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Life
| b. Littlebridge, Co Tyrone, 1761; reputedly grew to 8 ft.4 inches by the age of eighteen [recte 234cm. / 7 ft. 8 inches]; left Ireland in 1780 and toured Scotland and N. England; reached London, April 1782; made the subject of Harlequin Teague; or the Giant’s Causeway; fell into poverty after a brief period of fame during which he charged 2s. 6d. for admission; d. 1 June 1783 [aetat. 22], at Cockspur St., Charing Cross, purportedly of drink; asked that his body be buried at sea in a lead coffin to avoid dissection; remains secured by Dr. John Hunter through bribery and a coffin full of stones being buried instead for a rumoured £500 [vars. bribed friends, undertaker]; |
| Hunter immediately dissected his body and boiled it for 24 hours to recover the bones, only revealing his possession of the remains four years later; the leg-bones of Byrne’s skeleton figures in the background of his portrait by Joshua Reynolds; the reassembled skeleton, is now in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, having been purchased by the British Govt. for the College as being part of Hunter’s collection; |
| the probity of its display has been challenged by Michael Brennan of Loughanaganky, Co. Mayo, who is seeking its reinterrment in Ireland; the bones remains were made the subject of DNA testing in 2010, resulting in the identification by Dr. Marta Korbonitas of Barts, London, of the cause of gigantism - viz., familial isolated pituitary adenoma, or Fipa - a hereditary condition shared by a Brendan Holland of Tyrone, the joint-subject with Byrne of a tv programme broadcast, dir. Ronan McCloskey (BBC NI, 16 Jan. 2011). |
Criticism
‘How an Irish giant and an 18th-century surgeon could help people with growth disorders’, in The Guardian (11 Jan. 2011), G2 [‘Health’], p.14; see also “Charles Byrne – The Irish Giant” on BBC2 NI, N. Ireland (on 16 Jan. 2011).
See also a letter by Mr. Michael Brennan to RICORSO, recounting his attempt to have the human remains of Charles Byrne repatriated for decent burial in Ireland [as attached]. A response from the Royal College of Surgeons denying the request and dated 24 October 2009, is held by permission of the recipient, along with copies of other documents relating to his pursuit of the matter [as attached]. See also links to further online documents [as attached].
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Commentary
Frank McNally, “An Irishman’s Diary”, in The Irish Times (10 Sept. 2008) - on Charles Byrne:
[...] According to all accounts, he died - in 1783, aged 22 - so much in fear of dissection that he requested burial at sea to thwart the inevitable grave-robbers. [...] Even at the time of his death, the interest in his body caused scandal. Four days later, the Morning Herald reported that “the whole tribe of surgeons put in a claim for the poor, departed Irish giant, and surrounded his house just as Greenland harpooners would an enormous whale”. It was John Hunter [of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum], the most famous of the collectors, who secured the prize; with the help of some Judases in the giant’s retinue. Here is one description of the episode, from a recent book entitled With Words and Knives — Learning Medical Dispassion in Early Modern England: “In the knowledge that John Hunter and other anatomy teachers wanted his body for a specimen, Charles O’Byrne [sic] begged his friends to bury him at sea in a lead coffin. ... Hunter found out which public house the watchers of the body were drinking in as the coffin was being made [and] bribed the undertaker with £50 if he would agree to the body being ‘kidnapped’ as it travelled from London to Margate. .... The eventual price for the corpse of the poor giant was a staggering £500 - which Hunter had to borrow from a friend. “[He] had the body transported by hackney coach to his country place in Earls Court while the giant’s so-called friends placed paving stones in the coffin and buried it at sea. Hunter was concerned that the theft of such a famous corpse would be quickly publicised and, instead of a leisurely dissection, he sliced the body up and dropped it into a huge copper boiler to strip the flesh from the bones quickly. As a result, the skeleton was, and is, brown.” Hunter was so proud of having snatched the body that he had part of the skeleton included in his 1786 portrait by Joshua Reynolds. And his enthusiasm for collecting oddities was further immortalised by the museum named after him, when it inherited all his treasures, including the ill-gotten ones.’ McNally joins Michael Brennan of Mayo in a plea that the bones of Byrne be returned home, the Board of the College of Surgeons having already acceded to Brennan's request to the extent of permitting the bones to be released and a copy made. [End] |
| Available at The Irish Times - online; latest access 14.01.2024. |
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Vivienne Parry, ‘How an Irish giant and an 18th-century surgeon could help people with growth disorders’, in The Guardian (11 Jan. 2011): ‘In April 1782, a real, live giant appeared in London. Charles Byrne was said to be a majestic 8ft 4in (2.54 metres) in height and able to light his pipe on street lamps. Now, the macabre events that took place after his death have finally allowed modern genetics to deliver a new twist to the story of the “Irish Giant” – and could change the lives of patients today. [...] Today, we would recognise Byrne’s gigantism as being caused by a tumour in the pituitary, the endocrine gland that secretes many essential hormones, including ones for growth. Depending on the patient’s age at the onset of the tumour, either gigantism or acromegaly (typically characterised by excessive growth of the jaw, hands and feet) develops but there are other problems, such as delayed puberty.’ [...; see full text attached.]
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