9. I have seen him lift a rolling stone of about 800 lib. with his hand only, standing in a frame above it, and taking hold of a chain that was fastened to it. By this I reckon that he may be almost as strong again as those who are generally reckoned as the strongest men, they generally lifting no more than 400 lib. in that manner. The weakest men who are in health and not too fat, lift about 125 lib. having about half the strength of the strongest. (N.B. This sort of comparison is chiefly in relation to the muscles of the loins; because in doing this one must stoop forward a little. We must also add the weight of the body to the weight lifted. So that if the weakest man's body weighs 150 lib. that added to 125 lib. makes the whole weight lifted by him 275 lib. Then if the stronger man's body weighs also 150 lib. the whole weight lifted by him will be 550 lib. that is, 400 lib. and the 150 lib. which his body weighs. Topham weighs about 200 lib. which added to the 800 lib. that he lifts, makes 1000 lib. But he ought to lift 900 lib. besides the weight of his body, to be as strong again as a man of 150 lib.-weight who can lift 400 lib.
Now as all men are not proportionably strong in every part, but some are stronger in the arms, some in the legs, and others in the back, according to the work and exercise which they use, we can't judge of a man's strength by lifting only; but a method may be found to compare together the strength of different men in the same parts, and that too without straining the persons who try the experiment.
Here follows a long description of a machine for the above purpose.
Topham was not endowed with a strength of mind equal to the strength of his body. He was married to a wanton who rendered existence so insupportable that he committed suicide before he was forty years of age, on August 10th, 1749.[4]
[4] Interesting accounts of Topham's career may be found in Wonders of Bodily Strength, New York, 1873, a translation from the French of Depping, by Charles Russell; Sir David Brewster's, Letters on Natural Magic; London, 1838; Wanley's Wonders of the Little World, London, 1806; Wilson's Wonderful Characters, London, 1821, (but not in the reprint of 1869).
About the year 1703 there appeared in London a native of Kent, by the name of Joyce, who won the name of a second Samson by a series of feats of strength that to the people of that day seemed little short of superhuman. Dr. Desaguliers, in his Experimental Philosophy, gives the following account of Joyce and his methods.
About thirty years ago one Joyce,[5] a Kentish man, famous for his great strength (tho' not quite so strong as the King of Poland, by the accounts we have of that Prince) shewed several feats in London and the country, which so much surprised the spectators, that he was by most people called the second Sampson. [6] But tho' the postures which he had learned to put his body into, and found out by practice without any mechanical theory, were such as would make a man of common strength do such feats as would appear surprising to everybody that did not know the advantages of those positions of the body; yet nobody then attempted to draw against horses, or raise great weights, or to do anything in imitation of him; because, as he was very strong in the arms, and grasped those that try'd his strength that way so hard, that they were obliged immediately to desire him to desist, his other feats (wherein his manner of acting was chiefly owing to the mechanical advantages gained by the position of his body) were entirely attributed to his extraordinary strength.
[5] Or William Joy.
[6] This is the spelling used by Joyce, Eckeberg and others, for the Samson of the Bible.
But when he had gone out of England, or had ceased to shew his performances, for eight or ten years; men of ordinary strength found out the way of making such advantage of the same postures as Joyce had put himself into, as to pass for men of more than common strength, by drawing against horses, breaking ropes, lifting vast weights, &c. (tho' they cou'd in none of the postures really perform so much as Joyce; yet they did enough to amaze and amuse, and get a great deal of money) so that every two or three years we have a new second Sampson.
Some fifteen years subsequent to Joyce's advent, another so-called Samson, this time a German named John Charles Van Eckenberg, toured Europe with a remarkable performance along the same lines as Joyce's. Dr. Desaguliers saw this man and has this to say of him:
After having seen him once, I guessed at his manner of imposing on the multitude; and being resolved to be fully satisfied in the matter, I took four very curious persons with me to see him again, viz. the Lord Marquis of Tullibardine, Dr. Alexander Stuart, Dr. Pringle, and a mechanical workman, who used to assist me in my courses of experiments. We placed ourselves in such a manner round the operator, as to be able to observe nicely all that he did, and found it so practicable that we performed several of his feats that evening by ourselves, and afterwards I did most of the rest as soon as I had a frame made to fit in to draw, and another to stand in and lift great weights, together with a proper girdle and hooks.
