The Strongest Men on Earth

by Graeme Kent

  Even the high and mighty Sandow felt obliged to include a perfunctory confrontation or two of this sort in his act, although secretly he considered this part of the proceedings to be a little below his dignity, ignoring the fact that he had achieved fame by challenging both Cyclops and Sampson. He would produce his famous challenge dumbbell, weighing only 5lbs, and defy all comers to lift it from the ground, at the same time squeezing the handle as hard as possible. Built into the handle of the weight were grips of different strengths, each one of which could be activated if squeezed. Each successful exertion of power caused a small bell to ring, giving off a cacophony of sound as challengers struggled with the bar, at the same time holding the weight overhead.

  Usually a professional strongman would have enough power and technique to defeat any amateur. Occasionally, however, something could go wrong and the performer would find himself with a challenger patently strong enough to become a nuisance. As a matter of professional pride as well as economics, such a threat plainly could not be tolerated and there were many stratagems to be employed to safeguard the precious cash prize.

  Sometimes the challenge consisted of lifting a heavy barbell or dumbbell previously hoisted to a great fanfare by the strongman. Most of these special weights had very thick handles. As a matter of course the majority of strongmen spent years in training, practising to make sure that they could encompass such handles with their hands. They would start by lifting ordinary weights, and then, every week or so, make the handle thicker by wrapping another layer of tape around it. Eventually they could cope with massively reinforced handles, far beyond the grip of ordinary men.

  If a particularly dangerous challenger should appear on the scene, powerful enough to succeed in lifting the weight, a number of ploys could be brought into play by the suddenly alerted staff onstage. The principles of balance and concealment were often instigated to make challengers look stupid and reinforce the supremacy of the professional. It was not uncommon for the stage to be littered with apparatus towards the conclusion of a display of strength activities, and to have assistants and assorted stage-hands milling about in front of assorted curtains and drapes. Once the principal strongman had lifted his champion barbell, with its weight almost certainly greatly exaggerated, some time would elapse before the amateur was allowed to have a go. In the subsequent confusion the piece of apparatus would have been switched for a replica, identical in appearance but unobtrusively doctored.

  The difference between these two barbells lay in the fact that the one now being presented to the tyro from the audience to lift was completely out of balance. Either one of the globes at the end of the bar was up to 20lbs heavier than the other, or a few drops of mercury had been surreptitiously inserted into one of the globes, increasing its density to a remarkable extent. In either case, even if the aspirant could heave his weight up from the stage it was now so unwieldy that not even the most powerful of men could get it overhead. The sight of the challenger staggering wildly and helplessly about the stage was usually the signal for wild hilarity among the fickle crowd.

  A lot could and did go on behind the scenes to ensure that a sucker never got an even break. Arthur Saxon, the strongest of the Saxon Trio, offered £150 to anyone who could lift his challenge barbell. If would-be challengers were thin upon the ground the strongman would place the weight in a prominent position in the foyer of the music hall at which he was currently appearing and encourage passers-by to lift it. Many tried and a surprising number were successful. This impelled a number of the marks to challenge the strongman on the stage at an evening performance. This time hardly anyone ever succeeded in getting the barbell overhead. It was not surprising, as the reinforced weight on the stage was now at least 100lbs heavier than the one which had been on view in the foyer.

  The most famous of all the challenge dumbbells was that owned by Thomas Inch, the Scarborough Hercules. Inch was a flamboyant, astute businessman who developed a huge empire with his physical culture postal courses, modelled on those of Sandow. At one time he employed seventy-two people to send out his postal bodybuilding lessons from a suite of offices bearing the slogan ‘Here we make men!’ For years he roamed the halls with his vaunted piece of apparatus, defying all comers to lift it from the ground to arm’s length overhead as easily as he could. As an inducement he offered to pay a mind-boggling £200 to anyone who could accomplish this. The dumbbell was a masterly contraption. It weighed 172lbs, with a very short, thick handle only 4in. long. This meant that no one with large hands could secure a proper grip on the handle and hoist it overhead. As most amateur strongmen had fingers like bananas, hardly any of them could even hold the challenge dumbbell, let alone heave it off the ground. The handle was also designed so that it almost seemed to roll from the hands of those trying to lift it. This secured the Scarborough Hercules, who had remarkably small hands for his size – his wrist was a little over 6in. and he could slip a lady’s ring over any of his fingers – a comfortable, undefeated living for decades. In time he grew so confident that he enlarged the scope of his prize and offered all comers £5 for every inch they could lift it from the floor.

