The late Victorian period in Britain seems to have been a time when strange fads and peculiar crazes were particularly popular.
Beyond the well known fashion for smaller and smaller waists there were fasting crazes which saw some young women claiming that they never ate anything . . . at all . . . ever, but were somehow still alive. There was a hilarious fad for taking headless photographs of yourself using early photographic trickery, and people became obsessed with spiritualism, seances and talking to the dead.
There was even a craze for walking with a limp after the Alexandra, the then Princess of Wales, developed one after a bout of rheumatic fever. Women actually began wearing odd shoes so that they could be seen to emulate the fashionable princess’ lurching gait.
Clearly some of this behaviour was coming from a growing middle-class with an excess of cash and way too much time on their hands!
There were also all kinds of crazes that revolved around physical strength and fitness. People began diving into barrels from a great height, lifting weights with their moustaches or walking across Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
And then there was Pedestrianism. Walking and walking really fast became all the rage, and this seems to have led to a whole subsection of bonkers fads involving walking really long distances, walking really long distances really fast and walking long distances carrying something or pushing something.
And this brings us to the Wheelbarrow Men.
Where it all began . . .
In 1886 John Martin, known as Sawdust Jack, and James Gordon captivated the nation with a contest of athletic endurance – each was attempting to push a wheelbarrow further than the other. Martin had started in Newcastle and Gordon in his hometown of Dundee and both were aiming to walk their barrows all the way to London.
Details of their respective journeys were reported in the newspapers daily and became a brief national obsession. Everyone was talking about the wheelbarrow men! It was their race which began the great Wheelbarrow Mania that for a few years gripped the nation.
At one point it is estimated that there were more than 20 men across the country pushing a barrow to somewhere, and these chaps started to come up with ever more elaborate ploys to entertain and grab the attention of the public.
But this trend is not quite as light-hearted as it first sounds. More recent study of these events has revealed a sadder side to the obvious silliness. It would appear that many of these wheelbarrow men were poor or sometimes disabled in some way, and that the wheelbarrow craze was an unusual way for them to earn some extra money without actually resorting to begging. And they hoped that it would potentially bring them fame and fortune.
Before Gordon and Martin made the headlines, one of the first of these wheelbarrow men was a Scottish man called Bob Carlisle, who lived in St Austell in Cornwall for a while. Carlisle had had a very varied life and had been working with the circus until he lost his job through drinking. Allegedly he had had one too many while the circus was on tour in Cornwall, had decided that it was a good idea to take an unmuzzled tiger for a walk down a street in St Austell and had been fired from his job for it.
Carlisle was then sort of stuck in Cornwall and came up with the idea of walking long distances for money, for bets. One of the challenges he is said to have undertaken was walking 1000 miles through Cornwall in 620 hours, about 20 days. He walked St Austell to Falmouth, and Falmouth to Redruth and back again over and over and back and forth, just clocking up the miles.
Towards the end of 1879 Carlisle decided that he wanted to take his growing fame beyond Cornwall and he decides to trundle a wheelbarrow from Land’s End to John O’Groats. He received huge coverage in the papers and becomes a household name for a while.
Bob Carlisle did not remain in Cornwall, he and his wife returned to Scotland where he died in 1912 but in the 1890s, according to the Cornishman newspaper, his famous barrow (pictured above) could be seen on display in John Burton’s Old Curiosity shop in Falmouth.
This shop, which I am sure many of you will have heard of, was very famous in the 19th century for its strange collection of objects, many of which were exotic items that had come from the ships docked in the harbour. It was really more of a museum than a shop.
And it makes you wonder whether either of the Cornishmen we are going to discuss visited the Burton’s shop and saw Carlisle’s wheelbarrow and that was where they got the idea. . .?
Because in the last few years of the 19th century Cornwall had its own wheelbarrow men.
Cornwall’s Wheelbarrow Men:
Sidney Smith – Land’s End to . . .
Sidney Smith was already something of a minor celebrity in Cornwall before he set off with his wheelbarrow. He is described in the newspapers as a “horse trainer and steeple chase rider”. From the little village of Gwinear near Hayle, Sidney is said to have won “scores of valuable prizes in the three western counties” on his horse “Little Willing”.
The Cornishman wrote that he was the most successful and daring rider that Cornwall had produced. In the summer of 1894, he decided to turn his hand to pedestrianism.
So despite being a complete novice at long distance walking he made a wager of £10 (about £800 today) that he could walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats pushing a wheelbarrow. The conditions were that he had to make the journey within 21 days and he had to start out with just half a sovereign in his pocket.
Sidney would rely on the generosity of the public to feed him and give him shelter along the way. The other wheelbarrow men, Bob Carlisle, John Martin and James Gordon, all seem to have done their journeys in the same way and there is an implication that part of the reason for doing these epic walks was to make money.
