The Great Eater of Kent

Some people make it into the history books by becoming world leaders.  Some do so through acts of daring or heroism.  Some do so by creating immortal works of art.  And some, like the hero of today’s post, do so by eating an entire sheep in one sitting.

It’s a funny old world.

About all we know for sure about Nicholas Wood of Harrietsham, Kent, England, is that he would have been a devil at today’s “all you can eat” buffets.  Virtually all of our information about him comes from a 1630 pamphlet, “The Great Eater of Kent,” written by a poet named John Taylor, who was Wood’s self-appointed impresario.  Taylor was more interested in promoting his protege’s gastronomical feats than providing personal information, with the result that his work is less a biography and more of a 17th century infomercial.

Wood was born circa 1585.  He was a farmer who owned a reasonably large amount of land, and he was said to be a strongly-built man capable of great physical labor.  Some time around 1610, he began marketing his prodigious appetite, taking on a variety of wagers about how much he could eat.  According to Taylor, Wood “did eat a whole sheep, of 16 shillings price, and raw at that, at one meal.  Another time he eat 30 dozen of pigeons.  At Sir William Sedley’s he eat as much as would have sufficed 30 men.  At the Lord Wottons in Kent, he eat at one meal four-score and four rabbits…He made an end of a whole hog at once and after it swallowed three pecks of damsons.”

Impressive, if a bit monotonous.

One of the few times that Wood lost a bet was, it must be said, a bit of a cheat.  A man named John Dale asserted that he could fill the Great Eater to satiety for the cost of just two shillings.  After Wood took the bet, Dale bought 12 loaves of bread which he soaked in a “mighty ale.”  Halfway through this bibulous meal, Wood fell into a drunken stupor which lasted for nine hours, enabling Dale to win the wager.  Another defeat came at the hands of Sir William Sedley, who had the resources to compile such an enormous feast that it sent Wood toppling to the floor, literally knocked out by food.  His stomach was so distended it looked like it might burst.  Sedley’s alarmed servants, fearing the meal would be Wood’s last, carried him to the fireside and smeared his torso with fat, in the hope that it would make his belly more flexible.

By the next day, Wood had revived, but Sir William decided to add insult to injury by having the poor man dragged outside and put in the stocks as an object of public mockery.  (One hopes that Sedley’s peculiar ideas about hospitality earned him a lot of rejected dinner invitations.)  Happily, Wood afterwards regained his pride through his rabbit feast at the castle of Lord Wotton.

Taylor and Wood first met in 1630, when Taylor was visiting an inn in Kent.  There, Taylor observed Wood polishing off a light breakfast of a leg of mutton, sixty eggs, three pies, and a huge black pudding.  Wood was still hungry afterwards, and as the inn was now swept clean of food, a waiter ran out to grab a live duck from a nearby pond.  Wood devoured the bird, leaving nothing but the beak and quills.

Taylor was deeply impressed by the nauseating display.  He gave Wood twenty shillings to come up to London to perform at the Bankside bear garden.  Taylor pictured an extravaganza where his new friend would devour a wheelbarrow full of tripe, and as an encore, eat “as many puddings as would reach over the Thames.”  In later shows, he would wow the crowds by eating a fat calf and twenty sets of sheeps’ innards.  To entice Londoners to the spectacle, Taylor wrote his pamphlet describing Wood’s “admirable teeth and stomacks exploits.”   Wood’s belly was lyrically extolled as the “rendez-vous or meeting place for the Beasts of the Fields, the Fowles of the Ayre, and Fishes of the Sea.”

Wood did indeed travel to London, but, sadly, right before his debut, the Great Eater came down with a bad case of nerves.  Londoners were a notoriously brutal lot, and he feared dealing with some embarrassing--and dangerous--practical joke, such as the one he had suffered at the hands of John Dale.  Besides, he had recently lost all but one of his teeth, as the result of eating a shoulder of mutton--bones and all.  You might say the thought of facing a London crowd caused Wood to lose his appetite.  Without saying a word to anyone, Wood did a runner.  Taylor never saw him again.  It is said that Wood died in poverty soon afterwards, having sold everything he possessed to satisfy his tragically large appetite.

Taylor--no doubt muttering, “Ah, what might have been!”--had to settle for extolling Wood’s gastronomical feats in verse:

Thou that putst down the Mault below the wheat,

That dost not eate to liue, but liue to eate:

Thou that the Sea-Whale, and Land Wolfe excels:

A foe to Bachus, Champion of god Bels:

I wish if any foreine foes intend

Our famous Ile of Britaine to offend,

That each of them had Stomacks like to thee,

That of each other they deuour'd might bee.

