In April 1808, Mr. Podgers walked four hundred miles in eight successive days, for a wager of two hundred guineas. He started at Basingstoke, and from Hampshire went into the counties of Wilts, Gloucester, Somerset, Sussex, and Kent, finishing at Maidstone. He walked twelve hours each day, and slept eight. His weight was fourteen stones, and he did not appear the least fatigued at any period of the journey.
Mr. Dowler, a publican at Towcester, Northamptonshire, walked five hundred miles in seven successive days, for a bet of one hundred guineas. He started on the 3d of November 1808, and finished on the 9th, at three o’clock in the afternoon.
Captain Howe is a celebrated pedestrian, and walked three hundred and forty-six miles in six days, for a wager of two hundred guineas. He started on the 8th of March 1808, at four in the morning, to go from London to Exeter, and made out sixty-four miles by nine at night, having stopped at Basingstoke for an hour. On the following day he walked seventy miles; and on the third day, arrived at Exeter to dinner, where he stopt three hours, but returned to Honiton to sleep. On the fourth day, he reached within nine miles of Salisbury; and on the fifth night, slept at a public house near Basingstoke. He had now forty-nine miles to perform on the sixth day, which accomplished by six o’clock in the evening. Captain Howe, on the 28th of the same month, gained a match of two hundred guineas against Captain Hewetson, having walked eighty miles in less than twenty-four hours.—He also beat Mr. Smith in a twenty mile race on the Uxbridge road, about the end of October 1809. Mr. Smith was the favourite before starting; but Captain Howe performed the distance in two hours and twenty minutes, beating his adversary by half a mile.
On the 9th of June 1812, Captain Howe undertook to go sixty miles in twelve hours for a wager of two hundred guineas. He started at four o’clock in the morning, and did half the distance in twelve minutes less than six hours. He continued at the rate of five miles in the hour, and won the match within ten minutes of the time allowed.
Mr. Canning, a gentleman in Hampshire, walked three hundred miles in less than five days. He started at the turnpike road four miles from Basingstoke, at four in the morning, and went sixty miles in fourteen hours. He finished his task two miles from Yeovil in Somersetshire, by eleven at night, on the fifth day. He was apparently so little fatigued, that probably he could have continued for several days; but in the course of the journey, he lost twenty-six pounds in weight.
Mr. Rimmington, a farmer at Holt near Dorchester, in October 1811, walked five hundred and sixty miles in seven days, at the rate of eighty miles a day, for a wager of two hundred guineas. He was much emaciated by this extraordinary exertion, and became very lame towards the close.
Lieutenant Halifax, of the Lancashire militia, walked two miles an hour for one hundred successive hours, near Tiverton in Devon, in March 1808. This was a great performance, as he could not have more than fifty minutes rest at one time, during four days and nights. He was much distressed: his legs were swollen, and his whole frame was exhausted. His courage, however, never failed him; and he completed the task amidst the shouts of the multitude that this extraordinary experiment had attracted.
Thomas Savager, who died in 1809, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, was a noted pedestrian, although only five feet and four inches in stature, and lame from his youth. In 1789, he undertook to walk four hundred and four miles, in six days. The scene of his performance was on the turnpike road from Hereford through Leominster to Ludlow; and he won his wager within five hours of the time allowed. When the superfluous ground over which he walked to his lodgings at Hereford, Ludlow, &c. was added, it was found that he had walked not less than four hundred and twenty-nine miles in five days and nineteen hours.
On the 18th of September 1811, Mr. Mealing, a gentleman of fortune in Somersetshire, started to go five hundred and forty miles, at the rate of thirty miles a day, for eighteen successive days, and to perform the distance in eighteen different counties, which he accomplished, and won five hundred guineas. He was reduced from fourteen stone eight pounds, to twelve stone four pounds.