Tom Thumb

the hero of a nursery tale found among the stories of the French writer, Charles Perrault, although it is claimed that the story was of Anglo-Saxon origin. Tom is the son of a poor woodsman and his wife. The child is scarcely larger than his mother's thumb, and is therefore named Tom Thumb. He has many adventures, in one of which he is swallowed by a cow. The name General Tom Thumb was given to Charles Stratton, a famous dwarf exhibited in 1842 and subsequent years by P. T. Barnum. See Perrault