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For as long as so called civilized
societies have existed, equally uncivilized clubs and

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groups have sprung up within them,
allowing their members to revel in all sorts

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of weird and wonderful excesses. In
previous episodes, we have heard about secret

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food clubs with the goal of eating
every type of animal on Earth. Today's

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story may not be so different,
although this club's members weren't so picky about

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reaching any particular goal other than just
eating every type of food they could get

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their hands on. These are the
bizarre but true stories from history and in

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some way involved food. I'm Nick
Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic

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history of Food. I wanted to
say a huge thank you to all of

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my supporters on Patreon. You help
me out immensely in getting this show made,

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and today I want to send a
special shout out to two new supporters

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that have joined since our last episode, Philip Sirkov and Frank Morales. Thank

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you so much. If you would
like to support the show in the same

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way as these fine folks, it
costs just two dollars a month and when

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you sign up you'll have your name
mentioned in an episode. Just like you've

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heard today, but please, this
is absolutely pressure free. More than anything,

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I just love that you listen to
the podcast and get some enjoyment out

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of it, and that is the
reason why I keep making this show.

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Now back to the episode. It
was the middle of August eighteen eighty four,

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and for the most part it was
a normal day in the northeastern United

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States. It was bright and sunny, and somewhere close by to the shoreline

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of Long Island Sound, a group
of men began gathering together, albeit with

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a significant amount of effort imposed on
their chosen modes of transportation. Horses pulling

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wagons strained against their harnesses, small
boats crossing the bay came close to toppling

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over, and any sort of public
transportation was far more crowded than usual.

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You see in this small part of
the country, Something rather large was about

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to take place. Men from all
over the area were coming to one very

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particular venue to take part in the
Connecticut Fat Men's Club annual clam Bake.

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At the time, this was by
no means a club in isolation, but

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rather it was just one of many
chapters that had sprung up all across the

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east coast of the United States,
fat men's clubs were joyous places where members

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would gather to consume elaborate meals and
celebrate one in another weighty gains. It

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was, in short, the very
definition of celebrating excess in a world that

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for so long had managed to just
scrape by. These clubs were viewed through

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wildly different lenses at the time,
with some commentators alleging that these clubs promoted

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nothing but mental and physical degradation brought
on by their obesity, while others praised

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the clubs as one of the last
few bastions of true joy and pointed to

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the men's good spirits and how none
of these men ever seemed to commit any

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sort of crime in society. In
the general population as a whole, opinion

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seemed to constantly shift around how the
so called plumpness was viewed. Some simply

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saw fat men as being men of
wealth and status who could afford the finer

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things in life, and regarded them
as upstanding leaders of society. Others,

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however, viewed the men's enormity as
some kind of amusement only reserved for carnival

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exhibits, or as sideshow freaks.
But whichever side you were on both seen

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to agree that whatever else they were, these fat men were generally virtuous,

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good natured, and morally upright.
Whatever the prevailing discourse was at any one

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time. However, the men who
found joy within these clubs seemed at all

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times to be utterly unperturbed by the
swirling debates. In fact, some men

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would even find motivation within these criticisms
that would spur them on to even greater

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feats of over indulgence. Perhaps it
is no wonder that the first of these

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sorts of clubs sprang up in New
York City, the epicenter of the New

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World, sometime in the eighteen sixties. From there, their popularity grew,

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and more and more clubs sprung up
around the city, eventually spilling out into

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the surrounding areas and beyond. There
was even a mention in the Brooklyn Daily

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Eagle of a particularly fun party held
by the Coney Island Fat Men's Club that

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was being spoken about for days afterwards
by all who attended. In nineteen oh

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three, in a small local tavern
in Wells River, one of America's most

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successful fat men's clubs was launched in
New England. At its very peak,

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it would record ten thousand members.
But here in the midst of its humble

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beginnings were a few fat men enjoying
some good food and each other's company.

