Edward Dando
Edward Dando (c. 1803 – 28 August 1832) was a thief who came to public notice in Britain because of his unusual habit of overeating at food stalls and inns, and then revealing that he had no money to pay.
In 1837 William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a short story loosely based on Dando; this was made into a play by Edward Stirling.
[8][a] Dando's April 1830 arrest followed his eating 1.75 pounds (0.79 kg) of ham and beef, a half-quartern loaf, seven pats of butter and eleven cups of tea, coming to 3s 6d,[3][8] at a time when the average weekly wage for agricultural labourers was between eight and twelve shillings.
He was arrested and appeared in court; he explained that "I was very peckish, your Worship, after living on a gaol allowance so long, and I thought I'd treat myself to an oyster".
His defence was that he was hungry after his release from Guildford prison that day: "I am here at your mercy, and prepared to undergo the punishment that awaits me, whatever it may be; but I again say, that I must satisfy my hunger.
Outside the court, the owner of the oyster stall threw a bucket of water over him and beat him with his cane, "to the infinite amusement of a throng of persons who had assembled outside and who were aware of the prisoner's transgressions", according to The Times.
They heard that the day after Dando had been released from prison, he visited a tavern in Knightsbridge and drank sixpennyworth of brandy with two Abernethy biscuits and a pint of ale.
Having drunk two glasses of brandy in one public house in Queen Street before being thrown out, Dando then moved on to a restaurant near Temple Bar.
[30]In June 1832 Dando was arrested in Kent after drinking at an inn in the parish of Chilham without paying; he was imprisoned for vagrancy and a description of him appeared in the press, describing him as 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m), brown haired with a pale complexion and lame in the right foot.
[6][32][g] His burial was the following day; Dickens later imagined that Dando "was buried in the prison yard and they paved his grave with oyster shells".
The historian Christopher Impey describes much of the reportage as "romanticised";[6] the academic Ann Featherstone considers their tone "was half-amused, half amazed".
[36] Featherstone believes that Dando "had a sharp wit and an easy manner and provided reporters with striking quotes",[37] which helped their sympathetic tone, and his "audacity [which] drew a sneaking admiration from the more cynical newspaper men".
[38] In addition to the newspaper eulogies and obituaries, mostly humorous or whimsical,[39] after Dando's death there were numerous poems and street ballads written about him, as well as several caricatures.
[50] The academic Rebecca Stott considers that Dando is often portrayed "as a kind of folk hero, transgressing the law to follow his singular passions.
"[51] During the period when Dando was active, Britain's social and economic situation was in upheaval, with high unemployment, poverty and civil unrest such as the Swing Riots.
Featherstone, commenting on Dando's "I refuse to starve in a land of plenty" philosophy, sees the background of the Swing Riots as pertinent to his lifestyle.
[52] In 1867 the Tory-leaning literary journal Fraser's Magazine wrote that it thought Dando's philosophy had been plagiarised by the Tory politician Benjamin Disraeli.
So long as oysters exist, I will eat as many as I see fit" and compared this philosophy unfavourably with what they perceived to be Disraeli's flexible political positions: "Principles were meant for mankind; don't talk to me of a property acquired by believing in them.
In a letter from July 1842, Dickens gave Felton a potted history of Dando, in which he wrote "he has been known to eat twenty dozen at one sitting, and would have eaten forty, if the truth had not flashed upon the shopkeeper".
