I wanted to show them all what I could do
So strong was the confidence in his success, that no bets could be obtained
Robert Barclay Allardice died at age 75, three days after being kicked in the head by a horse. He’d sired a single child – Margaret – who had moved to the United States some decades prior. With no male heir, his title was passed down to a third cousin.
Allardice had inherited the Lairdship of Ury from his father and namesake. Along with it came the patrilineal line’s famous strength, dating back at least to the first Laird of Ury, who was believed to have been among the strongest men in England around the time of the country’s Civil War. Robert Sr. had demonstrated his own physical prowess by walking the 510 miles from Ury House in Aberdeenshire, Scotland to London in 10 days.
The younger Allardice blazed his own path, walking 110 miles in a muddy park one day in 1801. Similar feats followed for the next several years, culminating with his most famous walk in 1809. As was the case with so many exploits of the day, it was the product of a wager: 1,000 guineas to walk one mile for 1,000 straight hours.
The entirety of the exercise was set for Newmarket, Suffolk, taking more than five weeks to complete. Allardice was hardly alone in the undertaking, as spectators crowded the area to watch. The walker had reportedly pushed back against attempts to rope off the crowds, ultimately giving in when their numbers grew too large and unruly.
The Times reported on the scene, awarding it column space alongside the day’s top military campaigns,
One hundred to one, and indeed any odds whatever, were offered on Wednesday; but so strong was the confidence in his success, that no bets could be obtained. The multitude of people who resorted to the scene of action, in the course of the concluding days, was unprecedented. Not a bed could be procured on Tuesday night at Newmarket, Cambridge, or any of the towns and villages in the vicinity, and every horse and every species of vehicle was engaged.
Articles of clothing were adopted and shed, faced with rainstorms and temperature fluctuations. Of the final day, the paper noted that Allardice walked “with perfect ease and great spirit,” finishing the last mile in 15 minutes. He’d lost 30 pounds in the process and slept fitfully the following night, owing to the shock to the system of abruptly stopping after 41 days of constant movement. More than 10,000 people descended on Suffolk to witness the “Celebrated Pedestrian,” giving rise to a new sport in the process.
Pedestrianism would hit its stride in the middle of the century.
Edward Payson Weston was born to humbler circumstances than Allardice, his father a teacher and mother a writer. He gravitated toward the latter, publishing non-fiction volumes about his father’s exploits in the California gold rush and coauthoring a novel with his mother. A brief career with the circus ended abruptly when he was struck by lightning on the job. In an age devoid of workers’ comp and sympathy, Weston was soon fired. The precise origin of his own pedestrianism is a matter of some debate. One story finds the 19-year-old New York Herald copyboy speed walking uptown to save a box of flowers from certain doom.
It was in his early 20s, however, that he first received national fame for his walking exploits. Much like Allardice, his most first famous walk was the byproduct of a wager, though in Weston’s case, it was a consequence of losing. Betting against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election, he was tasked with walking the 478 miles from Boston to Washington D.C. to attend the Illinois Republican’s inauguration in 10 days. Sheer distance aside, it was a difficult walk, full of snow and rain. Weston made it, but missed the inauguration by a matter of hours. He did, however, summon the energy to attend the tail end of the inaugural ball that evening.
He received a bag of peanuts as an award.
Over the next several decades, Weston became the most famous of American pedestrians. He won $10,000 for a 1,200 mile walk from Maine to Chicago, walked 200 miles backward in St. Louis and emerged victorious from the first public six-day race, held in New York City’s Hippodrome. Traveling to England to challenge (and defeat) that country’s walking champion, Weston’s admission that he’d chewed on a coca leaf during the race was a source of great controversy in the pedestrian community.
In 1909, he left New York on his 70th birthday, beginning the 4,000 mile walk to San Francisco. Beset by snow, nature and the occasional threatening human, he missed his 100 day goal by five days. “[This] was a great walk, and but for unforeseen difficulties and hardships in the last three weeks on my journey, I would have been here on the one hundredth day,” he told the media. “Still, I am fine and could do it over again.”
Indeed, he could. The following year, he set out on a return trip from Los Angeles to New York. The route was shorter – 3,400 miles – so Weston gave himself a 90-day deadline. He made the trip in 75. “I wanted to show them all what I could do,” he noted on his return, “and I’ll bet I’ve made them all sit up and take notice.”
His final walk was brief. Crossing the street in New York City, the 88-year-old was struck by a taxi. Weston the Pedestrian was confined to a wheelchair until his death in 1929, two months after his 90th birthday.
Sources:
Walk of Ages: Edward Payson Weston’s Extraordinary 1909 Trek Across America by Jim Reisler
Weston, the Pedestrian https://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/02/archives/weston-the-pedestrian.html
The strange 19th-Century sport that was cooler than football https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210723-the-strange-19th-century-sport-that-was-cooler-than-football
Pedestrian Mania https://grantland.com/features/brian-phillips-edward-payson-weston/