March 11, 2021 • 26 mins
Author Marc Hartzman tells Matt and Helen about the odd profession of Stone Eaters and they find out that there is another job hiding behind this one.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is job sleete. I'm Helen Hung and I'm Matt
beat and we're taking a bite out of stone eaters.
Get it. There was a man named Thomas Gobson and
who was advised to eat couples for medical reasons. It
was to help relieve his flatulence problem. Have you ever
(00:22):
had the urge to eat rocks? Yeah? Me, neither? Won't.
Wait now, don't rocks have minerals in them? Minerals are good? Right? Well? No, no,
absolutely not. Humans have evolved to generally find no use
for eating rocks. They're simply not edible. But that hasn't
(00:43):
stopped some of us from making a quick book. Am
I right? Seriously? People used to eat stones to make money,
and it was more common than you might think. In
this episode, we're rocking to the rolling stones, not really
as to sneak that in there as we learn about
stone eaters. I had too much fun with that one.
(01:08):
So stone eaters. When I first heard the concept, I
was like, is this a euphemism for something? But you're
saying no, it's actually eating stones. Yes, actually eating stones. Okay,
why we'll get into that. That is a good question.
(01:31):
Let's hear from Mark Hertsman we spoke with him. He's
an author and he also has this website called the
Weird Historian. He's a stone eaters expert. It's someone who
eats stones or rocks or pebbles um. And this would
have been something they would have done for for entertainment,
although in some cases it's been said it was given
(01:51):
as a as medical advice, although not good medical advice,
but to other problems. But typically these would be people
who would who would eat stone for for fun and profits? Oh,
for fun and profit? Obviously for fun, right, like a
wild Friday night back in the day, Like, Hey, Betty,
(02:13):
you want to go eat some stones tonight? What else
are you gonna do? Wait? So like for fun? Does
he mean like it was fun for the people eating
stones or fun for the people watching them eat the stones? Well,
you're you're an actress, right you you? Why do you
like to act? I mean I like to act because
(02:36):
I crave attention because I didn't get enough of it
from my parents. Do you really want to get into
this now, Matt, Come on, all right, I didn't mean
for this to be a therapy session, but yeah, like
they wanted attention, that it was a good way to
entertain people, entertain their friends and press people, kind of
like a circus act. Yeah, they were right next to
the fire eaters and the jugglers. Of course, this is
(02:59):
something that still exists. We still have the circus, we
still have street performers. Um. I doubt that your local
modern day street performer has a stone eater, right, right,
So let's look at the hey day. The hey day, surprisingly,
from what I researched, was actually this was more common
(03:19):
in the sixteen hundred, seventeen hundreds up into the eighteen hundreds.
But according to our experts, maybe there really wasn't much
of a heyday. I don't know how much stone eating
had a heyday necessarily. I think it was more than
the one off WARDO category. Yeah, I would assume that
they would either be with a you know, a fair,
or you know, they might be touring during the summer
(03:40):
months maybe um off season. They might just be doing
shows locally. Um, but at a certain point, you know,
you could do shows within dime museums or that kind
of thing, indoor galleries or you know, the private performances
at homes. When the Bartholomew affair came, I mean, this
was obviously a huge event. Your entertainment choices were pretty
limited at that time. So whenever there was a fair
(04:00):
of that sort, carnival came to town or whatever it
might be, that was your entertainment, you know, and that
was something people will look forward to. And you'd have
something different you've never seen before and you wanted to
go see it, whether that was someone eating fire, swallowing
a sword, or eating rocks. You never saw any when
eat rocks before, so you have to go see what
that was about. And to have that sort of showmanship
of being able to, you know, show you the rock,
(04:22):
um put it in your mouth, swallow it, have a
few of them. I mean you can imagine that sound
and that effect being pretty powerful. This just makes me
really appreciate Netflix because when I'm bored, if I don't
like what's on Netflix, I'll go to Hulu. If I
don't like what's on Hulu, I'll go to HBO, Max, etcetera, etcetera.
(04:44):
I never am like, you know what, I need to
go to the local fair and see a guy swallowing
the stones. M I should probably bring up more information
about the Bartholomew Fair, which was it was a pretty
big deal in London, and it's crazy. It lasted like
they started it in the year eleven thirty three and
(05:04):
it happened every summer for the most part, all the
way up to eighteen fifty five. So this is a
big deal in London. Like everybody from the country came
to town and saw these street performers in the stone
eaters were one of the highlights of this whole thing.
Was it like the County Fair or the Rent Fair? Yeah? No,
(05:29):
I think honestly it'd be more like the Renaissance fairs
that we see today, because there were it was mostly
about the spectacle, like almost like a circus, like like
to you go and you see tricks and people on
stilts and stuff like that. Yeah, definitely. There was one
guy that is well documented and he regularly performed at
the bartholomyw Fair. And so his name was Francesco but Aglia.
(05:56):
I'm probably mispronounced that, I guarantee, I guarantee heard that up.
I did so well well that Mark just pronounced his
name correctly. Here there was one particularly famous stone eater
was a guy named Francis Battaglia, and so he was
a seventeenth century stone eater. He would have been like
maybe near a juggler or a fire eater. Um. And
(06:19):
he had sort of a weird history that said that
he was born with two stones in one hand and
one and the other um, and that's all he wanted.
