The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs — John Shaqi
The Old Showmen and the Old London FairsFrost, Thomas
History
The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs
Frost, Thomas
Fairs -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs
Among the shows of this period was another bearded woman, whom Pepys saw
in Holborn, towards the end of 1668. "She is a little plain woman," he
writes, "a Dane; her name, Ursula Dyan; about forty years old; her voice
like a little girl's; with a beard as much as any man I ever saw, black
almost, and grizzly; it began to grow at about seven years old, and was
shaved not above seven months ago, and is now so big as any man's almost
that I ever saw; I say, bushy and thick. It was a strange sight to me, I
confess, and what pleased me mightily." There was a female giant, too, of
whom Evelyn says, under date the 13th of February, 1669, "I went to see a
tall gigantic woman, who measured six feet ten inches at twenty-one years
old, born in the Low Countries."
Salamandering feats are not so pleasant to witness as the performances of
the acrobat and the gymnast, but they create wonder, and, probably, were
wondered at more two hundred years ago than at the present time, when the
scientific principles on which their success depends are better
understood. The earliest performer of the feats which made Girardelli and
Chabert famous half a century ago seems to have been Richardson, of whom
the following account is given by Evelyn, who witnessed his performance in
1672:--
"I took leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to Paris to my lord,
now ambassador there. She made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and
afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He devoured
brimstone on glowing coals before us, chewing and swallowing them; he
melted a beer-glass and eat it quite up; then, taking a live coal on his
tongue, he put on it a raw oyster, the coal was blown on with bellows till
it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained till the oyster gaped
and was quite boiled. Then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he
drank down as it flamed; I saw it flaming in his mouth, a good while; he
also took up a thick piece of iron, such as laundresses use to put in
their smoothing-boxes, when it was fiery hot, held it between his teeth,
then in his hands and threw it about like a stone; but this I observed he
cared not to do very long; then he stood on a small pot, and, bending his
body, took a glowing iron with his mouth from between his feet without
touching the pot or ground with his hands; with divers other prodigious
feats."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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