Charles Byrne (giant)

Charles Byrne (1761–1783) or "The Irish Giant", was a man regarded as a curiosity or freak in London in the 1780s. Byrne's exact height is of some conjecture. Some accounts refer to him as being 8 ft 2 in (2.49 m) to 8 ft 4 in (2.54 m) tall, but skeletal evidence places him at just over 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m).

Byrne's family lived in a remote part of northeast County Tyrone, Ireland, called Littlebridge, not far from the shores of Lough Neagh. It is said that Byrne had been conceived on top of a haystack, and that this was the cause of his great height. (This explanation is fanciful; it was actually due to an undiagnosed medical condition.) Little is known of Byrne's family other than that his parents were ordinary people, and that they were not unusually tall.

By his late teens Byrne had decided to set off for Britain in pursuit of fame and fortune. Landing first in Scotland, he became an instant success. As Eric Cubbage has recounted, Edinburgh's "night watchmen were amazed at the sight of him lighting his pipe from one of the streetlamps on North Bridge without even standing on tiptoe."

His celebrity spread as he made his way down northern England, arriving in London in early 1782, aged 21. Here he entertained paying audiences at rooms in Spring Garden-gate, then Piccadilly, and lastly Charing Cross. He was the toast of the town; a 6 May 1782 newspaper report bears out: "However striking a curiosity may be, there is generally some difficulty in engaging the attention of the public; but even this was not the case with the modern living Colossus, or wonderful Irish Giant."

His gentle, likeable nature inspired an immense public fondness, and his celebrity life was constantly splashed across the newspapers of the day. "The wonderful Irish Giant...is the most extraordinary curiosity ever known, or ever heard of in history; and the curious in all countries where he has been shewn, pronounce him to be the finest display of Human nature they ever saw". By mid-1782 he had inspired a hit London stage show called Harlequin Teague, or the Giant's Causeway.

Unfortunately, Byrne's great height was the result of a then undiscovered growth disorder (known today as acromegaly), and his health declined sharply in his twenty-second year. He was also pickpocketed in this period while drinking in his local pub, the Black Horse; Byrne's worldly earnings were on his person in the form of banknotes, and were stolen. The loss of his earnings interacted with his failing health, and two months later Byrne passed away at his lodgings in June 1783, aged 22.

Byrne was living in London contemporaneous with the pre-eminent surgeon and anatomist of the time John Hunter. Hunter had a reputation for collecting unusual specimens for his private museum, and as Byrne's health deteriorated he feared that Hunter wanted his body for dissection (a fate reserved at that time for executed criminals) and probable display. Byrne had made express arrangements with friends that when he died his body would be sealed in a lead coffin and buried at sea. But his burial wishes were thwarted and his worst fears realised when John Hunter arranged for Byrne's cadaver to be snatched on its way to sea. Hunter then reduced Byrne's corpse to its skeleton and four years later put Byrne's skeleton on display in his Hunterian Museum, now located in the Royal College of Surgeons. His 2.31-m (7 ft 7 in) skeleton still resides in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

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