Looking Back with Eric Leaver

THE sight of a grieving figure, death certificate in pocket, sobbing by a graveside is one that would hardly strike a cemetery stroller as unusual.

But how about 80 years after the funeral?

Yet, unashamedly shedding tears long after the event in Blackburn Cemetery the other day was historian Colin Alexander-Jones.

He was standing over the grave of his hero Fred Kempster, the legendary Blackburn Giant.

Top-hatted Colin, a volunteer helper at the Bath Industrial Heritage Centre, in the Somerset spa city where the long-gone 8ft 4in colossus once lived, has just brought out a book about Fred.

During the four years' research that went into his book, he came across his only living relative - his now-85-year-old niece Mrs Edith Nice, seen right, aged three, with her brothers and their extraordinary uncle in 1916. "I promised her I would take some pictures of his grave, but I cried when I saw it so overgrown and neglected. I really do think the council should do something to preserve it," said Colin, who also called at Blackburn's Register Office to obtain a copy of Fred's death certificate.

Among his other mementoes is the giant's pocket watch.

"I got it off an old boy in Avebury in Wiltshire where Fred also once lived," Colin explains.

Indeed, it is the giant's clutch of past abodes that leads him in his book to describe Fred as the "English Giant." Quite rightly, too, as the "Blackburn Giant" title is one that the poor fellow gained only by falling ill, dying and being buried in the town.

Before that, London-born Fred had lived in Essex, Avebury, Bath and elsewhere in Wiltshire before his size 22 boots took him off on fairground and circus tours - one of which found him in enemy Germany when the First World War broke out in 1914. He was interned there, at such cost to his health that the US ambassador was able to obtain his release two years later. Blackburn's Easter Fair of 1918 found the ailing 29-year-old on show at Cohen's Penny Bazaar in Victoria Street, next to the roundabout rides, amusing visitors with such tricks as passing an old penny coin through the gold ring he wore on his middle finger. But all 27 stones of him was about to be floored by a tiny microbe - a pneumonia bug. It took eight men to carry him into the ambulance from the Haymarket Hotel round the corner in Cort Street where he had been staying and they had to place him on a fire-brigade jumping sheet because he could not be fitted on a stretcher.

At Queen's Park Hospital, he was admitted by the fire escape because he was too tall to be carried up the staircase and he had to lie on three beds placed together.

Dying shortly afterwards, Fred required a coffin nine feet long and a grave consisting of two ordinary ones dug end-to-end, into which it took the strength of 14 men to lower him. But that's far from the end of his tall story as far as Colin is concerned. He plans to follow up with a series of children's books all about Fred.

Meanwhile, his Introduction to Frederick, The English Giant can be obtained from the Industrial Heritage Centre, Julian Road, Bath, price £5.95.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.