In previous episodes, we've mentioned men like Nicholas Wood, the great Eater of
Kent, Ping Body, the New York Yankees baseball player who beaten Ostrich in
a spaghetti eating competition, and recently we even spoke about William McKenna, the
man who could eat all sorts of glass and metals. Now there are hundreds
more stories, I'm sure of men and women with equally impressive or horrific eating
habits, depending on your point of view. But today we'll be focusing on
one of history's most notorious. His abilities defy traditional human limits and in fact
defy traditional human decency as well. His unquenchable appetite and insatiable hunger brought him
global acclaim and praise, but it also ultimately proved to beat his downfall.
Today we'll be diving into the story of Charles Domeri, a Polish born soldier
who tried to eat the whole world. These are the bizarre but true stories
from history and in some way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and
this is the fantastic history of food. Charles Domri was born in seventeen seventy
eight to a Polish family as one of nine boys. Now, according to
most accounts, all of these boys had larger than normal appetites, and I
feel incredibly sorry for their poor parents, who must have gone through roughly twenty
loads of bread on a slow week. But even so, Charles's appetite stood
out amongst his brethren. Despite his voracious eating habits, he grew up a
healthy child with an average frame, although he did grow up to be around
six foot three inches tall at the age of just thirteen, although in the
seventeen hundreds this was basically middle aged. Charles decided that the time was right
to join the Prussian Army. He expected to see some battle, some adventure,
and to make a name for himself defending his country. What he didn't
expect, however, were the meager food rations that the Prussian army handed out
to their soldiers Each day. He would complain loudly to his commanding officers that
there was just not enough food and he was still hungry. Eventually, in
an effort to shut him up, the army doubled his proportions, and yet
still this was not enough to satisfy Charles's hunger. So Charles did the only
thing he could think of. In the situation, he defected to the French
army to see if they would be prepared to feed him more now. Upon
his arrival to the French lines, he was given a whole fresh melon to
eat, which he immediately devoured, not even stopping at the rind, but
forcing that down his throat as well. The French army matched his Prussian counterparts
in affording him double rations, and his fellow soldiers, who would usually grumble
at this form of special treatment, simply watched on in amazement as domer ate
whatever he could get his hands on. When inevitably the French daily ration still
proved too meager to fill his belly, he began spending every single cent of
his military pay to buy himself more food, and would greedily scoop up his
fellow soldiers leftovers onto his own plate before devouring those as well. And yet
it was still not enough. His commanding officers watched on in amazement and simply
made notes of his gluttonous behavior, without having any real reason to stop him.
It's recorded in one of these journals that in the span of just one
year, Charles Domeri is said to have eaten one hundred and seventy four cats
that he caught while on duty. Now, the disturbing part of all of
this is that, by some accounts, he was so hungry sometimes he didn't
even wait to kill them first before he began feasting on them, and that's
some pretty gruesome stuff. In light of this, it's probably worth noting that
when these insatiable hunger urges first appeared, he was sent to be evaluated by
some form of early psychiatrist, who, for all intents and purposes, found
nothing wrong with him, either physically or mentally, and just described him as
being a man of average intelligence with no outward signs of mental illness. But
this assessment didn't always seem to correlate well with his actions. Asign from the
raw cat fiasco, it was also not uncommon for Domery to consume between four
and five pounds of grass each day simply to try and fill his stomach and
make the hunger pang subside for just a while, surprisingly, or perhaps not
surprisingly after what we've just heard earlier. As much as he loved food and
meat in particular, cooked or roasted meat would more often than not make him
sick to his stomach, and so his preferred method was to eat his meat
entirely raw. Now I know you're thinking what could possibly top the cat story
from earlier, but allow me to yet again one up it by sharing an
incident that happened aboard a French military ship while in the heat of battle.
The soldiers aboard the vessel were engaged in a sea battle with another ship,
and as was the custom of the day, cannon balls zipped through the air
as they were fired from ship to ship. Anyone unlucky enough to be in
the way of a giant metal ball hurtling through the air at a fairly rapid
pace was not going to be in for a very good time, and so
sailors were often hit full on by these cannonballs and found themselves heartily shifting off
what remained of their mortal coils. Other times, sailors were simply sideswiped by
the hurtling metal objects, and often when this happened, it would simply and
neatly remove from their bodies whichever limb had been unlucky enough to have been in
the way. And so it was on this fateful day that a soldier standing
alongside Charles Domery had their leg detached from their body as a cannon ball was
gone by. In that moment, something in Charles's eyes lit up, just
like in the cartoons when their hunger pangs start to turn their friends into chicken,
drumsticks or some other delicious food. The soldier's leg was still rolling around
on the deck, and before it could come to rest, Charles had grabbed
it and began gnawing on it like a Viking wood on a roasted leg of
lamb. The other soldiers around him were horrified at what they saw, and
once the initial shock had worn off, rushed towards him, grabbing the leg
out of his mouth and throwing it overboard before Charles could snatch it back again.
