Born in England in the early 1900s, Saxon Brown (real name Henry Brown) was briefly lauded during the 1930s as ‘Britain’s strongest youth‘ & ‘the world’s strongest young man’. Though his time in the physical culture spotlight was short lived, Brown’s strength was immortalised thanks to the below British Pathé footage.
Featuring a number of very old-school strongman feats including the hitting of anvils placed on Brown’s stomach, the video reminds us that the vaudeville and carnival roots of physical culture continued well into the twentieth-century.
Enjoy!
interesting I was wondering where you obtained the film clip of Saxon Brown,
as he is my father,
He performed on stage with my mother who was also a strong woman act in the early twenties, and thirties,
kind regards
Hi Roberta, thanks so much for stopping by. That is incredible, small world eh? I found the video by searching through old British Pathé videos on Youtube. David Gentle has a fantastic physical culture website you may be interested in. If you left a comment on their forum I’d be almost certain someone would have much more information on him. Finally if you were interested, I’d love to ask you some questions about him for the site as I’m fascinated by his career!
My friend is a relation of Saaxon absolute immense strength how old did he live too if you don’t mind me asking