Dr. Desaguliers illustrates Van Eckenberg's methods in a very exhaustive set of notes and plates, which are too technical and voluminous to repeat here, but I will quote sufficiently from them to make the modus operandi clear. The figures will be found on plate 19.
Figs. 1 and 2 have already been explained.
In breaking the rope one thing is to be observ'd, which will much facilitate the performance; and that is to place the iron eye L, (Fig. 3) thro' which the rope goes, in such a situation, that a plane going thro' its ring shall be parallel to the two parts of the rope; because then the rope will in a manner be jamm'd in it, and not slipping thro' it, the whole force of the man's action will be exerted on that part of the rope which is in the eye, which will make it break more easily than if more parts of the rope were acted upon. So the eye, tho' made round and smooth, may be said in some measure to cut the rope. And it is after this manner that one may break a whip cord, nay, a small jack-line with one's hand without hurting it; only by bringing one part of the rope to cut the other; that is, placing it so round one's left hand, that by a sudden jerk, the whole force exerted shall act on one point of the rope.
B is a feather bed upon which the performer falls.
The posture of Fig. 4 Plate 19 (where the strong man having an anvil on his breast or belly, suffers another man to strike with a sledge hammer and forge a piece of iron, or cut a bar cold with chizzels) tho' it seems surprising to some people, has nothing in it to be really wondered at; for sustaining the anvil is the whole matter, and the heavier the anvil is, the less the blows are felt: And if the anvil was but two or three times heavier than the hammer, the strong man would be killed by a few blows; for the more matter the anvil has, the more inertia and the less liable it is to be struck out of its place; because when it has by the blow receiv'd the whole momentum of the hammer, its velocity will be so much less than that of the hammer as it has more matter than the hammer. Neither are we to attribute to the anvil a velocity less than the hammer in a reciprocal proportion of their masses or quantities of matter; for that would happen only if the anvil was to hang freely in the air (for example) by a rope, and it was struck horizontally by the hammer. Thus is the velocity given by the hammer distributed to all parts of a great stone, when it is laid on a man's breast to be broken; but when the blow is given, the man feels less of the weight of the stone than he did before, because in the reaction of the stone, all the parts of it round about the hammer rise towards the blow; and if the tenacity of the parts of the stone, is not stronger than the force with which it moves towards the hammer, the stone must break; which it does when the blow is strong, and struck upon the centre of gravity of the stone.
In the 6th Fig. of Plate 19, the man IHL (the chairs IL, being made fast) makes so strong an arch with his backbone and the bones of his legs and thighs, as to be able not only to sustain one man, but three or four, if they had room to stand; or, in their stead, a great stone to be broken with one blow.
In the 6th and 7th Fig. of the same plate, a man or two are raised in the direction CM, by the knees of the strong man IHL lying upon his back. A trial will suffi
ce to show that this is not a difficult feat for a man of ordinary strength.
Wanley[7] enumerates thirty men of might, each of whom was famous in his time. Notable among them was Barsabas, who first made a reputation in Flanders, where he lifted the coach of Louis XIV, which had sunk to the nave in the mud, all the oxen and horses yoked to it having exerted their strength in vain. For this service the king granted him a pension, and being soon promoted, he at length rose to be town-major of Valenciennes.
[7] Wonders of the little World, by Nathaniel Wanley, London, 1806. Vol. I., page 76.
Barsabas entering one day a farrier's shop in a country village, asked for horse shoes, the farrier showed him some, which Barsabas snapped in pieces as if they had been rotten wood, telling the farrier at the same time that they were too brittle, and good for nothing. The farrier wanted to forge some more, but Barsabas took up the anvil and hid it under his cloak. The farrier, when the iron was hot, could not conceive what had become of his anvil, but his astonishment was still increased when he saw Barsabas deposit it in its place with the utmost ease. Imagining that he had got the devil in his shop, he ran out as fast as he could, and did not venture to return till his unwelcome visitor had disappeared.
Barsabas had a sister as strong as himself, but as he quitted his home very young, and before his sister was born, he had never seen her. He met with her in a small town of Flanders, where she carried on a rope manufactury. The modern Sampson bought some of her largest ropes which he broke like pack-thread, telling her they were very bad.--“I will give some better,” replied she, “but will you pay a good price for them?”--“Whatever you choose,” returned Barsabas, showing her some crown pieces. His sister took them, and breaking two or three of them said, “Your crowns are as little worth as my ropes, give me better money.” Barsabas, astonished at the strength exhibited by this female, then questioned her respecting her country and family, and soon learned that she belonged to the same stock.
The dauphin being desirous to see Barsabas exhibit some of his feats, the latter said, “My horse has carried me so long that I will carry him in my turn.” He then placed himself below the animal and raising him up, carried him more than fifty paces, and then placed him on the ground without being the least hurt.
Barsabas' sister was not unique in her century. I quote from a magazine called The Parlor Portfolio or Post-Chaise Companion, published in London in 1724:
To be seen, at Mr. John Syme's, Peruke maker, opposite the Mews, Charing Cross, the surprising and famous Italian Female Sampson, who has been seen in several courts of Europe with great applause. She will absolutely walk, barefoot, on a red-hot bar of iron: a large block of marble of between two and three thousand weight she will permit to lie on her for some time, after which she will throw it off at about six feet distance, without using her hands, and exhibit several other curious performances, equally astonishing, which were never before seen in England. She performs exactly at twelve o'clock, and four, and six in the afternoon. Price half-a-crown, servants and children a shilling.
From the spelling, I judge that the person who selected this lady's title must have been more familiar with the City Directory than with the Scriptures.
In Edward J. Wood's Giants and Dwarfs, London, 1868, I find the following:
A newspaper of December 19th, 1751, announces as follows:
At the new theatre in the Haymarket, this day, will be performed a concert of musick, in two acts. Boxes 3s., pit 2s., gallery 1s. Between the acts of the concert will be given, gratis, several exercises of rope-dancing and tumbling. There is also arrived the little woman from Geneva, who, by her extraordinary strength, performs several curious things, viz. 1st. She beats a red-hot iron that is made crooked straight with her naked feet. 2ndly. She puts her head on one chair, and her feet on another, in an equilibrium, and suffers five or six men to stand on her body, which after some time she flings off. 3rdly. An anvil is put on her body, on which two men strike with large hammers. 4thly. A stone of a hundred pounds weight is put on her body, and beat to pieces with a hammer. 5thly. She lies down on the ground, and suffers a stone of 1500 pounds weight to be laid on her breasts, in which position she speaks to the audience, and drinks a glass of wine, then throws the stone off her body by mere strength, without any assistance. Lastly, she lifts an anvil of 200 pound weight from the ground with her own hair. To begin exactly at six o'clock.
At present the stunt with the two chairs and the six men is being exhibited as a hypnotic test.
Giovanni Battista Belzoni, the famous Egyptian archeologist, who was a man of gigantic stature, began his public career as a strongman at the Bartholomew Fair, under the management of Gyngell, the conjuror, who dubbed him The Young Hercules. Shortly afterward he appeared at Sadler's Wells Theater, where he created a profound sensation, under the name of The Patagonian Samson. The feature of his act was carrying a pyramid of from seven to ten men in a manner never before attempted. He wore a sort of harness with footholds for the men, and when all were in position he moved about the stage with perfect ease, soliciting “kind applause” by waving a flag. He afterwards became a magician, and after various other ventures he finally landed in Egypt, where his discoveries were of such a nature as to secure for him an enviable position in “Who's Who in Archeology.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
CONTEMPORARY STRONG PEOPLE: CHARLES JEFFERSON; LOUIS CYR; JOHN GRUN MARX; WILLIAM LE ROY.--THE NAIL KING, THE HUMAN CLAW-HAMMER; ALEXANDER WEYER; MEXICAN BILLY WELLS; A FOOLHARDY ITALIAN; WILSON; HERMAN; SAMPSON; SANDOW; YUCCA; LA BLANCHE; LULU HURST.--THE GEORGIA MAGNET, THE ELECTRIC GIRL, ETC.; ANNIE ABBOTT; MATTIE LEE PRICE.-- THE TWILIGHT OF THE FREAKS. THE DIME MUSEUMS.
