Remarkable Persons

I wouldn’t have thought anything could top last week’s gigantic infant but something this week did. It’s a book in four volumes. It was written and printed in 1791 by a man called John Sewell. He came into the ownership of a load of etchings of various famous and strange people and decided to put them in a book with little biographies.

Strange people like the amazing Yorkshire Nan. She was, apparently, a pirate. She sailed on five trips and no-one ever suspected she was a woman. She could fight and cuss like a man and was scared of nothing. She also claimed to be Prince George’s cap-woman…whatever that was. Here she is in more traditional (for the time) female garb.

Avast, ye scurvy dogs!

Or, if you don’t fancy piratical grannies, how about Blind Jack? His real name was John Keiling. He was a poor vagrant soul who roamed around the streets of London playing a recorder with his nose. He had taught himself this ridiculous skill in order to make his busking worth more to the punters. The trouble was, the punters thought it was just gross and poor old Blind Jack would be shooed away where ever he played.

Snot very good if you really think about it

But, the reason I came across these wonderful books was because of a picture of a man and his stone. Poor Robert Short (for that was his name) had suffered with terrible pains all his life. He seemed to be constantly passing small stones which, normally, would appease anyone else but not poor Robert.

His friends and relatives really wanted to send him to the best surgeons to see if they could help but everyone of his acquaintance was dead poor so he popped along to the charitable hospital of St Thomas’. The doctors proved to be up to the task and successfully operated on him, removing from him a stone of immense size. It was eight inches across! And if you think that doesn’t sound very big, here’s Robert with his stone drawn, apparently, to perfect scale.

I think he's holding himself together with his left hand

The biographer doesn’t say if Robert felt better afterwards or even how long he survived so we can only rejoice for him that it was taken out.

Actually, the picture of Robert Short and his ‘baby’ was the one I had to research.