THE FAT BOY OF PECKHAM
As an epidemic of childhood obesity sweeps the developed world, JAN BONDESON explores a vanished age in which corpulent youngsters were treated neither as villains nor victims but celebrated as prodigies in the music halls and sideshows of Britain and the
As an epidemic of childhood obesity sweeps the developed world, JAN BONDESON explores a vanished age in which corpulent youngsters were treated neither as villains nor victims but celebrated as prodigies in the music halls and sideshows. Meet Johnny Trunley and his rotund rivals...
John Thomas Trunley Jr was born on 14 October 1898, the son of a poor Camberwell scavenger with the same name and his wife Rosetta. John Thomas Trunley Sr was a short, thin man, and his wife of ordinary stature; yet their son was an extraordinary large, sturdy infant. The 1901 Census has the three of them living at 1 Herring Street, Camberwell, but they soon moved into a small terraced house at 12 Colegrove Street, Peckham. Young Johnny Trunley, as the hero of this strange tale was always called, soon attracted notice due to his extreme size and corpulence. In late 1903, he was four feet tall, with a chest measurement of 44in (1.1m) and a weight of 10 stone (64kg). He was enormously strong for his age, and could lift his father from the ground. Johnny soon became a local celebrity. He spent most of his time in or near a beer-house in Willowbrook Road, where he earned various treats by acting as an advertisement and entertaining the customers. When a Daily Mail reporter went to see Johnny, it turned out that the Peckham dustmen, police constables and omnibus drivers knew all about his exploits. The unwholesome food he was served at the beer-house meant that he was rapidly increasing in girth.
In November 1903, when Johnny was five years old, the London School Board began to consider how this monstrous child would be supplied with an education. He was not mentally defective, and quite educable, although it would take quite a gargantuan chair and desk to fit him. Although it might be possible to take him to school for physically defective children, if he could be roused and dressed in time, the hulking Johnny might injure the other children or topple over JOHNNY SOON ATTRACTED NOTICE DUE TO HIS EXTREME CORPULENCE the schoolmistress, so a school inspector recommended that he should be exempt from attending school.
But a vocal faction of the London School Board refused to accept this recommendation, believing that, in the modern world, every child should go to school. They had access to a force of School Board officers, whose tasks included fetching truant children and forcing them to go to school. A carpenter was instructed to build Johnny a king-size chair and desk, and a stern schoolmistress was recruited to discipline him. When interviewed in the Daily Mail, a newspaper that took a vigorous interest in Johnny’s educational tribulations, she assured the journalist that she knew of a way to manage her 10-stone pupil. “Persuasion goes a long way,” she said, hinting that she had something in her cupboard that she would make good use of if he proved obstinate. Not unnaturally, Johnny did not like this sinister schoolmarm one little bit. When she annoyed him, he used to lie down on the floor and refuse to get up, and no one at Reddin Street Board School was strong enough to lift the Peckham prodigy. Even when Johnny was sitting quietly at his desk, the other pupils stared at him, to the detriment of school discipline. Johnny was fond of sleeping in the morning, and his parents found it difficult to rouse and dress him. Whenever the Fat Boy played truant, the assiduous School Board officers made themselves known in Colegrove Road.
Once there were deplorable scenes when two sturdy school policemen dragged the howling Johnny out of the house and put him in a cart, only partly dressed, to transport the Peckham prodigy to school. For obvious reasons, the School Board officers were not particularly popular among working-
class people, and there was considerable newspaper interest in the attempts to force Johnny to go to school. Many ordinary people viewed him as a hero: a sturdy, stubborn John Bull who refused to take orders from the creatures of the detested School Board.
