Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange Events — John Shaqi
Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Legends -- England -- Yorkshire; Yorkshire (England) -- Miscellanea
This Living Skeleton was Claude Ambroise Seurat, born in 1797, who was
exhibited in London in 1825. His flesh had wasted completely away, and
when he had attained his full height he presented the extraordinary
spectacle of a skeleton covered with skin, alive and able to move and
converse. A portion of Mr. Hones' description of him must be quoted
here:--"He seemed another 'Lazarus come forth,' without his
grave-clothes, and for a moment I was too consternated to observe more
than his general appearance. My eye then first caught the arm as the
most remarkable limb; from the shoulder to the elbow it is like an ivory
German flute, somewhat deepened in colour by age; it is not larger, and
the skin is of that hue, and not having a trace of muscle, it is as
perfect a cylinder as a writing-rule. Amazed by the wasted limbs, I was
still more amazed by the extraordinary depression of the chest. Its
indentation is similar to that which an over-careful mother makes in the
pillowed surface of an infant's bed for its repose. Nature has here
inverted her own order, and turned the convex inwards, while nobler
organs, obedient to her will, maintain life by the gentle exercise of
their wonted functions in a lower region. If the integument of the
bowels can be called flesh, it is the only flesh on the body; for it
seems to have wholly shrunk from the limbs, and where the muscles that
have not wholly disappeared remain, they are also shrunk."
That this emaciated object, whose appearance in London created a
sensation, should have been supposed by superstitious people, eagerly
looking out for portents and realisations of wild prophecies, to be
sent into the world with some peculiar significance, is not to be
wondered at.
Lindsay seems to have resolved to put Wroe's apostleship to the proof by
a visit to the extraordinary phenomenon, then exhibiting in the Chinese
Pavilion, in Pall Mall. The Living Skeleton was to have decided between
them, and confounded him who was the false prophet and impostor.
But Wroe would not go through this ordeal: he slunk away, conscious,
perhaps, that he was an impostor, and with superstitious fear of the
Walking Skeleton. He escaped to Greenwich, where he pretended to be ill.
Lindsay, finding Wroe was not at the exhibition, pursued him to
Greenwich, and an angry meeting ensued.
Next Sunday, Wroe again invaded the chapel of Lindsay, who began to
prophesy against him, saying, "I say, in the name of the Lord, you shall
shave!" Then John Wroe took the prophetic rod, and thrusting it towards
Lindsay, thundered forth, "Dost thou come to defy Israel? The Lord
rebuke thee, Satan!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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