Some haue drunke healths at once (to purchase fames)

As there are letters in their Mistris names,

Others there are, that drinke by rub and square,

And sound round drinkers there aboundance are,

These barely goe with making Barly deare,

And cunningly transforme themselues to Beere,

Or potent Ale, or Iuice of French or Spanish,

Or Smoake, (which Time and Coyne doth banish:)

These are the sleights that halfe the world inchants,

These are the principles of woes and wants:

But thou art free from drinking by the great,

Meat is for men, and thou wer't made to eate.

Though Maximinus, Romes great Emperour,

Did forty pound of flesh each day deuoure,

Albinus th'Emperour did him surpasse,

Fiue hundred Figges by him downe swallow'd was,

Of Peaches he consum'd one hundred more,

Of great Musckmellons also halfe a score,

One hundred Birds, all at one meale he cast

Into his paunch, at breaking of his fast.

Pago surpassed both these two together,

A Bore, a hundred loaues, a Pigge, a Weather,

All this the Rascall swallow'd at a meale,

(If Writers in their writing, true doe deale.)

But sure I am, that what of thee is writ,

Is sure (although not all the truth, or halfe of it:)

Thou dost exceed all that our age e're saw,

Thou potent, high, and mighty men of maw.

FINIS

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

And greetings from the Strange Company mail room!

A teenager who died in the American Revolution has finally been identified.

An ancient Roman fossil collector.

The strange case of the "Leavenworth Look-Alikes."

The legend of what may have been the first underwater tunnel.

Casual snapshots of the Romanovs.

The strange case of the Beale Ciphers.

A diplomat's widow with murder on her mind.  Lots of murder.

A tour of Icelandic turf houses.

A mysterious death in a toilet.  Yeah, definitely not how you want to go.

If it's time for the Link Dump, that means it's time to rewrite human history again.

The murder of a "squeeze fiend."

Hard times for body-snatchers.

Earl of Bolingbroke, disappointed father.

Let's talk Viking hygiene.

How to hold a medieval tournament.

A human "sixth sense."

A visit to an "island full of idiots."

Football culture in Early Modern Britain.

An ancient Maya scientist.

A giant bird in Kentucky?

A real-life inspiration for "Les Miserables."

The medieval custom of "proxy marriages."

A case of matricide.

Some influential medieval women.

How trees are archives.

A Brooklyn Bigfoot.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a man who gained brief fame for being anything but a picky eater.  In the meantime, here's some vintage Cyndi Lauper.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

A ghost that was, you might say, all things to all people was reported in the “Moncton Transcript,” February 1, 1922:

London, Jan. 30-Eastbourne is being troubled, or entertained, by a "ghost" mystery.

A strange apparition has been seen several times gliding along the Crumbles, near the fishermen's huts, and across Fishermen's Green. As the place is within 800 yards of the spot on which Irene Munro was murdered, some of the local residents accept the theory that the spirit of the murdered girl is abroad by night; but one of those who has seen the "ghost" says it was a male figure.

It was first seen in the half-light of a December morning by Mг. Richard Prodger, a fisherman, who says he was walking towards the huts when an apparition, clothed in a long black gown, suddenly rosе from the ground in front of him. As he moved forward the ghostly figure went ahead some distance. When he stopped the ghost stopped also.

"It was wearing a thing like an ulster cape, that reached down to the ground," he says. "It did not walk: it glided along. It wore also a big round hat.

"Three times I stopped, and the ghost stopped, too. It continued in front of me right across Fishermen's Green, and then suddenly sank into the ground and disappeared. I walked to the spot but saw no signs of the ghost. If I had not been loaded down with beat-hooks I should have gone for it."

The same apparition has been seen by Mrs. Goldsmith, caretaker of the Fishermen's Institute, adjoining Fishermen's Green. She says the ghost was white and luminous. She was walking near the huts when the strange figure emerged from between two of them like a white cloud. She stopped, trembling with fright, when, just as suddenly, the apparition disappeared--"vanished into nothing."

Bolder spirits are making nightly visits to the spot in an effort to run the strange visitor to earth.

Mr. Prodger is certain that the figure looked like a man who hanged himself in a house close to the huts, and thinks it is only natural that he should return to his old home at Christmas time.

On the other hand, Mrs. Goldsmith is equally sure that Irene Munro walks The Crumbles every night, while a girl who saw the ghost on her way home one night said she could "see right through it" as it glided along and vanished through the side of a hut.

More superstitious people dare not face the desolate waste after dark.