THE PECKHAM PRODIGY
John Thomas Trunley Sr was not the brightest of men, but he could not fail to be impressed with the great interest in his son from the media and the general public. Soon, a Great Yarmouth showman approached him with an offer he could not refuse. On 14 December 1903, the Fat Boy of Peckham made his debut at the Yarmouth Hippodrome, to great acclaim, before travelling to the Waverly Market Carnival in Edinburgh. On 23 December, when Johnny was exhibited at the Camberwell Palace of Varieties, the place was thronged with locals keen to see the Peckham prodigy. The School Board officers, who had already been exposed to a good deal of newspaper ridicule for their failure to bring Johnny to school, were up to their mean-spirited tricks once more: they went to the SPCC, objecting that a child under 11 was performing in a local amusement parlour. The case went to the Lambeth Magistrates, where the exhibition was declared to be fully legal. As a result of Johnny’s lucrative exploits on the stage, the Trunley family did not have to face Christmas Day in the Workhouse, and instead enjoyed some hearty Christmas meals. On 29 December, Johnny appeared in a pantomime at Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, before the King and Queen. This singular meeting between Royalty and the Fat Boy of Peckham was much commented on in the newspapers – even the New York Times, which found it strange that a boy who in America would at most have been an attraction in a dime museum had attained national celebrity.
Throughout 1904, the triumphal tour of the Fat Boy continued. The school policemen were still after Johnny, but Mr Trunley said that he was giving his son regular lessons. When it was objected that the scavenger turned showman entirely lacked teaching qualifications, a governess was recruited to accompany the Peckham phenomenon on his tour. As the tour went on, it was considered very droll to have some provincial tailor measure the Fat Boy for a suit of clothes, as funny the 20th time as it was the first. At a music hall sports event at Herne Hill in July 1904, Johnny competed in a race against the diminutive comedian ‘Little Dando’. As the Fat Boy gathered speed, and then seemed to stumble, a local humourist exclaimed “Catch him! He’ll make a hole in the track!” But Johnny recovered his balance, won the race, and was led away, quite breathless, by his proud father.
Picture postcards were very fashionable in Edwardian times, and Mr Trunley made sure that his son, the family breadwinner, was depicted on a number of them, which all enjoyed healthy sales. One of the earliest of these cards depicted the Fat Boy at the age of six, when he weighed 14 stone. Johnny’s success was such that a ‘funny’ Daily Mirror journalist wrote that Peckham must be a nursery for Fat Boys; the mothers purchased quantities of milk and treacle to produce an even more
monstrous specimen of boyhood. The school policemen still tried their best to make themselves obnoxious, but the incessant travelling of the Trunleys hampered their activities. Later in 1904, the old London School Board was reorganised into a more modern establishment, run by the London County Council, and this meant a temporary hiatus for the school police. But the London educationalists still considered the schooling of the Fat Boy of Peckham a top priority, and the school policemen issued the Trunley family with a summons that Johnny was to start school on 9 January. According to a Daily Mirror journalist, the Fat Boy was in despair at the thought of being forced to go to school, but still he devoured two plates of winkles, 17 slices of thick bread and butter, and two pieces of cake for Sunday tea, as the astonished newspaperman looked on. But a just few days later, there was a knock at the door. Mr Trunley answered it with some degree of caution, fearful that the school policemen were up to mischief again. But outside the door stood a dapper, grey-bearded gentleman wearing a large Stetson hat. As the flabbergasted Mr Trunley stood gaping, recognising his visitor but being quite unable to utter a word, a street guttersnipe passing by yelled out “Gorblimey, Guv’nor! It’s Buffalo Bill!”
ENTER BUFFALO BILL
And indeed it was the celebrated showman William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody who had descended, like a Deus ex Machina, from his great Wild West Show upon the sleepy Peckham terrace. After inspecting Johnny and finding him fully satisfactory, Buffalo Bill offered him a contract with his show, which was currently touring Britain, before going abroad. Overjoyed that his son was to become an international megastar of corpulence, Mr Trunley accepted this offer with alacrity, on the conditions that he himself was to accompany the Fat Boy, to provide him with some elemental tuition, and to protect him against the school police.
Johnny appeared along with Little Anita, the Smallest Lady on Earth, and the Human Skeleton. As the Wild West Show tour went on, the Fat Boy of Peckham was as popular as ever. The newspaper writings about his educational difficulties had been reported in the provincial papers as well, and Johnny was sometimes greeted like a conquering hero: suits of clothes were measured, postcards sold, and country journalists treated to interviews with the Peckham superstar. Johnny had a certain native wit, and if a crowd of country bumpkins was making fun of him, he asked them how much they earned each week. On 1 April 1905, the Daily Mail could announce that the Fat Boy of Peckham was to join the Wild West Show on an extended tour to Paris, Venice, Rome, and perhaps to the United States.
