To Gormandize – to eat (food) voraciously and greedily.
Edward Dando was born in Southwark on 11 February 1803 to John and Frances Dando. He grew up to be a ‘celebrated gormandizer,’ and a ‘celebrated oyster eater.’ Dando, although not a thief (by his reckoning) thought he shouldn’t go without anything he wanted, despite not having the money to pay. His betters, he explained, relied on credit to fund their lifestyles so why couldn’t he too?
© Lewis Walpole Library
Trained as a hatter, in his early twenties Dando embarked on his career as an oyster eater. He devoured up to thirty dozen large oysters in a sitting with bread and butter and washed down with quantities of porter or brandy and water. Then, with his belly full, he would inform the keeper of the oyster house that he could not pay. The usual result of this was a beating or a spell in gaol, or sometimes both. Although his dish of choice was oysters, he was not above trying the same trick for other food too.
HATTON-GARDEN. – Last night the celebrated gormandiser at other people’s expense, Edward Dando, was brought before Mr. LAING, and in default of bail was committed to prison, charged with having, last evening about seven o’clock, devoured divers rounds of toast, and sundry basins of soup and coffee, at the Sun Coffee-house, Charles-street, Hatton-garden, without paying for the same. (The Morning Post, Police Intelligence, 4th January 1831).
Notices were put in newspapers, warning of his presence: ‘CAUTION TO SHELL FISH DEALERS, PUBLICANS, &c. – DANDO THE OYSTER-EATER, ABROAD.’ (The Morning Chronicle, 2 April 1832.)
© Yale University Library
A few months later the Morning Chronicle repeated a paragraph on Dando from the Kentish Gazette. Dando had travelled into Kent to continue his gormandizing there, probably having become too well known in his usual London haunts to carry on his trade. The article carried a description.
DANDO ON HIS TRAVELS! Dando, the celebrated oyster eater . . . committed for vagrancy . . . 29 years of age, lame in the right foot, stands five feet seven inches in height, his hair is brown, complexion fair, and he generally wears a gaol dress. (The Morning Chronicle, 25 June 1832.)
Edward Dando, now twenty-nine years of age, returned to London. He’d been in and out of prisons in Kent during his tour and it was only a matter of days before he found himself in trouble again. He landed in Coldbath Fields prison, otherwise known as the Middlesex House of Correction in Clerkenwell. There he was taken ill with cholera. A beggar named James Martin who was also a prisoner took pity on Dando and went to his assistance. Both men were removed to the infirmary where they died within a few hours of each other. They were buried alongside each other on Wednesday 29 August 1832 at St. James in Clerkenwell.
DEATH OF DANDO, THE OYSTER EATER – We have this day to record the death of the well-known Dando, the terror of shell-fish dealers, and all other purveyors of the necessaries of life. (Morning Post, 1 September 1832)
Years after Dando died his exploits were still remembered. In 1838, a writer in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was presumably unaware of his death. He joked that ‘the celebrated Mr Dando, the oyster-eater’ was intended to be resident stipendiary commissioner of a “Central Metropolitan Oyster Emporium” in Dublin. Charles Dickens recalled Dando when he wrote to Professor Felton in 1842:
. . . but perhaps you don’t know who Dando was. He was an oyster-eater, my dear Felton. He used to go into oyster-shops, without a farthing of money, and stand at the counter eating natives, until the man who opened them grew pale, cast down his knife, staggered backward, struck his white forehead with his open hand, and cried, “You are Dando!!!” 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. For these offences he was constantly committed to the House of Correction. During his last imprisonment he was taken ill, got worse and worse, and at last began knocking violent double knocks at Death’s door. The doctor stood beside his bed, with his fingers on his pulse.
“He is going,” says the doctor. “I see it in his eye. There is only one thing that would keep life in him for another hour, and that is–oysters.” They were immediately brought. Dando swallowed eight, and feebly took a ninth. He held it in his mouth and looked round the bed strangely. “Not a bad one, is it?” says the doctor. The patient shook his head, rubbed his trembling hand upon his stomach, bolted the oyster, and fell back–dead. They buried him in the prison-yard, and paved his grave with oyster-shells.
Ballads and plays were written, based on Dando’s gormandizing career.
I originally published a version of this post on a blog I co-authored and the poet, Luke Wright saw it and told me that he was going to write a poem about Dando. And, readers, he did! I love that it is a ballad, a modern-day retelling of Dando’s story but in the full spirit of the past.
Sources not otherwise noted above:
The Life and Times of James Catnach of Seven Dials, ballad monger by Charles Hindley, 1878
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