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53 - Fat Men's Clubs

53 - Fat Men's Clubs

aktualisieren: 2024-05-10

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Beschreibung

For as long as so-called civilised societies have existed, equally uncivilised clubs and groups have sprung up within them, allowing their members to revel in all sorts of weird and wonderful excesses.

In previous episodes we have heard about secret food clubs with a goal of eating every type of animal on earth. Todays story may not be so different, although this clubs members were’nt so picky about reaching any particular goal other that just eating every type of food they could get their hands on.

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Thank you to our 2 brand-new supporters:

Frank Morales

Philipp Surkov

Please support me on Patreon for just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod

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Sources for this episode's research:

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.

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Transkript

00:00:00

For as long as so-called civilised societies have existed, equally uncivilised clubs and groups have sprung up within them, allowing their members to revel in all sorts of weird and wonderful excesses.

00:00:12

In previous episodes, we have heard about secret food clubs, with a goal of eating every type of animal on earth.

00:00:19

Today's story may not be so different, although this club's members weren't so picky about reaching any particular goal, other than just eating every type of food they could get their hands on.

00:00:32

These are the bizarre but true stories from history, and in some way,

00:00:45

involve food.

00:00:46

I'm Nick Chali Ki, and this is the Fantastic History of Food.

00:00:51

I wanted to say a huge thank you to all of my supporters on Patreon.

00:01:05

You helped me out immensely in getting this show made, and today I want to send a special shout out to two new supporters that have joined since our last episode, Philip Sarkov and Frank Morales.

00:01:18

Thank you so much.

00:01:20

If you would like to support this show in the same way as these fine folks, it costs just two dollars a month, and when you sign up, you'll have your name mentioned in an episode just like you've heard today.

00:01:31

But please, this is absolutely pressure free.

00:01:35

More than anything, I just love that you listen to the podcast and get some enjoyment out of it, and that is the reason why I keep making this show.

00:01:42

Now, back to the episode.

00:01:44

It was the middle of August 1884, and for the most part,

00:01:58

it was a normal day in the North Eastern United States.

00:02:05

It was bright and sunny, and somewhere close by to the shoreline of Long Island Sound, a group of men began gathering together, albeit with a significant amount of effort imposed on their chosen modes of transportation.

00:02:18

Horses pulling wagons strained against their harnesses, small boats crossing the bay came close to toppling over, and any sort of public transportation was far more crowded than usual.

00:02:30

You see, in this small part of the country, something rather large was about to take place.

00:02:36

Men from all over the area were coming to one very particular venue to take part in the Connecticut Fat Men's Club annual clam bake.

00:02:45

At the time, this was by no means a club in isolation, but rather it was just one of many chapters that had sprung up all across the east coast of the United States.

00:02:54

Fat Men's clubs were joyous places where members would gather to consume elaborate meals and celebrate one another's weighty gains.

00:03:01

It was, in short, the very definition of celebrating excess in a world that for so long had managed to just scrape by.

00:03:10

These clubs were viewed through wildly different lenses at the time, with some commentators alleging that these clubs promoted nothing but mental and physical degradation brought on by their obesity.

00:03:21

While others praised the clubs as one of the last few bastions of true joy, then pointed to the men's good spirits and how none of these men ever seemed to commit any sort of crime in society.

00:03:33

In the general population as a whole, opinions seemed to constantly shift around how the so-called "plumpness" was viewed.

00:03:41

Some simply saw Fat Men as being men of wealth and status who could afford the finer things in life and regarded them as upstanding leaders of society.

00:03:50

Others, however, viewed the men's enormity as some kind of amusement only reserved for carnival exhibits or as side-show freaks, but whichever side you were on both seemed to agree that whatever else they were,

00:04:02

these Fat Men were generally virtuous, good-natured and morally upright.

00:04:07

Whatever the prevailing discourse was at any one time, however, the men who found joy within these clubs seemed at all times to be utterly unperturbed by the swirling debates.

00:04:18

In fact, some men would even find motivation within these criticisms that would spur them on to even greater feats of overindulgence.

00:04:26

Perhaps it is no wonder that the first of these sorts of clubs sprang up in New York City, the epicenter of the New World, sometime in the 1860s.

00:04:35

From there, their popularity grew and more and more clubs sprung up around the city, eventually spilling out into the surrounding areas and beyond.

