DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70267#0186
160 dr. button’s account of
pewter quart at arm's length, and squeezing the sides to-
gether like an egg-shell—lifting 200 weight with his little
finder and moving- it gently over his head.—The bodies he
touched, seemed to have lost the power of gravitation.—
He also broke a rope fastened to the floor, that would have
sustained twenty hundred weight—lifted the oak table with
half a hundred weight to it; a piece of leather being fixed
to one end for his teeth to hold, and while two of the feet
stood upon his knees, he raised the end of it with the weight,
higher than that in his mouth. Mr. Chambers, then Vicar
of All Saints, in Derby, who weighed 27 stone, he took
and raised with one hand, his head being laid on one chair,
and his feet on another. Four people also, 14 stone each,
sat upon Topham’s body, and these he heaved at pleasure.
At one blow he struck a round bar of iron, one inch in dia-
meter, against his naked arm, and bent it like a bow.—•
Weakness and feeling seemed fled together.
Being a master of some music, Dr. Hutton says he en-
tertained the company at Derby, with Mad Tom.-—The
Doctor also heard him sing a solo to the organ (then the
only one in Derby) in St. Werburgh’s Church; but though
he might perform wifh judgment, yet the voice more ter-
rible than sweet, scarcely seemed human. The ostler at
the Virgin Inn, where Topham put up, having insulted
him, he topk one of the kitchen spits from the mantle-piece,
and bent it round his neck like a handkerchief; but as he
did not chuse to tupk the end in the ostler’s bosom, the
cumbrous ornament only excited the laugh of the com-
pany, until Topham undertook to untie his iron cravat.—
Had he not abounded with good-nature, the men might
have been in fear for the safety of their persons, and the
women for that pf their pewter shelves. One blow from
him would for ever have silenced those heroes of the fist,
who boast so much of boding.
But the circumstances here related by Dr. Desaguliers
=- and
pewter quart at arm's length, and squeezing the sides to-
gether like an egg-shell—lifting 200 weight with his little
finder and moving- it gently over his head.—The bodies he
touched, seemed to have lost the power of gravitation.—
He also broke a rope fastened to the floor, that would have
sustained twenty hundred weight—lifted the oak table with
half a hundred weight to it; a piece of leather being fixed
to one end for his teeth to hold, and while two of the feet
stood upon his knees, he raised the end of it with the weight,
higher than that in his mouth. Mr. Chambers, then Vicar
of All Saints, in Derby, who weighed 27 stone, he took
and raised with one hand, his head being laid on one chair,
and his feet on another. Four people also, 14 stone each,
sat upon Topham’s body, and these he heaved at pleasure.
At one blow he struck a round bar of iron, one inch in dia-
meter, against his naked arm, and bent it like a bow.—•
Weakness and feeling seemed fled together.
Being a master of some music, Dr. Hutton says he en-
tertained the company at Derby, with Mad Tom.-—The
Doctor also heard him sing a solo to the organ (then the
only one in Derby) in St. Werburgh’s Church; but though
he might perform wifh judgment, yet the voice more ter-
rible than sweet, scarcely seemed human. The ostler at
the Virgin Inn, where Topham put up, having insulted
him, he topk one of the kitchen spits from the mantle-piece,
and bent it round his neck like a handkerchief; but as he
did not chuse to tupk the end in the ostler’s bosom, the
cumbrous ornament only excited the laugh of the com-
pany, until Topham undertook to untie his iron cravat.—
Had he not abounded with good-nature, the men might
have been in fear for the safety of their persons, and the
women for that pf their pewter shelves. One blow from
him would for ever have silenced those heroes of the fist,
who boast so much of boding.
But the circumstances here related by Dr. Desaguliers
=- and