Charles could then be heard sulkily saying what a waste as he trudged below
decks, presumably to raid the ship's stores. Not long after this happened,
and during the course of yet another of these battles, Charles was captured by
the British Army in seventeen ninety eight. It's hilarious to me to think that
at that very moment they had no idea what they were getting themselves in for.
At the time of his capture, the average daily ration for a wartime
prisoner was one loaf of bread, one cup of vegetables, and a small
block of cheese. Naturally, this just wouldn't do for our Charles and his
captors soon became aware that they had somewhat of a freak of nature on their
hands. Rather than growing flustered by his dietary requirements, they instead saw it
as somewhat of a game, humorous reprieve from an otherwise mundane military existence.
Soon they too agreed to double his rations, but quickly realized that this was
mere child's play for Domri and slowly, but surely, they began increasing his
allotted rations, until at one point he was devouring in just one sitting the
entire daily rations of ten other men. When even this proved to be insufficient
for Charles, he began literally swallowing and or eating anything that wouldn't immediately kill
or poison him. He would snatch away other prisoners medications and swallow them,
or would chew and eat entire candles meant to light the cells at night.
And obviously, he went back to his old ways by not only capturing and
eating all of the rats he could get his hands on raw, mind you,
but he even managed to capture the prison cat and gobbled that poor creature
up too. Prison doctors watched him with fascination and made notes of his health
for as long as he was under their care. He was noted as sweating
profusely each night while he slept, but this would immediately stop as soon as
he woke up and ate something. A year after his capture, a word
of his escapades spread throughout the British High Command, and in seventeen ninety nine
he was given over to the Royal Navy for a more in depth study of
his condition. It was decided that they would do an experiment on him to
test and see if he had any limits whatsoever to how much he could eat
in a day, And so on the seventeenth of September seventeen ninety nine,
a physician by the name of doctor J. Johnston began the experiment. He
had made sure to include a number of other respectable witnesses on the day so
as to validate whatever his findings were, as he feared no one would believe
him if what everyone had said about Charles was true. That morning, at
four a m. Sharp, Charles was woken up and fed four pounds of
raw cow's udders. He made light work of that meal and promptly went back
to sleep again. At nine thirty a m. He was awoken once again
and fed the following firstly a meal of five pounds of raw beef, followed
up by twelve candles weighing one pound that were made from the rendered fat of
cows, as well as a bottle of porter Ale, a rather heavy bodied
beer. Onlookers were astonished to see that before even one full hour had elapsed,
his plate and mug were empty. One o'clock rolled around, and yet
more was laid out on the table before him. This meal was almost identical
to the last, and that they had gained fed him five pounds of beef
and twelve more tallow candles, but followed it up this time with three bottles
of porter Ale instead of just the one. An hour later and Domeri was
observed to be in good spirits, chatting with a few friends as he slowly
made his way through the lass of the candles, with a good chunk of
the meat still to go. At a quarter past sixth that evening, he
had finally finished everything that was on his plate and finally declared that he could
eat no more, asking kindly if he could go in lie down in his
cell. Doctor Johnston was astounded, but for a variety of reasons. Firstly,
it was insane to think that this man had consumed almost fifteen pounds of
food in one day, without even counting the beers. But a number of
his other observations shocked him as well. Not once did Charles need to use
the bathroom that entire day, and whilst monitoring him, found that his heart
rate remained normal throughout even that night, when one should have been too full
to even move. Domeri was observed to be dancing around his cell while smoking
a pipe, and even finished the night off with yet another porter ale before
retiring to bed. I think it's safe to say that this may very well
have been the best day of his life. Eventually, as time wore on,
Charles Domrie and his insatiable hunger slowly faded from the public consciousness, and
his later life and ultimately his death are unknown or at least undocumented. Modern
doctors have speculated that he may have been suffered from some form of glandular disorder,
but without being able to test the man directly, it will forever be
a guessing game as to what led a man to such hunger that he would
devour live cats, pounds of grass, and even a fellow sailor's leg,
just to make the pain in his stomach go away, knowing that soon it
would start all over again. This show is made entirely by me, Nick
Charlie Key, with our theme music having been made by the enigma that is
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like to support the show, the simplest
way to do that is over on our Patreon account. There's just one option,
so for just two bucks a month, you'll help me keep producing this
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Wall of Fame over on our website, and then maybe listen out for your
name in an upcoming episode. So until next time, bon appetite,