The Irish Giant: The Most Controversial Tragedy in British History

Charles Byrne lay in his hospital bed one day in June 1783, without parents, without relatives, and without a penny to his name. He was surrounded only by his fellow performers in the circus.

A dwarf approached the bed. He had to stand on tiptoe to hear Byrne's final wish: " Remember to bury me at the bottom of the sea, so that I will never be used for anyone's amusement again."

As the seven-foot-three Irish giant let out his dying breath, the rest of the people in the room—a bearded woman, a sword-swallowing man, and a fire-breathing old man—looked at each other, bowing their heads—knowing that no one could help.

Byrne spent his entire youth in the circus. Possessing a large, slow body due to being overweight, the boy from the Irish countryside only knew how to make a living by displaying himself, entertaining the British townspeople as a monster of creation.

From the muddy paths of the North of the Kingdom to the cobbled streets of London, the giant Byrne can be found bowing to the elderly, handing out balloons to children and returning any curious glances with a friendly smile.

There was only one look that made Byrne feel disgusted. It was the greedy gaze of the collecting aristocrats.

They coveted Byrne's body like a specimen - a specimen that would surely adorn the basement beneath the living room. So much so that one man came to his bedside, stooped down and said, " Byrne, I want to buy your body after you're dead. Just give me a number and an address where my money can be sent."

When the offer was rejected, the collector stood up and kicked the door open in a rage. He adjusted his vest, not forgetting to throw a contemptuous glance before joining the crowd surrounding number 21 Cockspur Street.

The local newspaper that year described the collectors as butchers preparing to throw their spears at the great beast, which had already worn out from fatigue. These aristocrats were not afraid to show their ambition, trying to get Byrne's body by any means, even if it meant stealing it.

Byrne: The Giant from Ireland

Charles Byrne, whose real name was Charles O'Brien , was born in 1761 in Littlebridge, a village in Northern Ireland. Records of Byrne's family are scant. It is known that his father was Scottish and his mother was a weaver. Both were healthy, of normal build and not overweight.

Legend has it that Byrne was conceived on a sacred haystack, which the villagers believed was the curse that would make him a giant. Back then, it was not known that the disease actually originated from a brain tumor.

People with gigantism often have a tumor that affects the pituitary gland – a small endocrine gland located at the base of the skull. For Byrne, the tumor caused him to produce too much growth hormone (GH). 

Under normal conditions, GH is secreted in batches of 4-11 times per day. It stimulates cell division in cartilage and bone. GH hormone is what helps us grow taller and develop physically during puberty. 

However, too much GH can cause problems.

Byrne was essentially unable to stop his growth. While the cartilage at the ends of his bones was still open, GH kept lengthening Byrne's bones. As a result, he reached a height of over 2 meters by his teens.

As the epiphyses close, GH inflates Byrne's body horizontally. His forehead juts out, his chin juts out, and his jaw stretches, causing the spaces between his teeth to widen. If the tumor continues to press on his pituitary gland, Byrne may experience headaches, increased sweating, and blurred vision.

Becoming a giant is therefore more of a curse than a miracle. It causes the patient's muscles to weaken, bones and joints to deform, and especially a shortened life expectancy due to obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes - metabolic disorders.

Yet all giants like Byrne found in their teenage years a magical window where superior physicality would give them more opportunities than their peers.

Byrne seized his chance to change his life on a runaway trip to Scotland, where he terrified the night watchmen in Edinburgh when they saw a giant standing on North Bridge, holding his pipe to a street lamp and lighting it without standing on tiptoe.

The appearance of a giant wandering through the city attracted the attention of all of Edinburgh, including a circus owner named Joe Vance.

It was the 18th century, and circuses called " freak shows" were becoming popular in the United Kingdom. They would gather dozens of physically abnormal people together to perform.

There will be dwarfs, quadriplegics, and microcephalic deformities. There will be bearded women, conjoined twins, and even people with two sets of genitals. All will be on display as "monsters of creation ."

The "freak show" attracted everyone from the common people to the nobility. The more unusual people a circus had, the more sought after it was. Some famous freaks even had the opportunity to be summoned to the palace to perform for the royal family.

At 7ft 3in, Byrne now stood out from the crowd as a giant. The circus boss in Edinburgh realised that if he stood him next to his old giant, Byrne would be a head taller.

So, byrne was hired immediately. The young man from rural Ireland was wondering what else he could do in the city - he nodded in agreement.

From the hunted to the hunted

Byrne's reputation as an entertainer grew as he joined the Edinburgh Circus, and he and his fellow performers toured the UK, settling in London in early 1782.

By this time, Byrne was so famous that his advertisements could dominate the newspapers:

Byrne, a sell-out, has taken over theatres and shows on every central London street, from Spring Garden Gate, Piccadilly to Charing Cross. The Irish giant's presence is a guarantee of any show where paying visitors have to pay to enter.

