Anna Haining Bates
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Image:Anna Swan with her parents.jpg 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 feet 5 and a half inches tall. She had to be rescued from a fire at Barnum's museum in July 1865. Anna reportedly weighed almost 400 pounds at the time. The stairs were in flames and she was too large to escape through a window, but 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.
When visiting a circus in Halifax with which Martin Van Buren Bates — another enormously tall person — was travelling, she was spotted by the promoter and hired on the spot. The giant couple became a touring sensation and eventually fell in love and married. 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 was still born and was reportedly the same size as her mother at her birth, and the other, a boy survived a day, after a difficult birth (he was the largest newborn ever recorded, at 10.6 kg, or 22 pounds and 28 inches tall). Anna recovered from this and returned to touring. 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 ever 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. One was sent that was standard size, believing that the wire was mistake. Bates wired them again telling them it wasn't a mistake and that his first wire was correct. Due to this the funeral had to be delayed. Anna was buried not far from her son and sister Maggie, who passed away from Tubercolosis in the spring of 1875 aged 22.