00:04:43

There was even a mention in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of a particularly fun party held by the Coney Island Fat Men's Club that was being spoken about for days afterwards by all who attended.

00:04:55

In 1903, in a small local tavern in Wells River, one of America's most successful Fat Men's clubs was launched in New England.

00:05:04

At its very peak, it would record 10,000 members, but here, in the midst of its humble beginnings, were a few Fat Men enjoying some good food and each other's company.

00:05:15

Their mantra was, "We're fat and we're making the most of it."

00:05:19

While their club motto was, "We have to be good-natured because we can't fight and we can't run."

00:05:26

To join the club, one needed to weigh at least £200, pay a yearly membership fee of $1 and learn the club's secret password and handshake.

00:05:36

Members would gather twice a year, with the meeting dates announced a good while in advance, allowing the men to stuff themselves beforehand to make sure they made the minimum weight requirement needed to stay a member.

00:05:48

Just a year after the New England Fat Men's Club formed, the local newspaper reported on one of their gatherings.

00:05:55

This village is full of bulbous and overhanging abdomens and double chins tonight, for the New England Fat Men's Club is in session at Haley's Tavern.

00:06:03

The natives, who are mostly bony and angular, have stared with envy at the portly forms and rubricund faces which have arrived on every train.

00:06:13

But these clubs were not without a healthy dose of self-deprecation either, and each and every Fat Men's Club event, away in, was held at the end of the night, with a heaviest member being presented with a pig as his prize for the night.

00:06:26

The title of heaviest member was so coveted that some members were even caught stuffing pillows up their shirts or carrying coins or lead balls in their pocket, in an attempt to help tip the scales in their favour.

00:06:38

And so it was, and our aforementioned Connecticut Fat Men's Club annual clambeck.

00:06:43

The event was covered rather extensively by the local press at the time, and they provide us now with some fascinating insights into exactly what occurred that day.

00:06:52

The chef, who hailed from Brooklyn, was widely regarded as an artist in his field when it came to the preparation of clams.

00:06:59

And that day, it is reported that on top of his hickory log fire, he baked around 24,000 clams.

00:07:07

But if you thought that was the only thing on the menu, you would be sorely mistaken.

00:07:12

Added to this clam genocide were, in quotes, wagon loads of spring chickens, boat loads of lobster, and many, many crates of green corn and vegetables.

00:07:22

The chef had begun many hours before the members arrived, slow cooking all of this food for hours.

00:07:30

The New York Times also spend a good amount of column inches writing about this particular club's president saying, Mr.

00:07:36

Dolan is huge.

00:07:38

He is ponderous.

00:07:39

His obesity borders on the infinite, and the most hardened lean man cannot gaze upon his magnificent proportions without being unconsciously made, pureer,

00:07:49

and holier.

00:07:51

That is some high praise for a man whose greatest achievement was filling himself to bursting with food.

00:07:56

Mr.

00:07:57

Dolan opened the day with a short speech, knowing that all in attendance were eager to get started.

00:08:03

And once the feast had come to an end, and there were clamshells strewn all across the surrounding area, the president once again took to the stage to give a speech.

00:08:11

He held up the club's ceremonial golden staff, inscribed with the names and weights of the club's presidents who had come before him.

00:08:19

As he spoke, he began to weep, and he compared how relatively slim his frame was in relation to many of the club's members, and in so doing offered to resign from his role as president out of sheer embarrassment so that he could be replaced by a worthyer and more importantly heavier member,

00:08:36

but the crowd was having none of it, and he was unanimously re-elected.

00:08:42

The menus of these clubs offer up a fascinating insight into the world of what these wealthy gentlemen engorge themselves on whenever they regularly met together.

00:08:51

Oyster roasts and Texan barbecues were just two of the staple favourites for these fat man's clubs over indulgences.

00:08:58

At any one of these events, you could eat your fill of oyster cocktail, cream of chicken soup, boiled snapper, fillet of beef with mushrooms, roast chicken, roastsuckling pig,

00:09:09

shrimp salad, steamed fruit pudding with brandy sauce, amongst a veritable smorgasbord of assorted cakes, cheeses and ice creams, before finishing off the night with coffee and cigars.

00:09:21

Some of the clubs had very specific rules for joining, as can be found in the charter of the Bedford Stiberson Fatmins Bicycle Club, which stated that you had to weigh in excess of 250 pounds before you were even allowed to join.

