A tale of two coffins; James Moore (1949-1935) & Ivy May Hamilton (1922-1966) Kensal Green Cemetery

Not many people visit the KGC catacombs these days but anyone lucky enough to get the chance always sees this pair of coffins with their immortelles. Why the coffins were not tucked away into a vault but left standing out in a corridor no one was really sure. The assumption was that they were temporarily deposited in the catacombs waiting for either a grave to be prepared in the cemetery or awaiting transportation to another cemetery. Had they just been forgotten about? Both coffins turn out to have very different stories, both are fascinating.

A year ago, the cemetery was visited by Ron Carlson, the CEO of PBD Inc, a Chicago based corporate design firm who, in his spare time, flies light aircraft and records YouTube videos about cemeteries under the name Faces of the Forgotten. His video of KGC featured the catacombs and the two coffins including a lingering closeup of the name plate on the coffin on the left. One of Ron's subscribers, HazelOwl7893, otherwise known as Hazel Mahan (we think) went to the trouble of searching the name on the coffin plate on Google and was excited to discover that it belongs to James Moore (1849-1935) who, according to Wikipedia was "an English bicycle racer. He is popularly regarded as the winner of the first official cycle race in the world in 1868 at St-Cloud, Paris, although this claim seems to be erroneous. In 1869 he won the world's first road race Paris–Rouen sponsored by Le Vélocipède Illustré and the Olivier brothers' Michaux Bicycle Company. Moore covered the 113 km (70 mi) in 10 hours and 25 minutes. He was one of the first stars of cycle racing, dominating competition for many years."

According to the parish register of St James Bury St Edmunds, Moore was born on the 14^th January 1848 and baptised on Christmas Day 1850 along with two of his siblings, his older brother Alfred and his younger sister Matilda.  On the Civil Registration Birth Index though his birth is registered in the first quarter of 1849. In the 1851 census his father James, a blacksmith, declares him to be two years old on the 30th March, which would indicate that the 1849 date is correct. There were two other, older sisters, Selina aged 8 and Mary Ann aged 6. When James was four the family moved to Paris. Some accounts say his father was French but on the 1851 census James senior states his birthplace to be Cambs. It was an unusual move for a Suffolk farrier to make but Moore was to spend most of his life in France and spoke English with a French accent. The family moved to 2 Cité Godot-de-Mauroy, then in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. Their near neighbours, at number 7, were Pierre Michaux and his son Ernest who in around 1861 developed the pedal powered velocipede, the forerunner of the modern bicycle.  James’ first machine was bought from the Michauxs as a birthday present in 1865. It was initially used to run errands for his father but in 1868 he joined the Veloce cycling club and took part in what was the first official bicycle race meeting in the world at St-Cloud, although there is some dispute if the race Moore won was actually the first race of the meet.

James Moore pictured in old age posing with the Michaudine velocipede with which he won the St-Cloud bicycle race in Paris on 31 May 1868. The shot was probably taken in the back garden at 56 Wildwood Road, NW11, Moore's home at the time of his death. Note the curious kitchen maid watching the proceedings from the scullery window.

Moore’s racing career was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War in which he served in the ambulance corps during the 1870 Siege of Paris. When the war ended, he continued to compete in bicycle races, winning five international championships between 1873 and 1877, but he also took a keen interest in horse racing, working at the Maisons Lafitte the French horse-riding centre. He later studied veterinary science at either Cambridge or at the Royal Veterinary College in London, depending on which source you read, and opened a horse stud in Normandy. He married Julie Cécile Mabille in Boulogne in 1887 and the couple went on to have at least one child, also called James.

Details of his later life are patchy and often contested but we know that by 1935 he was living in London at 56 Wildwood Road in Hampstead Garden Suburb (last sold in in 2004 for £1.85 million, current estimated value £3.5 million, so a very substantial property). He died there on the 17th July that year. Under the heading 'Burial Mystery' his Wikipedia article will tell you that "the location of Moore's grave is not known. His grandson, John, said: 'The odd thing is that my father was such a good story-teller but he couldn't or wouldn't tell me where my grandfather was buried. It was as if there was some unfinished business, some sort of mix-up, something I never understood. It's a mystery.' Moore believes the site may be near the Welsh Harp reservoir – also known as Brent Reservoir – in north London.” It appears that somehow, the family seem to have forgotten that on the 20^th July, 3 days after James Moore died, the undertaker stored his coffined body in the catacombs at Kensal Green. The burial register states quite clearly that this is a 'temporary deposit' but the coffin was never collected and remains there to this day.

Excerpts from the burial registers at Kensal Green Cemetery showing James Moore

HazelOwl7893 and Ron Carlson have tried to update the Wikipedia entry on James Moore to clear up the 90-year-old 'burial mystery' but their amendments are swiftly removed by someone who apparently wishes the mystery to remain unresolved. Even worse other YouTubers and FindaGravers have muscled in to try and claim credit for the discovery. Hazel is absolutely right, this is the coffin of James Moore and this is confirmed in the cemetery records. Other people speculated that the second coffin may belong to James' wife Julia Cecile Moore (nee Mabile) but this is definitely not the case; there is no record of Julia being buried in the cemetery or, indeed, of dying the UK and we suspect that she may have returned to France just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

When we were recently in the catacombs my friend Meriel was able to read the corroded nameplate on the second coffin; “Ivy May Hamilton Died 2nd September 1966 Aged 44 Years”. The next day she messaged me, “The coffin next to your cyclist, James Moore, is for Ivy May Hamilton – she was murdered in 1966! She has a will which is how I know it’s her as the address matches…” The cemetery burial records show that her coffin was placed in Catacomb B on the 24th September 1966. Probate records give her address as 166 Bravington Road and the value of her estate as £6362. The circumstances surrounding her death were reported in the Kensington Post on 7th October 1966;

Rent dispute ended in death, court told

During a dispute with his landlady over the nonpayment of a week's rent, a West Indian carpenter stabbed her with a chisel, inflicting a wound which resulted in her death two days later in hospital, alleged Mr. Arthur Flavell, counsel prosecuting at Marylebone Court on Thursday.

John Augustus Wills, 52, of Mozart Street, North Kensington, was committed in custody for trial at the Old Bailey charged with the murder of Miss Ivy Hamilton of Bravington Road, Paddington. Mr. Flavell said the defendant lived in a rear ground floor room at the house In Mozart Street with a Miss Eileen Davies. On learning that the building was to be the subject of a compulsory acquisition by the local authority, he decided to request a rent book and a written Notice to quit from Miss Hamilton. These would. he thought. better his chances of obtaining alternative council accommodation. To induce Miss Hamilton to visit him he deliberately failed to pay a week’s rent.

At about 9.15 p.m. on August 31, said Counsel, the landlady went to the defendant’s room and spoke to him and Miss Davies. Miss Hamilton's sister, Elaine, and two other relatives, all tenants of the house. stood at the door. An argument developed during which Miss Hamilton demanded payment of the previous week's rent and told Wills be would have to leave. He said that all he wanted was a rent book and a proper notice to quit, but she walked out, with the intention of going to Harrow Road Police Station to make a complaint

Mr. Flavel said Miss Hamilton set off on foot with two of her relatives, closely followed by Wills and Miss Davies who were also heading for the police station. On the way, a police car pulled up and the argument resumed in the presence of the officers. They were all advised to return home, but Wills went on to the police stallions where he rejoined Davies, who had walked ahead. A police officer advised them to go back to the house and wait outside.