Buffalo Bill had been very pleased with Johnny during the tour of Britain, but the French and Italian reaction to the Peckham prodigy left much to be desired. With their usual disdain for British fads, the French declared themselves to be entirely unimpressed with the Fat Boy. Linguistic difficulties meant that Johnny was unable to interact with the audience. A picture postcard in French was published to advertise ‘Le Garçon Gras de Peckham, Londres, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’, but to no avail. Buffalo Bill realised that the usefulness of the Fat Boy as an object of exhibition was geographically limited, and in September 1905, Johnny was back in London, where he was immediately ‘nabbed’ by the school police and taken to school. But although the snub from Buffalo Bill was a hard blow for Mr Trunley, his son was still famous, and there were other showmen interested in taking over his management. Trunley soon signed a contract with the celebrated music hall impresario Fred Karno, and Johnny performed in various sketch comedies, meeting Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, among other celebrities.
When there was a lack of music hall engagements, Mr Trunley took Johnny touring the country. He was a particular favourite at the Peckham Hippodrome, not far from his home, and at Great Yarmouth, where he had many admirers. In November 1906, the Evening Telegraph announced that Johnny was to attend a school for the mentally deficient in Gloucester Road, nearly a mile from his home in Peckham. There were problems, though: he could not walk 200 feet without pain, his boots cost 22 shillings a pair, and he ate twice as much as an ordinary man. Nothing much seems to have become of this schooling project, and the Daily Mail wrote that the wastrels of the London County Council ought to have constructed a special tramline to carry the Fat Boy to school, since no motor omnibus would hold him. Another joker, in the Buckinghamshire Herald, suggested that the Fat Boy ought to be housed, at government expense, near the opening of the proposed Channel Tunnel, and used for blocking it in case of hostilities.
AN ORDINARY MAN
Johnny continued touring for quite a few years. In February 1907, he was barred from appearing at the Winter Halls in Leamington Spa, where the local magistrates found the exhibition to be in bad taste, but the majority of towns and cities accepted him without demur. In Edinburgh, where he was particularly popular, a waxwork effigy of him was unveiled in 1908. In a postcard from early 1908, the hulking Johnny is portrayed together with his father and manager. In another card from late 1909, he is advertised to be over 25 stone (159kg) in weight and touring under the management of Barron Bros., Amusement Caterers, of Great Yarmouth. In April 1910, he was at the Novelty Bazaar, 27 Biggin Street, Dover. The
JOHNNY WAS PROCLAIMED THE HEAVIEST PERSON IN GREAT BRITAIN
1911 Census lists both John Thomas Trunleys, the elder of whom gives his employment as a Travelling Showman. But the following year, Mr Trunley died unexpectedly, and Johnny was without his father and manager. Although he kept increasing in weight, turning the scales at 33 stone (210kg) by 1915 and being proclaimed the heaviest person in Britain, his career never recovered from this blow. The Great War affected him badly, and he was very much afraid of the air raids and the sinister ‘Zeps’. Due to his nervous disposition and to wartime shortages, his weight plummeted dramatically.
As hostilities ended, the fortunes of the Fat Boy continued to dwindle. Although he soon increased in weight to 21 stone (133kg), he was incapable of regaining his pre-war fame. In a brief acting career, he took part in a play called ‘Kill or Kure’ at the Stratford Empire, and played the part of a bookmaker in an early silent film. His self-confidence was as high as ever, and he told his friend Charlie Chaplin about his ambition to go to America and challenge ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and other overweight Hollywood celebrities. But Charlie warned him that since America already had a great many fat comedians, actors and performers of every description, it would be very difficult for a foreigner to break into the industry.
