In the 18th century, a Yorkshire man attracted the curiosity of his fellow Englishmen.
They were not intrigued by his ideas, convictions or opinions, but by his nose:
Thomas Wadhouse owned a 27cm nose and it was the largest ever recorded.
.
Wadhouse became something of a celebrity of his time thanks to his extremely large nose.
She was exhibited across the country and was even featured in
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
, a 19th-century book on rare and bizarre diseases.
Today he holds the Guinness record for the longest nose , and a wax replica of his head is on display at
Ripley's Believe It Or Not
museum in London
.
However, who was the man behind that nose?
To date, the history and identity of Thomas Wadhouse are difficult to unravel.
Thomas Wadhouse.
And his 27 cm nose in the replica of his face.
Who was Thomas Wadhouse, the big-nosed man in the world?
Very little is known about the early life of Thomas Wadhouse.
He was born around 1730 in Yorkshire, England, and the
History of Yesterday
site reports
that his parents may have been brothers.
It may have been this misguided genetic mix that gave rise to
Wadhouse's prodigious nose, but the true cause is unknown.
Born a century before so-called "freak shows" really caught on, Wadhouse seems to have flaunted himself - and his nose - all over England.
The entry on Wadhouse in the book
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
briefly explains: "At the beginning of the last century Thomas Wedders (or Wadhouse) with a nose 27 cm long was exhibited throughout Yorkshire."
Other circus and variety performers had sharp minds under their infamous faces.
For example,
Lionel the Lion-Faced Man
(real name: Stephan Bibrowski), for example, spoke five languages and dreamed of being a dentist.
But Wadhouse had a very different reputation.
Thomas Wadhouse died at the age of 50.
The man behind the world's biggest nose
The few writings on Thomas Wadhouse that do exist all suggest the same thing:
unlike Bibrowski, Wadhouse was not a great thinker.
"Wadhouse died as he lived,
in a mental condition best described as the most abject idiocy
," explains
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine.
The Strand Magazine
, Vol XI also wrote of Thomas Wadhouse and his famous nose in 1896, noting that if "noses were ever uniformly accurate in representing the importance of the individual", then Wadhouse would have "massed all Threadneedle's money Street and conquered all of Europe".
Thomas Wadhouse.
One of the reproductions of the particular face of him.
But Thomas Wadhouse's large nose was not indicative of great abilities, the magazine described.
"Either his chin was too weak, or his forehead too low, or
Nature had exhausted herself so much in giving this prodigy a nose that she utterly forgot to give him a brain
; or perhaps the nose shifted to the latter good".
Still, it's unclear what prompted Thomas Wadhouse to go on display.
He maybe he felt that he couldn't turn down the opportunity.
Or perhaps others led him into that life, given Wadhouse's reputation for poor intelligence.
Thomas Wadhouse died at the age of 50, in 1780.
His last job was to show his nose in front of the public in the mythical circus of the Whorshire brothers.
There are practically no records of his life, no written testimonies of how he felt about his face or the exhibitions in which he participated.
Unlike later sideshow artists
, only a few drawings of Wadhouse's face exist
although wax replicas of his face have been exhibited in
Ripley's Believe It Or Not
.
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