00:09:35

Under no circumstances were women allowed to become members, and most hilariously, if any member was caught eating limberga cheese outside of a meeting, they would have to then provide enough to feed the entire club as a punishment.

00:09:49

In what was a rather interesting turn of events for these clubs, they began competing with one another in a variety of different sporting events, as was foreshadowed by the aforementioned bicycle club.

00:10:00

The New York Times has an article from 1885 in which it describes in detail a baseball game played between teams representing the Brooklyn Fatmins Club and that of Flushing Queens.

00:10:11

The article was by no means flattering in its descriptions.

00:10:14

The individual masses of row-tunned corpulency made up the famous Fatmins Baseball 9 of Brooklyn, and they had gone down with all the speed they were capable of to test the agility of a similar set of linear and latitudinal giants.

00:10:29

Upon the team's arrival at the field, the Brooklyn team somehow managed to cram themselves onto an agricultural scale, weighing in at a collective £2211,

00:10:40

or £245 per person an average.

00:10:44

As it turned out, all of the men competing that day were formerly professional baseball players who had since grown obese due to their excessive beer-drinking habits and the sedentary lifestyle of politics into which many of them had ventured.

00:10:57

Still, they were adamant that they could run their own bases, on condition that at each base they positioned a so-called "resuscitating" keg of beer to drink in between plays.

00:11:08

Before the game started, the captain of the Brooklyn team, only known as Supervisor Jones, addressed the assembled media.

00:11:15

I say with pride that no man is allowed into this organisation if he should weigh less than £212, and he himself led this team by example, tipping the individual scale at a hefty £325 all by himself.

00:11:30

In his speech, he proudly announced that he had had such trouble fitting himself into his uniform that he had had to pay a young boy £25 to help stuff himself inside.

00:11:40

Before long, it was clear that their opponents were going to be no shows.

00:11:44

The local newspaper reported that the team from flushing had arrived, seen the caliber of man they were up against, and fled in shame at their own embarrassing frames, which on average weighed just over £200 per man.

00:11:57

As mad as the Brooklyn team was, they were apparently mollified by the distribution of even more kegs of beer.

00:12:06

Just after the turn of the century in 1904, the Lewiston Evening Journal reported on a basketball game between the local Fat Men's Club and a professional men's team from Livermore Falls and Maine.

00:12:17

By all accounts, so many people turned out to watch the game, then when the players took to the court, the cheering was so deafening that the announcer couldn't even be heard above the ruckus.

00:12:27

At their peak, these clubs spread as far as Nevada, Utah and Tennessee, as well as all the way to France.

00:12:34

But as attitudes began to change towards obesity and medical doctors began stressing the dangers that came with it, the numbers of members and clubs in general began to steadily fall.

00:12:46

Nowhere was the change in attitude towards Fat Men felt more acutely than in the New York police force.

00:12:52

They went from holding Fat Men's races at their annual police department get-togethers to instating a policy whereby you could not even become a policeman if you weighed more than £250.

00:13:03

In fact, in 1910, one of the police captains was relieved of his duty due to his obesity.

00:13:10

By 1924, the movement had all but died out, and at the very last meeting of the once popular New England Fat Men's Club, they were down to just 38 members,

00:13:21

all of whom were now disappointingly under £200.

00:13:26

At their final meeting, they raised their glasses in one last whimsical toast.

00:13:31

A toast to us, my good kind friends, to bless the things we eat.

00:13:36

For it has been many a year since we have seen our feet.

00:13:41

But who would lose a precious pound by trading sweets for hours?

00:13:45

It takes a mighty girth indeed to hold such hearts as ours.

00:14:01

This show is made entirely by me, Nick Charlie Key.

00:14:05

With our theme music having been made by the enigma that is the mysterious, break master cylinder.

00:14:12

If you'd like to support this show, the simplest way to do that is over on our Patreon account.

00:14:20

There's just one option, so for just two bucks a month, you'll help me keep producing this show.

00:14:26

And in return, you'll get your name forever etched onto our supporters' wall of fame over on our website.

00:14:31

No.

00:14:32

And then maybe listen up for your name in an upcoming episode.

00:14:35

So until next time, bye-bye.

00:14:46

Yum.

00:14:54

[BLANK_AUDIO]

00:15:04

53 - Fat Men's Clubs

53 - Fat Men's Clubs

Nick Charlie Key

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