THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

In 1862, Margate fisherman Thomas Gaskell made an incredible catch.  From beneath the waves came a giant crab, two-and-a-half metres in length.  Although the creature might have made Gaskell rich, he instead took it to live in his cottage, where it reportedly ate chopped eels and “showed a strange interest in the world of humans, grasping and ungrasping things in an attempt to learn”. This blissful high point of human-decapod domestic relations was sadly doomed from the start.  What followed is a sad and gruesome tale, involving angry mobs, a travelling freak show – and, ultimately, the death and dismemberment of a cruel and drunken circus master.

Flaig/Quietus, 2022