Johnny Trunley, once the Fat Boy of Peckham, had become an Ordinary Man. He got a job as an apprentice clockmaker, and later opened his own clock repair shop in Gordon Road, Peckham. He once tried to return to the limelight by challenging Gene Tunney, the world heavyweight boxing champion who had twice defeated Jack Dempsey, but Gene snubbed him. In 1927, Johnny married Mrs Florence Petty, a widow with an adolescent son. A photograph shows the hulking paterfamilias sitting astride a motorcycle, with his short, slim wife in the sidecar and the stepson ‘Reg’ riding pillion. Johnny and Florence got on well, and had at least one child, John, who later had offspring himself. There is evidence that although still eating heartily, Johnny became rather more health-conscious after getting married, taking regular exercise through swimming, boxing and club-throwing. The Second World War, with its terrible air raids, again affected him very badly. He caught pneumonia from spending the nights in damp air raid shelters, and went into hospital where the doctors diagnosed tuberculosis. In September 1944, poor Johnny passed away.
His Times obituary pointed him out as one of the many cases in which extensive publicity is followed by the most profound oblivion. Over the years, many a plump schoolboy must have been called ‘The Fat Boy of Peckham’ without having a clue as to the origin of this cheerful insult.
THE FAT BOY’S RIVALS
One’s immediate reaction, after considering the life and career of the Fat Boy of Peckham, must be that it is quite distasteful, even barbaric, to exhibit a morbidly obese child in such a manner. Today, such a degrading exhibition would of course be speedily prohibited, and one would have thought it would have been considered tasteless and unedifying back in 1903. Three independent factors conspired to allow Johnny Trunley to make his fortune on stage, however. Firstly, the traditional freak show was still alive and flourishing, as evidenced by the exploitation of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, in the 1880s, and Krao, the Human Monkey ( FT317:76-77) in the 1890s. Although
the tide was slowly turning, with many ‘educated’ people finding the exhibition of freaks morally repugnant, support for freak shows from the lower classes remained strong, as did the infrastructure for the travelling exhibition of freaks. Secondly, the considerable newspaper publicity around the Fat Boy’s educational mishaps made him a national celebrity, and thus set the stage for his exploitation in the sideshow. Thirdly, the popular ‘fat baby’ competitions arranged by PT Barnum and others had engendered an unwholesome fascination with obese children, both in the United States and in Britain. In the 1880s and 1890s, various grossly obese children were exhibited in the American sideshows, and one or two of them even visited Britain. They were considered as ‘phenomena’ or ‘wonders of nature’ rather than unwholesome or unwell.
Johnny Trunley eclipsed all his predecessors, however, and his meteoric success even spawned a few ‘Fat Boy wannabes’ eager to go on show. The Hungarian Fat Boy was at large from 1904 until 1907, with modest success. In the 1910s, Lenny Mason, the Leicester Fat Boy, managed to usurp some of the fame of the Peckham prodigy following his semi-retirement in 1912, until Lenny himself died prematurely in 1920.
The next question must of course be: What was wrong with the Fat Boy?
Some Internet commentators have suggested that there must have been something seriously amiss with his ‘glands’, although not providing any details exactly what this might have been. A newspaper account mentions that, when he was four years old, Johnny was brought to some kind of medical convention, where he was shown to 700 doctors, one of whom was the celebrated Sir Frederick Treves; they had no clue what ailed him.
In modern medicine, obesity can be separated into a (common) primary form, which occurs without other disease being present, and an (uncommon) secondary form, where the corpulence has some external endocrine or genetic cause. For example, myxoedema (severe lack of thyroid hormone) may cause obesity, as may Cushing’s syndrome of hyperproduction of corticothropic hormone. Less common causes include Froelich’s syndrome of hypothalamic insufficiency and certain rare genetic syndromes like the Laurence-MoonBiedl syndrome and the Prader-Willi syndrome.