  As always, among the fraternity of strongmen rumours spread that Inch was practising a certain amount of jiggery-pokery in his stage act. It was claimed that the Scarborough Hercules had four identical challenge bells and that even the strongman could lift only one of them. The other three were ‘ringers’. An assistant of the strongman claimed that it had been his task before a stage exhibition to test each of the four dumbbells by hitting them with a spanner to ensure that only the one which gave off a particular reverberation should be offered to Inch to lift. The other three were for the use of the hapless challengers.

  Before long, Inch had extended his challenge to include professional strongmen, and there were many who sought to collect the £200 now on offer. Thomas Inch always enjoyed tormenting his rivals with his challenge dumbbell, writing: ‘I used to smile to myself often when I saw strong men stooping down and peering beneath the handle, turning my bell from side to side for the “secret”.’ The challenge was a particular source of irritation to Edward Aston, who worked on Thomas Inch’s touring show for a time and was irked that the sum being offered in newspapers to any man who could lift the Inch challenge weight equalled Aston’s wages for a considerable period of time. But even Aston could not lift the challenge dumbbell. Like others he suspected that Inch took care only to lift the one carefully selected weight, leaving the impossible replicas to all comers. At one matinee, while he was struggling in vain yet again with the challenge weight, he called out sarcastically to his employer standing in the wings: ‘Which one is this, Mr Inch?’

  ‘The one I’m going to lift tonight!’ came the complacent response.

  Apart from Inch himself, no one lifted the challenge dumbbell more than a few inches from the ground in its owner’s lifetime. Towards the end of his long career he was claiming that no one had ever shifted it at all, although this does not seem to be accurate. Certainly he was the only man of his time able to lift it overhead. Many seeking to probe the secret of the weight in question put forward a number of theories but none were ever proved. Some noticed that a small hole had been bored in the centre of the handle. Could it be that Inch placed a pin through the thin hole, attached to a thin rod tied to his wrists and concealed by the gloves he wore when he performed his lifts? If this was the case, this might balance the handle and prevent the dumbbell from writhing and squirming in his hands. The designer of the dumbbell always denied this.

  On one occasion in 1907, there was a major wrestling tournament held at Hengler’s Circus in London. Most of the major grapplers of the day were there, including the Russian Ivan Padoubney and Louis Uni. Inch left his dumbbell at the circus for a few days. Most of the wrestlers tried to lift it but none succeeded. On the final day Inch turned up, claimed his dumbbell, ostentatiously lifted it and marched out with the weight to a waiting hansom cab.

  In addition to orthodox wei
ghts, other strongmen spent a great deal of time in preparing more complicated diabolical contrivances with which to torment mugs from the audience and prevent their winning the prize on offer. A common implement was a specially constructed chest expander with a number of short rubber strands. On this occasion the challengers were allowed to compete first in an effort to draw the expander out to its full extent. As usual, few succeeded. There would then be a short comedy interlude in which two of the strongman’s assistants would come forward. Each man would take a separate end of the expander. Between them, with much huffing and puffing and falling over, they would draw the piece of equipment out to its full extent a few times. What they were really doing was making the rubber strands more malleable. When the waiting strongman finally strode forward, he was able to manipulate the freshly weakened strands with apparent ease.