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Their mantra was we're fat and we're
making the most of it, while their

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club motto was we have to be
good natured because we can't fight and we

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can't run. To join the club, one needed to weigh at least two

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hundred pounds, pay a yearly members
fee of one dollar, and learn the

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club's secret password and handshake. Members
would gather twice a year, but the

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meeting dates announced a good while in
advance, allowing the men to stuff themselves

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beforehand to make sure they made the
minimum weight requirement needed to stay a member.

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Just a year after the New England
Fat Men's Club formed, the local

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newspaper reported on one of their gatherings, this village is full of bulbous and

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overhanging abdomens and double chins. Tonight
for the New England Fat Men's Club is

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in session at Hailey's Tavern. The
natives, who are mostly bony and angular,

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have stared with envy at the portly
forms and rubicund faces which have arrived

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on every train. But these clubs
were not without a healthy dose of self

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deprecation either. At each and every
Fat Men's Club event, away in was

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held at the end of the night, with the heaviest member being presented with

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a pig as his prize for the
night. The title of heaviest member was

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so coveted that some members were even
caught stuffing pillows up their shirts or carrying

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coins or lead balls in their pocket
in an attempt to help tip the scales

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in their favor. And so it
was at our aforementioned Connecticut Fat Men's Club

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annual clambake. The event was covered
rather extensively by the local press at the

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time, and they provide us now
with some fascinating insights into exactly what occurred

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that day. The chef, who
hailed from Brooklyn, was widely regarded as

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an artist in his field when it
came to the preparation of clams, and

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that day it is reported that on
top of his hickory log fire, he

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baked around twenty four thousand clams.
But if you thought that was the only

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thing on the menu, you would
be sorely mistaken. Added to this clam

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genocide were, in quotes, wagon
loads of spring chickens, both loads of

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lobster, and many many crates of
green corn and vegetables. The chef had

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begun many hours before the members arrived, slow cooking all of this food for

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hours. The New York Times also
spent a good amount of column inches writing

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about this particular club's president, saying, mister d'orlon is huge. He is

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ponderous. His obesity borders on the
infinite, and the most hardened lean man

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cannot gaze upon his magnificent proportions without
being unconsciously made purer and holier. That

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is some high praise for a man
whose greatest achievement was filling himself to bursting

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with food. Mister dawlon opened the
day with a short speech, knowing that

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all in attendance were eager to get
started, And once the feast had come

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to an end and there were clam
shells strewn all across the surrounding area,

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the president once again took to the
stage to give a speech. He held

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up the club's ceremonial golden staff,
inscribed with the names and weights of the

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club presidents who had come before him. As he spoke, he began to

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weep as he compared how relatively slim
his frame was in relation to many of

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the club's members, and in so
doing offered to resign from his role as

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president out of sheer embarrassment, so
that he could be replaced by a worthier

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and more importantly heavier member, But
the crowd was having none of it,

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and he was unanimously re elected.
The menus of these clubs offer up a

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fascinating insight into the world of what
these wealthy gentlemen engaged themselves on whenever they

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regularly met together. Oyster roasts and
Texan barbecues were just two of the staple

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favorites for these fat men's clubs.
Over indulgences. At any one of these

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events, you could eat your fill
of oyster cocktail, cream of chicken soup,

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boiled snapper, filet of beef with
mushrooms, roast chicken, roast,

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suckling pig, shrimp salad, steamed
fruit pudding with brandy sauce, amongst a

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veritable smaugus board of assorted cakes,
cheeses, and ice creams, before finishing

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off the night with coffee and cigars. Some of the clubs had very specific

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rules for joining, as can be
found in the charter of the Bedford Stuyvesant

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Fat Men's Bicycle Club, which stated
that you had to weigh in excess of

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two hundred fifty pounds before you were
even allowed to join. Under no circumstances

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were women allowed to become members,
and most hilariously, if any member was

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caught eating Limburger cheese outside of a
meeting, they would have to then provide

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enough to feed the entire club as
a punishment. In what was a rather

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interesting turn of events for these clubs, they began competing with one another in

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a variety of different sporting events,
as was foreshadowed by the aforementioned bicycle club.