He refused to have anything else, I think with with
battalia in his case. You know, he would have like
three or four stones. He put them on a spoon,
then he put them all into his mouth together and
he swallowed them, you know, one after another, and then
(06:39):
he drinks some water, kind of wash it down a
little bit, and he'd shake his body around. You'd hear
them kind of rattle, like it was in a sack
or something. Then he would either you know, supposedly he
would get rid of them after a few weeks. Um,
he would poop them out. It was reported as quote
a great quantity of sand. Wait wait wait, wait, time out.
(07:03):
There are so many questionable things about the story, like
who is checking out his poop? You just had to
take his word for it, like yeah, yeah, you should
have seen the dump I tuck yesterday. Whoo sandy. And
it's funny because the way that it is described as
there were illegitimate stone eaters and there were quote legitimate
(07:27):
like almost like they had to be licensed, you know,
like what Bataglia. He was one of the more famous
and definitely a legitimate, well respected stone eater. You had
to belong to the stone eaters Union. No union, but
I could see not that we know of. Have you
ever heard of the show on TLC called My Strange Addiction? Absolutely? Oh,
(07:50):
this is this is full on My Strange Addiction, right.
You know there's people on that show that like they
eat toilet paper and they eat like there was one
guy who was like eating his couch. Yeah, and this
is like these guys are like, yeah, man rocks okay,
along the same vein of My Strange Addiction. This cannot
(08:12):
be good for you. Eating stones is not healthy, right, yeah,
it's not healthy. Um. But Mark mentioned that it was
prescribed medically. Did you remember hearing that? Yes? Yes, And
I wanted to ask you about that because wow, I mean,
are you ready to hear this because this is going
to involve more, um, the potential for more poop jokes.
(08:36):
Oh I love poop jokes. Okay, Okay. There was a
man named Thomas Gobson and who was advised to eat
cobbles for medical reasons. It was to help relieve his
flatulence problem. Supposedly that the stones were passed through him
very easily, and he felt a lot of relief from
doing this, and so he kept eating them, and he
kept eating more and more stones. Then he would shake
his bell and you could hear them rattle in his stomach.
(08:58):
And then after a few years of of you know,
he was walking around like this bag of rocks. And
he went back to a different doctor, which was at
least a good calling his part. He said he couldn't
digest other foods. He said he'd been under the hands
of a bunch of different quacks, but everything they offered
him never brought him, uh, you know, never brought him
any relief. So, yeah, he had a lot of problems.
(09:20):
So this guy had a farting problem that was so
bad that he went to go see a physician. Was like, oh, doc,
you're gonna help me. I can't even stand myself. I'm
just farting left and round right. My wife has left me. Help,
please help me on the docks, Like, you know what
would help with that? Eating rocks. Yeah, And the thing
(09:44):
is this was the first thing that worked for him,
So he just kept doing it. That's so crazy. He
was like he started eating the rocks and he was like, yes,
the farting is gone. This is brilliant. M h. I
(10:20):
think that was pretty rare though for it was used
for that. It was used for medical purposes. But there's
other things going on here with these stone eaters. So
here's the theory that Mark's going to go ahead and introduce,
and we'll we'll run with this. We'll see if the
sticks and eventually you know, you have these stone eaters.
There was another case of a guy who did it
(10:40):
in Um. I'm sure he was doing it before and
after a little bit um and he would swallow these
and the same kind of thing. He'd shake around his
belly and you would you might hear that at the show,
but I don't. I don't think he was keeping them
in his system. I think he was regurgitating these rocks later,
and so I think he figured out how to control
his muscles the stomach to bring them back up so
(11:02):
we could do the show, swallow the rocks, amaze everybody,
and they could go back later and just take them
out through the mouth. Done, done, done. Wait. So this
is so he's saying, like some people who were stone
eaters would actually bring them right back up after the
show was over. Yeah, trapped them in their esophagus and
(11:23):
regurgitate them, which is actually one of the most impressive
things I've ever seen or heard of, Like they're the
precursors of not only my strange addiction, but that show Jackass.
Oh yeah, let's try this insane thing. Let's see if
(11:44):
we live. Okay, So, just to clarify Mark our expert things,
some stone eaters were swallowing stones for good and then
they were either stay in there or they would poop
them out somehow. But some stone eaters were regurgitating them
up the greater the spectacle. It was probably more than
likely they were just regurgitating and technically they were still
(12:09):
eating the stones, so it wasn't false advertising. Speaking of advertising,
I do have an advertisement for an extraordinary stone eater
from would you like to hear it? I would love
to hear it? Wait from Yeah, Mark came across this
with his research, so I'll just read it here. This
is this would be on a a flyer that you
(12:31):
see in the street, you know, so trying to get
people to show up an extraordinary stone eater. The original
stone eater, the only one in the world, is arrived
and means to perform this and every day Sunday accepted
at Mr Hatch's trunk Maker four oh four strand opposite
(12:51):
a DELFI stone eating and stone swallowing, and after the
stones are swallowed, maybe heard to clink in his belly
the same as in a pocket. Yeah. First of all,
I loved your rendition, very town criery. I was gonna say,
(13:12):
I kind of got into my town crier went into you.
You went into town crier mode. I I'm here for it,
and I just a modern day equivalent of like Ladys
coming to the Forum July. But it's like stone eaters.
