A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press

by Clay, Jeremy

  The terms were dutifully recorded in the book, which was published in 1892. Some of the wagers are born of the kind of disputes that could be settled in moments today on the internet. Squabbles about the correct wording of a French phrase, for instance, or whether an obscure general was alive or dead. Many of the rest were predictions; on politics, high society or the justice system. Would Lord Derby’s government survive the new year? Would the Duchesse de Montpensier have a child before her sister? Would the prince of poisoners William Palmer swing for his crimes? Would Baron de Vidil be sentenced to hard labour for horse-whipping his son? Idle bets, of the idle rich.

  But while gambling was rife among the upper classes, society took a dimmer view of the masses joining in. ‘There can be no doubt that the vice of gambling is on the increase amongst the English working-classes’, tutted James Greenwood in The Seven Curses of London in 1869, pointing to the spiralling numbers of sports papers published in the capital as proof.

  The government made a couple of spirited attempts to stamp it all out, but to little ultimate effect. And as the decades passed, and Victorians refined the art of free time, there were so many new things to bet upon: football matches, cricket tests, rugby games …

  Alternatively, you could simply make up your own challenge. In Brixton Deverill, in Wiltshire, in 1883, two farmers had a bet to see who could eat the most hard-boiled eggs. After they had scoffed 28 each, the battle was abandoned. No winner, then, but it’s safe to say the village nightsoil man was the loser.

  A Foolish Election Wager

  Anderson (Indiana), Monday: An unfortunate election enthusiast here will probably die in consequence of a foolish bet. He wagered that if Mr Cleveland carried the State he would swallow a live turtle, and he has honestly done so, the specimen being small but lively. Now it refuses to digest, or even to die, and is causing the man frightful agony besides. The doctors are trying to dislodge or kill it, but without success.

  The Western Mail, Cardiff, November 15, 1892

  Killed by Cigarettes

  As the result of an attempt to see how many cigarettes he could smoke in half an hour to win a wager, a fourteen year old lad named Elwell, of Chicago, has just met with his death.

  It appears from the New York Tribune that a number of newsboys were talking of cigarette smoking, and one of the crowd urged Elwell to see how many he could smoke in half an hour. A small wager was made, and two packets of cigarettes were purchased. The lad was taken sick during the night and he died in the morning.

  The Loughborough Herald and North Leicestershire Gazette, September 3, 1896

  A Peculiar Bet

  A Lyons boatman, named Aymard, has just won a considerable sum of money. He bet he would descend the Saone from Thoissey to Lyons on a piece of ice floating down the river.

  He embarked at Thoissey last Sunday evening on a sheet of ice four metres long by three metres broad, and took a portable stove and the materials to make pancakes, which was one of the stipulations of the wager.

  On Tuesday morning he reached Lyons safely. While passing under the bridges he attached the pancakes he had made to strings which were let down to him by the cheering crowd.

  He landed at the appointed spot, and received quite an ovation, while his ice craft continued floating down the river, carrying the tricolour flag he had planted on it.

  The Blackburn Standard and Weekly Express, February 28, 1891

  Extraordinary Wager by a Boy

  On Tuesday a boy named John Magee, aged 16, was admitted to the Cardiff Infirmary under most singular circumstances.

  It appears that while playing with other lads Magee undertook, for a small wager, to swallow fifty-three marbles. He succeeded, and apparently suffered no discomfort. His friends, however, became alarmed on hearing of the affair, and escorted him to the infirmary, where he was detained, seemingly none the worse for his extraordinary feat. Yesterday the medical staff succeeded in extracting forty-three of the marbles.

  The Western Daily Press, Bristol, November 12, 1891

  In the Lions’ Cage

  A High Wycombe resident has attained to the distinction of a hero by reason of a curious wager into which he entered on the closing night of the town’s Michaelmas fair.