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The New York Times has an article
from eighteen eighty five in which it

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describes in detail a baseball game played
between teams representing the Brooklyn Fat Men's Club

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and that of Flushing Queens. The
article was by no means flattering in its

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descriptions. The individual masses of row
tunned corpulency made up the famous Fat Men's

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Baseball nine of Brooklyn, and they
had gone down with all the speed they

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were capable of to test the agility
of a similar set of linear and latitudinal

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giants upon the team's arrival at the
field, The Brooklyn teams somehow managed to

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cram themselves onto an agricultural scale,
weighing in at a collective two thousand,

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two hundred and eleven pounds or two
hundred and forty five pounds per person in

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average. As it turned out,
all of the men competing that day were

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formerly professional baseball players who had since
grown obese due to their excessive beer drinking

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habits and the sedentary lifestyle of politics
into which many of them had ventured.

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Still, they were adamant that they
could run their own base on condition that

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at each base they positioned a so
called resuscitating keg of beer to drink in

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between plays. Before the game started, the captain of the Brooklyn team,

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only known as Supervisor Jones, addressed
the assembled media. I say with pride

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that no man is allowed into this
organization if he should weigh less than two

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hundred and twelve pounds. And he
himself led this team by example, tipping

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the individual scale at a hefty three
hundred and twenty five pounds, all by

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himself. In his speech, he
proudly announced that he had had such trouble

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fitting himself into his uniform that he
had had to pay a young boy twenty

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five cents to help stuff himself inside. Before long, it was clear that

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their opponents were going to be no
shows. The local newspaper reported that the

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team from Flushing had arrived, seen
the caliber of man they were up against,

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and fled in shame at their own
embarrassing frames, which on average weighed

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just over two hundred pounds per man. As mad as the Brooklyn team was,

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they were apparently mollified by the distribution
of even more kegs of beer.

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Just after the turn of the century, in nineteen oh four, the Lewiston

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Evening Journal reported on a basketball game
between the local Fat Men's club and a

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professional men's team from Livermore Falls in
Maine. By all accounts, so many

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people turned out to watch the game
that when the players took to the court,

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the cheering was so deafening that the
announcer couldn't even be heard above the

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ruckus. At their peak, these
clubs spread as far as Nevada, Utah,

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and Tennessee, as well as all
the way to France. But as

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attitudes began to change towards obesity,
and medical doctors began stressing the dangers that

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came with it, the numbers of
members and clubs in general began to steadily

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fall. Nowhere was the change in
attitude towards fat men felt more acutely than

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in the New York Police Force.
They went from holding fat men's races at

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their annual police department get togethers to
in stating a policy whereby you could not

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even become a per police man if
you weighed more than two hundred and fifty

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pounds. In fact, in nineteen
ten, one of the police captains was

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relieved of his duty due to his
obesity. By nineteen twenty four, the

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movement had all but died out,
and at the very last meeting of the

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once popular New England Fat Men's Club, they were down to just that he

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ate members, all of whom were
now disappointingly under two hundred pounds. At

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

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

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

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But who would lose a precious pound
by trading sweets for sours? It takes

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a mighty girth, indeed, to
hold such hearts as ours. This show

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00:14:01,399 --> 00:14:05,679
is made entirely by me, Nick
Charlie Key, with our theme music having

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been made by the Enigma that is
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like

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00:14:16,240 --> 00:14:18,440
to support the show, the simplest
way to do that is over on our

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00:14:18,480 --> 00:14:22,519
Patreon account. There's just one option, so for just two bucks a month,

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you'll help me keep producing this show, and in return, you'll get

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your name forever etched onto our supporter's
Wall of Fame over on our website and

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00:14:31,480 --> 00:14:35,360
then maybe listen out for your name
in an upcoming episode. So until next

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00:14:35,360 --> 00:14:37,679
time, bon apetite,