So then would this be a big deal, Like would
this be like a sold out show and people would
line up and pay all this money to see this
(13:34):
stone eater? Well, the advertisement said it costs two shillings
and sixpence, so they made a pretty good living doing this,
and then even said a private performance was for five
guineas on a short notice. Hilarious. There were actually really
famous stone eaters who even today have Wikipedia pages, and
(13:57):
one of those was mc nor. We do know that,
you know, as time moved on. You did have performers
that were swallowing stones and other objects as well and
and regurgitain them. And those we know were a decent
size um, so I imagine if they could do. You know,
people were swallowing frogs, watches, coins, all kinds of various objects.
(14:23):
But yeah, there was a guy in the late eighteen
hundreds named mac Norton who was a French performer. His
big thing was with frogs, but he would do all
kinds of different objects, and so we'd swallow the frogs
bring them back up, and he earned the nickname the
human aquarium. I think that would be a pretty tough job.
I mean he really had to develop a lot of
skills and muscle control, you know, muscles that are generally
(14:45):
involuntary um that he was able to get control of
to bring these back up on command. So basically he'd
swallow it and then he would just bring it up
when he was ready to. And this was something that
that Houdini he learned from him. Wow, okay, is he
talking about live frogs. Yeah, so this guy would take
a squirming like ribbit ribbit frog, swallow it whole and
(15:10):
then bring the frog back up and the frog would
be still alive and being like ribbit ribbit. Yeah, although
he did fear one time that he accidentally digested a frog,
like the count he missed, like the count was off
at the end of the day. He's like, I swear
to God, I swallowed seven and there's only six here now.
He mentioned Harry Houdini, who is one of the most
(15:33):
famous magicians in history, but he was actually very influenced
by mc norton, and Harry Houdini wrote that mc norton
had swallowed so many animals that he kind of lost
count and sometimes I came up yikes, Well they came
(15:55):
out the back end. Yeah, they came out eventually. Harry
Houdini actually was inspired by Norton and learned from him
as far as his own tricks with regurgitation. So you're
saying that Houdini, Harry Houdini, the very famous magician, would
practice swallowing things as part of his magic act. Yeah.
(16:17):
Of course, we don't know Houdini today for him just
swallowing stuff and regurgitating it. We know him for his
stunts that he would pull, like put himself into a
straight jacket or uh, some kind of stunt where he
had to escape, you know. And so there's one theory
that the way he was able to escape was he
would just swallow the key and then when the time came,
(16:39):
he would recurgitate it and unlock himself. That makes a
lot of sense. Like if you're like in a straight
jacket and you're locked in a cage, and then they
lower the cage into a pool of water, and then
and then you're like two minutes later you emerge and
everyone's like, however did he do it? And he actually
(17:00):
allowed the key to the cage. Yeah, well, it's still amazingly,
I mean, if that is true, that's just still amazing
to me. Like, I have even more respect for this guy.
So how about the Hoodini guy? I had heard of him,
and and mc norton or Claude l Yeah, I would
(17:24):
say that another person that was even more interesting than
mc norton was a guy known as the Great Waldo.
(17:50):
The Great Waldo he went even further. He went, He's like,
you know what frogs I wanna put? I'm gonna put
ice down, or fish or maybe even rats. There was
another guy came along shortly after. It was called the
(18:12):
Great Waldo and the Great Walldo was was really spectacular.
He had these same kind of powers of gregg agritation.
And while mc norton was known for swallowing frogs, Wallow
could do that too. But his big thing was swallowing
live mice. He he used white rats. That was his trademark.
And he said, his quote is it became a hobby
with me. Other people go in for golfer bridge, I
(18:32):
swallow rats. He would also do a thing where he
drink the water first and let the frog have some
like a little pool to splash around in. He'd swallow
someone's watch. You could go up and listen to the
watch chicking through his stomach. This guy had such control.
He could swallow different colored balls and then bring up
whatever color you asked him to bring up. You wonder too,
if it's if it's jumping around a little bit, you know,
(18:53):
what's that feel like? What's a hitting down there? It
really leaves lots of the imagination, no way, So this
was for real. This wasn't like an illusion like he
would swallow like a red ball, a green ball, and
a blue ball, and you'd be like, bring back up
the blue ball, and he would. He would regard to
take the blue ball. Yeah, I mean this guy became
actually world famous. He was German, he fled Nazi Germany
(19:19):
and then ended up in the United States. And you
know that show Ripley's Believe It or Not. Yeah, he
performed with Ripley's Believe It or Not. He would swallow
all these random any animate objects. But yeah, occasionally, uh, frogs, mice, rats, fish.
So these are people, like all of these people that
you've mentioned, like they could all be on America's Got
(19:40):
Talent or Britain's Got talent, or Germany's Got talent or
Croatia's got talent. I think that's actually a thing. It's
a showmanship and it's like something you don't see every day.
And that's I would say, rats is probably where I
would draw the line. No, you know what I would
(20:01):
draw the line is is much. I would draw the
line at swallowing anything, frankly other than food. I can't
even swallow my daily vitamin without like I have a gag,
like yeah, down, I want to know. It's impressive. It's
very impressive. Yeah, so funny you should mention that, Helen,
because there is a a star today who does this
(20:26):
and his name is His stage name is Stevie Star
and he's been on like all kinds of these type
of shows. There's a guy who's doing this today, who's
a Scottish performer named Stevie Star. People may have seen
him on America's Got Talent and he was swallowing things
on stage as big as billiard balls, which was really
extraordinary to stay. I don't know how he got a
(20:48):
billiard ball down his throat. And then, you know, David
Blaine has taught himself to do recently, he learned to
do the frog trick. I should say stunts because it's
not a trick, but he did it on one of
his ABC specials where he swallowed a frog and brought
it back up. And he was also inspired by mac Norton.
