The Story of the Gnome Fly Part 3 - the final days of Hervio Nano; Harvey Leach (1801-1847)

Leach fell on hard times after the fire at the Bowery Theatre as other than Thomas Hamblin no one in the US seemed willing to engage him. It was almost certainly during this time that he approached P.T. Barnum in New York, proposing to the famous showman that he exhibit him in London, the stipulation on location presumably being a way of paying his passage back to England. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Leach and Barnum already knew each other, Leach supposedly being one of the exhibits at Scudders American Museum in New York when Barnum took it over in 1841. I cannot trace a primary source to confirm this but Leach was in America for at least part of 1841, appearing as the Gnome-fly, so it is a possibility that he also appeared at Scudder’s. Barnum recounts his 1845 meeting with Leach in The Life of P. T. Barnum Written by Himself: On the same visit to New-York, I was called upon by "Hervio Nano," who was known to the public as the "gnome fly," and was also celebrated for…