They returned home, he said, and entered their room. Miss Hamilton followed them in and the argument broke out again. She became violent, pushing him on to the bed. Miss Davies tried to get out, but was prevented from doing so by two or three other tenants standing at the door. Wills managed to get up off the bed and got Miss Davies out. She left the house and telephoned the police.

Shortly afterwards, Miss Elaine Hamilton was standing outside the defendant's room when she heard her sister scream from inside. She ran in and found her sister lying on the bed with Wills standing over her holding a chisel. She shouted at him and he turned and stabbed at her with the chisel, catching her shoulder. Elaine called out to another tenant, Mr. Tyrrell, who struggled with Will. When the police arrived. the injured woman had been carried into the hallway.

Mr. Flavell said Miss Hamilton was taken to Paddington General Hospital with a stab wound in her chest. An operation was performed at 1.45 am the next morning, but she died on September 2 from bronchial pneumonia resulting from the wound. Acting Det.-Insp. Kenneth North said he questioned Wills at the police station and told him Miss Hamilton was critically ill in hospital. The defendant said: "She came at me for the rent. I told her I would pay her rent. but I wanted a rent book. She shouted at me for the rent and wouldn't give me a rent book. She hit me in the face. They all hit me." When asked who else had been present, he said: "My wife, but they hit her and punched her. One got a pan from the stove. The children, her niece and another girl, came at me. I fell on the bed and took the chisel from the table. She had her hands round my throat. I pushed her away. The chisel went into her. I didn't stab her—l pushed the chisel." The Officer said that later, after he had been told of Miss Hamilton's death, Wills said: "Why is there so much ignorance? Why did She come to me for the rent? Why didn't she give me a rent book? Why so much ignorance?" Wills pleaded not guilty and reserved his defence.

John Wills went on trial at the Old Bailey in 1966. Interestingly the jury acquitted him not just of murder but also of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

We know Ivy Hamilton was born in approximately 1922 and that electoral records show her living at 15 Mozart Street, W10 with her sister Elaine from 1961. In 1966 she moved around the corner to 166 Bravington Road but Elaine stayed on at Mozart Road until 1969/70. At this point the house would finally have been compulsorily purchased by RB Kensington and Chelsea, it was the plan to do this that had set in train the events that led to Ivy’s death. The house, along with the rest of Mozart Street that lay to the west of Lancefield Street was demolished to make the way for a new council estate, the Mozart Estate. The place has a bad rep, known as ‘Crack City’ and notorious for rival gangs from Harlesden, Kilburn and Ladbroke Grove fighting ‘postcard wars.’ But according to Big Zuu, who grew up there, there is another side to the story:

The media seems to focus a lot on the bad side of Mozart, all the things that come with gang culture – knife crime, drugs etc. It’s not about that. There’s so much more to the area. It has a mad sense of community which I think you only fully understand when you live there. It’s taught me that it’s okay to be myself. You don’t have to try and fit in anywhere, just be you.

What heaps of unmeaning stone and marble! A visit to Westminster Abbey

In the opposite transept to Poet's Corner stands a monument which is among the most renowned achievements of modern art, but which to me appears horrible rather than sublime. It is the tomb of Mrs. Nightingale, by Roubillac. The bottom of the monument is represented as throwing open its marble doors, and a sheeted skeleton is starting forth. The shroud is falling from his fleshless frame as he launches his dart at his victim. She is sinking into her affrighted husband's arms, who strives with vain and frantic effort to avert the blow. The whole is executed with terrible truth and spirit; we almost fancy we hear the gibbering yell of triumph bursting from the distended jaws of the spectre. But why should we thus seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and to spread horrors round the tomb of those we love? The grave should be surrounded by everything that might inspire tenderness and veneration for the dead, or that might win the living to virtue. It is the place not of disgust and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation.

Washington Irving - The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)

Usually quoted as an encomium, Irving’s description of Louis-François Roubiliac’s memorial to Joseph and Elizabeth Nightingale as “among the most renowned achievements of modern art” is in fact mordant sarcasm. The American was not a fan of the French Sculptor’s overwrought composition which shows Joseph Gascoigne Nightingale trying to protect his swooning young wife from a predatory death. Elizabeth Nightingale died on 17th August 1731 after the shock of a lightning strike caused her to go into premature labour. Her baby survived. The memorial was commissioned by the Nightingale’s son William following the death of his father in 1752; however, William never saw the monument completed as he died in 1754 and Roubiliac did not finish it until 1761. It is a little surprising that the author of ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ did not find the memorial in sympathy with his gothic sensibilities, but it is quite astonishing to find that the otherwise puritanical John Wesley loved it. In his journal for the 16th February 1764, he notes “I once more took a serious walk through the tombs in Westminster Abbey.   But there was one tomb which showed common sense: that beautiful figure of Mr. Nightingale endeavoring to screen his lovely wife from death. Here indeed the marble seems to speak, and the statues appear only not alive.”

A few years later, in February 1771, Wesley is back in the Abbey and once again drawn to Roubiliac’s memorial:

Monday, 25.--I showed a friend, coming out of the country, the tombs in Westminster Abbey. The two with which I still think none of the others worthy to be compared are that of Mrs. Nightingale, and that of the Admiral rising out of his tomb at the resurrection. But the vile flattery inscribed on many of them reminded me of that just reflection

                                 If on the sculptured marble you rely,
                                    Pity that worth like his should ever die.
                                    If credit to the real life you give,
                                    Pity a wretch like him should ever live

In February 1893 Archdeacon Frederic W. Farrar, then the Dean of Westminster contributed to the Christian magazine Good Words his views on the depiction of Death in the Abbey, singling out Robiliac for particular censure:

The early tombs in Westminster Abbey were like radiant phantoms with blue and vermilion, and gold, and glass mosaic, and lustrous enamels, and floral sculpturings, and Angels with outspread wings. In these death was not presented as a thing revolting and abhorrent, nor was any prominence given to the mere accidents of corruption and decay.  The tombs of a later age become wildly different. The skull and cross-bones—most futile, most conventional, most offensive of all ‘decorations’ - appear for the first time on the unfinished tomb of Anne of Cleves. After that we get, with increasing frequency, the ridiculous nudities of weeping children, and the females who sit under willows and clasp urns to their breast. The attempt to force into prominence the fact that death is a thing for which to weep and the angel of death a king of terrors culminates in two tombs in the Chapel of St John the Evangelist. One—with the inscription Lacrimis struxit amor—is spotted all over with imaginary teardrops falling from an eye which is carved above it! The other is the tomb of Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, of which Barke disapproved, but which is usually regarded as Roubiliac’s masterpiece, and which Wesley is said to have considered the finest monument in the Abbey, as showing “common-sense among the heaps of unmeaning stone and marble.” Considered merely as sculpture the contrasted figures of the dying wife and the startled, agonised husband are undeniably fine and skilful, but nothing can be more repellent or less like the feeling with which the early Christians regarded death than the revolting skeleton who issues, with his javelin, from the dark tomb below. Such allegory is preposterous jumble of the material and immaterial. The “Death,” as Allan Cunningham says, “is very meanly imagined—the common dry bones of every vulgar tale.” Apparently Roubiliac’s imagination could not rise above this fleshless anatomy, for he repeats it on the tomb of General Hargrave in the nave. Here Time is breaking the arrow of a crowned skeleton across his knee. But how different is this bony Grotesque from the vague and awful magnificence of Milton’s imagination:—  What seemed his head, The likeness of a kingly crown had on...                           

