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"The Two-Headed
Patagonian Giant" was over 12ft (3.7m) tall, was a famous
fairground attraction brought to England in the 19 century.
He had been captured by the Spanish sailors in 1673 and
bound to the mainmast. He broke loose and killed four of his
captors, before being killed himself by a boarding pike
plunged into his heart.
In the early 1900's, the stuffed giant was purchased by Mr.
Bartram who toured the country on the Edwardian horror
circuit, ending up in Weston-super-mare in Somerset,
where the curiosity passed through several hands and
exhibited at various locations. It was known as Kap Dwa,
which translates approximately as Two-Heads.(In the Maylay
language, kepala means head and dua means two; how this
relates to the Patagonian provenance is unknown.) In 1914,
visitors to Weston's Birnbeck Pier paid tuppence to see the
black giant lying on his back wearing a loincloth, armed
with large club and a snake coiled on his breast. The
exhibit is mentioned in an Innkeeper's Diary(1931) by John
Fothergill, and in Cider With Rosie (1959) by Laurie Lee. It
was sold to a showman called "Lord" Thomas Howard in 1959,
after which it left Weston.
Frank Adey remembers seeing it in Blackpool around 1960.
"There were nosing's of sutures or other 'joins', even
though the body was largely unclothed". In the 1930s, two
doctors and a radiologist inspected it in Weston and found
"no perceptual evidence of it being a fake". They speculated
that it was some kind of conjoined twin. It was again
on display in Blackpool at the end of 1960. One account
maintains that in 1974 Howard sold or transferred Kap Dwa to
his brother Scott in New Jersey.
A two-headed giant in a glass case with a coiled snake and a
club was seen at a traveling funfair in MANCHESTER IN
NOVEMBER 1998. Ian Simmons then asked "Professor Stomboll"
about Kap D. Stomboll, one of the last of the British freak
show showman Billy Hill had bought the giant from Howard in
Blackpool and, though semi-retired, still toured in his
white bus with an assortment of attractions-including
the two-headed boy, "the smallest woman that ever lived", a
six-legged lamb, and a three-eyed fox. Last heard, he
exhibited Kap Dwa in Newcastle in September 1999.
Mr. Horn in Baltimore has tracked the dubious relic this
year in a Baltimore antique shop called Antique Man 1.
You Gottta Love it!!!
John Strong
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