But you know, it's it's kind of interesting, how you know,
talking about David Blaine doing it and Stevie Starr doing
(21:11):
it and that in a sense that kind of traces
back to you know, Batalia the guy, the guy doing
it at the Bartholomew Fair with this weird stone eating performance.
I mean, where is Peter during all of this? Because
if I'm a frog and I am getting swallowed and
(21:31):
then regurgitated. I'm calling my agent like, this is just
this is not cool. Beans. One time he regurgitated a
Rubik's cube. That's even worse because it's square and it's
a discut pointy edges. There's a certain point where you
think they're like, oh, I don't think that would actually work.
And by the way, I will say about Stevie Starr,
(21:53):
there there's a bit of a controversy. Some people speculate
that he's just more of an illusionist, that he's not
really swallowing all of these things. I'm trying to decide
whether it would be worse to swallow a Rubik's cube
or a live mouse, frog or rat. He swallowed nails too.
Apparently he was on Britain Scott Talent and I believe
(22:15):
that was where yeah, oh gosh, if you just want
to look at it, no, don't look at us up.
I'm not looking it up. I'm not looking up anything.
So this kind of got out of control this episode here.
So weren't we talking about stones? Who are we were
talking about stones and we veered off wildly, So like,
let's get back to the stone eaters. Are there still
stone eaters today? Here's what's crazy, not really at all.
(22:40):
So Mark will explain on this, but I'm not sure
I'm fully satisfied with his explanation. But I want to
see what you think. So I don't know if there's
anyone just doing stones, um, I would I would guess
not UM. I would think if anything, a stone might
be part of a repertoire. I think when you can
do something like frogs or billiard balls, um or you know,
(23:01):
a ticking watch, any of those kind of live rat,
any of the things from from modern day to like
the mid twentie century. I feel like it's surpassed the
idea of swallowing stones, that if you were just going
to do stones, you'd kind of be behind. You know,
everyone's trying to push things further with all these kinds
of performances. So I would think, if you want to compete,
you have to you have to be equal or better. Right. Oh,
(23:25):
I love that. I love that stones are just boring,
like if you're a stone swallower. Now, it's like that's
so sixteen ds man hatch up with the times. But
I would be just incredibly impressed if if I actually
saw a person swallow a stone right in front of me,
I would just help, my mouth would be open, and
(23:48):
just the idea of like, how did you even stumble
onto this talent that you like? Was it like a
really boring Saturday night. I think all of us just
eventually reach a point in our lives. We're just like
I think I just want to go further. I want
to go further than anyone has ever gone before me.
And you know what, I might financially benefit from this.
(24:11):
I might not, I might I might just be talked
about on a podcast in three years. But that's okay.
It's it's weird because there's always that point where like
most of us are like, nope, I'm turning around, and
then there's these certain people like, no, I'm just gonna
go ahead and put that, put that in my That's
a really good point. It's like these people who are
(24:31):
they're kind of adventurers in their own way. It says
a lot about our expanding society that if you lived
in the sixteen hundreds and the only entertainment you had
was Bartholow New Fair that came around once a year,
and you were like, I never saw anybody eat a
stone before. That's so crazy. And now we live in
this world. It's like we have shows like My Strange Addiction,
(24:54):
and I'm like, stones boring. I just saw a dude
to eat an entire cow. Like for things to be
like whoa mind blowing now has to be really mind blowing.
Maybe the episodes shouldn't have been stone Eaters. Maybe it
should have been Professional Regrugitators or something that's actually a title,
by the way, professional regurgitators, and they still exist, so
(25:16):
that would be a job that's not jobs, right. So
that's why we're talking about stone eaters specifically, because it
was a subset of regurgitators that is just so out
now so out. So, hey, regurgitators out there listening, you
just need to thank the stone eaters for paving the way,
aiving the way. Get it. Hey, we want to give
(25:38):
a shout out to Mark Hartsman, our expert today on
stone swallowing and regurgitating and all kinds of deliciousness. Thank you, Mark.
Mark has a book out right now called The Big
Book of Mars, published by Books. You can find him
and his other books at Mark Hertsman books dot com,
(25:59):
and he's also known as the Weird Historian on the Internet.
So check him out at weird Historian dot com. And hey,
if you have an opinion on whether you think you
would rather swallow a Rubik's cube or a live animal,
let us know. Tweet us at job Sleete. Pod Job
(26:20):
Salte is produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing
hand Forge Podcast for You. It's hosted by us Helen
Hong That's Me and Matt That's Me. The show was
conceived and produced by Steve Za Markey, Anthony Savini, and
Jason Elliott. Our editor is Tommy Nichol, Our researcher is
Amelia Pauca, our production coordinator is Angie Hymis, and theme
(26:44):
music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to
our I Heart Radio team led by Nikki Etre, Katrina Norvell,
Ali Cantor, Mangesh Hotti, Kador, Will Pearson, conal Burne and
Bob Pittman.
