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William Bradley (giant)

Britain's tallest man

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ8005835 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Bradley (10 February 1787 – 30 May 1820), known more commonly as Giant Bradley or the Yorkshire Giant, was a British man known as one of the tallest to ever live, measuring 7 feet 9 inches (2.36 m), the same height as Angus MacAskill from Scotland.

Early life

William Bradley was born in Market Weighton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on 10 February 1787, the fourth of thirteen children. He weighed 6.35 kg (14.0 lb) at birth. Although Bradley would become Britain's tallest recorded man, his family was generally of average height. His father was described in later accounts as a master tailor, although the Market Weighton parish registers identify him as a butcher. He stood about 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in), while Bradley's mother, Anne, and most of his siblings were of average stature. One sister, who died in an accident at the age of 16, was also said to have been unusually tall. According to later local accounts, Bradley's father made bespoke clothing to accommodate his son's exceptional growth.

Bradley grew rapidly throughout childhood. By the age of 11, he reportedly weighed 70 kg (150 lb), and by the age of 18 he weighed 171 kg (377 lb).

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“William Bradley (giant)” enters the record as britain's tallest man. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Bradley and giant can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1787, 1820—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1787-02-10. Its strongest next move is a source search built around William, Bradley and giant.
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“William Bradley (giant)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, William, Bradley and giant provides the most credible route into that argument.

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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8005835. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1787 and 1820.

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This entry incorporates text from “William Bradley (giant)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.