SKELETONS OF GIANTS IN MUSEUMS. – There is evidently a natural determination of giants towards the museum. The most striking object the eye meets on entering the first large room is the skeleton of the Irish giant O’Bryan. His fate was a memorable example of how vain is the struggle men of such extravagant development wage against the anatomist. Poor O’Bryan who drank himself to death, evidently had a presentiment of the manner in which his body would be disposed of; and he tried to avert it by directing that his body should be sunk in the deep, and in order to provide for this disposition of it two men were provided to watch it until the time for the burial came. But Hunter could not bring himself to let slip such an opportunity to acquire such a “specimen,” and he attempted to bribe the wretches by offering them £100 for it. His eagerness was too apparent, however, and these trustworthy individuals managed to raise the price to £800. The prize obtained, Hunter sent it home in his own carriage, and fearing, lest it should be claimed, immediately dismembered and boiled it. – Once a Week.
– Dundee People’s Journal, Saturday 8th December, 1860, p.4.
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In the chapter immediately following is a dissertation regarding the strength of ancient towns, and the comparative sizes of men in ancient times and in the present day, suggested by the evil report brought by the majority of the spies. The following are Dr Kitto’s opinions regarding the giants:-
“As to the giants, if we be asked whether the race of men were, in early times, taller than at present, we must answer frankly that we do not know. No facts in favour of that conclusion have been found. All the facts in history, and art, and human discovery, are against, rather than for, that notion, and tend to shew that the stature of men in general has not been greater than at present, within any period to which any kinds of monuments extend. What may be said to be, at the first view, the most striking argument in its support, is the impression that the stature of men in the olden time may have borne some proportion to the duration of their lives. But the supposition rests on an analogy which has no foundation in nature, for it is not seen that long lived animals are generally larger than short-lived ones; and if the conjecture had all the force that could be assigned to it, it would not account for the Canaanites, or any tribes of them, being taller than the Israelites or than the Egyptians, who were their contemporaries; seeing that among them all, the average duration of life, for aught that appears, was the same.
“But if we are asked, Whether there might not be gigantic races, which, however originated, increased and multiplied? we answer, Yes – because the Scripture affirms it in the case before us, and in other cases; and because the fats of human experience are in favour of it. We see that stature is somewhat influenced by climate, and that men are taller generally in moist and temperate climes than in those which are very hot, or very cold, or very dry; and it is on record that tall parents have tall children born to them; and if they cared, by their intermarriages, to present the distinction, they might keep up a race of giants; but not generally caring for this, the stature of their descendants dwindles, sooner or later, down to the common standard. Such races the Anakim, and others mentioned in Scripture, seem to have been. In this case their descent from a single giant, of the name Anak, is repeatedly recorded. This race seems to have been rather numerous at the time under notice, but in the course of the four following centuries had declined so much, probably by intermarriages with persons of common stature, that only a few individuals remained, and they were all destroyed by David and his worthies. As Goliath, whom David slew, was of this race, his stature, which may be taken at about nine feet, is a good measure by which to estimate that of the Anakim, whose appearance so alarmed the Israelites. It is clear that the explorers only mean to describe these, and perhaps one or two other races, as of extraordinary stature, for, in their first statement, they carefully distinguish the Anakim as those whose appearances alarmed them; and although, in the second statement, they generalise the special instance into the designation of “the inhabitants,” they still indicate that it was the Anakim whose appearance had filled them with dismay. All that we can safely gather from these facts is, that the ancients, accustomed to venerate the appearance or reality of physical dignity and prowess – were careful to perpetuate and multiply the distinctions of this kind that from time to time arose in every land. Hence the races of giants of which we read in ancient history, and of which some existed in Palestine.
– Kelso Chronicle, Friday 15th May, 1863, p.3.
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GIANTS. – There is but little material to fill up the history of a gigantology between the men of renown and the giants of romance. The gentle giants shared the fate of all out-grown superstitions. They were shunned, however, before they were laughed at. They were still dreaded before they were exhibited as shows. They did not begin to lose caste until they gave over living in castles. A giant, who could take Salisbury Plain in six strides, and regardless of rinderpest, devour a herd of oxen for breakfast – who kept a lovely lady a prisoner, and made her cook stray human visitors for his supper – this was a description of creature still likely to cause some little sensation, in his own neighbourhood, at all events. But a giant in a caravan was quite another matter. Instead of ramping and raging about the country, he was uncomfortably jolted along country lanes in what used to be irreverently called a travelling tea-kettle; he was never let out during the day, lest the attraction of the “show” should become diminished; he was afraid of his owner, very likely beaten by his wife (if he had one), and at night he slept on a bunker full of boa-constrictors, when not kept awake by the scratching of the armadillo. – The Reader.