This is job sleete. I'm Helen Hung and I'm Matt
beat and we're taking a bite out of stone eaters.
Get it. There was a man named Thomas Gobson and
who was advised to eat couples for medical reasons. It
was to help relieve his flatulence problem. Have you ever
(00:22):
had the urge to eat rocks? Yeah? Me, neither? Won't.
Wait now, don't rocks have minerals in them? Minerals are good? Right? Well? No, no,
absolutely not. Humans have evolved to generally find no use
for eating rocks. They're simply not edible. But that hasn't
(00:43):
stopped some of us from making a quick book. Am
I right? Seriously? People used to eat stones to make money,
and it was more common than you might think. In
this episode, we're rocking to the rolling stones, not really
as to sneak that in there as we learn about
stone eaters. I had too much fun with that one.
(01:08):
So stone eaters. When I first heard the concept, I
was like, is this a euphemism for something? But you're
saying no, it's actually eating stones. Yes, actually eating stones. Okay,
why we'll get into that. That is a good question.
(01:31):
Let's hear from Mark Hertsman we spoke with him. He's
an author and he also has this website called the
Weird Historian. He's a stone eaters expert. It's someone who
eats stones or rocks or pebbles um. And this would
have been something they would have done for for entertainment,
although in some cases it's been said it was given
(01:51):
as a as medical advice, although not good medical advice,
but to other problems. But typically these would be people
who would who would eat stone for for fun and profits? Oh,
for fun and profit? Obviously for fun, right, like a
wild Friday night back in the day, Like, Hey, Betty,
(02:13):
you want to go eat some stones tonight? What else
are you gonna do? Wait? So like for fun? Does
he mean like it was fun for the people eating
stones or fun for the people watching them eat the stones? Well,
you're you're an actress, right you you? Why do you
like to act? I mean I like to act because
(02:36):
I crave attention because I didn't get enough of it
from my parents. Do you really want to get into
this now, Matt, Come on, all right, I didn't mean
for this to be a therapy session, but yeah, like
they wanted attention, that it was a good way to
entertain people, entertain their friends and press people, kind of
like a circus act. Yeah, they were right next to
the fire eaters and the jugglers. Of course, this is
(02:59):
something that still exists. We still have the circus, we
still have street performers. Um. I doubt that your local
modern day street performer has a stone eater, right, right,
So let's look at the hey day. The hey day, surprisingly,
from what I researched, was actually this was more common
(03:19):
in the sixteen hundred, seventeen hundreds up into the eighteen hundreds.
But according to our experts, maybe there really wasn't much
of a heyday. I don't know how much stone eating
had a heyday necessarily. I think it was more than
the one off WARDO category. Yeah, I would assume that
they would either be with a you know, a fair,
or you know, they might be touring during the summer
(03:40):
months maybe um off season. They might just be doing
shows locally. Um, but at a certain point, you know,
you could do shows within dime museums or that kind
of thing, indoor galleries or you know, the private performances
at homes. When the Bartholomew affair came, I mean, this
was obviously a huge event. Your entertainment choices were pretty
limited at that time. So whenever there was a fair
(04:00):
of that sort, carnival came to town or whatever it
might be, that was your entertainment, you know, and that
was something people will look forward to. And you'd have
something different you've never seen before and you wanted to
go see it, whether that was someone eating fire, swallowing
a sword, or eating rocks. You never saw any when
eat rocks before, so you have to go see what
that was about. And to have that sort of showmanship
of being able to, you know, show you the rock,
(04:22):
um put it in your mouth, swallow it, have a
few of them. I mean you can imagine that sound
and that effect being pretty powerful. This just makes me
really appreciate Netflix because when I'm bored, if I don't
like what's on Netflix, I'll go to Hulu. If I
don't like what's on Hulu, I'll go to HBO, Max, etcetera, etcetera.
(04:44):
I never am like, you know what, I need to
go to the local fair and see a guy swallowing
the stones. M I should probably bring up more information
about the Bartholomew Fair, which was it was a pretty
big deal in London, and it's crazy. It lasted like
they started it in the year eleven thirty three and
(05:04):
it happened every summer for the most part, all the
way up to eighteen fifty five. So this is a
big deal in London. Like everybody from the country came
to town and saw these street performers in the stone
eaters were one of the highlights of this whole thing.
Was it like the County Fair or the Rent Fair? Yeah? No,
(05:29):
I think honestly it'd be more like the Renaissance fairs
that we see today, because there were it was mostly
about the spectacle, like almost like a circus, like like
to you go and you see tricks and people on
stilts and stuff like that. Yeah, definitely. There was one
guy that is well documented and he regularly performed at
the bartholomyw Fair. And so his name was Francesco but Aglia.
(05:56):
I'm probably mispronounced that, I guarantee, I guarantee heard that up.
I did so well well that Mark just pronounced his
name correctly. Here there was one particularly famous stone eater
was a guy named Francis Battaglia, and so he was
a seventeenth century stone eater. He would have been like
maybe near a juggler or a fire eater. Um. And
(06:19):
he had sort of a weird history that said that
he was born with two stones in one hand and
one and the other um, and that's all he wanted.