  The Scot William Bankier, performing as Apollo, defied anyone to lift his challenge sack of flour and some heavy weights, offering a prize of £10 to anyone who could lift the bag. It weighed a considerable 280lbs but its almost total immunity to being lifted by anyone but Bankier lay in its shape. It was packed very hard into quite a small compass, so that anyone attempting to lift the sack had to lie down next to it and squirm around in an attempt to drag the bag on to his back, causing it to roll off time after time. It was also very greasy and difficult to hold.

  When Bankier issued his challenges he showed himself to be less grasping and a better businessman than many of his competitors. He was always prepared to give a challenger an even break and allow him to have a chance to win a prize. If a contender looked a capable lad and his supporters had bought an encouraging number of tickets, Bankier would sometimes substitute the challenge sack for a lighter one, which the amateur would be able to lift. This would send the aspirant and his fans home in happy frames of mind and perhaps encourage them to return and try again later in the week. This time the sack on offer would be the original almost unliftable one.

  Arthur Saxon also included a sack of flour, weighing about 300lbs, in his act. Constant practice allowed Saxon to hoist the package into the air quite easily and walk around with it. However, it was filled so awkwardly and covered with layers of slippery chalk to such an extent that few approaching it for the first time could hope to lift it because it was so slippery for the uninitiated.

  While challenges to all comers drew in a steady number of patrons to music halls on a regular basis, the occasional grudge matches taking place between professional strongmen were huge successes at the box office. A number of them were undoubtedly fixed but every so often two rival strength athletes, prompted by greed or animosity or even a genuine desire to find out who was the more powerful man, would meet onstage in a genuine competition, starting with the Sampson–Sandow match of 1889, which kicked off the whole strongman craze. These events gathered so much newspaper publicity that on the nights in question it would usually be a case of standing room only, no matter how capacious the halls.

  From an early stage in his career, Eugen Sandow did his best to eschew challenges from his peers. This was probably due to an unpleasant experience he had early in his reign as the world’s strongest man. In 1890, despite his reservations about public challenges, Sandow allowed himself to be inveigled into a strength contest against the veteran Louis ‘Hercules’ McCann, who stood 5ft 11in. tall, weighed 219lbs and had a chest measurement of 40in., with 17in. biceps. Sandow had just dispensed with the services of the wily Professor Atilla, who surely would never have allowed his relatively inexperienced protégé to become involved in such a shambles.

  The match took place at the Royal Music Hall at Holborn in London on 10 December. It quickly degenerated into a farce, with mutual recriminations, accusations of cheating, refusals to attempt certain challenges and even threats of legal action. At the end of the shambolic performance it seemed as if Sandow had succeeded in four out of six strength challenges, while McCann had triumphed in only three. It came as something of a surprise, consequently, when the ubiquitous Marquess of Queensberry, befuddled by all the claims and counter-claims made by the protagonists, declared McCann to be the winner and made a hasty exit. The Morning Post of 11 December described the confusion:

  The judges then retired to draw up their decision, which was considered by the vast majority to be almost a certainty for Samdow. Whose splendid proportions and modest bearing, coupled with the fact that he had undergone far greater exertion than his opponent, made him a strong favourite. After an absence of about a quarter of an hour the judges returned and the Marquess of Queensberry announced that Hercules had won the competition.

  McCann, along with his brother, was able to return to the strongman circuit with an enhanced reputation, and could display the specially struck commemorative medal presented to him. In part, its inscription read ‘For defeating Sandow and sustaining the prestige of Englishmen as athletes.’ One jingoistic newspaper report commented that ‘Hercules’s victory is regarded as the apotheosis of English bull-beef over German sausage.’ A more balanced view was taken by another newspaper commenting on the propensity of strongmen to squabble like prima donnas whenever they met in opposition: ‘Win, tie or wrangle seems to be the order for all strongman competitions.’

  The disputed defeat had no effect on Sandow’s popularity or status, although he claimed to have lost £5,000 in side bets over the result and threatened to take out a legal injunction against the decision. The Prussian made a mental note in future to avoid counter-productive strength challenges as far as possible – but only a few years later he found himself embroiled in yet another confrontation.

