These programmes are everywhere on our screens, with give-away titles such as My 1000 Pound Life, Benefits: Too Fat to Work, Half Ton Mum and Half Ton Dad. Many such shows come from America, where the obesity epidemic in its modern form first hit in the late 1970s.
All-you-can-eat fast food restaurants with names such as Fat Boys Barbecue were all the rage when I visited in the early 80s and I could barely manage the ubiquitous pre-mains salad, with their cholesterol-laden dressings, let alone cope with a steak the size of the Isle of Wight or the 1,000-calorie pudding to follow.
Britain followed America, as we so often do, and we have one of the highest rates of obesity in western Europe, with 64% of adults overweight or obese and an estimated 31 percent of children aged 5-19 unhealthily fat, thanks to ultra-processed food, a snack culture, low consumption of fruit and veg, lack of physical exercise, sedentary office jobs and an obsession with social media, iPhones and games consoles.
Now we have quick-fix fat jabs, of course, and some who have little self-control over what they shovel into their stomachs think all their problems are over. We shall see…
All this sprung to mind when I learned of the discovery of an unusual silhouette on the wall of a house in East Yorkshire by Dominic Cox, fine art specialist for Yorkshire auctioneers Duggleby’s. He had been called in to value a collection of silver – but it was the watercolour portrait of a ginormous figure that caught his eye. Now his big find has fetched £1,700, seven times more than expected, at a Duggleby Stephenson country house sale at the York Auction Centre, Murton.
The 1830 silhouette depicts the Rev. Joseph Coltman (1776-1837), an intelligent, genial, wealthy, God-fearing benefactor best remembered, naturally, for his enormous bulk. The kindly cleric weighed in at 43 stone (602lb) and was the fattest man in Regency England. He became a familiar sight around Beverley, riding around on his specially-strengthened velocipede, a walking bicycle. Presumably he needed help to straddle it, just as he required a team of vergers to propel his huge body into the pulpit to preach at Beverley Minster, where he was “perpetual curate”.
Coltman became England’s heaviest man on the death of one-time gaol keeper and animal breeder Daniel Lambert (1770-1809), of Stamford, Lincolnshire, who weighed 52 stone (728lb). Despite his increasingly large girth, Lambert was fit and active, once walking seven miles from Woolwich to the City of London “with much less apparent fatigue than several middle-sized men who were of the party”.
His girth was so enormous, six normal-sized men could fit inside his waistcoat and each of his stockings was the size of a sack. On his death after a day at the races, his coffin was made from 112 square feet of wood which needed 20 men to drag it to his grave.
Nowadays, colossal people are commonplace and certainly wouldn’t be commemorated with a silhouette. Back then, they were national celebrities. Lambert, for instance, when he became too fat to work, charged spectators to enter his rooms to meet him.
But life wasn’t easy for such big men, even for those from a wealthy landowning family like the Rev. Coltman. Says Duggleby Stephenson paintings specialist Holly Hammond: “By the age of 19, when he was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was so heavy that he was finding it difficult to get about and commissioned the strengthened velocipede. When he was appointed Perpetual Curate of Beverley Minster in 1813 the floors at the parsonage had to be strengthened because of his weight and the doors widened to enable him to enter the rooms, modifications which apparently can still be seen today.”
Despite his size, the highly educated cleric played a notable part in the life of the Minster, Beverley and the wider Yorkshire area, championing local education, helping to establish schools and supporting charitable institutions. He was also a vocal advocate of the abolition of slavery and Catholic emancipation. When he died, some serious lifting tackle was required to haul his giant coffin on a stone transporter through the streets to a burial in the Minster graveyard.
*Also at Duggleby Stephenson, a still-life oil by Dame Ethel Walker (1861-1951), Mixed Bouquet, fetched £29,900, a record auction price for the artist.
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