Note 19 — Chapter IV

From this period Freeman returned to his theatrical and professional circus exhibitions, in which his gigantic size attracted the popular wonderment. He was a careless, good-natured fellow; and it was stated by the medical officers of Winchester Hospital, where the emaciated giant died of consumption on the 18th of October, 1845, that he had within him the fatal seeds of pulmonary disease from his first period of manhood. His end was of necessity accelerated by repeated colds, caught in the light attire of fleshings and spangles, in which he exhibited in draughty canvas erections, and crowded theatres and booths. This last remark is drawn from us by a senseless paragraph, in which a Hampshire penny-a-liner endeavoured to “improve the occasion” by suggesting that the early death of the good-natured, soft-headed acrobat was due to the dreadful injuries “he must necessarily have received in his terrible combat with the formidable bruiser known as the Tipton Slasher—​injuries which from the tremendous stature of the combatants, must have been beyond ordinary calculation.” To this it may fairly be replied that the few fatal results on record from battles between big men is actually phenomenal—​Andrew M’Kay (June, 1830) and Simon Byrne (May, 1833) being the only two on record; the others resulting from contests between middle or light weights, and several of these regrettable fatalities being proved by subsequent surgical examination to have resulted from accident, excitement, or apoplexy, induced by violent exertion.