francisco to Gabriel Kahn and his wife Caroline. His mother gave birth to ten children, of which three survived. His two dwarf brothers were known as Major Atom and General Pin, born 1881. Their mother was declared insane and jailed after trying to drown General Pin when he was two years old.{{cite news |title=A Midget's Demented Mother |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1883/07/31/113296763.pdf |newspaper=The New York Times|date=July 26, 1883 |accessdate=2011-09-09 }}
Barnum wrote: "During the week we spent in seeing San Francisco and its suburbs [in 1869], I discovered a dwarf more diminutive than General Tom Thumb was when first I found him, and so handsome, well-formed and captivating, that I could not resist the temptation to engage him. I gave him the soubriquet of Admiral Dot, dressed him in complete Admiral's uniform, and invited the editors of the San Francisco journals to visit him in the parlours of the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Immediately there was an immense furore, and Woodward's Gardens, where "Dot" was exhibited for three weeks before going east, was daily thronged with crowds of his curious fellow citizens, under whose very eyes he had lived so long undiscovered."{{cite book |author=Phineas Taylor Barnum |author-link=Phineas Taylor Barnum |title=The Recollections of P.T. Barnum |year=1880 |page=307 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVwBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA306 }}
Starting in 1877, he performed with the American Lilliputian Company. In the 1890s, he toured with Adam Forepaugh's circus.{{cite book |author=John Springhall |author-link=John Springhall |title=The genesis of mass culture: show business live in America, 1840 to 1940 |year=2008 |publisher=Macmillan |page=43 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iv_YcdAV21IC&pg=PA42 |isbn=978-0-230-60449-0 }}
He married dwarf Lottie Naomi Swartwood on August 14, 1892. They had two children: a daughter, Hazel Kahn Golden (1892-1918) and a son, Gabriel Kahn (1896-1982).{{cite news |title=A Wedding Of Midgets. Admiral Dot Kahn and Lottie Naomi Swartwood Married |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1892/08/15/archives/a-wedding-of-midgets-admiral-dot-kahn-and-lottie-naomi-swartwood.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 15, 1892 |accessdate=2011-09-09 }} He died of the 1918 influenza pandemic at his home in White Plains, New York on October 28, 1918, aged 59 years.{{cite news |title=Admiral Dot Dying of Pneumonia |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/10/26/97037566.pdf |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 26, 1918 |accessdate=2009-07-24 }}
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Barnum}}
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Category:American male entertainers
Category:Entertainers with dwarfism
Category:Year of birth uncertain
Category:Deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic in New York (state)
Category:People from San Francisco
Category:American people with disabilities
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