Thomas Wedders (or Wadhouse), a circus sideshow performer in England during the 1770s, is believed to have had the longest nose ever.
According to historical accounts, Thomas’s prominent proboscis measured 19 cm (7.5 in). That’s the same length as a standard pencil, and over double the length of the most-recent longest nose on a living person (8.80 cm; 3.46 in).
But was Thomas’s nose really that long?
Although little is known about his life, and the true length of his nose cannot be verified because his existence predates the camera, there are some things we do know.
Thomas was born circa 1730 in Yorkshire, and as an adult he performed in various circus sideshows, exhibiting his huge hooter throughout his home county.
It’s probable that promoters overstated the length of Thomas’s nose, as it was common practice for them to exaggerate the measurements of circus acts.
For example, sideshow entertainer Lucía Zárate (Mexico, 1863-1890), formerly the shortest woman ever, measured 67 cm (26.5 in), but was billed at an even shorter height of 20 inches. Franz Winkelmeier (1860-1887), Germany's “Giant of Friedburg-Lengau”, was billed as standing at 259 cm (8 ft 6 in) but was later measured to be 228 cm (7 ft 6 in).
Whatever the length of Thomas’s nose was, it was big enough to draw crowds in every town he went to.
Thomas passed away in the early 1780s, aged 50-52, but the legend of his sizeable sniffer was not quickly forgotten.
Over a century after his death, in 1896, Thomas was mentioned in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, a book about rare medical conditions by George Gould and Walter Pyle.
In addition to stating Thomas’s nose size, the authors alluded to him being intellectually disabled. They wrote: “This man expired as he had lived, in a condition of mind best described as the most abject idiocy."
The Strand Magazine – best known as the original publishers of the Sherlock Holmes stories – wrote about him similarly: “Thus, if noses were ever uniformly exact in representing the importance of the individual, this worthy ought to have amassed all the money in Thread needle Street and conquered all Europe, for this prodigious nose of his was a compound of the acquisitive and the martial.
“But either his chin was too weak or his brow too low, or Nature had so exhausted herself in the task of giving this prodigy a nose as to altogether forget to endow him with brains; or perhaps the nose crowded out this latter commodity.”
We’ll never be able to confirm the veracity of these claims, just as we’ll never be sure exactly how long Thomas’s nose was.
Regardless, his record continues to fascinate people, and almost 250 years after his death, Thomas's nose was immortalised by Ripley's Believe It or Not!, who created a wax reproduction of his head.
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