FEATS of strength have always interested me greatly, so that in my travels around the world I have made it a point to come in contact with the most powerful human beings of my generation. The one among these who deserves first mention is Charles Jefferson, with whose achievements I became quite familiar while we were working in the same museum many years ago. I am convinced that he must have been the strongest man of his time at lifting with the bare hands alone. He had two feats that he challenged any mortal to duplicate. One was picking up a heavy blacksmith's anvil by the horn and placing it on a kitchen table; for the other he had a block of steel, which, as near as I can remember, must have been about 14 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 7 inches thick. This block lay on the floor, and his challenge was for anyone to pick it up with bare hands. I noticed that it required unusually long fingers to grasp it, since one could get only the thumb on one side. Though thousands tried, I never saw, or heard, of anyone else who could juggle his anvil or pick up the weight. True, I saw him surreptitiously rub his fingers with resin, to assist in the gripping, but that could have been only of slight assistance to the marvelous grip the man possessed.
It is generally conceded that Louis Cyr was, in his best days, the strongest man in the known world at all-round straight lifting. Cyr did not give the impression of being an athlete, nor of a man in training, for he appeared to be over-fat and not particularly muscular; but he made records in lifting which, to the best of my knowledge, no other man has been able to duplicate.
John Grun Marx, a Luxemberger, must have been among the strongest men in the world at the time I knew him. We worked on the same bill several times; but it was at the Olympia, in Paris, that he shone supreme as a strong- man--and at the same time as a weak one. For, in spite of his sovereign strength, Mars was no match for a pair of bright eyes; all a pretty woman had to do was to smile and John would wilt. And--Paris was Paris.
Mars's strength was prodigious, and he juggled hundreds, and toyed with thousands, of pounds as a child plays with a rattle. He must have weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, and he walked like a veritable colossus. In fact, he reminded me of a two-footed baby elephant.
Always good-natured, he made a host of friends both in the profession and out of it. After years of professional work he settled down as landlord of
a public house in England, where, finally, he was prostrated by a mortal illness. Wishing to die in his native city, he returned to Luxemberg. He did not realize that he was bereft of his enormous strength, and those about him humored him: the doctor and the nurses would pretend that he hurt them when he grasped their hands. He died almost forgotten except by his brother artists, but they (myself among them) built a monument to this good-natured Hercules, whose only care was to entertain.
Among the strongmen that I met during my days with the museums, one whom I found most interesting was William Le Roy, known as The Nail King and The Human Claw-Hammer, whose act appealed to me for its originality. So far as I could learn, it had never been duplicated.
Le Roy was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, October 3rd, 1873. He was about 5 feet 10 inches in height, and well set up. The inordinate strength of his jaws, teeth, and neck, enabled him to push a nail, held between his teeth, through a one-inch board; or to nail together, with his teeth, two 3/4-inch boards. He could draw with his teeth a large nail that had been driven completely through a two-inch plank. Then he would screw an ordinary two- inch screw into a hardwood plank with his teeth, pull it out with his teeth, and then screw it into the plank again and offer $100 to any man who could pull it out with a large pair of pincers which he proffered for the purpose. When he had performed these stunts in various positions, he would bend his body backward till his head pointed toward the floor, and in that position push a nail through a one-inch board held perpendicularly in a metal frame. I saw no chance for trickery in Le Roy's act.
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods Page 11