He refused to have anything else, I think with with
battalia in his case. You know, he would have like
three or four stones. He put them on a spoon,
then he put them all into his mouth together and
he swallowed them, you know, one after another, and then
(06:39):
he drinks some water, kind of wash it down a
little bit, and he'd shake his body around. You'd hear
them kind of rattle, like it was in a sack
or something. Then he would either you know, supposedly he
would get rid of them after a few weeks. Um,
he would poop them out. It was reported as quote
a great quantity of sand. Wait wait wait, wait, time out.
(07:03):
There are so many questionable things about the story, like
who is checking out his poop? You just had to
take his word for it, like yeah, yeah, you should
have seen the dump I tuck yesterday. Whoo sandy. And
it's funny because the way that it is described as
there were illegitimate stone eaters and there were quote legitimate
(07:27):
like almost like they had to be licensed, you know,
like what Bataglia. He was one of the more famous
and definitely a legitimate, well respected stone eater. You had
to belong to the stone eaters Union. No union, but
I could see not that we know of. Have you
ever heard of the show on TLC called My Strange Addiction? Absolutely? Oh,
(07:50):
this is this is full on My Strange Addiction, right.
You know there's people on that show that like they
eat toilet paper and they eat like there was one
guy who was like eating his couch. Yeah, and this
is like these guys are like, yeah, man rocks okay,
along the same vein of My Strange Addiction. This cannot
(08:12):
be good for you. Eating stones is not healthy, right, yeah,
it's not healthy. Um. But Mark mentioned that it was
prescribed medically. Did you remember hearing that? Yes? Yes, And
I wanted to ask you about that because wow, I mean,
are you ready to hear this because this is going
to involve more, um, the potential for more poop jokes.
(08:36):
Oh I love poop jokes. Okay, Okay. There was a
man named Thomas Gobson and who was advised to eat
cobbles for medical reasons. It was to help relieve his
flatulence problem. Supposedly that the stones were passed through him
very easily, and he felt a lot of relief from
doing this, and so he kept eating them, and he
kept eating more and more stones. Then he would shake
his bell and you could hear them rattle in his stomach.
(08:58):
And then after a few years of of you know,
he was walking around like this bag of rocks. And
he went back to a different doctor, which was at
least a good calling his part. He said he couldn't
digest other foods. He said he'd been under the hands
of a bunch of different quacks, but everything they offered
him never brought him, uh, you know, never brought him
any relief. So, yeah, he had a lot of problems.
(09:20):
So this guy had a farting problem that was so
bad that he went to go see a physician. Was like, oh, doc,
you're gonna help me. I can't even stand myself. I'm
just farting left and round right. My wife has left me. Help,
please help me on the docks, Like, you know what
would help with that? Eating rocks. Yeah, And the thing
(09:44):
is this was the first thing that worked for him,
So he just kept doing it. That's so crazy. He
was like he started eating the rocks and he was like, yes,
the farting is gone. This is brilliant. M h. I
(10:20):
think that was pretty rare though for it was used
for that. It was used for medical purposes. But there's
other things going on here with these stone eaters. So
here's the theory that Mark's going to go ahead and introduce,
and we'll we'll run with this. We'll see if the
sticks and eventually you know, you have these stone eaters.
There was another case of a guy who did it
(10:40):
in Um. I'm sure he was doing it before and
after a little bit um and he would swallow these
and the same kind of thing. He'd shake around his
belly and you would you might hear that at the show,
but I don't. I don't think he was keeping them
in his system. I think he was regurgitating these rocks later,
and so I think he figured out how to control
his muscles the stomach to bring them back up so
(11:02):
we could do the show, swallow the rocks, amaze everybody,
and they could go back later and just take them
out through the mouth. Done, done, done. Wait. So this
is so he's saying, like some people who were stone
eaters would actually bring them right back up after the
show was over. Yeah, trapped them in their esophagus and
(11:23):
regurgitate them, which is actually one of the most impressive
things I've ever seen or heard of, Like they're the
precursors of not only my strange addiction, but that show Jackass.
Oh yeah, let's try this insane thing. Let's see if
(11:44):
we live. Okay, So, just to clarify Mark our expert things,
some stone eaters were swallowing stones for good and then
they were either stay in there or they would poop
them out somehow. But some stone eaters were regurgitating them
up the greater the spectacle. It was probably more than
likely they were just regurgitating and technically they were still
(12:09):
eating the stones, so it wasn't false advertising. Speaking of advertising,
I do have an advertisement for an extraordinary stone eater
from would you like to hear it? I would love
to hear it? Wait from Yeah, Mark came across this
with his research, so I'll just read it here. This
is this would be on a a flyer that you
(12:31):
see in the street, you know, so trying to get
people to show up an extraordinary stone eater. The original
stone eater, the only one in the world, is arrived
and means to perform this and every day Sunday accepted
at Mr Hatch's trunk Maker four oh four strand opposite
(12:51):
a DELFI stone eating and stone swallowing, and after the
stones are swallowed, maybe heard to clink in his belly
the same as in a pocket. Yeah. First of all,
I loved your rendition, very town criery. I was gonna say,
(13:12):
I kind of got into my town crier went into you.
You went into town crier mode. I I'm here for it,
and I just a modern day equivalent of like Ladys
coming to the Forum July. But it's like stone eaters.
