Volume 1

Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters.

Date:
[1819?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    167/348 (page 111)
    ' He was short of stature, swarthy, active, and strong, and served as a soldier in Flanders, and afterwards in Ireland, where he made such good use of this property, that he^sold his allow- anceof provision at a good price, to persons who bought of him to see his wonderful way of din¬ ing ; for he told the doctor, that while at Lime¬ rick, in Ireland, he sold his sixpenny loaf and two-pennyworth of cheese for 125* to a com¬ pany, who witnessed his swallowing above half a peck of gravel and pebble stones. It seems the fellow, when he first came over, was suspected for an impostor, and was, by the command of the state, shut up for a month, with the allowance of two pots of beer, and half an ounce of tobacco every day* He endured this confinement, and was in consequence acquitted from all suspicion of deceit. After all, the doctor says, in defence of stone- eating, he was a more delicate feeder than many of our newspaper tconders, who devour improper food for a trifling wager* Mr* Boyle, in bis observations on this indivi¬ dual,.takes the oppoTtunityof cautioning the public