N.B.--His Merit is fully demonstrated by Dr.Monroe, who in his Medical Commentary, 1772, and several other Gentlemen of the Faculty.Likewise Dr.John Hunter and Sir Joseph Banks can witness the Surprising Performance of this most Extraordinary STONE-EATER.
Admittance, Two shillings and Six pence.
A Private Performance for five guineas on short notice.
A Spanish stone-eater exhibited at the Richmond Theater, on August 2nd, 1790, and another at a later date, at the Great Room, late Globe Tavern, corner of Craven Street, Strand.
All of these phenomenal gentry claimed to subsist entirely on stones, but their modern followers hardly dare make such claims, so that the art has fallen into disrepute.
A number of years ago, in London, I watched several performances of one of these chaps who swallowed half a hatful of stones, nearly the size of hen's eggs, and then jumped up and down, to make them rattle in his stomach.
I could discover no fake in the performance, and I finally gave him two and six for his secret, which was simple enough.He merely took a dose of powerful physic to clear himself of the stones, and was then ready for the next performance.
During my engagement in 1895 with Welsh Bros.Circus I became quite well acquainted with an aged Jap of the San Kitchy Akimoto troupe and from him I learned the method of swallowing quite large objects and bringing them up again at will.For practice very small potatoes are used at first, to guard against accident; and after one has mastered the art of bringing these up, the size is increased gradually till objects as large as the throat will receive can be swallowed and returned.
I recall a very amusing incident in connection with this old chap.
In one number of the programme he sat down on the ring bank and balanced a bamboo pole, at the top of which little Massay went through the regular routine of posturings.
After years spent in this work, my aged friend became so used to his job that he did it automatically, and scarcely gave a thought to the boy at the top.One warm day, however, he carried his indifference a trifle too far, and dropped into a quiet nap, from which he woke only to find that the pole was falling and had already gone too far to be recovered, but the agility of the boy saved him from injury.As my knowledge of Japanese is limited to the more polite forms, I cannot repeat the remarks of the lad.
Until a comparatively recent date, incredible as it may seem, frog-swallowers were far from uncommon on the bills of the Continental theaters.The most prominent, Norton, a Frenchman, was billed as a leading feature in the high-class houses of Europe.I saw him work at the Apollo Theater, Nuremberg, where I was to follow him in; and during my engagement at the Circus Busch, Berlin, we were on the same programme, which gave me an opportunity to watch him closely.
One of his features was to drink thirty or forty large glasses of beer in slow succession.
The filled glasses were displayed on shelves at the back of the stage, and had handles so that he could bring forward two or three in each hand.When he had finished these he would return for others and, while gathering another handful, would bring up the beer and eject it into a receptacle arranged between the shelves, just below the line of vision of the audience.
Norton could swallow a number of half-
grown frogs and bring them up alive.I
remember his anxiety on one occasion when returning to his dressing-room; it seems he had lost a frog--at least he could not account for the entire flock--and he looked very much scared, probably at the uncertainty as to whether or not he had to digest a live frog.
The Muenchen October Fest, is the annual fair at that city, and a most wonderful show it is.I have been there twice; once as the big feature with Circus Carre, in 1901, and again in 1913, with the Circus Corty Althoff.The Continental Circuses are not, like those of this country, under canvas, but show in wooden buildings.At these October Fests I saw a number of frog-swallowers, and to me they were very repulsive indeed.In fact, Norton was the only one I ever saw who presented his act in a dignified manner.
Willie Hammerstein once had Norton booked to appear at the Victoria Theater, New York, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would not allow him to open; so he returned to Europe without exhibiting his art (?) in America.
In my earlier days in the smaller theaters of America, before the advent of the B.F.Keith and E.F.Albee theaters, I occasionally ran across a sailor calling himself English Jack, who could swallow live frogs and bring them up again with apparent ease.
I also witnessed the disgusting pit act of that degenerate, Bosco, who ate living snakes, and whose act gave rise to the well-known barkers' cry HE EATS 'EM ALIVE! If the reader wishes further description of this creature's work, he must find it in my book, The Unmasking of Robert Houdin, for I cannot bring myself to repeat the nauseating details here.
During an engagement in Bolton, Eng., I
met Billington, the official hangman, who was convinced that I could not escape from the restraint he used to secure those he was about to execute.
Much to his astonishment, I succeeded in releasing myself, but he said the time consumed was more than sufficient to spring the trap and launch the doomed soul into eternity.
Billington told me that he had hardened himself to the demands of his office by killing rats with his teeth.
During my engagement at the Winter Garten, Berlin, Captain Veitro, a performer that I had known for years in America, where he worked in side shows and museums, came to Berlin and made quite a stir by eating poisons.He appeared only a few times, however, as his act did not appeal to the public, presumably for the reason that he had his stomach pumped out at each performance, to prove that it contained the poison.This may have been instructive, but it possessed little appeal as entertainment, and I rarely heard of the venturesome captain after that.
