Robert Hale, the "Norfolk Giant,"
who died in Yarmouth in 1843 at the age of forty-three, was 7
feet 6 inches high and weighed 452 pounds. The skeleton of
Cornelius McGrath, now preserved in the Trinity College Museum,
Dublin, is a striking example of gigantism. At sixteen years he
measured 7 feet 10 inches.
O'Brien or Byrne, the Irish giant, was supposed to be 8 feet 4
inches in height at the time of his death in 1783 at the age of
twenty-two. The story of his connection with the illustrious John
Hunter is quite interesting. Hunter had vowed that he would have
the skeleton of O'Brien, and O'Brien was equally averse to being
boiled in the distinguished scientist's kettle. The giant was
tormented all his life by the constant assertions of Hunter and
by his persistence in locating him. Finally, when, following the
usual early decline of his class of anomalies, O'Brien came to
his death-bed, he bribed some fishermen to take his body after
his death to the middle of the Irish Channel and sink it with
leaden weights. Hunter, it is alleged, was informed of this and
overbribed the prospective undertakers and thus secured the body.
It has been estimated that it cost Hunter nearly 500 pounds
sterling to gain possession of the skeleton of the "Irish Giant.
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