I think that the men imagined walking along with the public running out of their houses and throwing money and gifts into their barrow. But of course, it didn’t always go like this!
The Cornishman reported that on Monday 6th August 1894 Sidney Smith set off with his barrow from Land’s End at 6am, he arrived in Penzance at 8.20am and had breakfast there before setting off for Hayle “at a smart pace”.
A few reporters had expressed some doubt as to whether Sidney was really up to the task, he is said to have been a small, muscular, wiry man, very suited to being a jockey but there were some questions as to whether he had the stamina to walk a long distances day after day.
And it seems that Sidney had his doubts too. He reached Blackwater at 5pm that evening, having walked roughly 30 miles, which was pretty good going for his first day! But when he arrived in the village, he found that there was an auction underway at the Red Lion Inn.
On the 15th August the Western Morning News wrote:
“Smith decided that the best thing to do would be to sell his barrow. The auctioneer’s clerk made a bid of 3s 6d and became the purchaser. Smith returned home minus his wheelbarrow and plus some coppers collected along the way.”
So that was the end of Sidney Smith of Gwinear’s pedestrian career. The Royal Cornwall Gazette called it “an ignominious termination”.
But a few weeks later a much more determined Cornish candidate revealed himself – Thomas Uren.
Thomas Uren of Camborne
Thomas Uren, sometimes called Tom or Tommy, was a tin miner living at 13 Church Street in Camborne. He had been born in about 1871 and his walking career began in towards the end of August in 1894 when he was about 23 years old. I think it is pretty fair to assume that he was inspired to do better than Sidney Smith – some comparison between them was made in the papers. But it is also clear that there might have been a financial incentive too.
The local papers had been reporting that Camborne folk were “feeling the pinch of poverty” because the price of tin had fallen so low that the miners were working reduced hours and wages were being described as “low at best”. It might be fair to assume that Tom was thinking that this was a way to escape the poverty and hard work of the mines.
On Monday 27th August Tom Uren set out from Land’s End with his wooden barrow, which weighed 17lbs (about 8kg) and according to reports it had a sign painted down the side saying ‘Land’s End to John O’Groats’, just like Bob Carlisle’s.
Tom was also expected to do the journey in 21 days, taking Sundays off to rest, and he started out with only 10 shillings in his pocket.
A rather unflattering description of Tom was printed in the Cornubian and Redruth Times at the time:
“Uren is of medium height, slight build, with a light moustache and looks more capable of establishing a record in a soup kitchen than in long distance pedestrianism. It is thought that he will not prove equal to the task. He however is confident of success and claims to have walked 40 miles daily for a long spell.”
And this may very well have been true, it is well known that poor labourers would walk miles every day in order to find work, so it is entirely possible that Tom found himself in those kinds of circumstances. The wheelbarrow challenge was his way of breaking this cycle.
And he did much better than anyone expected.
On Wednesday 29th August he arrived in Exeter and stopped at the Buller’s Arms. That’s a distance of about 120 miles in three days.
But this smooth going was not to last.
Rivalries and rumours were common in this kind of competition – Sidney Smith had been accused of starting from Redruth, not from Land’s End for example, and there were soon stories circulating about Tom as he made his way further up-country.
On 1st September a paper published a letter from an anonymous source that claimed that they had seen Tom catch a train between Linton and Lydford in Cambridgeshire. Tom quickly replied by publishing his own letter denying the claims and assuring the public that he had walked the entire distance. He said he could produce a “correct statement” of his movements. But the rumours didn’t go away.
Then sadly on 10th September the West Briton reported that:
“Thomas Uren who started on his walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats has returned to his native town (Camborne) having walked nearly as far as Gloucester. Uren met with an accident being run into by a horse and trap whilst rounding a corner. He had one of his legs injured.”
Despite the fact the Tom had walked some 230 miles the Royal Cornwall Gazette wrote rather disparagingly that:
“Uren has failed and his barrow is burnt and it is to be hoped that Uren and men like him will put their strength of mind and limb to better purpose.”
There seems to have been a definite feeling from some in the media that these men were wasting their time.
Whether Thomas returned to his work as a miner isn’t clear and the next report we have of him comes in January 1895 when he runs from Camborne to Penzance, a distance of 14 miles, in 1 hour and 36 mins. He left Camborne at 2.15pm and arrived at Penzance at 3.51pm.
By any standards that is an impressive feat but when you factor in the fact that he was probably wearing boots and his ordinary clothes as well as the uneven roads that is pretty fast!
Tom also began challenging other runners to race him, placing adverts in the local papers, but it doesn’t appear that there were any takers.
Then in June that same year the Cornishman reported that he was going to make another attempt at the Land’s End to John O’Groats pushing a wheelbarrow walk. It was said that he would be leaving on Midsummer’s Day and then the date of departure was moved to 24th June.