What the Monks Saw: A Medieval Mystery

Just to show that life is full of unexpected turns, on June 18, 1178, a group of medieval English monks threw a fine puzzle in the laps of astronomers that lingers to this day.

On that day, shortly after sunset, five monks at the abbey of the Christ Church of Canterbury (on the site of Canterbury Cathedral,) noticed that something very odd was happening in the sky.  Gervase, who was Canterbury’s chronicler, provided the eyewitness record:

“The upper horn of the Moon split in two. From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the Moon which was below writhed, as it were in anxiety, and to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the Moon throbbed like a wounded snake. Afterwards it resumed its proper state. This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal.  Then, after these transformations, the Moon from horn to horn, that is along its whole length, took on a blackish appearance.”

I am sure you are about to bring up the obvious question:  What the hell happened?  Go ahead and ask, but the answer you are likely to get from scientists is “Dunno.”  In 1976, geologist Jack Hartung suggested that the monks observed a meteor impact on the Moon so massive that it caused molten matter (the “flaming torch”) to rise into space.  Hartung pointed out that the Moon has a crater (named after Giordano Bruno,) that is possibly relatively young--perhaps young enough to date from June 18, 1178.  

Alas for this delightfully brief and tidy answer, it is far from universally accepted.  Other scientists have pointed out that an impact that huge would have had dramatic and impossible to ignore effects on Earth.  It likely would have caused one of the biggest meteor showers in human history, observable all over the world for days afterwards.  As far as we know, such spectacular showers were not recorded by the Canterbury monks, or anyone else on our planet for that matter.  Additionally, in 2008 high-resolution images obtained by a Japanese satellite were used to give the Giordano Bruno crater an age of about 4 to 6 million years, which would obviously negate Hartung’s theory.

In 2001, a University of Arizona student named Paul Withers came up with a more elaborate scenario.  He proposed that if, on that June night in 1178, a meteor came down to Earth and exploded right in front of the rising Moon, it could conceivably have appeared to the Canterbury witnesses that the Moon itself was erupting.  This would be a rather remarkable astronomical coincidence, but not an impossible one.  Unfortunately, this hypothesis can neither be proved or disproved.

So, what did those Canterbury monks observe?  We’ll likely never know for sure, which is what charms me about our little historical footnote.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, which is so action-packed, not one, but four hosts were required!

Two ships from the "dawn of naval aviation."

It turns out that wild chimpanzees are pretty good drummers.

If you're planning to visit the Grand Canyon, maybe think twice about that.

I was in a happier frame of mind before I learned that there is a spider that can outrun humans.

A really confusing place in Canada.

Weird lights off the coast of Greenland.

JMW Turner's "matchless vale."

So maybe "witches' marks"...weren't witches' marks.  Bummer.

In case you were wondering, being a 19th century sailor generally wasn't much fun.

The tradition of "bedding ceremonies."

Daniel Defoe, government spy.

Newly discovered medieval shipwrecks.

Snake the Bigfoot Hunter is claiming victory.

Once again, it's "let's rewrite human history time!"

Mark Twain as a "local industry."

The oldest evidence of mourning rituals.

The modern "faerie phenomenon."

So, you ship a dead human and a live dog.  Hilarity ensues.

"Little House on the Prairie"-style recipes.

Butterflies remember being caterpillars.

A look at medieval pilgrimages.

Evidence for a "lost" ancient Egyptian city.

The days when Americans paid good money to see a "Man-Bear."

Manhattan's last farm.

The mystery of the Pied Piper.

How Coolidge became "Silent Cal."

A ballad inspired by a once-notorious murder.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a lunar mystery.  In the meantime, here's Sam & Dave.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

 

This account of an extremely weird cloud (?) appeared in the “Caledonian Mercury,” January 18, 1821:

COSENZA. On the 29th Nov. last, about half-past six in the evening, there suddenly appeared, on the west of the horizon, a luminous body, more brilliant than the moon at its full. This body had the figure of a dragon. After passing with great velocity across the horizon, it changed into a dark and thick cloud. After three or four minutes several violent flashes of lightning burst from the cloud, which, after playing awhile through the air, died away. In the moment of their disappearance a long and loud peal of thunder was heard, and a considerable motion was felt in the air. The cloud then took a triangular figure, and rolling rapidly to the east, disappeared. On the following morning the mountains to the east were found covered with snow. Where it exploded there remained a long via lattea near the cloud.  

My opinion is that it was a meteor composed of the same materials as in lightning: Neither it nor its precipitations fell in direct lines, because their specific gravity was less than that of the air. On the tops of the mountains it was met by winds which dissolved it into snow. 