  He volunteered to enter a cage of forest bred lions which formed part of a travelling circus, smoke a cigar, and drink a bottle of champagne to the health of his Wycombe friends.

  The eventful hour arrived, and with the greatest nonchalance, the hero entered the cage and performed his feat, gaining the applause of the townspeople assembled. No one else could be found who would follow his example.

  The Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, Sheffield, September 28, 1899

  An Amusing Scene in Sheffield

  Yesterday a crowd gathered on the canal bank, near Messrs. Turton’s bridge, to witness the issue of a singular wager.

  A man named Carrol had made a bet that he could pull a cat across the water, and the wager had provided ample food for bar-parlour gossip. Carrol stood on one bank of the canal, and the cat was held on the other. Pussy had a rope round its body, and the other end of the rope was placed round Carrol’s waist.

  At a given signal, when Carrol began to pull at the cat, some wags on the opposite bank seized the rope and dragged Carrol himself into the water, so that he not only lost the bet, but was the object of much mirth, although the ‘carol’ to which he gave expression when he got out of the canal had little that was joyous about it.

  The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, August 27, 1883

  A Mad Wager

  A curious wager with fatal results was recently decided at Siepring, in Bavaria (says Vanity Fair). A notoriously strong man, named Freytag, betted that a horse could not move him from the door of his house.

  The horse was brought, and Freytag put his hands and feet against the door-posts, whilst Stern, the man with whom the bet was made, fixed a rope round Freytag’s neck.

  At the first pull the rope broke. A new rope having been brought, Stern plied his whip with all his might, when Freytag gave a scream, and, letting go, was dragged along for some yards. His neck was broken.

  The Citizen, Gloucester, August 25, 1890

  An Extraordinary Wager

  The eccentric individual who a short time since undertook for a wager of a thousand francs to travel from Romorantin to Paris on foot, escorted by fifty rabbits, and accomplish the distance in the space of five days, encouraged by the successful issue of his first enterprise, has just announced his willingness to start on a second expedition of a similar nature.

  The difficulties he encountered on the first occasion were not slight. A fortnight before starting he selected, he says, 25 male and 25 female rabbits, which troop he endeavoured to accustom to the work cut out for them by training them to the required indifference to dogs, carriages, and other objects liable to alarm their timid nature.

  At the outset the rabbits proved distressingly refractory. At every noise, every sound, they scampered away right and left, helter-skelter, refusing to be coaxed back into order, causing thus much precious time to be lost.

  In despair at the prospect of losing both the wager and his reputation, their leader tried the effect of a stimulant; to each rabbit he administered a small dose of eau-de-vie, which appears to have supplied the troop with a courage foreign to their nature.

  No longer timorous, they bounded forward with such speed that their owner had some difficulty in keeping up with them, arriving in Paris some hours before the expiration of the time fixed for the singular excursion.

  Proud of his achievement, he has just offered to accept bets with any one disposed to make them for his second enterprise. This time, confident in his rabbits, especially when under the influence of brandy, he proposes to perambulate the Paris Exhibition at midday on any given Sunday, and to make his exit without there being one of the animals lacking.

  After the accomplishment of this feat he backs himself, and invites others to back him, for an excurs
ion to Berlin, which city he promises to reach in twenty-two days with his troop of rabbits intact.

  The Edinburgh Evening News, June 19, 1878

  A Suicidal Wager

  The prevalent mania for performing insane feats of endurance appears to have ‘caught on’ in India, with results that might have been anticipated.

  With an ardent desire for fame and with stupid originality, a Mahommedan made a wager with a co-religionist that he would stand gazing at the Indian sun for 10 hours on end.

  On the appointed day, at eight o’clock in the morning, the aspirant to immortality took up his position face to face with the sun-god. As the hours went by a vast crowd of excited sportsmen surrounded the man and eagerly looked on while he was suffering visible defeat.

  At three o’clock he fell down in a fit, beaten by three hours, and very shortly afterwards he died.

