Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Not George Talkington, but there must have been a strong resemblance.

Many people could be called “accident prone,” but, fortunately, few take it to the level of the subject of today’s post.  From the “Bath Chronicle,” November 21, 1833 (via Newspapers.com):

George Talkington, once a celebrated horse-dealer at Uttoxeter, who died on the 8th of April, 1826, at Cheadle, Cheshire, in his eighty-third year met with more accidents than probably ever befell any other human being. Up to the year 1793 they were as follows:— shoulder broken; skull fractured, and trepanned; left arm broken in two places; three ribs on the left side broken; a cut on the forehead; lancet case, flue case, and knife forced into the thigh; three ribs broken on the right side; and the right shoulder, elbow, and wrist dislocated; back seriously injured; cap of the right knee kicked off; left ankle dislocated; cut for a fistula; right ankle dislocated and hip knocked down; seven ribs broken on the right and left sides; kicked in the face, and the left eye nearly knocked out; the back again seriously injured; two ribs and breast bone broken; got down and kicked by a horse, until he had five holes in his left leg: the sinew just below the right knee cut through, and two holes in that leg, also two shocking cuts above the knee; taken apparently dead seven times out of different rivers.—Since 1793, (when a reference to these accidents was given to Mr. Madely, surgeon, of Uttoxeter) right shoulder dislocated and collar-bone broken; seven ribs broken; breast-bone laid open, and right shoulder dislocated; left shoulder dislocated, and left arm broken; two ribs broken; and right thigh much bruised near the pope's eye. In 1819, in his seventy-sixth year, a lacerated wound in the calf of the leg, which extended to the foot, mortification of the wound took place, which exposed all the flexor tendons of the foot, also the capsular ligaments of the ankle joint; became delirious, and so continued upwards of three weeks; his wonderful recovery from this accident was attributed chiefly to the circumstance of a friend having supplied him with a quantity of old Madeira, a glass of which he took every two hours for eight weeks, and afterwards occasionally. Since then, in 1823, in his eightieth year he had a mortification of the second toe of the right foot, with exfoliation of the bone, from which he recovered, and at last died from gradually declining old age. He was the father of eighteen children, by one wife, in fifteen years, all of whom he survived, and married again at the age of seventy-four.—Oxford and University Herald, April 29, 1826. Communicated by J.J.A.F.