– Glasgow Herald, Wednesday 18th October, 1865, p.3.
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THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS.
Among many other strange things, our unlettered ancestors believed in the past existence of those tall fellows, giants (individually, or even collectively as nations), quite as implicitly as they, worthy folks, did in the pranks and appearances of contemporary witches and ghosts; but even among the learned a more than tacit belief in a defunct class of beings, whose bulk and stature far exceeded those of common humanity, found full sway until the beginning of the present century.
A love of the marvellous is strong; and even Buffon, the eminent naturalist, fell into the old and vague delusion that “there were giants in those days,” and he made the bones of an elephant to figure as the remains of a man of vast stature.
With Scripture as a basis to their assertions, it was difficult, no doubt, for the over-learned, and still more for the unlearned, of past times to subdue their belief in the existence of such foes as were encountered by our old friend Jack of gallant memory – veritable giants, tall as steeples, to whom such men as Big Sam of the Black Watch, O’Brien the Irish giant (whose skeleton is in the museum of the College of Surgeons), even the King of Prussia’s famous grenadiers, and the girl fifteen years old and more than seven feet high, “who was presented to their Majesties at Dresden,” were all as pigmies and Lilliputians by comparison.
The Bible gives us four distinct races of giants, the chief of whom were the Anakims, or sons of Anak, the people of the chosen land, to which Moses was to lead the children of Israel, who were unto them but as grasshoppers in size. Og, the king of this tall race and of Bashan, however, if judged by the measurement of the present day, was not taller than eight feet six inches, as his brazen bedstead measured just nine Jewish cubits; but the Rabbis maintain that the bed described was only his cradle when an infant. The Anakims are referred to in the fifth chapter of the Koran, which speaks of Jericho as a city inhabited by giants. The father of Og is also asserted to have been of stature so great, that he escaped the Flood by – wading!
When told (as we are) in I Samuel that Goliath was in height six cubits and a span, that his coat of mail weighed five thousand shekels of brass, that the staff of his spear was a weaver’s beam, and that its head weighed six hundred shekels of iron, it was difficult for the simple people of past days, when, in some remote cavern or river’s bed, or fallen chalk cliff, the monster bones of the elephant, the mastodon, or the rhinoceros came unexpectedly to light, not to believe that there might have been many Goliaths in the world once.
Josephus records that in his time there were to be seen in Gaza, Gath, and Azoth the tombs of those mighty men of old, the sons of Anak, who had been slain when Joshua marched into the land of Canaan, and slew the people of Hebron and Dabir.
According to the Moslems, even Joshua was a man of prodigious stature; and the highest mountain on the shores of the Bosphorus is at this hour called by the Turks the Grave of Joshua – Juscha Taghi – or the Giant’s Mountain.
Tradition ascribes the origin of the name of Antwerp to a giant whose abode was in the woody swamps through which the Scheldt then wandered to the German Sea, and who used to cut off the hands and feet of those who displeased him; “and to prove this” (vide Atlas Geographus, 1711) “they show there a tooth, which they pretend to be his. It is a hand’s-breadth long, and weighs six ounces. Moreover, the city has hands cut off as part of its arms.”
Giants figure largely among the earlier fables of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, the two latter contending still for the nationality of the famous
“Finn MacCoul,
Wha dung the deil, and gart him yowl.”
and who, by the famous causeway of his own construction, could cross the Irish Channel to Britain whenever he chose.
Fiannam is probably the same personage. He is said to have lived in the time of Ewen II. of Scotland, a protentate who, according to Buchanan, “reigned in the year before Christ 77, and was a good and civil king;” and local story connects with his name the Giant’s Chair, a rock above the river Dullen, in the parish of Mortlach.
England, too, is not without traces of some interest in the sons of Anak. We have the Giant’s Grave, a long and grassy ridge in the beautiful Fairy Glen at Hawkstone, in Salop; another place so named on the coast of Bristol, and a third at Penrith, where two stone pillars in the churchyard, standing fifteen feet asunder at the opposite ends of a grave, and covered with runes or unintelligible carving, mark the size and tomb of Owen Cæsarius. Near these pillars is a third stone, called the Giant’s Thumb.