  Supplement to the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, October 23, 1886

  Death Follows a Wager.

  A Story with a Moral

  The London Mail’s Paris correspondent says that two men in a tavern in the Latin quarter were boasting of their drinking powers, and one wagered twenty francs with the other that he could drink twenty-four absinthes.

  He won the bet, and proceeded home. Shortly afterwards his companion, who lived in the same house, left the tavern for his house. As he mounted the staircase he found the drinker dead, hanging over the banisters. He was so horrified that he fell down the stairs and broke his leg.

  The Midland Daily Telegraph, Coventry, February 3, 1899

  Extraordinary Brutality

  We are informed that on the afternoon of Thursday last, a village not a hundred miles from Kegworth was the scene of a most extraordinary, and, at the same time, most disgusting incident.

  A man, it is alleged, made a wager that he would kill a rat by worrying it to death with his mouth. The bet was at once accepted; upon which a live rat was produced and placed upon the table of a public house, and its escape prevented by a cord of the length of three-quarters of a yard being placed round its neck, and fastened to a nail inserted in the wood.

  The fellow thereupon commenced his pursuit of the frightened animal, and it was only with considerable difficulty that it was at length secured. The man’s object was to seize the rat with his mouth by the back of the neck; and for this purpose he made a series of lunges with his head. One snap, however, having failed, the rat at once buried its teeth in his cheek, making it bleed most profusely.

  This unexpected rebuff at once aroused the rage and fury of the assailant, who immediately renewed the attack, and plunged his teeth in the belly of the animal, which still clung to his face.

  The consequence was that the rat was compelled to relax its hold; fell upon the table half-dead; was once more attacked by its inhuman foe, bitten on the back of the neck, and speedily thereafter dispatched.

  Incredible as it may seem, it is stated that the same fellow, and another equally brutal, have offered to test at no distant date which can thus cruelly massacre the largest number of such vermin in a specified time; but it is earnestly to be hoped that the police will interfere to prevent more of such cruel and ferocious so-called ‘sport.’

  The Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury, February 26, 1876

  A Fatal Wager

  One day last week, says the Spanish paper Eco del Navarra, a wager was made between two men, which ended in the death of one of them and the narrow escape of the other.

  The object of the bet was to see which of them, after remaining a day without food, should be able to drink 17 glasses of strong wine, and then walk from Pampeluna to Eransus, a place about 6½ miles distant.

  As one of them was much younger than the other he agreed to carry a pound of earth for every year by which his competitor was his senior. Since their respective ages were twenty-six and forty-two, the younger man had to carry 16 pounds of earth.

  After the fast agreed upon they drank their 17 glasses (about 6¼ English pints each), and set out on the journey. They had not gone far when the elder of the two fell and the younger lay down.

  On being carried to a bed in a neighbouring house, the man who had fallen shortly after died; while he with the weight has escaped death only by the skin of his teeth.

  Both men were Frenchmen, and the incident shows that, in other countries besides England, mad bets are made.

  The Manchester Evening News, June 3, 1879

  A Strange Wager

  Vienna, Wednesday night. A curious wager is at present occupying the attention of such widely separated classes as our young noblemen and the Association of Hotel and Restaurant Waiters in the capital.

  Several of the younger scions of the highest Austrian aristocracy, who were accustomed to dine in an old hotel of high repute in the Karnthner Strasse, took exception to the practice of the waiters, most of whom had seen twenty or thirty years service, in dressing their moustaches in just the same fashion as the ‘noble swells’ they had to serve.

  One of the high-born customers accordingly laid a wager with some of his friends, which was immediately accepted, that within a given time the objectionable adornment should disappear from the upper lips of the waiters in all the fashionable hotels and restaurants in Vienna, otherwise the proposer himself was to shave off his own embellishment for a given period.

