Celebrated Giants

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
by George M. Gould, M.D., Walter L. Pyle, M.D.

(Page 10 of 32)

Mention of some of the most famous giants will be made, together with any associate points of interest.

Becanus, physician to Charles V, says that he saw a youth 9 feet high and a man and a woman almost 10 feet. Ainsworth says that in 1553 the Tower of London was guarded by three brothers claiming direct descent from Henry VIII, and surnamed Og, Gog, and Magog, all of whom were over 8 feet in height. In his "Chronicles of Holland" in 1557 Hadrianus Barlandus said that in the time of John, Earl of Holland, the giant Nicholas was so large that men could stand under his arms, and his shoe held 3 ordinary feet.

Among the yeoman of the guard of John Frederick, Duke of Hanover, there was one Christopher Munster, 8 1/2 feet high, who died in 1676 in his forty-fifth year. The giant porter of the Duke of Wurtemberg was 7 1/2 feet high. "Big Sam," the porter at Carleton Palace, when George IV was Prince of Wales, was 8 feet high. The porter of Queen Elizabeth, of whom there is a picture in Hampton Court, painted by Zucchero, was 7 1/2 feet high; and Walter Parson, porter to James I, was about the same height. William Evans, who served Charles I, was nearly 8 feet; he carried a dwarf in his pocket.

In the seventeenth century, in order to gratify the Empress of Austria, Guy-Patin made a congress of all the giants and dwarfs in the Germanic Empire. A peculiarity of this congress was that the giants complained to the authorities that the dwarfs teased them in such a manner as to make their lives miserable.

Plater speaks of a girl in Basle, Switzerland, five years old, whose body was as large as that of a full-grown woman and who weighed when a year old as much as a bushel of wheat. He also mentions a man living in 1613, 9 feet high, whose hand was 1 foot 6 inches long. Peter van den Broecke speaks of a Congo negro in 1640 who was 8 feet high. Daniel, the porter of Cromwell, was 7 feet 6 inches high; he became a lunatic.

Frazier speaks of Chilian giants 9 feet tall. There is a chronicle which says one of the Kings of Norway was 8 feet high. Merula says that in 1538 he saw in France a Flemish man over 9 feet. Keysler mentions seeing Hans Brau in Tyrol in 1550, and says that he was nearly 12 feet high.

Jonston mentions a lad in Holland who was 8 feet tall. Pasumot mentions a giant of 8 feet.

Edmund Mallone was said to have measured 7 feet 7 inches. Wierski, a Polander, presented to Maximilian II, was 8 feet high. At the age of thirty-two there died in 1798 a clerk of the Bank of England who was said to have been nearly 7 1/2 feet high. The Daily Advertiser for February 23, 1745, says that there was a young colossus exhibited opposite the Mansion House in London who was 7 feet high, although but fifteen years old. In the same paper on January 31, 1753, is an account of MacGrath, whose skeleton is still preserved in Dublin. In the reign of George I, during the time of the Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield, there was exhibited an English man seventeen years old who was 8 feet tall.

Nicephorus tells of Antonius of Syria, in the reign of Theodosius, who died at the age of twenty-five with a height of 7 feet 7 inches. Artacaecas, in great favor with Xerxes, was the tallest Persian and measured 7 feet. John Middleton, born in 1752 at Hale, Lancashire, humorously called the "Child of Hale," and whose portrait is in Brasenose College, Oxford, measured 9 feet 3 inches tall. In his "History of Ripton," in Devonshire, 1854, Bigsby gives an account of a discovery in 1687 of a skeleton 9 feet long. In 1712 in a village in Holland there died a fisherman named Gerrit Bastiaansen who was 8 feet high and weighed 500 pounds. During Queen Anne's reign there was shown in London and other parts of England a most peculiar anomaly - a German giantess without hands or feet who threaded a needle, cut gloves, etc.

About 1821 there was issued an engraving of Miss Angelina Melius, nineteen years of age and 7 feet high, attended by her page, Senor Don Santiago de los Santos, from the Island of Manilla, thirty-live years old and 2 feet 2 inches high. "The Annual Register" records the death of Peter Tuchan at Posen on June 18, 1825, of dropsy of the chest. He was twenty-nine years old and 8 feet 7 inches in height; he began to grow at the age of seven. This monster had no beard; his voice was soft; he was a moderate eater. There was a giant exhibited in St. Petersburg, June, 1829, 8 feet 8 inches in height, who was very thin and emaciated.

Dr. Adam Clarke, who died in 1832, measured a man 8 feet 6 inches tall. Frank Buckland, in his "Curiosities of Natural History," says that Brice, the French giant, was 7 feet 7 inches. Early in 1837 there was exhibited at Parma a young man formerly in the service of the King of the Netherlands who was 8 feet 10 inches high and weighed 401 pounds. Robert Hale, the "Norfolk Giant," who died in Yarmouth in 1843 at the age of forty-three, was 7 feet 6 inches high and weighed 452 pounds. The skeleton of Cornelius McGrath, now preserved in the Trinity College Museum, Dublin, is a striking example of gigantism. At sixteen years he measured 7 feet 10 inches.

O'Brien or Byrne, the Irish giant, was supposed to be 8 feet 4 inches in height at the time of his death in 1783 at the age of twenty-two. The story of his connection with the illustrious John Hunter is quite interesting. Hunter had vowed that he would have the skeleton of O'Brien, and O'Brien was equally averse to being boiled in the distinguished scientist's kettle. The giant was tormented all his life by the constant assertions of Hunter and by his persistence in locating him. Finally, when, following the usual early decline of his class of anomalies, O'Brien came to his death-bed, he bribed some fishermen to take his body after his death to the middle of the Irish Channel and sink it with leaden weights. Hunter, it is alleged, was informed of this and overbribed the prospective undertakers and thus secured the body.