Two miles below Brougham Castle, on the steep banks of the Eamont, are two excavations in the rock, having traces of a door and window, and of a strong column indented with iron; and these caves are assigned by tradition to a giant, who bore the classic name of Isis.
The vast stature of the Patagonians was long the subject of implicit belief, until it passed into a proverb. Antonio Pagifeta, who accompanied the adventurous Ferdinand Magellan on his famous voyage in 1519, records that on the coast of Brazil they found wild and gigantic cannibals so nimble at foot, that no man could overtake them. Bearing on thence to south latitude 40°, the land seemed all desolate and uninhabited, for they could see no living creature. At last a giant came singing and dancing towards them, and threw dust on his head. He was so tall, that the head of the Spaniard reached only to his waist. His apparel was the skin of a monstrous beast. All the inhabitants were men of the same kind, wherefore “the admiral called them Patagons.”
This absurd story was corroborated a hundred years later by Jacob le Maire, in a voyage to the same region, and by the Dutch navigator Schonten, when they relate that at Port Desire they found graves containing human skeletons from eleven to twelve feet long. However, the Spanish officers of Cordova’s squadron, by accurate measurements, reduced the utmost stature of the real Patagonian to seven feet one and a half inches, and their common height to six feet.
Premising that, of course, the great bones about to be referred to were those of the mammoth, the mastodon, and other antediluvian animals, perhaps the most amusing instance of the credulity and gullibility even of the learned in such matters was a mémoire, read seriously to the Royal Academy of Science at Rouen, in the middle of the last century, by a savan named M. le Cat.
Therein he asserted and affected to give proof that Ferragas, who was slain by Orlando, the nephew of Charlemagne, was eighteen feet in height; that Isoret, whose tomb lay near the chapel of St Pierre, in the suburbs of Paris, had been twenty feet high; and that in the city of Rouen, when digging near the convent of the Jacobins in 1509, during the reign of Louis XII., there was found in a tomb of stone a skeleton, the skull of which would hold a bushel (thirty-eight pounds weight) of corn. The shin bones were entire, and measured four feet long. On the astounding tomb was a plate of copper, bearing the epitaph, “In this grave lies the noble and puissant Lord Riccon de Valmont and his bones.” He then proceeds to tell us that Valence in Dauphiné possesses the bones of giant Buccart, tyrant of the Vivarais, whom his vassal, the Count de Cabillon, slew by a barbed arrow, the iron head of which was found in his tomb when it – with all his bones intact – was discovered in 1705, at the base of the mountain of Crussol, whereupon the giant dwelt, and whence he used to come daily to drink of the river Merderet. The skeleton when measured was twenty-two feet six inches long.
“Father Crozat assured me,” continued the veracious M. le Cat, “that the physicians who were in the train of the Princess who passed through Valence all acknowledged the bones to be human, and offered twenty-two pistoles for them.” He further appends a copy of the epitaph of this personage, forwarded to him by the same Father Crozat in 1746, and beginning, “Hæc est effigiis gigantis Baardi Vivariensis tiranni in Montis Cressoli Straatis,” &c.
This tall personage, a second whose bones were exposed by the waters of the Rhone in 1456, and a third whose skeleton, nineteen feet long, was found near Lucerne in 1577, were all jokes and swindles when occupied with others that were found in later years, particularly the remains of Teutobochus, king of the Teutones, which were discovered near the ruined castle of Chaumont in Dauphiné, in the year 1613, by some masons who were digging a well. At the depth of eighteen feet, in light sandy soil, they came upon a tomb built of brick; above it was a stone inscribed, “Teutobochus Rex.” Five years afterwards Mazurier, a surgeon, published his Histoire Véritable du Géant Teutobochus, which excited keen controversy, and brought all Paris – the Paris of Louis the Just and of Richelieu – rushing in crowds to see the bones of the mastodon, or whatever it was, whose tomb bore a royal inscription.
This king of the Teutones, who is said to have been vanquished and slain in battle a few miles from Valence, and to have been buried with all honour by Marius, his conquerer, was carefully measured, and found to be twenty-five feet six inches long, ten feet across the shoulders, and five from breast to backbone. His teeth were each the size of an ox’s foot. All France heard of this with wonder, and a belief which the anatomist Riolan sought in vain to ridicule and expose.
Sicily was peculiarly the favourite abode of giants.
