2-798-748 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bushman Children, Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, 1845. San children being exhibited as curiosities in London. 'Two Bushmen...Children have lately been brought from the interior of Africa...the female is thirty two inches high, and eight years old; and the male only forty four inches in height, though nearly full grown, and sixteen years of age. They wear the dress of their tribe (Hottentots); they throw a spear, dance, &c; the Bushman, as a Corporal of the Army, goes through the Manual and Platoon Exercises; and the Bush girl appears as a Soldier's Wife; and their several feats are very amusing. Their parents are stated to have been murdered by Kaffirs, who pursue and exterminate the Bushman Tribe with unrelenting ferocity: they were rescued by a Dutch Trader...We hope they may here receive many visitors...to the Ethnographers, in a scientific point of view, these specimens of a "pigmy race" maybe especially interesting'. From "Illustrated London News", 1845, Vol VII.