One of the most popular spectator sports of the late nineteenth century was “pedestrianism,” that is to say, sport walking. Not just a decent walk, though, but competitive walking events that covered ultra-marathon distances. Spectators loved the mix of the athletic and the ridiculous, and they were more than willing to pay admission to watch athletes walk in circles.
Drama scholar Kirstin Smith explains that, at its mid-nineteenth-century height, pedestrianism gave everything but horse racing a literal run for its money. The public events came in all flavors. As she writes,
[a] great range of walking and running performances by men and women included: races against the clock, one-on-one matches, individual journeys across vast distances, saloon performances in which pedestrians “walked the plank” for 30 hours straight, and—an 1870s innovation—six-day track races.
Presaging dance marathons and other bizarre endurance entertainments, pedestrian events invited all manner of interests and tastes: curious spectators, sport enthusiasts, eager gamblers, fame-seekers, and folks secretly hoping something might go awry. Endurance walkers would log dozens of miles a day, only resting for prescribed periods of a few hours at a clip. And they were known to fuel themselves by any means necessary: during a well-publicized headline competition at Gilmore’s Garden in New York in 1879, when a competitor was flagging, “only electric shocks and judicious doses of milk punch and brandy kept him going,” report screenwriter and film producer Walter Bernstein and historian Milton Meltzer in their co-authored essay about “walking fever.”
Not everyone was a fan of commercialized walking, despite its public popularity. Smith notes opposition from a host of more pure-minded writers and scholars, for whom walking should not be hasty, nor commercialized, but “a means to experience a moral order inherent in the natural landscape.” For nineteenth century individualists, essentialists, and naturalists, the point should be to walk for walking’s sake, not for fame or outward fitness or money. Robert Louis Stevenson insisted that the ideal walker was “none of your athletic men in purple stockings, who walk their fifty miles a day.” Thoreau appreciated the “genius” in “sauntering.” Educator Bessie Putnam, writing in 1917, mused that “in the mad rush to get there, we make ourselves think that we have not the time to go in the old leisurely fashion.” No matter where we go, “there is the mad whirl of wheels which hustle us hither and thither, and this is good business. But some day we will be compelled to take time to recuperate for the strenuous life. And the——where is the gain?
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Do note that these were folks who could afford, in time and money, leisure for its own sake. For others, pedestrianism was an appealing shortcut to fame or money in an era of expanding celebrity, an obscene gesture toward increasingly sedentary work life, or even a media boost. Joseph Pulitzer, in his time, “recognized the importance of a specialized sports section in his efforts to drive circulation,” writes Smith. For him, “[t]he walking contest was a particularly effective circulation booster because like the newspaper’s readers, pedestrians were commonly recent or second-generation immigrants and served as unofficial representatives of their own communities.”
Pedestrianism was carried forward by a handful of (nearly exclusively white male) personalities. Names like Edward Mullen, George Avery, Dan O’Leary, and C. N. Payne appeared again and again. P. T. Barnum promoted walks at his entertainment venues. One of the most famous of the walkers was Edward Payton Weston, whose many ultra-walks touted a mix of sensationalism, spectacle, manliness, and health.
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In 1867, twenty-seven-year-old Weston walked from Portland, Maine, to the city of Chicago, in twenty-six active days (he rested on Sundays). He was still going strong in 1879, when Scientific American noted that
[t]he longest distance ever made in a six days’ walking match—550 miles—was accomplished by Edward Weston, the well known [sic] pedestrian, in the contest for the championship in London, June 16–21. The best previous record was made by Weston’s opponent, Brown, in April last, when he covered 542-1/2 miles. In the last contest Brown broke down on the third day, and made, in all, only 453 miles. Weston’s daily records were respectively 123, 97, 93, 77, 83, 77 miles.
There was more than simple determination in play. Weston played fast and loose with his money and would undertake walking events of as much as 5,000 miles at a time (as well as solicit business sponsorships) to get himself out of debt. After paying off his support crew and placing a few sizable bets on himself, he would go home with an armload of cash. Supporters aligned with the temperance movement used Weston’s walks to advance their agenda—since Weston was a teetotaler, sponsors and cheerleaders trumpeted his feats as evidence that sobriety was healthy.
And was it just the spectators, the temperance crowd, the news media who clung to Weston? Nope. Scientists did too, and their interest was decidedly more, uh, personal. You guessed it: Weston was peeing in jars for science. In 1884, on a 5,000-mile walk (fifty miles a day until target reached), for six days he was observed by a full scientific committee. Professionals “measured the urine, preserved the faeces, and weighed or measured all the food, whether liquid or solid.” Researchers dutifully published the athlete’s “ingesta and egesta,” listing a chart of food types and amounts, and a breakdown of macros showing he was eating twice as much or more than a typical person.
I’m guessing that, after that detailed analysis, these scientists needed a long walk. Outside.
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