The Shrewsbury Chronicle published on Saturday 18th January 1884 reported on the funeral of J. L. Stubbs of Shifnal. Most reports of funerals in the newspapers concerned local landowners or significant professional or trades people in the town. J. L. Stubbs was neither of these. John Stubbs was a Shifnal man, born about 1829. On 3rd August 1854, he married Mary Hayward, a Shifnal woman, and, between 1855-1869, they had six children – Alfred, Thomas, Emma, Caroline, Anne and Thomas. At the time of his marriage, John Stubb’s job was recorded as ‘engineer’ but in the baptismal records and the census he is classed as a labourer. His brother William was an agricultural labourer and so was their father.

What makes his internment so remarkable was his size.

The report continues: ‘he was one of the biggest men in Shropshire weighing 3 ¾ cwt (26.75 stones or 390.5kg). The coffin, of oak, measured 37 ins across the shoulders, and was 7ft long and 2ft deep and took the strength of 10 men to lift when the corpse was placed in it. Planks were used against the bedroom window and the coffin was lowered down on to a railway truck and thus wheeled into the churchyard. The ground was cut away at the head of the grave to form an incline so that the coffin could slide into its resting place. A large number of people witnessed the ceremony’.

So unusual was this funeral that not only was it reported in the Shropshire newspapers, but also the Welsh local papers, the Birmingham Post, the Bristol Times & Mirror, the Liverpool Mercury, the Weekly Irish Times, the Wexford People and even in the Bruce Herald in New Zealand, where the story appeared as quickly as March 1884. Worldwide fame for a humble local man.

L. Stubbs was not the only notable large man born and bred in Shifnal. Samuel Lawrence, 1763 – 1825, blacksmith and famed bell ringer, weighed 32 stones, the second largest man in England at the time. He too is buried in Shifnal churchyard – at the foot of the steps leading to the bell tower. So much for our ancestors being smaller than us.