At Mazarino, a town near Girgenti, they were found in 1516 the bones of a giant whose skull was like a sugar-hogshead, with teeth each five ounces in weight; and in the Val di Mazzara, thirty years after, the alleged remains of another were found, whose stature was the same!
Patrick Brydone, in his Tour to Sicily and Malta, in 1773, mentions some of these marvellous discoveries.
“In the mountain above it (il Mar Dolce) they show you a cavern where a gigantic skeleton is said to have been found; however, it fell to dust when they attempted to remove it. Fazzello says its teeth were the only part that resisted the impression of the air; that he procured two of them, and that they weighed near two ounces. There are many such stories to be met with in the Sicilian legends, as it seems to be a universal belief that this island (Sicily) was once inhabited by giants; but, although we have made diligent inquiry we have never yet been able to procure a sight of any of those gigantic bones which are said to be still preserved in many parts of the island. Had there been any foundation for this, I think it is probable they must have found their way into some of the museums. But this is not the case; nor indeed have we met with any person of sense and credibility that could say they have seen them. We had been assured at Naples that an entire skeleton, upwards of ten feet high, was preserved in the museum at Palermo; but there is no such thing there, nor I believe anywhere else in the island.”
This Palermitan giant is gravely referred to in the mémoire of M. le Cat, as well as “another thirty-three feet high, found in 1550.”
According to Plutarch, Serbonius had the grave of Antæus (the Libyan giant and antagonist of Hercules) opened in the city of Tungis, and finding this body to be “sixty cubits long, was infinitely astonished,” as well he might be, and gave orders for the tomb to be closed, but added new honours to his memory. The bones of a giant, forty-six cubits in length, were laid bare by an earthquake in Crete, as Pliny states with implicit faith; and it was disputed whether they were those of Otus, son of Neptune, who built a city in his ninth year, or of the equally fabulous Orion. But all that we have noted are over-topped by the giant found at Thessalonica in 1691, who was ninety-six feet high (as certified by M. Quoinet, consul for France), and by another found at Trapani, in Sicily – the ancient Drepanum. The latter, Boccaccio states the learned of his time to have taken for the skeleton of Polyphemus, the son of Neptune and Thoosa – the one-eyed Cyclop of the Odyssey,
“A form enormous! far unlike the race
Of human birth, in stature and in face;”
and on being measured, the bones proved to be exactly three hundred feet long! – Tinsley’s Magazine.
– Falkirk Herald, Thursday 8th December, 1870, p.6.
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–
A GIANT AT GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.
Quite a sensation has been created at the Giant’s Causeway and the districts around by the discovery of what is supposed to be the remains of a giant. The figure is carved, measures 13 feet long by 6 feet round the waist. There are six toes on the right foot, which is much larger than the other, while the other parts resemble a fully-formed human skeleton. So great has been the throng of sightseers, that admission is charged for the public to see the huge remains, which are at present lying on the lawn in front of the Causeway Hotel. The figure is apparently composed of limestone, and seems to have been embedded for a length of time in red clay. The discoverer, a Mr Fort, says he found it a short distance from the Causeway when on the search for iron ore; it was about four feet from the surface.
– Edinburgh Evening News, Thursday 1st June, 1876, p.4.
–
The details of giant-life exhibit many curious features. Contrary to expectation, and against the spirit of the old legends, our modern giants are, for the most part, persons of a singularly mild disposition, and exhibit, as a rule, the most amiable of tempers. Nature in this respect, indeed, appears to preserve a wonderful and admirable balance of power in imbuing persons of great physical development with an equable temperament; whilst the dwarfs and pigmies of our race are usually inclined to exhibit a disposition the reverse of benevolent or mild. – Gentleman’s Magazine.
– Dundee Evening Telegraph, Friday 21st September, 1877, p.4.