Louis-François Roubiliac is generally thought to have been born in Lyon in either 1702 or 1705. He was the son of a silk merchant who moved his business and family to Frankfort in 1710. He trained in Dresden but in 1730 after failing to secure the Prix de Rome and the opportunity to study in Italy he moved to England. After a brief spell at Thomas Carter’s stone yard in Shepherd Market he accepted a position as assistant to the successful sculptor Henry Cheere. In 1838 he had his first solo success with a statue of Handel commissioned for Vauxhall Gardens by Jonathan Tyers who was so pleased with the seated figure of Handel in modern dress, (now in the V&A) that he asked Roubiliac to provide the centrepiece sculpture for the temple dedicated to Fleeting Life and Inevitable Death at Tyers Surry estate, Denbies.  Now sadly lost, this stucco monument to Tyer’s friend Lord Petre, the botanist and gardener who had died at the early age of 29, was Roubiliac’s first foray into his full blown Death mode. An angel was shown blowing the last trump and causing a stone pyramid to crumble. Inside the pyramid a corpse threw aside its shroud and prepared to rise from the dead with an expression of ecstasy and bewilderment on its cadaverous face. Echoes of this piece are to be seen in the Nightingale and Hargreave memorials in Westminster Abbey.  Sepulchral memorials were in fact Robiliac’s main source of income; he received his first commissions for a monument in Westminster Abbey in 1745 and went on to complete five others there. He died penniless in 1762 and was buried in the churchyard at St Martins in the Fields. 

Dutton Cook in his Art in England of 1869 draws a vivid picture of Roubiliac’s supposed eccentricities:

Roubiliac — a thin, olive-skinned Frenchman, with strongly-marked, arching eyebrows, mobile features, and small, sharp, dark eyes—liable at all times to fits of abstraction, attacks of inspiration. He will drop his knife and fork while at dinner, sink back in his chair, assume an ecstatic expression: the fit is on him; he must abandon his meal and hurry away at once to lock himself in his studio, and place upon record the superb idea which has so inconveniently visited him. His companions make allowances for him: men of genius are often thus. At other times he is absorbed in meditation upon his art: address him, and he makes no reply, fails to hear. While engaged upon his statue of Handel, he decides that the great musician must have possessed an ear of exceeding symmetry, and searches everywhere for a model. He scrutinizes the ears of all his acquaintances. Suddenly he pounces upon Miss Rich, the daughter of the Covent Garden manager. 'Miss Rich,' he cries, 'I must have your ear for my Handel!' In Westminster Abbey he permits himself to be 'discovered'—to use an appropriate theatrical term—lost in contemplation of the kneeling figure at the north-west corner of Sir Francis Vere's monument. His servant, having thrice delivered a message, without receiving a word in reply, finds his arm suddenly seized, and his master whispering mysteriously in his ear, while he points to the statue: 'Hush! hush! he vill speak presently!' At another time he invites a friend to occupy a spare bed at his house, gives him his candle, and bids him good-night. Presently the friend is heard crying aloud in great excitement and alarm; the bed is already occupied: the dead body of a negress is laid out upon it. 'I beg your pardon,' says the artist, 'I quite forgot poor Mary vas dere. Poor Mary! she die yesterday vid de small-pox. She was my housemaid for five, six years. Come along; I vill find you a bed somevhere else.' All this was but acting up to the idea Mr. Roubiliac had formed of the abstractedness and eccentricity of genius.

I found this story about Roubiliac and the Nightingale memorial in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News of 16 July 1898:

The story is told of Roubiliac that when he was engaged at Westminster Abbey erecting his famous monument to Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale, he was found one day by the Abbey mason gazing intently on a knightly figure supporting the canopy over the statue of Sir Francis Vere. As the man approached, the sculptor laid his hand on his arm, pointing to the figure, and whispered, "Hush! hush! he vil speak presently!"

On 30 March 1826 the distinguished architect and pioneer of the study of medieval gothic architecture, Lewis Nockalls Cottingham wrote a letter to the editor of the Representative lamenting the state of Westminster Abbey and concerned that the ecclesiastical authorities were considering allowing the general public unfettered access to the edifice. “I recollect visiting this building a few years since, when it was a common thoroughfare,” he wrote “and remarking how slight a protection the iron cages, which then enclosed the tombs and statues, were against the constant depredations committed by the careless and mischievous.” He told the newspaper that he could provide ‘a hundred instances’ as evidence why the church should remain shut to the common visitor, monuments he said, “are nearly destroyed; in several instances the heads, fingers, and toes of the figures are broken off. The sanctity of the place was daily violated, and the stones which covered the mortal remains of a Pitt and a Fox trodden on with as much indifference as common pavement. Surely, in a country which boasts of so much taste and refinement of feeling, something should be done to preserve the most interesting of its monuments from premature ruin.” His feeling was that an entrance charge should be levied, and quite a stiff charge, not less than 15 pence. One and three! That would have been quite a hefty entrance fee in the 1820’s. Perhaps almost the equivalent of the £31 it currently costs to buy a basic ticket to the Abbey. Despite the price the place was still full when I visited earlier this week. There is, for anyone interested in funerary monuments, far more to see than you can take in in one visit. The estimate is that around 3600 people are buried here, all of them either prebendaries of the Abbey or the great and the good of the Kingdom. No one ordinary in interred here, you have to be royalty, aristocracy or ridiculously famous. I found it a bit overwhelming; too much to see and too many other people in the way. Let me leave the last words to Washington Irving:

It seems as if the awful nature of the place presses down upon the soul and hushes the beholder into noiseless reverence. We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled history with their deeds and the earth with their renown. And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human ambition to see how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; what parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty nook, a gloomy corner, a little portion of earth, to those whom, when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy, and how many shapes and forms and artifices are devised to catch the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetfulness for a few short years a name which once aspired to occupy ages of the world's thought and admiration.

Monument to Mary Beaumont, Countess of Buckingham, and her 1st husband Sir George Villiers   (died 1606). St. Nicholas' chapel, Westminster Abbey

Elizabeth Russell (died 1601) rests her foot on a skull and is not dying, but sleeping, according to the latin tag on the memorial

The Story of the Gnome Fly Part 3 - the final days of Hervio Nano; Harvey Leach (1801-1847)

 

Leach fell on hard times after the fire at the Bowery Theatre as other than Thomas Hamblin no one in the US seemed willing to engage him. It was almost certainly during this time that he approached P.T. Barnum in New York, proposing to the famous showman that he exhibit him in London, the stipulation on location presumably being a way of paying his passage back to England. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Leach and Barnum already knew each other, Leach supposedly being one of the exhibits at Scudders American Museum in New York when Barnum took it over in 1841. I cannot trace a primary source to confirm this but Leach was in America for at least part of 1841, appearing as the Gnome-fly, so it is a possibility that he also appeared at Scudder’s.  Barnum recounts his 1845 meeting with Leach in The Life of P. T. Barnum Written by Himself:

On the same visit to New-York, I was called upon by "Hervio Nano," who was known to the public as the "gnome fly," and was also celebrated for his representations of the monkey. His malformation caused him to appear much like that animal when properly dressed. He wished me to exhibit him in London, but having my hands already full, I declined. He, however, made immediate arrangements with two Americans, who took him to London. They stained his face and hands, and covered him with a dress made of hair, and resembling the skin of an animal. They then advertised him as a curious "nondescript," called "WHAT IS IT?" and claimed that "the strange animal" was captured in the mountains of Mexico; that it appeared like a "wild man," but could not speak, although it manifested much intelligence. I was let into the secret, on condition of "keeping dark." The exhibition opened in Egyptian Hall, and as a matter of curiosity I attended at the opening. Before half an hour had elapsed, one of the visitors, who knew "Hervio Nano," recognized him through his disguise and exposed the imposition. The money was refunded to visitors, and that was the first and last appearance of "What is it?" in that character. He soon afterwards died in London.

Despite Barnum’s disavowal of playing any direct part in the ‘What is it?’ fiasco he admits to being ‘let into the secret’ and being present at the opening of the exhibit at the Egyptian Hall. Rumours persist that he was behind ‘What is it?’ and that his denials of any connection were simply a face-saving measure because the carefully prepared hoax failed so dismally. In the run up to the opening advertising posters were pasted on walls all over London and hundreds of copies of a four-page flyer showing a woodcut of ‘The Wild Man of the Prairies’ and explaining where and how he had been captured were printed and distributed;

Is it Human? Is it an Animal? Is it an extraordinary freak of nature? Or is it a legitimate member of Nature’s works? Is it not the long sought for LINK between Man and the OURANG-OUTANG, which Naturalists have for years decided does exist but which has as yet been undiscovered?... The Exhibitors of this Indescribable Person or Animal, do not pretend to assert what it is; they have named it 'THE WILD MAN OF THE PRAIRIES' or "WHAT IS IT," because this is the universal exclamation of all who have seen it. Its Features, Hands, and the upper portion of the 'Body', are to all appearances Human: the lower part of its Body, the hind Legs, and Haunches, are decidedly Animal! It is entirely covered, except the Face and Hands, with long flowing Hair of various shades. IT IS LARGER THAN AN ORDINARY SIZED MAN, but not quite as tall. "WHAT IS IT" is decidedly the most extraordinary Being that ever astonished the World. It has the intelligence appertaining to humanity, and can do anything It sees done, or anything which Man or Animal can do, except speak, Read or Write. It Leaps, Climbs, Runs &c... with the Agility of a Monkey. It lays the Cloth and sets a Table with the au fait of a London Waiter, lifts its Hat &c., with the grace of a Master of Ceremonies: distinguishes Colours: remembers what is said to it: goes through the Military Exercises: and Plays various Games with an Instinct and Skill that would reflect on HOYLE himself. "WHAT IS IT" was caught in the WILDS of CALIFORNIA: its Food is chiefly Nuts and Fruit, though it occasionally indulges in a Meal of RAW MEAT: It drinks Milk, Water, and Tea, and is partial to Wine, Ale, and Porter.

The flyer claims that ‘What is it’ was bartered for with ‘guns, beads and other Trinkets’ in the Guadalupe mountains of Mexico by a party of Missouri traders and hunters from a tribe of Comanche Indians who had originally captured the creature in Upper California. Quite why the Missourians and Comanches, who would both have been a couple of thousand kilometres away from their usual territories, were doing in Mexico is not explained.  If Barnum thought that this huckster’s bullshit would bamboozle the public rather than arouse their suspicions, he was sorely mistaken. At 11.30am on the 31st August 1846 the Wild Man of the Prairie was finally exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, the price of entry to the public being one shilling for adults and sixpence for children under 10. On the 1st September the following letter, describing what happened on opening day, appeared in The Times from a pseudonymous correspondent who identified himself only as Open-Eye:

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. Sir, - Being naturally a bit of a naturalist, and consequently anxious to see the “what is it” at the Egyptian-hall in its first wildness, I arose two hours earlier than usual and proceeded thither in a kind of feverish excitement, paid my shilling magnanimously, and was shown into the sanctum of “the wild man of the prairies.” Yes, there “what is it” was with its keeper, playing “toss” with an India rubber ball. Oh, ghost of Buffon! What was my surprise when, at the first glance, I found “what is it” to be an old acquaintance- ‘Hervio Nano, alias Hervey Leech, himself! I will not take up your valuable space by relating how Mister Leech sucked raw flesh and cracked nuts, nor how I volunteered (although “what is it” is very savage with strangers) to go alone into his den, which was refused; but I will tell you how the “wild man,” finding his hair dress and the fervent expressions of his visitors too warm, shrank into himself and horse-cloth, and went to his kennel to argue with the proprietor on the propriety of returning my shilling. The coin was handed back; and as I suppose Mr. Leech will take an early departure for the “wilds of California” again, I hope he will take the comfortable assurance back with him, that The Times won’t let Mr. Bull encourage impostors. Yours, &c., OPEN-EYE.

The letter was re-published in countless newspapers across the country and story of the hoax widely reported. No one it seems, had been fooled. The Illustrated London News on Saturday 05 September 1846 reported that they were already suspected the identity ‘What is it?’ before they tried to visit the Egyptian Hall on the opening afternoon and were surprised to find the exhibit already closed:

“THE WILD MAN OF THE PRAIRIES.” The attempt made to hoax the gentle public the exhibition of this pseudomonster has turned out a failure; and there is a forlorn look in its portrait, still posted on the walls of the metropolis, that is absolutely sad to behold. The question of “What is it?” has been simply solved in the Times, by a cunning visitor, who finds it is Mr. Hervey Leech, the Signor Hervio Nano who played in the “Gnome Fly,” during one of poor Yates’s splendid gags at the Adelphi. We suspected as much when we first saw the picture of the Wild Man; and should have recognised our old friend the instant we saw him. But, going to the Egyptian Hall, on Monday afternoon, found he was invisible. The question of “What is it?” immediately induced another of “Where is it?” and this led to our asking Why is it?” and “Who is it?” to all of which we in time found solution. The man told us that What’s-his-name had been taken ill, and was expected to die ; and at the same time person with whom an arrangement had been entered into for some advertising vans was informed that one of the visitors had given Thing-uma-bob an apple stuck with pins, and that the doctors had been called in, but had Aid that poor What-d’ye-call-him could not live throughout the day. This was all very painful—to those who believed it; but we were not of them. We still clung to our notion of Hervey Leech, and the letter the next day in the Times put our mind at rest upon the subject. So that suppose The Wild Man of the Prairies,” so savage to strangers, as the bill said, went quietly home to dinner in a cab, and slept that night in his usual second-floor wigwam.

James Carter, the 'American Lion King', and his big cats

The Cork Examiner suggested that Open-Eye was a Mr Waterton “who was enabled to detect Hervio… through all his coatings of bear-skin, owing to his own long possession of an astounding animal of the ourang outang genus…” Were they referring to Charles Waterton, the Yorkshire naturalist who famously captured a caiman by sitting on its back and tying its jaws with his braces? Waterton never owned an Orangutan as far as I can see.  In 1884 a Mr R. Hohnyard of 1 Sydney Villas, Sydney Road, Wood Green won a £1 prize from Rare Bits magazine in their edition of 9th August with an intriguing, and superficially convincing account of ‘What is it?’ Hohnyard does not say explicitly that Barnum was responsible for ‘What is it?’ but says that he was in London exhibiting General Tom Thumb at the time. Also in London was James Carter, generally known as the American Lion King, who had been performing with big cats in the capital at Astley’s and other places since 1839. Carter was then exhibiting General Washington, advertised as the ‘mammoth horse’, who stood 20 hands high at the withers (6 feet 8 inches), weighed 2500 pounds, and was a “noble steed… found galloping among a herd of mustangs on the Great Plains,” which required “the combined might of twelve British-made steam engines… to break his ironclad American will.” According to Hohnyard Carter thought that “if he could get Barnum to allow General Tom Thumb to ride his big horse, it would be a great card.” But Barnum refused the proposal “much to Carter’s chagrin.”  Carter was “determined to let his revengeful cat out of the bag” and the unmasking of ‘What is it?’ was to be the instrument of his revenge. This would only make sense of course if Barnum were behind Leach’s final professional appearance. Hohnyard’s account of Carter’s unmasking of Hervio Nano as the Wild Man of the Prairies is broadly similar to Open-Eye’s version in The Times, but claims that Carter demanded to be let into the Wild Man’s cage with a whip in his hand. Leach at once became extremely docile and after shaking the Wild Man’s hand, Carter “with one strong tug tore the shaggy skin all down its back and sides – and out stepped – Hervio Nano, the ex-Gnome Fly!” Carter greeted Leach “Ah Harvey, my boy! How d’ye do? I knew you were an old acquaintance. And now, as you’ve been living on raw meat so long, come down to Craven-street and have a broiled steak with me.”  None of the contemporary newspaper accounts of the affair mention either Barnum or Carter’s involvement even though both of them were well known figures at the time. That seems a little strange as Barnum claims to have been present at the unmasking. We will never probably know the truth.  

James Carter with 'General Washington, his 'mammoth horse'

‘What is it?’ was the final, humiliating, professional appearance of Harvey Leach. Within six months of his outing at the Egyptian Hall, on Tuesday the 16th March 1847, at the age of just 46, he was dead. According to the Illustrated London News of Saturday 20 March, he had been about to set out to Lisbon (Portugal would have been a completely new audience for him) when he was taken suddenly ill and died at his home in George Street, Shoreditch. The death was officially registered but there are no burial records because instead of going to Lisbon, Leach went, at his own request, to Liston, Robert Liston the eminent surgeon:

Death of Harvey Leach—The mortal career of this remarkable individual, who earned for himself considerable reputation both in this country and abroad, for his clever personifications of the habits and eccentricities of the monkey race under the assumed name of Signor Hervio Nano, terminated, after a short illness, on Tuesday evening, at his residence, George-street, Shoreditch. A short time ago deceased exhibited himself at the Egyptian Hall, disguised as an extraordinary animal captured at the Cape of Good Hope, supposed to be the link between the human race and the ourang-outang, and called “What is it?” The last place deceased performed at was the Standard Theatre, in December last, where, notwithstanding the deception having been discovered and made public, he continued to represent “What is it?” He was about to start for Lisbon when he was taken ill. He was a native of America, and in his forty sixth year. The last request of the deceased was, that his body should be presented to Dr. Liston, the eminent surgeon, not to be buried, but embalmed and kept in a glass case, as the doctor had been a particular friend to him.

Liston did his best to respect Leach’s last request; there was to be no embalmment, an uncertain procedure at that time in any case, instead a plaster cast was taken of his body and, following his dissection, the flesh was cleaned from his bones and the skeleton was articulated. Plaster cast and skeleton were presented to the anatomy museum of University College. Liston did not carry out the dissection himself, he presented Leach’s corpse to his protégée, the 29-year-old Demonstrator of Anatomy at University College, John Phillips Potter.  Phillips Potter was apparently in something of a hurry when he carried out the dissection on the 22nd April, perhaps because Leach had already been dead for more than a month and the corpse would have not been in its first flush of freshness. The anatomist carelessly managed to puncture the skin on his knuckle with one of his instruments during the post mortem. Thinking nothing of it he finished up the dissection and then went about his business as normal. The next day the wound was red and inflamed but still nothing much to worry about, he thought. Bell's New Weekly Messenger of Sunday 06 June 1847 gives the following account of what happened next, drawn from a much longer article in the previous weeks Lancet;

The Dangers of Dissection. —ln the death of Mr. John Phillips Potter, F.K.C.S., Demonstrator of Anatomy in University College, and Assistant Surgeon of University College Hospital, have record melancholy and disheartening instance of brilliant talent and promise blighted in the bud. For some weeks before his illness, he had been assisting Mr. Liston in dissections, which were always done early in the morning, and on the 22d of April, was engaged in taking a pelvis, with diseased hip-joint and abscess, from a subject, and being pressed for time, received some very small puncture on the knuckle of the forefinger, which was disregarded at the moment, but on the following day it became painful, and after the early morning dissection, he came home, complaining of feeling chilly and very unwell. The little wound was inflamed, and the swelling and redness soon extended up the arm to the axilla and side of the chest, accompanied with severe pain, and great constitutional disturbance. After two days symptoms of great depression came on, accompanied with complete jaundice, and other dangerous symptoms, which led his medical attendants, Mr. Liston, Mr. Travers, Dr. Watson, and Dr. Brodie Sewell, almost to despair of his rallying. It was thought advisable make two deep incisions in the seat of pain, in hopes of finding matter, but none issued from the wound. Stimulants were administered, and he rallied considerably, but on the 17th, exhaustion again came on, and death relieved him from a state of great suffering.   

Leach's skeleton, originally preserved in the anatomy museum of University College London, now lost

The initial reports of Phillips Potter’s death made no mention of Leach but a couple of weeks later stories started to appear linking the two. This is from the Birmingham Journal of 29th May 1847:

There is no saying what is impossible in these days, which are the true age of miracles, notwithstanding all that is being talked about everything being commonplace. There, for instance, has Mr. Harvey Leech, Hervio Nano, the Gnome Fly, the Brazilian Ape, the What Is It? being performing with killing effect, three weeks after his death! He had bequeathed his astonishing and most enigmatical carcass to Liston, the surgeon, who made it over to another surgeon, named Potter, who pricked himself with the knife, charged with a virus as deadly as the bite of all the Leeches that ever drank venom from the poisoned pools of Sumatra. The Gnome Fly's post-humous sting was mortal, and Potter was as incapable as Jock: of answering “What Is It?” on Tuesday.

Phillips Potter was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on Saturday 22nd May 1847. According to the Lancet, “besides his immediate relatives, upwards of 200 professors, students, and friends, assembled to pay his remains the last tribute of respect—a speaking testimony of the regard felt for him. Death has in this case inflicted an irreparable loss upon the friends, and indeed upon the profession and society in general.”

In February 2019 (I have been interested in Harvey Leach for some time!) I emailed the Anatomy Museum at University College London and asked them about Leach’s remains:

Dear Sir

I am trying to trace a specimen which I believe may be in the UCL pathology collection.

The specimen is of an American called Harvey Leach who left his body to either Sir Robert Liston or assistant surgeon at University College Hospital John Phillips Potter in 1847. Potter cut himself on the knuckle during the dissection of Leach's body and subsequently died of septicaemia. Sir William Fergusson in his 1867 'Lectures on the Progress of Anatomy and Surgery During the Present Century' gives a detailed description of Leach's skeleton and mentions that it is in the museum of University College. I wondered if the Pathology Museum still has the specimen and if it does if it would be possible to see it?

Yours

David Bingham

I received a reply in April:

Dear David,

With thanks for your patience with this reply, I’m afraid I’m writing with disappointing news – no full skeletons from the original Anatomy Museum at University College Hospital survive in UCL Pathology Collections. Most of the existing UCH collection are wet-preserved tissue specimens from the museum’s second incarnation in the 20th Century. The only mentions of Liston in the collection catalogue is in relation to a few kidney and bladder caculi, along with a view jaw and one intestine specimen. It seems to be mostly chance what has lasted and what hasn’t.

Sorry to not be writing with more positive news, but I hope this is useful nonetheless.

Subhadra Das
Curator, UCL Science Collections
UCL Culture

So much for Leach’s desire to be embalmed and kept in a glass case.  I had a little more luck Phillips Potters grave at Kensal Green. I had been told, by someone I trusted implicitly, that the grave was unmarked but late last year my friend Meriel told me that there was a request for a photo of it on Find a Grave. When I told her that the grave was unmarked she was surprised as she had already been to look for it, managed to locate it and had found a sunken ledger stone. There was also a stone cross on the grave but Meriel didn’t think it really belonged there, somehow it had been moved there from another grave. What she really needed was my help to dig out the ledger stone which was almost completely buried beneath the turf. And so, on a wet November morning, I found myself, with Meriel, kneeling on the sodden ground in square 168 of the cemetery, removing the earth and turf above grave 6846. The ledger was sitting at an angle so that the bottom end was still visible but the top end, where any inscription was likely to be, was a good 9 inches below the surface. It took us the best part of an hour to remove the grass and dirt. Disappointingly there was no sign of an inscription, not a trace of even weathered and illegible lettering. The surface of the stone was as pristine as when it came out of the quarry.  

The Story of the Gnome Fly Part 2 - Introducing Signor Hervio Nano; Harvey Leach (1801-1847)

In late 1837, after almost eight years working exclusively on the continent, the American born performer Harvey Leach returned to England with a new identity, as the Neapolitan Signor Hervio Nano, and a sensational new act, the Gnome Fly. A notice of the previous night’s performance at the Adelphi in The Times of February 1st 1838 gives some idea of Leach’s extraordinary performance:

A very curious performance was exhibited at this theatre last night. The plot of this, to use the phraseology of the 'Philologos’ of the theatre, Bizarre Flights of Fancy, is scarcely worth detailing. It consists in the loves of the rightful heir to the kingdom of Tartary and the heiress of the estates of the Great Mogul. The plot and the Incidents of the drama are all very good in their way; but they are all ancillary to the performance, and it may be justly said the most astonishing performance of a very astonishing personage, called Signor Hervio Nano, who enacts a baboon and a fly. To what order of animals or Insects this very strange gentleman belongs would puzzle the most recondite students of entomology to determine. He represents a baboon with such aptitude to nature that everybody would take him for a monkey If It were not that in a few minutes he is seen buzzing and fluttering across the stage in the shape of an enormous fly, and though innoxious in his transport, sufficiently alarming from his size to give terror to those by whom he is beholden. - In a word, Signor Hervio Nano performs some of the most astonishing feats ever exhibited within the walls of a theatre. He appears to fly from the stage to a lofty tower, with the celerity of an insect; he runs up places perfectly perpendicular; he climbs, without any apparent exertion, along the side of the theatre, gets into the upper circle in a moment, catches hold of the projection of the ornaments of the ceiling of the theatre, crosses to the opposite side, and descends along the vertical boarding of the proscenium. It is a most extraordinary performance, and if it creates a rather nervous sensation during its actual process, it affords a commensurate admiration at its termination. Signor Hervio Nano is the most extraordinary man in his way. It is difficult to describe a performance of this kind; it must be seen even to be understood. It will suffice to say that it deserves to be seen by all who are anxious to see something out, very much out, of the common way, and to encourage the uncommon in dramatic excellence. The performance was given out for repetition by Mr. Yates, amidst the loudest applause from a very crowded house.

So popular was the Gnome Fly that when Leach refused to take the stage at the Royal Theatre in Birmingham because of a dispute over £10 that he felt the management owed him, the audience took his side and there was a near riot. This is from Aris's Birmingham Gazette of Monday 8th October 1838;

A disgraceful riot took place at the Theatre in this town on Monday night last. It appears that a dispute had arisen between the Manager and Signor Hervio Nano, with reference to a pecuniary demand of the latter in a settlement which took place on Saturday. Hervio Nano at the time when his presence was required for his part on the stage, was seated in one of the boxes of the theatre, and on being applied to, in an audible voice refused to take his part until a settlement was made to his satisfaction. The Stage Manager explained that there was no claim existing on the part of the complainant, as a full settlement had been made with Mr. Yates of the Adelphi, to whose company the Signor was attached. An attempt was made to remove Nano forcibly from the box, and in the scuffle the latter passed over into the pit and on to the stage, and in the course of the struggle was aided by some of the audience —from the stage he proceeded again to the boxes. After another attempt on the part of the Manager to proceed with a different piece, Signor Nano addressed the audience, and being so advised, proceeded to the greenroom, soon after which a scuffle was heard on the stage, and Nano, having raised the curtain, was seen struggling with several persons. A rush was made by some of the audience from the pit and boxes, but to no avail, as the subject of sympathy did not reappear. Hereupon the occupants of the gallery, having given notice of their intention to those assembled in the pit to clear away, began to tear up the benches of the gallery, and to throw them into the pit, breaking the chandeliers and whatever came in the way of the missiles, the havoc and confusion continuing until the lights were extinguished. At the Public Office on Thursday and Friday last the above riotous proceedings were the subject of long investigation. On the first-mentioned day, Mr. Simpson, the stage-manager, charged Hervio Nano with an assault, which after a lengthened hearing was dismissed. The defendant was then charged with disturbing the audience, and instigating others to outrage and violence; and depositions having been taken, warrant for his apprehension was granted and being subsequently bailed he appeared to answer the charge on the latter day. After a long examination of witnesses for the prosecution and defence, it was agreed that the defendant should enter into sureties to appear at the Sessions to answer any charge that may be made against him; and having done so to the extent of 50/. Mr. Simpson was bound over to prosecute. Mr. Edmonds defended the accused, and Messrs. Suckling and Greatwood appeared for the prosecutor — it will be observed that a reward of 10/. Has been offered by the Proprietary of the Theatre, for the detection and conviction of any participator in the outrage.

The Warwickshire Criminal Register for 1838 shows that Leach was found not guilty of the charges of Riot and Assault, presumably, in time, his £50 surety was returned. He did not let the matter drop though, and we know from later bankruptcy proceedings in 1843 that the battle was fought out in the courts with Leach taking an action for false imprisonment against Mr. Simpson, the manager of the Birmingham Theatre, and a police constable named Rook. The action was not successful and Leach found himself liable for £266 of his opponent’s costs which, typically, he did all he could to avoid paying.

Just five weeks after the Birmingham episode, on Thursday the 15th November the Gnome Fly found himself in further trouble when he became involved in an altercation with a man called John Williams on Ludgate Hill. According to William’s testimony he was the completely innocent party. He had tried to overtake Leach, who was riding with a lady in a chaise, on his pony and the showman swerved the carriage to knock William’s off his horse. When William’s tried to remonstrate with Leach he had been lashed with a horsewhip. Refusing to give up the argument William’s received further injuries. Leach was summonsed to appear at the Guildhall in Early January to answer charges of assault. The Morning Chronicle, of January 3rd, 1839 gives this account of what happened:

Harvey Leach, the 'Gnome Fly', was brought up on a warrant by Herdsfield, charged with having assaulted a young man, named John Williams, residing in Water-lane. The complainant stated that as he was riding a valuable pony down Ludgate-hill, on the 15th of November, he overtook the defendant who was driving a lady in a chaise, and seeing an opportunity to pass, he attempted to do so. This gave offence to Mr. Leach who swerved from the [illegible] to throw him down on the pavement, and did so. The pony's hock was cut. He went up to the chaise, to ask why he had served him so, and immediately received a cut from the defendant's whip, which laid his cheek open. He approached him again, and received a cut over the hand which drew blood; and, on going to stop the defendant's horse, till he got his address, the defendant cut him round the neck, and pulled him off the pony. Two gentlemen had given him their cards, but neither of them was able to attend that morning.

 The defendant denied the charge and said he would draw a refutation from the complainant himself in five minutes. His questions were for the purpose of showing that the young man had followed him from Cheapside to Ludgate-hill; had holden up his hand to draw attention to the defendant; that the whip was intended to be applied to defendant's horse to extricate him from the complainant's hold; and that complainant gave defendant's horse a thump in the face. The complainant, however, answered none of the questions to Mr. Harvey Leach's satisfaction, and Mr. Alderman Gibbs ordered the defendant to find bail for his appearance at the London Sessions on Saturday next.

The London Courier and Evening Gazette of the 7th January briefly reported on the hearing at the London Sessions, getting Leach’s name wrong but making it clear that the bench accepted Williams’ version of events:

At the London sessions on Saturday, Mr. James Leach, alias Senhor Hervio Nano, alias the Gnome Fly of the Adelphi Theatre, was tried for horse-whipping a man on Ludgate-hill. The particulars of the case were recently given in a police report. The defendant conducted his case in person, and indulged in violent language against the complainant, for which he was called to order by the Chairman. He was found guilty, and sentenced to pay a fine of £20

Was it a completely unprovoked attack? It seems unlikely. Leach clearly reacted strongly to any attempt to ridicule him in public but there are no accounts of him launching one-sided attacks on other people for offences as trivial as overtaking his chaise on the public highway. Perhaps this was an early incidence of ‘road rage’ but it seems highly likely that Williams would have launched a few choice insults in Leach’s direction and may well have misjudged his opponent’s physical strength, allowing himself to be fooled by his diminutive stature. It was a costly error for the young man though. The matter did not stop there – a couple of weeks later William’s was back in court, this time at the Alderman’s court, demanding damages for the assault. It quickly becomes clear that at the Sessions hearing Leach had been given the opportunity to pay William’s £10 in damages or to be fined £20 and that he had preferred to pay the larger fine rather than give anything to his supposed victim. This account is from The Times, January 16th;

Yesterday a Court was held for the despatch of business; Alderman Harmer presented a petition from a poor man named Williams, who prosecuted the dwarf called Hervio Nano (Harvey Leech) for a most desperate assault at the last London Sessions. Tho petition stated that the defendant was convicted of the assault, and was fined £20, with permission to speak to the prosecutor, and upon the understanding that if the defendant gave £10. to the prosecutor the penalty would be remitted that the defendant refused to give any remuneration to the prosecutor, and paid the penalty of £20; that the prosecutor having sustained considerable injury from the assault, and having lost the situation which he possessed at the time, he threw himself on the humane consideration of the Court, and begged, that as they considered the case an aggravated one, and recommended a course which was calculated to make some amends, but which was rejected, and as the prosecutor had been put to expense they would make an order for the payment of such part of the penalty to him as they might think fit. There was a strong feeling in the court that the prayer of the petition should be complied with. The Recorder said, that there was a fund out of which the corporation could make remuneration to the poor man. Alderman HARMER said, that the object of the Court at the time of the trial was to obtain some remuneration for the injury inflicted by the defendant, and as the sum they considered the prosecutor entitled to was £10., he moved that that amount be handed over to him. (Hear, hear.) Alderman LAINSON seconded the motion, which was carried unanimously, and gave a great deal of satisfaction, The bad feeling of the defendant has thus been completely disappointed, for he calculated that by paying £20 he would have prevented the injured man from receiving a farthing.

In 1839 February Leach began working at the Royal Victoria Theatre in London in two specially written dramas, ‘The Monkey of the Pyrenees or Woman’s Faith’ and ‘The Shipwreck or the captain and the monkey’ but his triumphant return to England was now irremediably soured and he was soon making plans to leave the country again. He was gone for almost the next three years, initially to the United States where he appeared in Boston and Philadelphia, then touring Europe, (Antwerp, Rotterdam, Alkmaar, Amsterdam, and Paris) before returning to the US for theatre appearances in New York and Washington. He returned to England in late 1842, performing at the Theatre Royal in Liverpool as the Gnome Fly before appearing before Commissioner Merivale at the Court of Bankruptcy in London in December and January. It seems Leach would rather declare himself bankrupt than pay the £266 costs still owed to Mr Simpson, the manager of the Birmingham Theatre, he had sued for false imprisonment. Leach was forced to admit that he had £400 deposited in a French bank but told the court that this “was all disbursed for travelling expenses in a professional tour he, with other parties, made through Antwerp, Rotterdam, Alkmar, Amsterdam, &c., which, like many other theatrical speculations, proved a failure.” He was back in court in January, by this time his creditors had given up all hope of ever receiving their money and did not appear. According to the Globe of 19th January 1843, “Mr. Commissioner Merivale said that no party appeared on the other side; he thought, however, that as the insolvent was an actor, a conditional order for the benefit of his creditors might be made out of his future engagements; but as no person appeared, he should not interfere. The Court made final order.” And with that order Leach was finally free of his debt which had started, let us not forget, with a dispute over a £10 appearance fee. 

Charles Freeman, the American Giant, as depicted by the Illustrated London Life of 9th April 1843 

Leach’s career was now in the doldrums; although he continued to work, he struggled to recapture the successes of previous years. In February he was engaged to appear again at the Adelphi and the Theatre Royal in a specially commissioned piece by William Leman Rede ‘Son of the Desert or the Demon Changeling’ with Charles Freeman the American giant. Freeman, who was just shy of 7 feet tall, was a 22-year-old from Michigan who had earned his living as a non-descript in American Freakshows until employed to take part in staged exhibition matches with the English heavy weight boxing champion Ben Caunt who was then touring in the US. Caunt brought Freeman to England at the end of 1842 where he took part in two much hyped matches with William Perry, the Tipton Slasher. ‘Son of the Desert’ was an attempt to capitalise on Freeman’s short-lived celebrity but it did not prove to be especially popular. The piece had moved to the Olympic theatre by March where the management announced that  “the Lessee begs to announce to the Nobility, Gentry and the Public generally that he has entered into an Engagement with Mr. CHARLES FREEMAN, the American Giant, the great Pourtrayer of the Passions, and with Signor HERVIO NANO, the Miracle-achieving Dwarf, who will have the honour of making their first appearance at this Theatre.” Within a week or so ‘Son of the Desert’ was abandoned and Leach was appearing as an orangutan in the story of ‘The Indian Maid and the Shipwrecked Mariner’ and Freeman was appearing separately as Frankenstein’s monster.  According to the Pictorial Times of Saturday 1st April 1843, neither were a great success:

At the Olympic Theatre the dwarf "Hervio Nano" has been disguising himself in a monstrosity called the Ourangoutang, and the American Giant, in the drama of the Monster, or the Fate Frankenstein, has been drawing as much as a man of his dimensions can be expected to draw, seeing that he is not aided by the advantages of histrionic talent. A great deal has been said about these human curiosities, but we have good reason to suppose that neither the performances of the one, nor the deformities of the other, are calculated to improve the fortunes of the theatre.

Struggling to make a living in England Leach decided to once again return to the continent. He did not return alone, taking with him three young brothers, the Cottrell’s, who, according to a report in the Gazette des Tribunaux of 29 December 1844 were full of “boldness, grace, and lightness” and were discovered when Leach, who the paper called l’homme-mouche (the human-fly) was:

passing near a house in a London suburb, where the three Cottrells were frolicking in games. Harvey Leach, a true connoisseur, noticed their youth and precocious dexterity; he entered and, addressing their father, a poor man, offered to have the following children taken to France: 1. Henry, aged eighteen; 2. Thomas, aged six; 3. and finally, there was little Alfred, barely four years old. Mr. Leach promised to treat, house, feed, and clothe them properly, and even to give the two little ones all the care required by such a tender age. Armed with the father's consent, the human-fly instructed the children and exhibited them with him in the performances given in France

On the 26th October 1844 Leach signed a contract with a Monsieur Philippe, a magician, who had a theatre on the Boulevard Bonne-Neuvelle to appear in the theatre, along with the Cottrells (who were billed as ‘les jeunes Américains’, the Young Americans) for up to 100 performances over a five-month period, five performances a week at 200 francs per performance. The contract allowed Monsieur Philippe to terminate the agreement after ten performances with at least two weeks’ notice, if the performance did not meet the approval of the audience. Although Leach and the Young Americans were a decided hit with the public Monsieur Philippe’s theatrical license only allowed him to stage conjuring tricks and ‘physiques amusantes’ (educational scientific experiments) and the authorities threatened to revoke it unless he cancelled the human-fly’s performances. Le Courer des Spectacles of the 28th December reported that Leach had only performed 17 times when Monsieur Philippe was forced to cancel the show. He paid Leach a further 600 francs as notice but the performer was not happy with this and sought redress through the courts. He lost the case and to compound his problems, the Cottrells were unhappy with his treatment of them and managed to get word to their father who turned up in Paris demanding the return of his children. When Leach refused to give up the three boys, Cottrell senior swore out a complaint at the Civil Tribunal in Paris alleging “that none of the magnificent promises made by the impresario to the poor father  to persuade him to abandon his offspring, had been kept, despite the lucrative income they had generated; that, not content with this, Mr. Harvey Leach daily mistreated the Cottrell children, beating them violently, and even going so far as to arm himself with a knife to stab them.” (Gazette des Tribunaux) Leach surrendered the three boys before the case was heard at court but his lawyer argued that as a dispute between two foreigners, the court had no jurisdiction over it. The judge was inclined to agree, especially as the boys had been returned to their parents, but in any case, he ordered Leach to return the rest of the boy’s property to their family within 24 hours.

A French playbill, possibly from 1845, when Leach was appearing in Le conte de fées 

Despite the action taken by Cottrell senior Leach evidently still hoped to use the boys’ services for another act he arranged to stage at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique on the boulevard du Temple. Le Courer des Spectacles of the 20th December, reports that Leach will be appearing in Le conte de fées along with ‘les jeunes Américains’ but says there is no word of the giant Leach has promised to bring from England, presumably Charles Freeman, to show off feats of strength. Le conte de fees did go ahead, quite probably without either Freeman or the Cottrells, until the 7th January when the management were forced to close because Leach was indisposed; Le Courer des Spectacles reported that a doctor had certified that he was suffering from inflammation of the lungs and needed several days rest. The show was closed for one night only though as the management of the Ambigu-Comique announced Leach’s place as the Breton Fairy would be taken by one Monsieur Alexandre. The theatrical journal L’Argus on the 9th January took up the story;

Now, do you know who Mr Alexandre is, the audacious acrobat who has unexpectedly replaced the astonishing, the surprising, the incomprehensible Harvey Leach, the human-fly? Well? Mr Alexandre is a young man, the manager of the Ambigu, whose devotion is unwavering and who had wisely judged that Mr Harvey Leach’s gymnastic feats were mere showboating and that he, a complete and agile fellow, could easily perform the exercises of the monstrous, shapeless individual. No sooner said than done: the Breton Fairy descended as nimbly as usual, astride her broomstick; then the fly took flight with equal lightness; the monkey was even more agile, funnier and less repulsive. Mr Alexandre cut the human-fly in two and we advise Mr Antoine Beraud to rid himself as quickly as possible of this heavy-handed cripple who lounges in a tilbury after having exploited the graceful talent and supple agility of the three young children whose guardianship was removed from him by the court due to mistreatment.

Monsieur Alexandre’s ability to perform all of Leach’s celebrated feats was a fatal blow for the performer. He never returned to the stage in France and no doubt humiliated and mortified he chose to take himself away from Europe altogether and return to the United States where he was engaged by Thomas Hamblin at the Bowery Theatre. We catch an extraordinary glimpse of him just a few months after the debacle in France, on the night of April 25th 1845, when the notoriously fire prone theatre burnt down to ground for the fourth time in less than twenty years. Shortly after 6pm, the fire, which started in one of the carpenters’ rooms, quickly engulfed the building, completely destroying it in less than an hour. In the account of the fire published in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper on the 18th May, appears this:

Amid the turmoil of the scene, no one was more active than Hervio Nano, on the roof of Messrs. Bartlett's Hotel, in the Bowery, calling out for those below to send him up a hose, and crying aloud that he would save the buildings. But he was unheeded; not that it appeared to be actually necessary, but, at the same time, no one could have exercised himself more energetically.

An engraving of the fire in the Illustrated London News of 24 May 1845 shows a huge crowd watching the flames consume the theatre while the fire department direct three or four inadequate streams of water at the conflagration. Standing on the roof of the building next door to the theatre is a diminutive figure – is this Leach calling for a fire hose? 

The burning of the Bowery Theatre from the Illustrated London News of 24 May 1845