So then would this be a big deal, Like would
this be like a sold out show and people would
line up and pay all this money to see this
(13:34):
stone eater? Well, the advertisement said it costs two shillings
and sixpence, so they made a pretty good living doing this,
and then even said a private performance was for five
guineas on a short notice. Hilarious. There were actually really
famous stone eaters who even today have Wikipedia pages, and
(13:57):
one of those was mc nor. We do know that,
you know, as time moved on. You did have performers
that were swallowing stones and other objects as well and
and regurgitain them. And those we know were a decent
size um, so I imagine if they could do. You know,
people were swallowing frogs, watches, coins, all kinds of various objects.
(14:23):
But yeah, there was a guy in the late eighteen
hundreds named mac Norton who was a French performer. His
big thing was with frogs, but he would do all
kinds of different objects, and so we'd swallow the frogs
bring them back up, and he earned the nickname the
human aquarium. I think that would be a pretty tough job.
I mean he really had to develop a lot of
skills and muscle control, you know, muscles that are generally
(14:45):
involuntary um that he was able to get control of
to bring these back up on command. So basically he'd
swallow it and then he would just bring it up
when he was ready to. And this was something that
that Houdini he learned from him. Wow, okay, is he
talking about live frogs. Yeah, so this guy would take
a squirming like ribbit ribbit frog, swallow it whole and
(15:10):
then bring the frog back up and the frog would
be still alive and being like ribbit ribbit. Yeah, although
he did fear one time that he accidentally digested a frog,
like the count he missed, like the count was off
at the end of the day. He's like, I swear
to God, I swallowed seven and there's only six here now.
He mentioned Harry Houdini, who is one of the most
(15:33):
famous magicians in history, but he was actually very influenced
by mc norton, and Harry Houdini wrote that mc norton
had swallowed so many animals that he kind of lost
count and sometimes I came up yikes, Well they came
(15:55):
out the back end. Yeah, they came out eventually. Harry
Houdini actually was inspired by Norton and learned from him
as far as his own tricks with regurgitation. So you're
saying that Houdini, Harry Houdini, the very famous magician, would
practice swallowing things as part of his magic act. Yeah.
(16:17):
Of course, we don't know Houdini today for him just
swallowing stuff and regurgitating it. We know him for his
stunts that he would pull, like put himself into a
straight jacket or uh, some kind of stunt where he
had to escape, you know. And so there's one theory
that the way he was able to escape was he
would just swallow the key and then when the time came,
(16:39):
he would recurgitate it and unlock himself. That makes a
lot of sense. Like if you're like in a straight
jacket and you're locked in a cage, and then they
lower the cage into a pool of water, and then
and then you're like two minutes later you emerge and
everyone's like, however did he do it? And he actually
(17:00):
allowed the key to the cage. Yeah, well, it's still amazingly,
I mean, if that is true, that's just still amazing
to me. Like, I have even more respect for this guy.
So how about the Hoodini guy? I had heard of him,
and and mc norton or Claude l Yeah, I would
(17:24):
say that another person that was even more interesting than
mc norton was a guy known as the Great Waldo.
(17:50):
The Great Waldo he went even further. He went, He's like,
you know what frogs I wanna put? I'm gonna put
ice down, or fish or maybe even rats. There was
another guy came along shortly after. It was called the
(18:12):
Great Waldo and the Great Walldo was was really spectacular.
He had these same kind of powers of gregg agritation.
And while mc norton was known for swallowing frogs, Wallow
could do that too. But his big thing was swallowing
live mice. He he used white rats. That was his trademark.
And he said, his quote is it became a hobby
with me. Other people go in for golfer bridge, I
(18:32):
swallow rats. He would also do a thing where he
drink the water first and let the frog have some
like a little pool to splash around in. He'd swallow
someone's watch. You could go up and listen to the
watch chicking through his stomach. This guy had such control.
He could swallow different colored balls and then bring up
whatever color you asked him to bring up. You wonder too,
if it's if it's jumping around a little bit, you know,
(18:53):
what's that feel like? What's a hitting down there? It
really leaves lots of the imagination, no way, So this
was for real. This wasn't like an illusion like he
would swallow like a red ball, a green ball, and
a blue ball, and you'd be like, bring back up
the blue ball, and he would. He would regard to
take the blue ball. Yeah, I mean this guy became
actually world famous. He was German, he fled Nazi Germany
(19:19):
and then ended up in the United States. And you
know that show Ripley's Believe It or Not. Yeah, he
performed with Ripley's Believe It or Not. He would swallow
all these random any animate objects. But yeah, occasionally, uh, frogs, mice, rats, fish.
So these are people, like all of these people that
you've mentioned, like they could all be on America's Got
(19:40):
Talent or Britain's Got talent, or Germany's Got talent or
Croatia's got talent. I think that's actually a thing. It's
a showmanship and it's like something you don't see every day.
And that's I would say, rats is probably where I
would draw the line. No, you know what I would
(20:01):
draw the line is is much. I would draw the
line at swallowing anything, frankly other than food. I can't
even swallow my daily vitamin without like I have a gag,
like yeah, down, I want to know. It's impressive. It's
very impressive. Yeah, so funny you should mention that, Helen,
because there is a a star today who does this
(20:26):
and his name is His stage name is Stevie Star
and he's been on like all kinds of these type
of shows. There's a guy who's doing this today, who's
a Scottish performer named Stevie Star. People may have seen
him on America's Got Talent and he was swallowing things
on stage as big as billiard balls, which was really
extraordinary to stay. I don't know how he got a
(20:48):
billiard ball down his throat. And then, you know, David
Blaine has taught himself to do recently, he learned to
do the frog trick. I should say stunts because it's
not a trick, but he did it on one of
his ABC specials where he swallowed a frog and brought
it back up. And he was also inspired by mac Norton.
