Photograph of 7 ft 6½ in (2.30 m) tall Baptiste Hugo, known as the French Giant, sitting in a New York City tavern with a beer on the table beside him and a cigar in hand, 1908. The man seated next to him gives a sense of his scale. The photograph was likely taken as publicity while he was employed by the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Baptiste Hugo (Battista Ugo) was born on June 21, 1876, in the village of Vinadio, Italy, to Antonio Ugo and Maria Teresa Chiardola. He was one of seven children, with five boys and two girls in the family. The Hugo (or Ugo) family represents a rare case of familial acromegaly, as Baptiste’s younger brother Antoine Hugo (Paolo Antonio Ugo) also grew to an exceptional height of 7 ft 5 in (2.25 m). It was sometimes claimed that the two were twins, but this is incorrect. Antoine was born ten years after Baptiste, on June 28, 1887. Their parents and other five siblings were of average height.
In 1891, while working as a woodcutter near the town of Barcelonnette, France, Baptiste was noticed by the owner of a travelling circus and invited to join, thus beginning his career as a “giant.” His name and birthplace were then Frenchified, and he was billed as being from a small French Alpine village near Saint-Martin-Vésubie. During his career, he travelled around the world, including Germany, Switzerland, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and the United States. This made him one of the most famous giants of the early 20th century.
Hugo took part in the Exposition Universelle of 1900, a world’s fair, where he was employed as a character in the “Vieux Paris” section. Designed under Albert Robida, Vieux Paris was a large reconstruction of historical Paris, featuring recreated medieval and Renaissance streets, buildings, taverns, and entertainment. Hugo played Gargantua, a French giant king originating in folklore and popularized by François Rabelais’s The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
In 1905, Baptiste Hugo’s brother Antoine joined him, and they began a double act billed as “The Giants Hugo.” Their manager, O. Maréchal, produced a biography containing a mixture of truth, lies, and exaggerated information in order to market and promote them further. The brothers continued to tour both together and separately, including periods with the Barnum & Bailey Circus in the United States. Baptiste was billed at various heights, ranging from his real height of 7 feet 7 inches (2.30m) to as much as 8 feet 10 inches (2.69m).
On February 16, 1914, Antoine Hugo died in Maisons-Alfort, France, at the age of 26. He had been scheduled to join a Barnum & Bailey Circus tour in the United States, so Baptiste decided to take his brother’s place. Baptiste toured the country for two years before becoming ill with pneumonia. He died at Willard Parker Hospital in New York City on April 23, 1916, at the age of 39.
The photograph is often mistakenly identified as showing Adam Rainer, the only known person to have been classified as both a dwarf and a giant. Born in Austria-Hungary in 1899, Rainer measured just 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m) at the age of 18. By 1932, 15 years later, he had grown to 7 feet 2 inches (2.18 m). This extraordinary growth was caused by a pituitary tumor that led his body to produce excessive amounts of growth hormone. By the time of his death in 1950, he measured 7 feet 8 inches (2.34 m).