But Johnny Trunley had no symptoms of either hypothyroidism or hypothalamic insufficiency, nor had
he the typical moon-face of the patient with Cushing’s syndrome. Patients with the PraderWilli or Laurence-Moon-Biedl syndromes may become extremely corpulent, but are often quite feeble both bodily and mentally, with a tendency towards diabetes and severe eye disease that may lead to blindness. Johnny Trunley was strong and vigorous as a child, and lived to be 46 years old. There is no doubt that he suffered from primary obesity, which does not appear to have been genetic in origin, due to the lack of any overweight relations; his father was in fact a short, thin man. It is notable that not less than six Trunley children were born in the Camberwell district from 1900 until 1909, so Johnny may well have had several siblings. In late 1904, there was a newspaper story that Mrs Trunley had just given birth to another very large, heavy son; this may well have been the Albert Edward Trunley whose birth was registered in early 1905, but nothing more is known about him than that he expired in 1962. Indeed, the popular belief that very obese individuals have something wrong with their ‘glands’ is illfounded; in fact, only a small minority of them have an endocrine cause for their obesity. The 76-stone (483kg) Robert Hughes used to blame his corpulence on a singular accident: when three years old, he suffered from whooping-cough and ‘ruptured his thyroid gland’. This explanation, eagerly swallowed by the journalists, deserves a place among the ‘greats’ of medical cock-and-bull stories, along with the tale of the Irishman who tried to convince the doctor that he had caught venereal disease from borrowing another man’s trousers.
In my book The Two-Headed Boy, and other Medical Marvels, I described the life and times of Daniel Lambert, a native of Leicester who weighed not less than 52 stone (330kg). When he exhibited himself for money in London in 1806, he was acknowledged as the heaviest man ever seen in Britain. There is no doubt that like Johnny Trunley, Lambert suffered from primary obesity, as did the first man in Britain to challenge his weight record, the publican William Campbell (see FT298:7677). Whereas Lambert was said not to have been grossly overweight as a child, Campbell turned the scales at 18 stone (114kg) at the age of 10, roughly the same as Johnny Trunley. Lambert died at the age of 39, and Campbell, whose habits were not conducive to a long and healthy life, at just 22.
Two showbusiness contemporaries of Johnny’s, namely Willie Filtz, the American Fat Boy (1892-1911) and Lenny Mason (19031920) also died prematurely. It is today appreciated that adipose tissue produces adipokines, noxious signalling proteins that mediate early-onset diabetes, atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Thus, being grossly overweight does not just increase the strain on the locomotory and circulatory systems, it literally poisons the body from within. Johnny Trunley’s life may well have been saved by his rapid weight loss during the Great War.
As is well known, the globe is today swept by an epidemic of obesity: both adults and children are increasing in weight in an alarming manner. The world’s heaviest person, the American John Brower Minnoch (19411983) weighed in at 100 stone (635kg), far outclassing Daniel Lambert and the other obese celebrities of yesteryear. Although extremes like Johnny Trunley and Willie Filtz would still attract notice today, some of the other ‘fat children’ exhibited in Edwardian times would fit in perfectly well waddling around a contemporary schoolyard.
Childhood obesity is a serious health problem, as the aforementioned adipokines are given extra time to undermine health. Moreover, being an overweight child engenders psychological problems as well, from the incessant playground teasing and bullying. One might find it unlikely that a boy who was exhibited in the Edwardian freak-shows as ‘The Fat Boy of Peckham’ from 1903 (aged five) until 1912 (aged 14) would grow up to become a psychologically well-adjusted person, after suffering a decade of heartless comments and impertinent questions from the audience, but sources agree that in later life Johnny Trunley was an affable, popular man. He did not appear to feel sorry for himself or embarrassed by his size. He was a good watchmaker, and a kind husband and father. His local popularity was such that hundreds of people attended his funeral in the Camberwell New Cemetery. For many years, the Bun House at 96 Peckham High Street exhibited an old colour banner of Johnny in his prime, but this pub was closed down in 2002 and is today a branch of Betfred. In addition, both the Trunley family home in Colegrove Street, and the watchmaker’s shop in nearby Gordon Road, have fallen victim to London’s developers.
But although the humble Peckham terraces are gone, and the ordinary people who inhabited them forgotten, the memory of Johnny Trunley, once the celebrated Fat Boy of Peckham, remains to this day.