Britain’s Tallest Giant

Although he did not hail from the North West, the burial place of Frederick Kempster (1989-1918) is at Blackburn in Lancashire.  He died there, according to the Lancashire Telegraph, whilst taking part in a travelling show.

The records suggest that the tallest known Britain – meaning that his measurements have been confirmed – was a man from Yorkshire called William Bradley, who was born in 1797.  Apparently, the Guinness Book of Records gives Bradley the title of the tallest British man in history at 7ft, 9 inches.

Documentation suggests, however, that Frederick Kempster beat that by .3 of an inch.  What’s interesting for me is how, even within the boundaries of modern times, proving accuracy in measurements is not as straight-forward as one might anticipate.  What I mean is that Kempster’s verified dimensions are still a little in doubt, even though he died less than 100 years ago, and his life and size were not infrequently detailed in newspapers and in photographs.

Just four years before his untimely death, The Daily Mail wrote about a visit Kempster made to its premises: “The hood of a taxicab had to be raised before he could enter, and when he reached The Daily Mail office he had to remove his hat and stoop in the lift.  He is 21 years of age.  His height is 8 feet 2 1/2 inches, and he is known as ‘the Bayswater Giant’.

(Source: http://www.thetallestman.com/frederickkempster.htm)

This article is cited on Tallest Man website by the grandson of Frederick’s younger brother George.  Despite the Mail’s view that Kempster reached over 8 feet tall, James Kempster concludes that his great uncle was, in fact, 7ft, 9.3 inches (237cm) tall. 

Whether or not he beat William Bradley by a third of an inch, it is certain Frederick Kempster would have been a stupendous site.  He died of pneumonia, with ill effects to his health attributed to being confined to prison in Germany just before the hostilities of World War 1 erupted.

Here’s a lovely detail to conclude: one newspaper article suggested that his hand could “span 16 notes with one hand on a piano keyboard”.  I do not know whether he played the piano, but if he did, I wonder how well he might have tackled Rachmaninoff’s challenging piano concertos deploying his prodigiously large hands and fingers.

Giants in Patagonia

It is the 1520s, and Ferdinand Magellan, the celebrated Portuguese explorer, is aboard ship, off the coast of South America.

Venetian Antonia Pigafetta was one of the few to survive Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, and his published account details an encounter with giants in Patagonia – a huge swathe of territory now shared by Argentina and Chile.

Pigafetta wrote: "One day we suddenly saw a naked man of giant stature on the shore of the port, dancing, singing, and throwing dust on his head. The captain-general [i.e., Magellan] sent one of our men to the giant so that he might perform the same actions as a sign of peace. Having done that, the man led the giant to an islet where the captain-general was waiting. When the giant was in the captain-general's and our presence he marveled greatly, and made signs with one finger raised upward, believing that we had come from the sky. He was so tall that we reached only to his waist, and he was well proportioned...”

The giant, however, was not immune to fear.  Pigafetta reports that the great figure took fright from his own reflection in the Magellan’s mirror.

In due course, Pigafetta’s companions meet other giants, including one who was more ‘amiable’.  This giant even allows himself to become baptised, and learns to say the name of Jesus.  He is given gifts and goes back to his people.  He returns to the explorers with his own gifts, but our chronicler never sees him again.  Pigafetta ruefully concludes that the new Christian has been killed by his own people for fraternising with the Europeans.

Tales of great wonders from all ‘corners’ of the globe were common currency for centuries.  It was a time for great exploration, and the naming of regions hitherto unknown to Western powers.  The name given to this Southern landmass, Patagonia, alluded to feet (in Spanish, ‘pata’), and after Pigafetta’s narrative became more read, there was an ongoing association with giants, leading to the great British explorer Sir Francis Drake reporting his own sighting of giants in South America.

Even as late as the mid 18^th century, stories emanated of Patagonian giants, including a supposed rendezvous with a British ship commanded by the Romantic poet Byron’s grandfather.  The Museum of Hoaxes tells us: “The rumors of Patagonian giants were only definitively proven to be fictitious when the official account of Byron’s voyage appeared in 1773. This account revealed that Byron had indeed encountered a tribe of Patagonians, but that the tallest among them measured only 6 feet 6 inches. In other words, they were tall, but not 12-foot giants. The tribe that Byron met was probably the Tehuelches, who were wiped out by the Rocca expedition in 1880.”

A prosaic, bloody end, then, to this strand of fantastic fictions and intrigues generated by world travellers centuries ago.  And, once again, testimony to the fascination that giants have had to the human imagination.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagon

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/patagonia.html

http://www.lawrence.edu/news/pubs/lt/fall04/giants.shtml

The Greek Giants

Greek mythology is rich with tales of giants, not least because the 'gigantes' once waged war against the gods.  The gods ultimately triumphed (with the help of the superhuman Herakles), but tales of the giants and their exploits left an imprint in Greek legend, which, in turn, influenced Roman culture.  That is why the great Roman poet Ovid writes about the giants in his ‘Metamorphoses’; Ovid has a new race of men being born from the death throes of the giants.

Although the Greek giants are represented as essentially human in shape, their legs were sometimes depicted as the tails of serpents, and their hair was rendered as writhing snakes!

The ancient storyteller known as Homer regarded the giants as a separate race of men, whereas another source from antique times, Hesiod, wrote of them being of divine origin, arising from the spilled blood of Uranus.

I find the crimes that the giants committed of particular interest.  These transgressions range from the troubling but hardly nefarious hurling of trees and attempting to steal the cattle of Helios (the sun), to deeds that are clearly malevolent, such as the attempted rape of Aphrodite and the enslavement of humanity.

Another distinct race of giants in Greek folklore was known as the Titans; the word 'Titanic' comes to us as a signifier of immense size.  What we know about the historical ship Titanic was that it was an enormous vessel. (On a related note, I've just been reading Ian Jack's superb commentary on the upcoming 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.  You can read it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/13/100-anniversary-titanic-disaster-again?INTCMP=SRCH)

The twelve Titans of Greek mythology were the offspring of Gaia and Uranus, and perhaps the most well-known of their number is Prometheus.  A generous being, Prometheus gave to humans a number of gifts, including fire, but in so doing, he angered Zeus, king of the gods.  As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock to have an eagle attacking his liver for eternity.  It was Herakles, once more, who saved the day by freeing the tormented Prometheus from an unimaginably grim perpetual fate – but this time, Herakles acted on the side of the giants against the gods.

An invaluable source for this piece has been: http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/Gigantes.html