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A PETRIFIED GIANT. – A remarkable discovery has just been made in Colorado – namely, a petrified giant, supposed to be pre-historic. The discoverer was a Mr Conant, a merchant of many years’ standing in New York, who once represented the county of Suffolk in the State Legislature. On the 16th of September he drove out from Pueblo to a place about twenty miles distant, where he had often found petrified fish, sea turtles, serpents, and fruit. He was accompanied by his son, and while eating his luncheon under a tree, his attention was attracted by something protruding from the ground, which looked like a man’s toes. With the assistance of Mr Conart, jun., he commenced digging, and soon unearthed a petrified man of enormous size. The giant was in a reclining position, the left knee being slightly drawn up, with the left arm resting on it, while the right hand was laid across the left breast. The length of the figure is 7 feet 5½ inches, its arms 4 feet long, and the hand is 12 inches long from the wrist bone to the end of the longest finger. One foot has been broken below the toes. The other foot is quite perfect, and is thirteen inches long. The toes are somewhat flattened out. The features of the face resemble those of the Indian. The forehead recedes from the eyebrows, and the head is large. After being removed to Pueblo, the giant was taken to Colorado Springs, where he was exhibited gratuitously for three days. He was then carried to Denver, and has created intense excitement, thousands of persons flocking to see him. By a strange coincidence Mr Barnum was at Denver when the giant was found, and some people were ill-natured enough to suggest that there was some mysterious connection between the two.
– Dundee Courier, Monday 29th October, 1877, p.3.
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GIANTS IN REAL LIFE.
The following list of giants may have an interest for readers:-
Samuel McDonald, a Scotchman, nicknamed “Big Sam,” was 6ft. 10in. in height. He was footman to the Prince of Wales. Died 1802.
Alice Gordon, “Essex Giantess,” 7ft.; died 1737.
Anne Haven Swan, of Nova Scotia, 7ft.
Henry Blacker, 7ft. 4in. and most symmetrical. Born at Cuckfield, in Sussex, in 1724. Generally called the “British Giant;” was exhibited in London in 1751.
Edward Bamford, 7ft. 4in.; died 1768.
Louis Frenz, Frenchman, 7ft. 4in. His left hand is preserved in the Museum of the College of Surgeons.
Martin Salmevon, a Mexican, 7ft. 4in.
Porus, an Indian king, who fought against Alexander near the river Hydaspes, B.C. 327, was 7½ft. high, with strength in proportion.
Heinrich Osen, born in Norway, 7ft. 6in.; weight, 300lbs.
Edward Mellon, 7ft. 6in.; born at Port Leicester, Ireland, 1665, and died 1684.
James McDonald, 7ft. 6in., native of Cork; died 1760.
Robert Hale, 7ft. 6in.; born at Somerton in 1820, and often called the “Norfolk giant;” died 1862.
Francis Sheridan, an Irishman, 7ft. 8in.; weight, 22 stones; girth of chest, 58in.; died 1870.
Bradley, 7ft. 8in. at death; born at Market Weighton, in Yorkshire. His right hand is preserved in the museum of the College of Surgeons. Born 1798, died 1820.
Joseph Brice, 7ft. 8in. At the age of 26 years he was exhibited in London. His hand could span 15½in.
Cornelius Magrath, 7ft. 8in. He was an orphan, and reared by Bishop Berkley. Died at the age of 20 years; born 1740, died 1760.
John Busby, of Dawfield, 7ft. 9in.
Joachim Eleozeque, Spanish giant, 7ft. 10in.; exhibited in London.
Captain Bates and his wife, of Kentucky, 7ft. 11½in. each; exhibited in London 1871.
Harold Hardrada, Norwegian giant, nearly 8ft.
Gilby, a Swede, 8ft.; exhibited in a show early in the 19th century.
William Evans, 8ft. at death; porter to Charles I.; died 1632.
Charlemagne, nearly 8ft. He could squeeze together three horse shoes at once with his hands.
J. Toller, of Nova Scotia, 8ft.; died 1819.
Maximilian Christopher Miller, 8ft. His hand measured 12in., and his forefinger was 9in. long. Called the “Saxon Giant.” Died in London. Born 1674, died 1734.
Chang-Woo-Goo, of Tychow, Chinese giant, 8ft. 2in.; exhibited in London 1865-6, and again in 1880.
J. H. Riechart, of Friedberg, 8ft. 3in. His father and mother were giants.
Charles O’Brien, or Byrne, Irish giant, 8ft. 4in. His skeleton is preserved in the museum of the College of Surgeons. Born 1761, died 1783. Patrick, his brother, was 8ft. 7in.
Poushkin, Russian giant, 8ft. 5in.; drum-major of the Imperial Guards.
Alexander Miller, 7ft. 4in.; born in Dunfermline and died there about 1870, aged about 30 years. He is said to have been the tallest volunteer who ever wore uniform in Scotland.
Patrick Cotter, Irishman, 8ft. 7½in. A cast of his hand is preserved in the museum of the College of Surgeons. Died 1802.