This luminous body was visible at Naples, but none of its characteristics were observed; in some parts of Calabria and on the part of Sicily opposite, we have heard that its appearances were more singular than those described in the foregoing letter.

The Goat Head of Strumpshaw

"Norwich Evening News," February 3, 1970, via Newspapers.com

If you’re at all familiar with my Twitter/X or Facebook feeds, you know that I periodically share old newspaper reports about the seemingly endless varieties of mayhem carried out by goats.  (Why do I do this?  It’s just how I roll, I guess.)  So, you can imagine how delighted I was to learn of the following story, which just may be the peak World of Goats tale ever.

For about two hundred years, a pub called The Goat Inn stood in the Norfolk, England, village of Strumpshaw.  (It is now known as “The Huntsman.”)  It was an ordinary little British pub until an unwise purchase gained the place a certain eternal fame among those of us who like our locally-brewed ale and cider with The Weird for a chaser.

One day in 1908, the wife of The Goat’s landlord, a Mrs. Newton, took a fancy to the large, handsome white goat belonging to a traveling peddler, and bought it for a half-crown.  She then showed her esteem for the animal by having it butchered.  The body was transformed into a supply of goat meat for the pub’s kitchen, while the head was taxidermied, after which it occupied pride of place behind the pub bar.  

I can’t say this is my idea of how to drum up clientele, but perhaps that’s just me.

For the next sixty years, the unfortunate goat--who was soon nicknamed “Old Capricorn”--gazed down at patrons while they sipped their drinks, and, possibly, silently wished that Strumpshaw had a better class of pubs.

Those six decades were not uneventful around the pub.  Regular patrons of The Goat, as well as its owners, began noticing that they had become a particularly unlucky lot.  They suffered strange illnesses, financial misfortunes, domestic troubles, and more.  Many attributed their miseries to the pub’s resident goat head.  Was “Old Capricorn,” justifiably irritated at being slaughtered and then used as pub bric-a-brac, getting his revenge?  Over the years, the head--now universally seen as a curse--was stolen from the pub, but it always seemed to find its way back.  Presumably the thieves learned that actually possessing the thing just increased their troubles.

In 1967, the pub was purchased by one Frank Walpole.  He soon realized that he bought more than he had bargained for.  An uncanny force seemed to haunt the place.  Mirrors mysteriously flew off walls, the pub’s piano would play by itself, water would unaccountably drip from the ceiling.  Walpole and his wife and daughter began seeing shadowy figures walking around at night.  The tragic climax came when a teenage boy, apparently wanting to defy the alleged “curse,” grabbed the goat’s head in a very disrespectful manner.

The next day, the youth was killed in a car accident.

That was enough for Frank Walpole.  Ignoring the protests of some of the pub regulars, he removed Old Capricorn from public view.  However, two years later, public sentiment persuaded him to reinstall the head behind the bar.  No sooner had he done so that his family pets--birds, monkeys, dogs--began dropping dead or running away.  This convinced Walpole that the goat must go…for good.  In February 1972, he weighed down the head and threw it in the River Yare.  He hoped this would “drown” the evil forces.

Unfortunately, in every good horror movie, the villain just plain refuses to die.  Less than a month later, one Alfred Stone found the head in a dyke five miles from where it had been submerged.  It was, Stone noted, “looking more malevolent than ever.”  For reasons best known to Stone, he fished out the head and presented it to a Mr. Loades.  Loades’ son Dennis wanted it to “start his own museum.”  Well, he started something, all right.  The dogs on the family farm began turning angry and violent.  Mr. Loades’ mother had to be hospitalized.  The family finally got the message and returned the head to The Goat.  “I was pleased to see it go,” Loades commented.  Several months later the head again vanished.  It was found in a shallow grave in Strumpshaw’s gravel pit, the eyes staring up in an evil glare, “as if it was alive.”

It will not surprise you to learn that all this ill-treatment made Old Capricorn crabbier than ever.  The digger used to dig out the head blew a tire in the effort.  The mechanic who came to replace the tire was mysteriously shot in the arm from someone--it was never learned who--wielding a pellet gun.  When a dog belonging to one of the pit workers was confronted with the head, he ran to a shed, cowering in terror.

After that final bit of supernatural mayhem, the trail of the cursed goat head went cold.  When Paul Cornwall bought The Goat in 1984, he expressed interest in finding the head and returning it to its old home.  He cheerfully called himself a “glutton for punishment.”  However, his efforts to track down Old Capricorn were unsuccessful.

My opinion?  If you should ever be in that part of England, and you happen to see in a deserted barn or a junk shop, a very old, bedraggled goat’s head with a sinister expression on its face, leave the damned thing for someone else.