  In order to effect his purpose, the latter commenced by trying to persuade the hotel keeper in the Karnthner Strasse to forbid all his servants wearing moustaches, on penalty of losing his aristocratic customers.

  In this case he succeeded, but the waiters, who were mostly married men, one after another gave notice to leave their places. They were at once replaced by younger men, who, for a consideration, submitted to the imposed humiliation.

  The same thing happened in a number of other hotels and restaurants, and the wager was nearly won by the layer when the proprietor of the Hotel Imperial, the first hotel in Vienna, flatly refused to comply with the whim of the Vienna jeunesse dorée, whom he told outright that if they deserted his house he should readily find better customers.

  The case was also taken up ‘as a matter of right and honour,’ by the Association of Waiters, which threatened to expel from the Society any member degrading himself by humouring aristocratic caprice in this matter.

  Thus the matter stands at the present moment. The bet appears likely to be lost, and then will come the triumph of the waiters, who expect soon to have the satisfaction of seeing their would-be dictator instead of themselves going about with shaven lips.

  The Nottingham Evening Post, October 16, 1890

  Peculiar Bets

  Peculiar bets on the outcome of the Presidential election are causing considerable amusement in the Western States.

  If Mr McKinley is elected, Henry Winsted, of Kinkley Junction, Indiana, is to engage in a butting match with a full grown ram; while should Mr Bryan be the victor, John Burns, of the same town, will drink three pints of hard cider while standing on his head in a barrel.

  Arthur Williams, of Burr Oak, Michigan, has agreed to support the mother-in-law of his neighbour, George Stebbens, if the Democrats win, while if they lose Mr Stebbens will twist the tail of a vicious mule owned by Williams once a day for three weeks.

  The strangest bet of all has been made by George Wren, of Deepwells, Wisconsin, and Samuel Carpenter, of a neighbouring town. If the former, who is an ardent Bryanite, loses, he is to wear all his clothes backward during the next four years, and if he wins, the other man is to walk backwards during Mr Bryan’s incumbency of office, and is to eat crow pie every day for breakfast.

  The Star, Guernsey, August 30, 1900

  ACCIDENTS and DISASTERS

  Preface

  The memorial is a study in anguish. A grieving mother, carved from marble, tips back her head in distress, the body of a lifeless child draped across her arm. It stands encased in glass in Sunderland’s Mowbray Park, just across the road from the scene of one of the
most harrowing episodes in the disaster-strewn span of nineteenth-century Britain.

  Victorian society never seemed far from catastrophe. In 1878, more than 650 people died on a pleasure trip down the Thames when the SS Princess Alice was split in two by the collier Bywell Castle. A year later, the storm-lashed Tay Bridge collapsed, taking the train from Wormit to Dundee too. Fishing fleets from the Moray Firth and Eyemouth were lost at sea. Warships and passenger liners sank. A burst dam sent a wall of water cascading through Sheffield. Calamitous military adventures befell in Afghanistan, the Crimea and South Africa. There were explosions and collapses at mines in Lanarkshire, Glamorgan, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Leicestershire and more.

  Yet there was nothing quite like the Victoria Hall tragedy, a disaster that claimed almost twice as many lives as at Hillsborough football stadium – all of them children – but has slipped from the collective memory.

  The kids had come to see the Fays, a pair of travelling entertainers who promised the ‘greatest treat for children ever given’: conjuring, talking waxworks, living marionettes and ‘the great ghost illusion’.

  ‘Every child entering the room will stand a chance of receiving a handsome present of books, toys etc’ said the handbill they’d given out at schools.

  The show started at three o’clock that Saturday afternoon in June 1883, and drew to a close two hours later as the Fays performed their finale, during which they threw toys into the pit below the stage.

  ‘This way for the prizes’, called a voice, and the boys and girls in the gallery above, fearing they’d miss out, stampeded for the stairs. The staircase led down to a door that opened inwards and was bolted ajar, leaving a gap just big enough for a child to squeeze slowly through.