But you know, it's it's kind of interesting, how you know,
talking about David Blaine doing it and Stevie Starr doing
(21:11):
it and that in a sense that kind of traces
back to you know, Batalia the guy, the guy doing
it at the Bartholomew Fair with this weird stone eating performance.
I mean, where is Peter during all of this? Because
if I'm a frog and I am getting swallowed and
(21:31):
then regurgitated. I'm calling my agent like, this is just
this is not cool. Beans. One time he regurgitated a
Rubik's cube. That's even worse because it's square and it's
a discut pointy edges. There's a certain point where you
think they're like, oh, I don't think that would actually work.
And by the way, I will say about Stevie Starr,
(21:53):
there there's a bit of a controversy. Some people speculate
that he's just more of an illusionist, that he's not
really swallowing all of these things. I'm trying to decide
whether it would be worse to swallow a Rubik's cube
or a live mouse, frog or rat. He swallowed nails too.
Apparently he was on Britain Scott Talent and I believe
(22:15):
that was where yeah, oh gosh, if you just want
to look at it, no, don't look at us up.
I'm not looking it up. I'm not looking up anything.
So this kind of got out of control this episode here.
So weren't we talking about stones? Who are we were
talking about stones and we veered off wildly, So like,
let's get back to the stone eaters. Are there still
stone eaters today? Here's what's crazy, not really at all.
(22:40):
So Mark will explain on this, but I'm not sure
I'm fully satisfied with his explanation. But I want to
see what you think. So I don't know if there's
anyone just doing stones, um, I would I would guess
not UM. I would think if anything, a stone might
be part of a repertoire. I think when you can
do something like frogs or billiard balls, um or you know,
(23:01):
a ticking watch, any of those kind of live rat,
any of the things from from modern day to like
the mid twentie century. I feel like it's surpassed the
idea of swallowing stones, that if you were just going
to do stones, you'd kind of be behind. You know,
everyone's trying to push things further with all these kinds
of performances. So I would think, if you want to compete,
you have to you have to be equal or better. Right. Oh,
(23:25):
I love that. I love that stones are just boring,
like if you're a stone swallower. Now, it's like that's
so sixteen ds man hatch up with the times. But
I would be just incredibly impressed if if I actually
saw a person swallow a stone right in front of me,
I would just help, my mouth would be open, and
(23:48):
just the idea of like, how did you even stumble
onto this talent that you like? Was it like a
really boring Saturday night. I think all of us just
eventually reach a point in our lives. We're just like
I think I just want to go further. I want
to go further than anyone has ever gone before me.
And you know what, I might financially benefit from this.
(24:11):
I might not, I might I might just be talked
about on a podcast in three years. But that's okay.
It's it's weird because there's always that point where like
most of us are like, nope, I'm turning around, and
then there's these certain people like, no, I'm just gonna
go ahead and put that, put that in my That's
a really good point. It's like these people who are
(24:31):
they're kind of adventurers in their own way. It says
a lot about our expanding society that if you lived
in the sixteen hundreds and the only entertainment you had
was Bartholow New Fair that came around once a year,
and you were like, I never saw anybody eat a
stone before. That's so crazy. And now we live in
this world. It's like we have shows like My Strange Addiction,
(24:54):
and I'm like, stones boring. I just saw a dude
to eat an entire cow. Like for things to be
like whoa mind blowing now has to be really mind blowing.
Maybe the episodes shouldn't have been stone Eaters. Maybe it
should have been Professional Regrugitators or something that's actually a title,
by the way, professional regurgitators, and they still exist, so
(25:16):
that would be a job that's not jobs, right. So
that's why we're talking about stone eaters specifically, because it
was a subset of regurgitators that is just so out
now so out. So, hey, regurgitators out there listening, you
just need to thank the stone eaters for paving the way,
aiving the way. Get it. Hey, we want to give
(25:38):
a shout out to Mark Hartsman, our expert today on
stone swallowing and regurgitating and all kinds of deliciousness. Thank you, Mark.
Mark has a book out right now called The Big
Book of Mars, published by Books. You can find him
and his other books at Mark Hertsman books dot com,
(25:59):
and he's also known as the Weird Historian on the Internet.
So check him out at weird Historian dot com. And hey,
if you have an opinion on whether you think you
would rather swallow a Rubik's cube or a live animal,
let us know. Tweet us at job Sleete. Pod Job
(26:20):
Salte is produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing
hand Forge Podcast for You. It's hosted by us Helen
Hong That's Me and Matt That's Me. The show was
conceived and produced by Steve Za Markey, Anthony Savini, and
Jason Elliott. Our editor is Tommy Nichol, Our researcher is
Amelia Pauca, our production coordinator is Angie Hymis, and theme
(26:44):
music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to
our I Heart Radio team led by Nikki Etre, Katrina Norvell,
Ali Cantor, Mangesh Hotti, Kador, Will Pearson, conal Burne and
Bob Pittman.
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