Where does Joseph Fleming fit into the equation?

[DVV]

Your "Allelujah", is a little late Dave

Is it ? So how come that you deny any value to any of my arguments ? If they're all valueless + 6'7 written, enough, case closed, he was 6'7 tall. But you just said it could be a mistake. Why ?

Debs doesn't support you Dave

Debs isn't ready to accept he was 6'7 because it's written once. Do you think she was just kidding when she has posted the Lincolnshire giant article ?

It is the record, and until you find another entry which contradicts it, then lets just accept it and move on.

Haha. Oh oh.
You sure know Joseph Fleming.
6'7 tall, 11 st, aged 37.
Actually, Joseph Fleming was an alias used once by a lunatic named James Evans.

Cheers

[DVV]

It gets you to the East End at that time. In your minds eye. Picturing this man over six feet, no, over halfway to seven feet tall walking out the door of the Victoria Home and down Wentworth street, and throngs of children come running to see and folllow along. And your realize - what's wrong with this picture? How could the second hand accounts of Mary Kelly's beau Joe not include that he was the Bethnal Green Giant.

That's where it gets you.

Roy

Sound post, Roy.
And he would have been the chief attraction of the loony bin as well.

Cheers

[Wickerman]

Thank you Dave, I see what you're saying.



It gets you to the East End at that time. In your minds eye. Picturing this man over six feet, no, over halfway to seven feet tall walking out the door of the Victoria Home and down Wentworth street, and throngs of children come running to see and folllow along. And your realize - what's wrong with this picture? How could the second hand accounts of Mary Kelly's beau Joe not include that he was the Bethnal Green Giant.

That's where it gets you.

Roy

Therefore, I ask you the same question, where do you expect to see the accounts of ordinary people passing this strange man in the street?

[Lechmere]

DVV

Yes I did mean that there was no proof Evans/Fleming was in the Victoria Home in September 1888

The point about Barnett being unreliable was that nothing he said about Kelly can be substantiated or relied on – except according to some what he said about Fleming.
That does not mean that the details he said about Fleming were of themselves dubious. They weren’t, they were humdrum. You cannot know for sure that Barnett was referring to Evans/Fleming.

Evans/Fleming’s height simply isn’t confounded by his weight. It is utterly hopeless to claim it is. Peter Crouch is living testimony to the ridiculousness of that stance.
Nor does his good health confound his height. I will quote again the peter Crouch example – the only example necessary although I am sure there are plenty of others. But I also quoted the contemporary example of Kosminski to illustrate the medical authority’s attitude to such things. Your own private thoughts on the matter carry no weight.

I haven’t admitted that Fleming’s height would have been mentioned by anyone – presuming of course that Evans/Fleming really was Kelly’s ex. tI is more than probable that none of those witnesses saw him. And maybe Kelly was embarrassed to mention his height – who knows? You seem to think that everything works in straight lines. Every mention of a person links together and refers to the same person, like a nice jigsaw. Life isn’t like that.
I pointed out to you that Harald Hardrada’s greater unusual height was seldom mentioned.

As for Fleming’s age, maybe he gave that as his age. You have no idea whether his mother was asked to corroborate it. It is somewhat ludicrous for you to pretend that you do.
As Wickerman pointed out, the height would have been a simple matter of observation.
Visually judging between 33 and 37 years of age is virtually impossible.

The height would have stuck out like a sore thumb every time the book was opened to that page and the record amended.
The age record would not have done.

Why would the mistaken height have been corrected – if it was an error?
You may as well ask why they bothered to record the height at all?
If it did not matter what was entered why did they bother meticulously recording the height of off the inmates? In feet and inches, never just in inches.
Clearly it was part of the documentation that could determine the health of the patient. If the weight got ridiculously low for example.
I would suggest that clerks in 1888 were far more likely to be fastidious in correcting details than now.
The institutional mentality would have been to correct the record.

I would suggest that junior staff would be responsible for routine updates and the book which contained numerous other records would be looked at from time to time by more senior staff to consider each case.
Fleming for example was on the verge of being released at one point until he had some sort of relapse.

Of course it is possible that the height is a mistake. But the way it was recorded and the use to which the document in which it was recorded was put is strongly suggestive that it was not a mistake.
As I have said it is far firmer evidence than the flimsy connections made about Fleming

By the way several inmates at Stone were under 5 feet tall. There didn’t seem to be any reference to them being titchy. I wonder of crowds of kids followed them about asking where their six mates were?

[DVV]

Thanks, Lechmere, but don't bother writing so long posts, Lechmere.
I quite understand how embarrassed you are.
To prove Fleming wasn't strikingly tall and thin, you call Peter Crouch for help.
And to prove that 6'7 cannot be a mistake, you take the picture of a page in which there is another mistake.

Cheers

[Lechmere]

I'd be embarrassed to make a case that depended on an official record being a mistake - particularly a record like the Evans/Fleming height record.

[DVV]

Which means he was born James Evans in 1855 ?

[DVV]

Or is it that there really was a 55ft tall soldier in the LVP ?
Hence the empire where the sun never sets, I suppose.

[Wickerman]

Reflecting back on James Bradshaw, the Lincolnshire Giant.

He was from Spalding, they knew him in Spalding.

Does anyone,....have reason to believe James Bradshaw was written about in the local press every time he set foot out of the door?

Regardless of who the local celebrity is, he is from their town, like Fleming was from the East end, and as such it matters nothing that he is seen in the street, he is a common enough sight, and that it is not news.
It is only news in Hull, a populace who were not aware of Bradshaw's existence, but in Spalding he is part of the local scenery and passed everyday in relative anonymity.

This is human nature, likewise then, Fleming in and out of the Victoria Home, up and down Wentworth Street, everyday, its not news, everybody knows him.
Fleming may have been a spectacle in the West End, but in the East End he was part of the background - assuming he was in fact 6' 7" tall.

Joseph Merrick was born and raised in Leicester - was he in the local papers every day in Leicester?
He only became a national celebrity after he moved to Whitechapel, no-one knew him in London.

Regardless what Fleming looked like, he was a local man seen every day in and around Whitechapel & Bethnal Green - not newsworthy.

[DVV]

Thanks for that, Jon.
Sound post.
Now I know Fleming was an average giant.

[Wickerman]

Wanna see a real giant?



Jack Earle, 7ft 7 1/2 in.

Yeh, Fleming was only an average giant.

[DVV]

Wanna see a real giant?

No.
What for ?
See the non-Hutchinsonian Roy's post.

Cheers

[Wickerman]

No.
What for ?
See the non-Hutchinsonian Roy's post.

Cheers

Was that the example of a "not newsworthy" local celebrity?

[DVV]

Piéral

"You know, Julia, I'm very fond of a man. His name is Piéral. He's terribly jealous and has beaten me more than once, but I love him. He's an actor. But between two movies, he's the center for the Boston Celtics."

[Brenda]

.

At 6'7", he would have been uncommon enough that when Barnett mentioned him, everyone would have been like "OH YEAH, that guy!!"