Edward Dando — London’s most notorious oyster eater.

In 19th-century London, oysters were everywhere — cheap, abundant, and eaten by all classes. But one man turned oyster consumption into legend. His name was Edward Dando.

In the early 1800s, oysters were not a luxury. They were street food — sold in pubs, markets, and oyster shops across London. A working man could eat dozens for pennies. This was the world in which Dando operated.

What began as a street tale soon became documented history — reported in newspapers, preserved in court records, and even referenced by Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

Excerpt from a letter to Cornelius Conway Felton: “… Perhaps you don’t know who Dando was. He was an oyster-eater, my dear Felton.“

Edward Dando was born on 11 February 1803 in Southwark, London. He trained as a hatter but never found real success in the trade.

By his early twenties, he was already well known in the city for his unusual habit of consuming vast quantities of oysters — often without paying for them.

He would enter oyster shops without a farthing to his name and stand at the counter eating natives, until the man who opened them grew pale, cast down his knife, staggered backward, struck his forehead with his open hand, and cried, “You are Dando!” He was known to eat twenty oysters at one sitting and would have eaten forty, had the truth not dawned upon the shopkeeper.

For these offences, he was repeatedly committed to the House of Correction. During his final imprisonment, he fell ill. His condition worsened, and at last he began knocking violent double knocks at Death’s door. The doctor stood beside his bed, with fingers on his pulse. “He is going,” says the doctor. “I see it in his eye. There is only one thing that would keep life in him for another hour, and that is—oysters”

The oysters were immediately brought. Dando swallowed eight and feebly took a ninth. He held it in his mouth and looked round the bed strangely. “Not a bad one, is it?” says the doctor. The patient shook his head, rubbed his trembling hand upon his stomach, bolted the oyster, and fell back—dead. They buried him in the prison yard, and paved his grave with oyster-shells.

Who would be ready to believe that? However, this is a true story.

By the 1830s, Dando had become a familiar figure in London — known as much for his appetite as for his audacity. He would consume extraordinary quantities of oysters, promise payment “next time,” and return again and again, despite imprisonment and public humiliation.

If there were no oysters, he would eat whatever else was available. London newspapers were writing about Dando’s «feats» all the time and warned the sellers from fish stores and pub owners against him.

The Morning Post (4 January 1831):

The Morning Chronicle (2 April 1832):

‘CAUTION TO SHELL FISH DEALERS, PUBLICANS, &c. – DANDO THE OYSTER-EATER, ABROAD’

In the summer of 1832, Dando left London — where by then he was widely recognised — and went to the county of Kent, hoping to eat some oysters there in his usual manner. But in the newspapers all across the county the warnings and the descriptions of a «celebrated oyster-eater» were already published. In particular, it was said that he was 29, five feet seven inches tall, lame in the right leg, had brown hair and pale complexion. And that most often he was wearing a prison uniform.

(Once Dando was asked about the way he would dress. He said that there was nothing strange about it, since all of the garments he was wearing were picked up in prisons: “The jacket came from Brixton, the waistcoat . . . was bestowed to me at a similar establishment at Guildford; and the trousers I know I acquired by hard servitude in your Middlesex House of Correction.”)

Gateway of the House of Correction, Coldbath Fields, London.

Of course, during his short stay in Kent, Dando was in prison several times, and as soon as he got back to London, he was committed to Middlesex prison once again.

In the prison Dando fell sick with cholera, was taken to a hospital and died on 29 August 1832. He is buried on the cemetery of Saint-James Church in Clerkenwell.

That is the story of a strange oyster eater. Who was that guy, really? A thief? A prankster? A crazy lover of oysters, who was ready to tolerate being beaten so hard for his favourite dish? Nowadays Edward Dando would most probably be referred to as a performance artist.

On the morning of 30 August 1832, The Morning Chronicle published a necrology with a heading » Dando used to pride himself that he was no thief». Whether it is truth or just an artifice of the newsmen, the «oyster eater» himself assumedly thought that he was fighting against double standards in the society, and in court actions he often claimed: “Why, some men live in great extravagance and luxury, owe money and cheat their creditors, yet they are still considered respectable and honest. I only run into debt to satisfy the craving of hunger, and yet I am despised and beaten.”.

Oh yes, those oyster stories can lead you to strange places… Today, oysters are once again a symbol of craftsmanship and care — far removed from the chaotic oyster houses of 1830s London.

At Finlandia Caviar, we celebrate oysters with respect for their origin, quality, and character.

Original:https://reginablog.wordpress.com/2019/12/16/about-dando-the-oyster-eater/