WATTON'S SHIP-SWABBER "FROM THE INDIES."--RICHARDSON, 1667--DE
HEITERKEIT, 1713.--ROBERT POWELL, 1718-1780.--DUFOUR,
1783.--QUACKENSALBER, 1794.
The earliest mention I have found of a public fire-eater in England is
in the correspondence of Sir Henry Watton, under date of June 3rd,
1633. He speaks of an Englishman "like some swabber of a ship, come
from the Indies, where he has learned to eat fire as familiarly as ever
I saw any eat cakes, even whole glowing brands, which he will crush
with his teeth and swallow." This was shown in London for two pence.
The first to attract the attention of the upper classes, however, was
one Richardson, who appeared in France in the year 1667 and enjoyed a
vogue sufficient to justify the record of his promise in the Journal
des Savants. Later on he came to London, and John Evelyn, in his diary,
mentions him under date of October 8th, 1672, as follows:
I took leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to Paris to my Lord,
now Ambassador there. She made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and
afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He devoured
brimstone on glowing coals before us, chewing and swallowing them; he
melted a beere-glass and eate it quite up; then taking a live coale on
his tongue he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blown on with
bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his mouthe, and so remained
until the oyster gaped and was quite boil'd.
Then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank down as it
flamed: I saw it flaming in his mouthe a good while; he also took up a
thick piece of iron, such as laundresses use to put in their
smoothing-boxes, when it was fiery hot, held it between his teeth, then
in his hand, and threw it about like a stone; but this I observ'd he
cared not to hold very long. Then he stoode on a small pot, and,
bending his body, tooke a glowing iron with his mouthe from betweene
his feete, without touching the pot or ground with his hands, with
divers other prodigious feats.
The secret methods employed by Richardson were disclosed by his
servant, and this publicity seems to have brought his career to a
sudden close; at least I have found no record of his subsequent
movements.
About 1713 a fire-eater named De Heiterkeit, a native of Annivi, in
Savoy, flourished for a time in London. He performed five times a day
at the Duke of Marlborough's Head, in Fleet Street, the prices being
half-a-crown, eighteen pence and one shilling.
According to London Tit-Bits, "De Heiterkeit had the honor of
exhibiting before Louis XIV., the Emperor of Austria, the King of
Sicily and the Doge of Venice, and his name having reached the
Inquisition, that holy office proposed experimenting on him to find out
whether he was fireproof externally as well as internally. He was
preserved from this unwelcome ordeal, however, by the interference of
the Duchess Royal, Regent of Savoy."
His programme did not differ materially from that of his predecessor,
Richardson, who had antedated him by nearly fifty years.
By far the most famous of the early fire-eaters was Robert Powell,
whose public career extended over a period of nearly sixty years, and
who was patronized by the English peerage. It was mainly through the
instrumentality of Sir Hans Sloane that, in 1751, the Royal Society
presented Powell a purse of gold and a large silver medal.
Lounger's Commonplace Book says of Powell: "Such is his passion for
this terrible element, that if he were to come hungry into your
kitchen, while a sirloin was roasting, he would eat up the fire and
leave the beef. It is somewhat surprising that the friends of REAL
MERIT have not yet promoted him, living as we do in an age favorable to
men of genius. Obliged to wander from place to place, instead of
indulging himself in private with his favorite dish, he is under the
uncomfortable necessity of eating in public, and helping himself from
the kitchen fire of some paltry ale-house in the country."
His advertisements show that he was before the public from 1718 to
1780. One of his later advertisements runs as follows: