This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
[BRIGHT, Edward (1721 – 50)] The Surprising Bett Decided. [London]: Carrington Bowles, ca. 1751. Satirical etching depicts a bet whether seven men could fit inside the shirt of Edward Bright, the famous fat man of eighteenth-century England. Captioned above and below. 13 3/4 x 9 5/8”. Mounted to an album page, margins trimmed close. See BM Satires 3084, and Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, V1 N2, p. 14. The caption below the image reads in part: “A view of deciding the wager between Mr. Codd and Mr. Hants … which was that 7 men where actually with great ease on the first day of December 1750 … button’d within the waistcoat of Mr. Bright deceas’d ….” Bright was reported to be the “fattest man in England” at the time of his death in November of 1750, weighing some 665 pounds. A second wager was made in 1751, during which nine men were buttoned into Bright’s oversize shirt.