George Talkington, once a celebrated horse-dealer at Uttoxeter, who died
on the 8th of April, 1826, at Cheadle, Cheshire, in his eighty-third
year, met with more accidents than probably ever befell any other human
being. Up to the year 1793 they were as follows:--Right shoulder broken;
skull fractured, and trepanned; left arm broken in two places; three
ribs on the left side broken; a cut on the forehead; lancet case, flue
case, and knife forced into the thigh; three ribs broken on the right
side; and the right shoulder, elbow, and wrist dislocated; back
seriously injured; cap of the right knee kicked off; left ancle
dislocated; cut for a fistula; right ancle dislocated and hip knocked
down; seven ribs broken on the right and left sides; kicked in the face,
and the left eye nearly knocked out; the back again seriously injured;
two ribs and breast-bone broken; got down and kicked by a horse, until
he had five holes in his left leg; the sinew just below the right knee
cut through, and two holes in that leg, also two shocking cuts above the
knee; taken apparently dead seven times out of different rivers.
Since 1793, (when a reference to these accidents was given to Mr.
Madely, surgeon, of Uttoxeter,) right shoulder dislocated and
collar-bone broken; seven ribs broken; breast-bone laid open, and right
shoulder dislocated; left shoulder dislocated, and left arm broken; two
ribs broken; and right thigh much bruised near the pope’s eye. In 1819,
then in his seventy-sixth year, a lacerated wound in the calf of the
leg, which extended to the foot, mortification of the wound took place,
which exposed all the flexor tendons of the foot, also the capsular
ligaments of the ancle joint; became delirious, and so continued upwards
of three weeks: his wonderful recovery from this accident was attributed
chiefly to the circumstance of a friend having supplied him with a
quantity of old Madeira, a glass of which he took every two hours for
eight weeks, and afterwards occasionally. Since then, in 1823, in his
eightieth year he had a mortification of the second toe of the right
foot, with exfoliation of the bone, from which he recovered, and at last
died from gradually declining old age. He was the father of eighteen
children, by one wife, in fifteen years, all of whom he survived, and
married again at the age of seventy-four.[292]
[292] Oxford and University Herald, April 29, 1896. Communicated by J.
J. A. F.
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