It was said that Bartley was inside the whale for 36 hours, that his skin had been bleached by the gastric juices, and that he was blind the rest of his life.
[8][9] The French scientist De Parville published a report of the alleged incident in the Paris Journal des Débats in 1914.
Davis suggested that the story may have been inspired by the "Gorleston whale", a 30-foot (9.1 m) rorqual killed near Great Yarmouth shortly before in June 1891 that generated a lot of publicity.
The first secretes no gastric juices and has very thick muscular walls to crush the food (since whales cannot chew) and resist the claw and sucker attacks of swallowed squid.
Julian Barnes references the event in his novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, as did Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End and J. M. Ledgard in his novel Submergence, the latter albeit using a different name, John More, for the swallowed victim.
James Bartley was also mentioned in the 1965 "Jonah and the Whale" episode of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea television series.