  This time his adversary was Arthur Saxon, who had been issuing public challenges to the Prussian for some time using posters and billboards.

  Arthur Saxon challenges Sandow or any other man in the world for any amount. A match can be ratified at ‘The Sporting News’ office. Man and money ready.

  Such challenges were nothing new; Sandow had been receiving them from various upstarts for some time. But on this occasion his pocketbook was being threatened. His lucrative contracts with the various music hall chains all stated that should he ever lose his title of the strongest man in the world his engagements could be terminated. With the phrasing of his challenges, Arthur Saxon was actually intimating that he was the champion strongman. It was time for action.

  One February evening at the Grand Theatre in Sheffield, in 1898, Eugen Sandow put on an old coat and a pair of dark glasses and took his place among the audience. When Saxon issued his customary challenge, Sandow went up on to the stage, stripped to his shirtsleeves and accepted the offer to attempt to duplicate Arthur Saxon’s impressive routine of lifting, especially using the bent press, a gruelling one-handed lift which involved using a strange crouching position.

  Saxon succeeded in bent pressing the weight at the second attempt. At first, Sandow could not lift the 264lb weight but he refused to leave the stage until he had hoisted the weight to his shoulder overhead at the fifth effort. However, he could not complete the technical demands of the lift, which called for the arm to be extended and locked above the head.

  Subsequently, a jubilant Saxon started jeering at Eugen Sandow in his advertising matter, claiming to be the stronger of the two men. To safeguard his livelihood as a top-of-the-bill artiste, the Prussian had no recourse but to sue his German rival. It took three years for the case to come for judgment before Mr Justice Bigham at the Birmingham Assizes. It is plain from the court transcript that Eugen Sandow had the time of his life at his appearance before the judiciary. At one stage, before anyone could stop him, he had divested himself of his upper garments with practised ease in order to reveal his torso. On another occasion, when the strongman was asked if he had been ill on the night of his appearance on the Sheffield stage Sandow had boomed, ‘I have never been unwell in my life!’

  The result centred on the evidence of a former member of the Saxon Trio, Arno Saxon, who seemed to be bearing a grudge against the others. Arno, no blo
od relation to the others, had originally formed the trio but had left it. This man testified that Sandow had never had a chance of bent-pressing the challenge weight. When it was the Prussian’s turn to lift it, the witness swore, a member of Saxon’s troupe had surreptitiously performed the old trick of pouring quicksilver into one of the orbs, rendering it completely out of kilter and impossible to control. The former member of the troupe stated that Arthur Saxon always held the weight level when he performed the bench press, but that he had noticed that Sandow usually tilted the weight when he performed the lift. This would cause the quicksilver to run into one of the globes.

  Sandow declared that subsequently he had been able to purchase the weight in question and that when he had examined the globes it was revealed that they certainly could have been tampered with in the manner described.

  The Prussian was also aided by the obvious ignorance of the finer points of weightlifting on the part of Mr Justice Bigham. The judge was bewildered by the technical issues at stake and confused by the contradictory evidence given by different witnesses. Misunderstanding the technicalities of the complex bent press lift, he ruled in favour of Sandow, saying ‘he handled the bell in exactly the same bodily attitude as Arthur’. This was manifestly untrue, but even in the august eyes of the law Eugen Sandow was still semi-officially the strongest man in the world. The jury found in his favour and decreed that £25 in damages should be paid to the strongman by Arthur Saxon. The Tivoli theatre company, which owned the Sheffield music hall, had to pay £2.

  In another ‘meeting of the titans’, Thomas Inch would come face to face with his former employee, Edward Aston. Edward Aston was a subdued, down-to-earth Yorkshireman who had joined a Bradford weightlifting club at eighteen and had soon developed an impressive physique. He was so keen on his new hobby that he undertook extra training at home with a set of weights formed from large paint tins on the ends of a broom handle. He had to stop this, however, when one of the tins became dislodged and fell on his foot, breaking a bone.