ARTHUR MOLL AS "ARTIE ATHERTON"
"On the platform to your left we have Artie Atherton, the living skeleton.  Artie weighs as much as a good-sized New Jersey mosquito.  He is so thin that when he takes a bath he is afraid to pull the plug out.  Last night, one lady wanted to borrow him for a hatpin."
on crutches until he was seventeen."  Though he was very frail he nevertheless enjoyed good health.  Around 1911 he married a normal size woman, Blanche (reportedly the circus snake charmer),  and had two children - Adelaide "Addie" and Harold.  In 1916 a news article appeared about the Atherton clan in an Indiana newspaper.  Apparently, a "beautiful baby" contest had been held in New York and little Addie was the winner. A woman onlooker remarked "that's the result of having eugenic parents".  (The science of eugenics was a hot topic in those years.  It's modern equivalent is genetic counseling).  Noting that Mama Atherton was a healthy good-looking woman the lady continued, "Id like to see (her husband). He's as big as a house and strong as an ox, I'll bet - a policeman probably."  Just then angular Artie walked up, gave his wife a buss, took his children by the hand and calmly walked away leaving the onlooker and the eugenics movement with egg on their faces and something to think about!
    "Artie died in his home state of Michigan in 1920 from injuries he sustained when he was struck by an automobile.
Artie was born 1889 in Saginaw, Michigan and was active in show business from 1909 till about 1920.  He appeard with Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey's, at Coney Island's Dreamland Circus Sideshow and was even seen at the Palace of Amusement at Riverview park.  His promoters proclaimed:  "his weight is 38 pounds; he measures 3 3/4 inches around the biceps; 16 inches around the waist; 6 1/2 inches around the thigh, wears a number 3 shoe and a number 6 glove. At birth he weighed two pounds.  He had to be carried about on a pillow until he was six, was wheeled in an invalid chair until he was ten, and walked