The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure by John Mitchinson & John Lloyd

Author:John Mitchinson & John Lloyd
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Reference, General
ISBN: 9780307716408
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2010-09-06T21:00:00+00:00

O! Santianna’s day is o’er,

Heave away, Santianna!

Santianna will fight no more.

All on the plains of Mexico!

There are no songs dedicated to the “surprising Corpulency” of Daniel Lambert (1770–1809), but for a while his name was the universal cliché for anything big. London was “the Daniel Lambert of cities” and any especially erudite scholar, the “Daniel Lambert of learning.” There have been heavier men since—but not many, and none as fondly remembered. Perhaps for this reason he has kept an honorable mention in the Guinness Book of Records. When he died, aged thirty-nine, he weighed nearly 750 pounds and his waist was 9 feet 4 inches in circumference. In today’s terms that would give him a Body Mass Index of 104—three times the level at which obesity kicks in. Quite how he got so large was as much a puzzle to him as to others. He didn’t eat to excess and drank only water. He just kept getting bigger.

Obesity is not a modern phenomenon, although it has become a modern obsession. Today, in Britain and America, one in four adults is obese, and the cost (in terms of health care and lost earning potential) runs into hundreds of billions. Cheap food has meant that, for the first time in history, the bottom 20 percent of earners are, on average, more obese than the top 20 percent. The diet industry in the United States alone is valued at $60 billion per annum, more than the global turnover of Microsoft and McDonald’s combined. This double hysteria—overeating then trying to lose weight again—is a long way from rural Leicestershire in the late eighteenth century.

Lambert came from a cheerful lower-middle-class family. None of the rest of his relatives was in the least remarkable, either in size or achievement. His father was keeper of the Leicester County “bridewell,” or house of correction. Bridewells got their name from the original Bridewell in the city of London, first a royal palace, then a hospital, and finally a prison. They were run by local magistrates and were used to keep the streets clear of vagrants, idlers, and minor offenders. Keepers were salaried but were allowed to supplement their income by hiring out inmates as a source of cheap local labor. Lambert’s institution had eight rooms, three for men and five for women (it wasn’t considered appropriate for women to share a room).

Daniel grew up living the active, outdoor life of a Leicestershire countryman. He was a passionate devotee of cockfighting and hare coursing, rode with the hunt, and taught children to swim in the River Soar. He matured quickly, reaching almost six feet tall in his teens. He was also extremely strong, said to be able to carry huge cart wheels and quarter-ton weights and swim with two men clinging to his back. Once Lambert’s dog attacked a dancing bear that was due to perform in the town. The bear had retaliated and, to encourage some sport, its handlers removed its muzzle. When they refused Lambert’s request to restrain the bear, he felled it with a single blow to the jaw and rescued his dog.

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