Murphy, an Irish giant, 8ft. 10in.; died at Marseilles.
In the chapelry of Hale, in Lancashire, was born, in the year 1578, John Middleton, commonly called the “Child of Hale,” who was remarkable for his largeness of stature and extraordinary strength. His hand, from the carpus to the end of the middle finger, was seventeen inches; his palm, eight inches and a half; and his height 9ft. 3in., wanting but six inches of the size of Goliath. It is traditionally reported that one of the Irelands took him to London, and introduced him to the presence of King James I., dressed up in a very fantastic style. On his return from London, a portrait was taken of him, which is preserved in the library of Brazenose College, Oxford.
– Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette, Thursday 21st May, 1885, p.4.
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A NEW GIANT. – There has appeared at the London Pavilion, for the first time in this country, the tallest man whose height has been recorded in modern times. The new giant is an Austrian named Winkelmeier, and his height is 8ft. 9in., which is over 1ft. more than that of Change, the Chinese giant. Winkelmeier was born at Freidburg, near Salsburg, Upper Austria, in 1865, his parents being in a humble station in life. He is the youngest of a family of five children, none of whom are of abnormal stature, nor are his parents or grandparents unusually tall. His fingers span two octaves on a piano, and the stretch of his arms is enormous. He showed no development of this extraordinary growth up to the age of 14, but since then he has been growing rapidly, and medical authorities in Berlin and Paris have expressed the opinion that he is likely to increase till he is 25. The young man is healthy, strong, and intelligent. A huge bed has been constructed for him in the building of the pavilion.
– Fife Herald, Wednesday 19th January, 1887, p.3
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AN UNCLAIMED IRISH GIANT. – No fewer than 1000 waggons filled with thousands of commodities are, says Our Railways, dealt with at the Broad Street goods station, London, every day. In the midst of all this activity of trade there lies the curious relic of a time long departed, the fossilised remains of a human giant, said to be upwards of 12 feet in height, excavated near the Giant’s Causeway. If the company have not altogether abandoned the idea of tracing the owner, it might be worth while to send a travelling inspector to Ireland to institute inquiry among the O’Brien family. It is just possible that the ossified “gintleman” in the huge wooden case at Broad Street may be an ancestor of O’Brien, the Irish giant, well known in London at one time because of his exceedingly lofty stature, which enabled him to light his pipe at the street lamps without climbing, and to kiss the servant girls at the bedroom windows as he sauntered by.
– Southern Reporter, Thursday 13th June, 1895, p.4.
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A FOSSILISED GIANT.
—————
Pre-eminent among the extraordinary articles ever held by a railway company, says a writer in the Strand Magazine, is the fossilised Irish giant, which is at this moment lying at the London and North Western Railway Company’s Broad Street goods depot. This monstrous figure is reported to have been dug up by a Mr Dyer, while
PROSPECTING FOR IRON ORE
in County Antrim. The principal measurements are:- Entire length, 12 feet 2 inches; girth of chest, 6 feet 6½ inches; and length of arms, 4 feet 6 inches. There are six toes on the right foot. The gross weight is 2 tons 15 cwt.; so that it took half a dozen men and a powerful crane to place this article of lost property in position to be photographed. Briefly, the story is this:- Dyer, after showing the giant in Dublin, came to England with his queer find, and exhibited it in Liverpool and Manchester at 6d a-head, attracting scientific men as well as gaping sightseers. Business increased, and the showman introduced a man named Kershaw to purchase a share in the concern. In 1876 Dyer sent his giant from Manchester to London by rail, the sum of £4 2s 6d being charged for carriage by the company, but never paid. Evidently Kershaw knew nothing of the removal of the “show,” for when he discovered it he followed it in hot haste, and, through a firm of London solicitors, moved the Court of Chancery to issue an order restraining the company from parting with the giant until the action between Dyer and himself to determine the ownership was disposed of. The action was never brought to an issue, and the warehouse charges, even at a nominal figure, will amount to £138 on Christmas Day, 1895. In addition to this large sum, there is
THE COST OF CARRIAGE,
and about £60 legal expenses which the railway company incurred. The injunction obtained by Kershaw, which prevents the North-Western Railway Company from dealing with the giant, is still in force, and the sanction of the Court must be obtained before it can be removed from its resting-place at Broad Street goods depot; where it remains – a weird relic of distant ages, in a vast hive of latter-day industry.
– Glasgow Evening Post, Saturday 28th December, 1895, p.6.