Tarrare: The 18th Century Glutton Who Ate Cats, Dogs and Even A Toddler

There has been a point in every person’s life when they have been so hungry they claim to be able to eat the wildest of things… “a scabby horse” comes to mind. Obviously, they don’t mean this in a literal sense and as soon as they have had a meal, their stomach tells their brain that they are full.

But for one French man in the 18th century, his appetite was insatiable. No matter how much he ate, his hunger was never satisfied. It was a case that even baffled doctors. The man’s appetite became so ravenous that it even turned him into a criminal. This is the story of Tarrare.

Born in 1772 in Lyon, France, Tarrare had a large appetite even as a child and being that his parents were not the wealthiest, they had struggled to provide for him. By his teen years, it was said that Tarrare was eating a quarter of a cow, a specimen that weighed the equivalent of him, every single day.

Eating them out of house and home, his parents decided to throw Tarrare out on the streets as his food needs were greatly overwhelming to them.

Destitute with nowhere to go, Tarrare joined a travelling gang of pickpockets and prostitutes who survived by begging and stealing. For the next few years, he would tour the country with them.

His circumstances would eventually improve slightly, when he was able to find a job working with a travelling scam artist.

Tarrare became a star-attraction, drawing large crowds with his ability to eat corks, stones and live animals — showing a particular fondness for snake meat. One of his popular tricks was to swallow an entire basket of apples one after the other, to the astonishment of onlookers.

A large part of people’s fascination with Tarrare, was his unusual appearance. He was described as having an abnormally large mouth — even being able to hold 12 eggs at one time. His teeth were stained and his lips barely visible.

He indulged so much, that when he hadn’t eaten, the skin on his stomach hung around him in folds, enough that he could wrap it around his torso; but as soon as he had gouged on food, he swelled like a balloon.

By 1788, Tarrare moved to Paris to continue work as a street performer. Using his appetite to his advantage had proved to be a success.

Demonstrating his eating habits to anyone who would stop for the show and then drawing horrified gasps from spectators who would watch as he ate things not-fit-for-human-consumption, was something he lathered in.

On one occasion however, it seems that his act went wrong when he suffered an obstruction in his intestine due to his dining habits and had to be carried to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital by members of the crowd.

In excruciating pain, he was treated with laxatives before making a full recovery.

Whilst at the hospital, Tarrare had offered to demonstrate to his surgeon, M. Giraud, that he could swallow his pocket watch and chain. Unimpressed by the offer, the surgeon threatened that he would cut Tarrare open again to recover his items.

It was no doubt that his body showed physical responses to his eating habits. Tarrare was said to have sweated constantly and had a horrific stench that radiated from him. In a time when personal hygiene was not its best — Tarrare’s smell was so bad that people could not bare to be within 20 feet of him.

Despite the vast amount that he consumed however, he was relatively slim. This was likely due to the chronic diarrhoea in which he suffered. It was said that after he had eaten, his eyes and cheeks would become bloodshot.

In 1792, Tarrare would have a stint in the French Revolutionary Army, but military rations were unable to suppress his hunger. Desperate for more food, he would carry out tasks for other soldiers in return for a share of their rations or would scavenge for scraps in the dung heap. Eventually, he was granted a quadruple portion of rations.

Soon, he was admitted to the Soultz-sous-Forêts military hospital after suffering exhaustion. At the hospital, Tarrare was looked upon as a wonder by medical staff who had never encountered anything like him before.

Whilst residing here, Tarrare could not be stopped from scavenging for scraps in trash containers, eating scraps left by other patients and even creeping into the pharmacy room to eat the poultices (soft moist mass placed over the skin to treat an aching, inflamed, or painful part of the body).

Tarrare was ordered to remain in the military hospital to be studied by doctors who wanted to conduct experiments on him.

They first decided to test Tarrare’s capacity for food. Outside of the hospital gates, a banquet had been prepared for 15 labourers and Tarrare was allowed to visit the table where the food sat.

Tarrare managed to eat the entire meal, after which he fell asleep.

On another occasion, Tarrare was presented with a live cat. Promptly, he tore open the cat’s abdomen and ate the entirety of the animal, later vomiting up remnants of its fur and skin.

Both astonished and unnerved, the doctors offered up a variety of other animals to Tarrare — snakes, lizards, puppies, even swallowing an entire eel; all of which he ate without hesitation.

After several months in the hospital, the army ordered Tarrare to return to active duty. Soon, they discovered that they could use Tarrare to their advantage, using him as a kind of spy.

His ability to swallow small boxes meant that he could secrete messages , with the box later being retrieved from his excrement and the document still in legible condition. Having successfully demonstrated this to the gathering commanders, he was rewarded with a wheelbarrow with 30 pounds of raw bull’s lungs and liver, which he ate instantly in front of them.

Unfortunately, this did not go to plan and upon his capture by the Prussians during one of his missions and being beaten up and deprived of food, he easily gave up what he was doing.

Tarrare was ordered to be hung but was taken down from the scaffold after a a last-minute reprieve. He was given a severe beating and let go.

Following his brush with death, Tarrare was desperate to leave the military. He swiftly returned to the hospital and begged the doctors who had experimented on him to cure him.

Taking pity on him, they tested a range of treatments involving white wine and tobacco, but with no success. They attempted to feed Tarrare large quantities of boiled eggs, but his appetite was still rampant. If anything, it was only getting worse.

Any effort to keep him on a controlled diet also failed; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge the internal organs of animals from butchers’ shops and would fight stray dogs for rotting meat in gutters, alleys and rubbish heaps.

Out of control now, Tarrare would also be caught several times in the hospital drinking from patients undergoing bloodletting and eventually even going as far as to attempt to eat the bodies in the hospital’s morgue.

Whilst other staff pressed for him to be transferred to a lunatic asylum, the doctors conducting experiments insisted he remain at the military hospital.

However, after a 14-month-old child went missing, suspicion was strong that it had been eaten by the hungry patient who had a history of eating small animals and he was chased from the hospital, never to return.

Tarrare’s whereabouts for the next few years after this incident are unknown.

All that is known, was in 1798 at the age of 26, staff at a Versailles hospital contacted one of the familiar doctors from the military hospital claiming that Tarrare wished to see him.

The doctor, who had had attempted to help Tarrare years prior, travelled to see his patient, who was now weak and bedridden. It was here that Tararre confided to him that he had swallowed a golden fork years earlier and believed it was still lodged inside of him, causing harm.

He asked the doctor to remove it for him, but the doctor recognised another issue at play…Tarrare was suffering from Tuberculosis.

Within a month, Tarrare began to experience continuous diarrhoea that oozed from him. He died shortly after.

Tarrare’s corpse rotted at an exceptional rate, so much so, that surgeons at the hospital refused to dissect it.

The doctor who had travelled to see Tarrare however, was curious. He wanted to see the difference in Tarrare’s intestines, to that of a normal person.

When the autopsy was conducted, it was found that Tarrare’s body was filled with pus. His liver and gallbladder were abnormally large and ulcers riddled most of his abdominal cavity. No golden fork was ever found within him.