Challenge of giant's coffin

Sidney Wheeler will never forget the night when stones were thrown against his bedroom window, waking him up to the news that 63-year-old George Lovatt had died.

"I was 16-years-old and had just started working for my father's firm Wheeler Brothers," says Sidney, aged 90, who lives in Wollaston, Stourbridge.

"George Lovatt had been a famous figure in Brierley Hill because he was voted the country's heaviest man. "He was over 7ft tall and when he died we had to make a coffin to fit his large frame – which was 3ft 6in across the shoulders.

"When George was alive my father's company made furniture for him.

"We made a huge chair and a bed, which was 7ft 6in long and 4ft 6in wide and made of ash.

"George died on March 12, 1933, and his brother Jack arrived at my father's house in the early hours of the morning. There were no door bells in those days, so he had to throw stones against the bedroom window.

"When I heard George had died I realised it would be all hands to the pump."

George, who was nicknamed the Brierley Hill Giant, was an intelligent man who left school aged 12, having reached the required educational standard. He worked as a striker for Wright's Chainworks in Cradley Heath.

"People had not seen anyone as huge as George before," says Sidney.

"When he got on the tram everyone had to go down the other end to balance it out. "He was a very likable character. He had a voice like a girl and never shaved because he didn't grow any facial hair.

"On the day of the funeral people lined the streets of Brierley Hill and I have not seen so many people in the town since then. The pavements were jam-packed."

Wheeler Brothers, whose premises were in Wallows Road, had the job of transporting George's body.

They rose to the task after a well-known character, Pharoah Adams, put on a bet of £50 that it would not fit into their hearse.

"When we went to his house we had to lay him out on his own bed because we couldn't move him," says Sidney.

"We had to make the inner coffin straight away and eight of us lifted him into it using pulleys and webbing.

"To get the 50-stone body out of the house we had to remove the bay windows and we put it on planks of wood, with rollers underneath.

"At first the coffin wouldn't go in the hearse so we took all the fittings off and just managed to get it in.

"The inner coffin was put into a polished oak coffin with a glass panel for his face so people could see him."

It was decided that it was too difficult to get the coffin back in the hearse so the Lovatts' own coal cart was chosen as the funeral car, decorated in black crepe.

After the service at Brierley Hill Church, the coffin was secured by chains and ropes to a lifting jib and was lowered into the grave.

"It was believed that George's pituitary gland was not functioning properly, causing him to put on weight at an amazing rate," said Sidney.

"When he died there was a letter from the king saying he had lost his biggest subject."

By Cathy Spencer.