The Shadow of the Giants: A Victorian Obsession with Stature
A century before global social media, Seattle newspaper readers were served serialized curiosities about the world's 'tallest men'—a blend of anthropological fact, tall tales, and traveling circus spectacle.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
To satisfy a desire for more authentic details of modern giants, mention should be made of the giants of the past: Chang Woo Gow, the Chinese giant; Winkelmeier, the Austrian; and the celebrated Colonel Orr. Colonel Orr, who died some seven years ago, was seven feet four inches in height and weighed 530 pounds. He was a Royal Arch Mason and a Knight of Pythias. The Chinese giant, Chang Woo Gow, was perhaps the tallest man ever exhibited in America, claiming a height of eight feet two inches; he was the son of a wealthy merchant of Peking. According to an English newspaper, however, the true record holder was the Austrian giant Winkelmeier, born in 1863, who measured eight feet nine inches. He showed no extraordinary growth until the age of 14, after which he began growing rapidly until he was exhibited at the London Pavilion, where a special bed had to be constructed to accommodate his size.
“He would neither boast nor sneak to any man, but would take two of the tallest men of the guard under his arms at once, and order them as he pleased.”
This piece highlights the 19th-century fascination with 'human oddities' presented as global news. Much like our modern viral internet culture, these accounts served to shrink the world by circulating sensationalized, biographical profiles of people who were commodified as living spectacles, often stripping them of their humanity in favor of measurements and medical curiosities.
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