He was loved by the press and locals alike, a giant described as " gentle, amiable and inspiring to the public ". A playwright even wrote a play dedicated to Byrne, Harlequin Teague (or The Giant's Way).

But it was also at this time that Byrne attracted the attention of anatomists and collectors in London, including John Hunter , who had an entire basement devoted to displaying biological curiosities.

It is where Hunter stores more than 14,000 specimens of 500 different species of plants and animals. He also collects human remains, strange people. Hunter's goal is to turn his collection into the most unique biological museum on the planet.

With his ambition, he coveted Byrne as a living relic. Hunter made no secret of his intention to buy Byrne's body after his death, even going so far as to meet him and offer him a price: 130 pounds.

It wasn't the low price, but the thought that after he died, they would strip him of his flesh, leaving only his skeleton and putting him in a glass cage that terrified Byrne. He began to obsess over the way Hunter and the collectors looked at him.

By 1783, Byrne's health was failing. It was the result of gigantism, combined with a bout of depression. Dame Hilary Mantel, the female writer who wrote a novel about Byrne's life, shared: " Despite his fame and standing at the peak of his fame, I know he was a troubled soul ."

Byrne may have struggled with the meaning of his life. Although his fame brought him the opportunity to meet and mingle with many rich and aristocratic people, including King George III, Byrne still felt that he was just a " gentleman"  created by a circus freak.

To Hunter, he was just a hunted beast. The thought haunted Byrne even in his sleep. The pain of gigantism fueled his desire for alcohol.

Depression and illness meant Byrne's shows dwindled. Londoners stopped coming to see him on the main street, instead going to the Black Horse pub, where Byrne was always drunk.

The final straw came one day at the Black Horse, when a rat took advantage of the Irish Giant's drunkenness to steal two checks from his pocket. Two checks containing all the assets Byrne had accumulated during his touring days.

The figure was £770, equivalent to £160,000 today – an amount that many of Byrne's contemporaries would have spent a lifetime earning.

With everything gone, Byrne becomes increasingly ill. We are brought back to the original scene, where he is dying in his Cockspur Street flat. Outside, Hunter and a dozen body collectors are waiting.

A local newspaper described the scene:

"This tribe of surgeons laid claim to the poor departed Irish Giant. They surrounded his house like Greenland fishermen preparing to harpoon the great whale.

One of them was so outrageous that he hid in his coffin, so that he might be ready to strike [the body] at the moment when the witches were active at night, when the churchwardens were asleep."

The most controversial body theft in British history

John Hunter was a Scottish surgeon and one of the most prominent scientists of the 18th century. He was the teacher of Edward Jenner, the pioneer of the smallpox vaccine. Hunter himself performed the world's first artificial insemination in 1790.

With his works, Hunter has contributed to world medicine many understandings about development, bone regeneration, inflammation, treatment of gunshot wounds, venereal diseases, digestion, mammary gland activity, child development, distinction between maternal and fetal blood supply, role of lymphatic system.

But if there is anything to criticize about John Hunter's life, it is what he did to Charles Byrne.

The comparison itself is a mismatch. A small man next to a giant, a brilliant surgeon next to a circus performer, a rich and intelligent aristocrat next to a dying man who has lost everything.

When Hunter wanted to steal Byrne's body, it seemed like no force could stop him.

***

Back to Byrne's funeral. To fulfil his wish, his friends held a street fundraiser to raise enough money to buy a lead coffin. They planned to seal Byrne's body in it, drive him to the seaside town of Margate, and then charter a boat to float the coffin to an undisclosed location far offshore.

But Hunter, somehow, had found out about the plan. He hired a grave robber for £500. The robber formed a secret party to follow the funeral procession. When they stopped overnight at a pub on the way to Margate, the robbers took advantage of the drunkenness of the group to replace Byrne's body with heavy stone objects.

The Irish giant was brought back to London, where Hunter hid his body in his basement. Hunter spent days dissecting Byrne, fleshing him out and boiling the bones until they were white. He then erected the skeleton at the joints and placed it in a glass case, where he gazed at it for five years without revealing it to the public.

The documents say that Hunter was also afraid of being criticized by others. He even feared that if others knew of its existence, his precious skeleton would be stolen again.

But unfortunately, when Hunter commissioned a portrait by an artist named Sir Joshua Reynolds, Reynolds included the huge foot bones behind him, which were part of the body of the famous Irish Giant of Piccadilly Street.

As more people began to learn of the existence of Byrne's skeleton, Hunter sensed something was wrong. What he had previously considered a terrible crime had been overshadowed by public curiosity and his own fame.

No one criticized Hunter for stealing Byrne's body, after all, the Irish Giant could be replaced by another Irish Giant. There was no shortage of people on the island who were hypersecreting GH and could become giants.

Feeling safe, Hunter opened his collection to the public in 1788, with Byrne's skeleton always in the most prominent position. Hunter was now very proud of his most precious specimen.

