Henry Cooper is believed to have been born in Swainby, and as a boy he worked at Scugdale Hall Farm. An 1890 directory of the North Riding states that ‘this remarkable sample of humanity grew thirteen inches in the space of five months’. It adds that Cooper’s current height was 8ft 6in. He was at that time reputedly the world’s tallest man. And if the evidence of the directory is admitted, he is easily the tallest-ever Englishman, beating the champion in the Guinness Book of Record by 9in.
Cooper was certainly too tall for work on the farm: he couldn’t move easily in the farm buildings, and he found it backbreaking to follow the plough. Dismissed by his employer, he travelled to London where he joined a circus. In the 1880s he toured the USA with Barnum and Bailey.
Mead/Inside
THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT 
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