A Museum Is Trying to Find the Death Mask of Little (Very Little) Paulina Musters. Can You Help?

Do you know what happened to little Paulina Musters' death mask? The people of her hometown would like to bring the last relic of her short life home. That town is Ossendrecht in the Netherlands, a community of under 5,000. Nevertheless, they have a museum dedicated to Paulina (or Pauline) Musters. She is their most notable resident though no one in Ossendrecht ever met her. No one on earth alive today knew her as she died 130 years ago. She was once very well known and crowds came to see her across Europe and in New York, but her memory has faded with time from the public consciousness. But it hasn't faded in Ossendrecht.

Paulina was noted as a dancer, singer, gymnast and weightlifter, though that is not why she became so famous. She was known for her size. She was short. Very short. She was known then, and maybe still today, as the shortest woman who ever lived. Guinness World Records recognized her as such. I don't know whether she ever performed with Tom Thumb, but if she did, she had to look up to him. Paulina was two feet tall. Not two feet, one inch, but just 24 inches high. Today, people wouldn't go to a show to gawk at some for being very short, but times were different then. People definitely weren't “woke.”

Paulina was born in 1878. She was only 11.8 inches tall at birth and didn't grow much taller through the 17 years of her life. She was the seventh of nine children and her parents and siblings were all of typical height or a little more. Her proportions were all normal and her intelligence was high. She spoke four languages. She was not expected to survive at birth, but she confounded the experts.

Her family was poor but that all changed after Paulina arrived. People paid to see her. Her parents bought a large house and her siblings all went to fine schools. She was performing by the age of six months, and performing at that age meant lying there while people stared at her in amazement.

By the age of four she was performing at serious venues. She spent a month performing at the Folies Bergere in Paris with Russian giant Nicolai Siminoff. She was managed by her father and brought in astronomical sums of money for her time. She met with Queen Emma of the Netherlands and Wilhelm II of Germany. The Kaiser was so impressed that he had a little carriage built for her (also missing).

In 1889, her father died, but her brother-in-law took over her management. She traveled all over Europe and England, appearing in places such as the Crystal Palace. Paulina performed as “Princess Pauline.” Then, in late 1894, she got her biggest break. She was hired to perform at Proctor's theater on Broadway in New York. Doctors were concerned about the arduous journey but she went, and on December 24 began performing. She was paid $1,000 a week, the equivalent of $36,000 today.

On February 7, she caught a bad cold and had to stop performing. It was followed by bronchitis, pneumonia and meningitis. On February 15, she died. Her body was embalmed and sent home to Ossendrecht, where she was buried.

The physician who attended Paulina in her final days, Dr. J. Darwin Nagel of New York, wrote that despite her diminutive features and a weight that ranged from 7 ½ – 9 lbs., she had been in good health. However, she had a demanding schedule. Her friends traveling with her, he wrote in an article in Pediatrics, kept up her energies and an “exhausted vitality” though the use of stimulants after each performance. He continued, “It was astonishing to see what quantities of alcoholic beverages this little midget could absorb. Though not so choice about the quality, she could consume a considerable quantity of anything that tasted of liquor, her favorite beverage being champagne.” He attributed her death to her heart being weakened by “the excitement of her profession and from the quantity of alcohol that she was in the habit of taking.” Paulina, in effect, became the supporter of a large family, and the stress of the hard load on her small, young body took its toll.

Dr. Nagel offered one more comment, “After her death it was with the greatest difficulty that I received her sister's permission to take the cast of her head and arm.”

A few days back we received a message from Olga Jansz, Research Coordinator of the Museum Den Aanwas in Ossendrecht. They have been trying to locate Paulina's death mask. They have searched all over. They checked with the collection of death masks at Princeton University. They have a good collection but not Pauline's. They discovered the hospitals where Dr. Nagel worked were associated with Columbia University. They provided the article from Pediatrics No. 2 from 1896 which contained Dr. Nagel's article, but they did not have the death mask. Her family does not know it's whereabouts nor have other sources to whom they have reached out for assistance. Dr. Nagel did not say what he did with the death mask and the Museum has not been able to trace any of its history past his initial possession. Were it not for the Pediatrics article and the picture it contains, we would not even know it existed.

Paulina and her parents

If you can shed any light on this mystery, it would be of great help to the Museum Den Aanwas. A death mask is not something likely to have been tossed out, especially of a celebrity. Dr. Nagel obviously had a purpose in making this mask and he or his descendants must have done something with it. A likely scenario is that it went to a private collection or that of some university or museum. Perhaps at one time it was on display, but as memories of Paulina faded it got put into storage in a box in some backroom and remained there for years. Perhaps you may remember coming across it somewhere and can throw some light on the mystery (click on the picture in the upper left corner to enlarge the image). It would be fitting if the last image ever made of this tiny “princess” could go back to the town where she was born in a museum where she is revered. If you can help, provide any leads, or know someone who might know, please contact Olga Jansz at olga@jansz.eu