And so, once again, the Irish Giant was resurrected. In the form of a white skeleton, Byrne continues to serve the millions of visitors to the Hunter Museum, who want to know the limits and wonders of creation.

Only, the Irish Giant now looks less friendly. He can no longer bow to the Queen, can no longer give balloons to children, and can no longer see anyone.

***

In 1793, John Hunter died at the age of 65 of a heart attack. His entire collection was purchased by the government. They bequeathed the property to the Royal College of Surgeons of England, with the task of turning it into an anatomical museum called the Hunterian.

In this way, Byrne's skeleton has continued to stand there for 200 years – defying ethical, scientific and even legal principles.

No one knows what to do with Byrne's remains. The museum says the skeleton is their property, while lawyers say everyone must respect Byrne's wishes to be buried at sea.

Scientists did not want that, they said they needed to keep the skeleton to study gigantism, this knowledge would then help future generations who were also suffering from the same condition as Byrne.

But ethicists say that because scientists have extracted his DNA, the Irish giant should be left to rest.

How Byrne should be laid to rest, though, is another question.

Some say he should be buried in his homeland, some say he should be buried at sea as he wished, and some say the Hunterian Museum should simply keep Byrne and stop displaying him as a specimen.

For two decades, medical ethicists, lawyers and even Byrne's alleged surviving relatives have been unable to decide what to do with the remains. The Irish Giant case has become one of the biggest controversies in British medical history.

Finding Rest After Nearly 250 Years

Unable to reason out an answer to the fate of the Byrne skeleton, in 2011 the British Medical Journal (BMJ) conducted a vote within the medical community.

The idea was put forward by Len Doyal, emeritus professor of medical ethics at the University of London, and law lecturer Thomas Muinzer, in their paper titled: "Should the Irish Giant's skeleton be buried at sea?".

The poll found that 55.6% of voters supported the idea. 13.17% supported removing Byrne's skeleton from display but keeping it for research. 31.55% of voters said it should remain as it is.

The impact of the BMJ article that year prompted the Royal College of Surgeons to convene a council meeting to decide the fate of Byrne's remains. But after the meeting ended, they continued to display the ill-fated giant.

In 2013, a paper published in the International Journal of Cultural and Property Law continued to address the legal issues surrounding Byrne's remains. The authors of the study sought to trace the Irish Giant's birthplace in the village of Littlebridge, in the hope of finding his descendants.

The search, however, has been fruitless. Several Irish gigantism sufferers who claim to be distant cousins ​​of Byrne have not been able to match his genetic number to be recognised. The authors have therefore called on the Hunterian Museum to return the skeleton to the village of Littlebridge, where the Irish Giant was born. They say he should be buried there.

Dame Hilary Mantel, author of the novel " The Giant, O'Brien " about Byrne's life, agreed: " I think Byrne originally wanted to be thrown into the sea just to get out of Dr Hunter's reach. If he were allowed to leave the museum now, I think he would want to be buried in his native Ireland."

In 2021, the drama surrounding Byrne's remains was further heightened in a study by Dr Mary Lowth, a physician and jurist at King's College London.

Writing in the Journal of Medical Law, Mary cited centuries of English law that treated a corpse as a person. When a person donates his or her body to medical science, the corpse deserves to be treated as a person and has human rights.

So when Hunter stole Byrne's body, he wasn't stealing a piece of property, he was kidnapping a human being. At the Hunterian Museum, Byrne wasn't just put on display, he was held captive for 200 years.

This paves the way for a scenario where, now, if a group of people were to break into the museum and steal Bryne's remains to bury him at sea as he wished, it would not be a theft of property. Instead, these people were carrying out a hostage rescue.

If they had followed all the legal procedures regarding burial at sea, this group of remains thieves would not have been able to be prosecuted by law.

Mary's research was carried out while the Hunterian Museum was closed for three years for renovations. In January, they were preparing to reopen when, unexpectedly, the Royal College of Surgeons of England issued a statement.

They say the Irish Giant's public display will be suspended. However, the pressure has not been great enough to " set Byrne free ". He will remain somewhere in the Hunterian Museum's storage facility for scientific purposes.

" During the closure of the Museum, the Hunterian Collections Board discussed the sensitivities and differing views surrounding the display and retention of Charles Byrne's skeleton ," the statement read.

" The Trustees agreed that Charles Byrne's skeleton would not be displayed in the Hunterian Museum after the reorganization, but would remain available at any time for genuine medical research into pituitary disease or gigantism."

Having fought for Byrne's rights for more than 20 years, Muinzer and Professor Doyal were the first to welcome the decision. The Irish giant finally has a place to rest.

" But we suspect the museum is still allowing medical students to see the skeleton privately,"  Muinzer said . "This is again against his wishes.  We think Byrne's skeleton should still be buried at sea."