A sketch of him with his barrow, announcing the new venture, appeared in a couple of newspapers and from that we see that Tom was a slight, tall looking man in a striped t-shirt, shorts and what look like a miner’s hat.
But then nothing happens . . . and we hear no more of Tom until 3 years later in 1898.
This year he makes his 3rd attempt leaving Land’s End at 6am on 25th July.
“He left Penzance at 8.20 being followed for a mile or two by a large crowd of small boys, who lustily cheered Uren as he paced along the highway at good speed.”
But this attempt wasn’t to be either, he only reached five miles past Truro on the road to Bodmin before he decided to turn around and return home. The reason he gave was lack of support from the public. Apparently he had only been given 1s 10d on his walk between Penzance and Truro.
Things go a little quiet for a few years but then July 1903 Thomas Uren in the papers again. This time for pushing an 11 stone man in a hand cart from Camborne to Penzance town clock in 3hrs and 35mins – there was a bet that he couldn’t do it in under 4hrs.
Whether Thomas won any money for this latest feat isn’t made clear in the papers but one can assume he did, else what would be the point in him challenging himself to do it, and we know from other reports that he was still in financial straits. Despite all the fun and games Tom clearly had a darker side. He was in trouble with the law on several occasions, including being accused of a petty theft in 1905 and then of swindling two landladies out of money in 1908.
So it is hardly surprising then that when someone bet him £20 (around £1600 today) that he couldn’t walk from London to Cornwall with no money in his pockets he accepted that bet.
The Final Attempt
In the winter of 1908 Thomas Uren made one final attempt at long distant pedestrianism. It was fourteen years since his first Land’s End to John O’Groats challenge but this time Tom was without his wheelbarrow and this time his starting point was to be London.
His train fare to the city was paid for and he stayed overnight in the Brighton Hotel close to London Bridge and then on the morning of Wednesday 5th February he departed from Hyde Park Corner.
A crowd of well-wishers had gathered to see him off and to also check his pockets to make sure that he wasn’t carrying any cash.
The papers, who dubbed him the ‘Walking Miner’ followed his progress – he slept in Reading on the first Thursday, then Chippenham on the Friday and passed Street on the Saturday.
This time there would be no allegations of cheating, Thomas had to check in at various Post Offices all along the route and get someone there to sign and date a log book that he was carrying with him.
He passed Taunton on the Monday on his way to Exeter, which must have felt like familiar territory as he had made it that far, from the opposite direction, in 1894.
The longest stint he walked in one go without stopping was 65 miles. And according to the Cornishman newspaper Thomas reached Land’s End on the evening to Friday 14th February.
– 290 miles in 9 days! He had done it and he won his bet!
Thomas Uren then walked 10 miles back to Penzance where he stayed the night.
Final thoughts
What happened to Tom after this victory is something of a mystery. He would have only been around 37 years old in 1908 but I haven’t been able to find any record of him marrying and I wasn’t able to pin him down conclusively in the census records.
It is possible that he ended up in Bodmin Goal on more than one occasion for drunkenness between 1910 and 1916, though I can’t be entirely sure that it is the same Thomas Uren.
As for Sidney Smith, after his brief dalliance with wheelbarrows he went back to racing horses, his name appears in the newspapers as secretary of steeplechase racing in St Erth in 1896.
While these stories are certainly entertaining and comical in so many ways, as well as being examples of physical achievement, there is a darker underlying theme – it seems that these ‘wheelbarrowists’ as some people called them were all poor, or out of work or struggling in some way.
There was an economic drive behind what they were doing and when you consider that the 1880s and 1890s were a period of high unemployment across the country it all starts to make more sense, If we then factor in Cornwall’s own particular troubles, with the decline of the mining industry, then somehow Sidney Smith’s and Tom Uren’s stories, although entertaining, do take on a tinge of sadness.
There’s a feeling that these men were taking on desperate acts because of their desperate circumstances – they saw these fads as not only a chance of fame but as a way to feel like they were achieving something. It gave them something to aim for, something to get out of bed in the morning for, and maybe a chance to make a few pennies along the way.
Podcast Episode
I first recorded this research as a podcast episode, so if you would like to listen please follow the link below and look for episode 39:
Further Reading
Cornwall’s Strongmen – feats of strength & record breakers
George Symons – Cornish Motorcyclist in First Ever Manx Grand Prix
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Another fascinating story. It’s really interesting to think of the inventive ways people thought they might find a shortcut to fame and fortune and an escape from the desperate situations in which they found themselves, and although the challenges may have changed, in some ways the idea of instant celebrity are as strong if not more so today. The other thing I realised I knew little about is the Lands End to John O Groats challenge, were these among the first people who saw these landmarks as a definition of the ultimate journey or does it date back much further?