English medical records show that Jane Bunford (July 26, 1895 – April 1, 1922) was the tallest person ever during her lifetime. After her death, she still maintains four other notable records. She towered over all others by a factor of two: She was recognized as the tallest living person in the world around 1914, following Feodor Machnow‘s death and before Bernard Coyne surpassed her height. But she held this record again between 20 May 1921 and 1 April 1922, after Bernard Coyne’s demise and until her own passing. She had the longest hair in Britain during her lifetime, and people also called her Ginny or Jinny.
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Even now, Jane Bunford remains one of the most interesting giantesses in history. If any photographs of her exist at all, the public has never seen them. A photograph of Jane’s skeleton and a copy of her death certificate, issued on February 10, 1972, were all that were included in the Guinness Book of Records entry for her, which was published between 1972 and 2001. A reproduction of it could be found at the book’s end on page 11 back in 1972.
A Bicycle Accident Changed Jane’s Life Forever
Jane was born to John Bunford (1856–1916) and Jane Bunford nee Andrews (1857–1913) of Bartley Green, Northfield, Birmingham, UK. In his day, John worked casting metal. During the first eleven years of her existence, Jane (or “Jinny”) Bunford was a healthy, normal, timid, and well-behaved kid. Jane’s height was impressive for her age, but her pace of development was typical.
Although Jane had already reached a height of 5 feet by June 1906, her life was irrevocably altered in October of that year when she cracked her skull after falling from her bicycle and striking her head on the pavement. Jane, then just 11 years old, suffered irreparable damage to her pituitary gland after the fall. This caused her to produce too much growth hormone, which caused her height to spike unexpectedly. It was this same accident that would later cause her death in April of 1922. The pituitary gland was not definitively recognized as the source of human growth hormones until 1915, nine years after Jane’s injury. On top of that, no therapy for hyperpituitarism (endocrine disease) was available throughout her lifetime.
When the pituitary gland is damaged due to an accident or tumor at an early age (before 14–17), the person exhibits the gigantism condition, or the extreme growth of height.
Jane Bunford went to St. Michael’s Secondary School in Bartley Green. Jane showed a knack for embroidery at school, but she was bullied after an accident due to her unusually tall stature. The furniture, namely the desks and chairs, started to bother her after a while. Because of these two issues, Jane’s parents pulled her out of school on July 26, 1908, a full year before she turned 13. Jane’s height on that day was recorded at 6 feet and 6 inches with no footwear. Jane reached the 7-foot milestone two years later, around the time of her 15th birthday in July 1910. After another four years, in 1914, her height was recorded at 7 feet 8 inches. At the age of 21, Jane reached her full height of 7 feet and 10 inches (2.39 meters).
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She Didn’t Want to Capitalize on Her Fame
Jane turned down a number of chances to capitalize on her stature and fame. Her naturally straight auburn hair reached a length of 8 feet and 1 inch. According to the 1972 Guinness Book of World Records, she braided it into two strands that reached down to her ankles. When it was untied, it draped like a robe over her and reached the floor. A citizen offered her a fortune to buy her hair, but Jane turned him down. Jane also turned down lucrative invitations to appear on television programs.
At age 15, with no employment in the April 1911 Census, Jane Bunford still turned off opportunities to earn money with her tall height and, instead, worked at a Cadbury chocolate factory for a while after graduating from high school.
When Jane’s mother passed away in November 1913 at the age of 56, she relocated to Jiggins Lane in Bartley Green with her father. This happened after her father died in 1916. She remained there until her death. During her time off, she often traveled far from Bartley Green to see her remaining family or relax at the beach.
But in her later years, Jane isolated herself completely. She suffered from a significant curvature of her spine as a result of her massive frame being unable to provide enough support, a spinal condition called kyphosis. Towards the end of her life, Jane was hunched over because of this.
This was exacerbated by the fact that she had to constantly bend down to get through narrow doorways. Leonid Stadnyk and John F. Carroll, who both grew normally as children like Jane, had a disease common in exceptionally tall persons. She suffered from chronic discomfort due to joint issues and other illnesses, similar to Sandy Allen.
Jane Bunford’s Death
Much like other exceptionally tall people, Jane passed away at the early age of 26.
In March of 1922, Jane had her ultimate height measured at 7 feet 7 inches, which would have been 7 feet 11 inches if she had not acquired a spinal curvature. Jane’s doctor reported to Birmingham University’s medical school that she did not have long to live after the measurement was taken, and he was right. The next month on April 1, 1922, Jane passed away at home, and her passing was officially recorded the next day.
On April 5, 1922, Jane was laid to rest at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Bartley Green. It was reported in General Practitioner that her 8-foot-two-inch-long coffin was the longest ever used in the United Kingdom. On the night of April 4/5, 1922, it was secured within the church.
On April 5, 1922, a group of four young boys who helped transport Jane’s casket from the church to the cemetery subsequently observed that she seemed unusually light for someone of her stature. It was because Jane’s body was not in there. Nonetheless, if Jane would have been buried that day, it would still end any chance of her being recognized by the Guinness Book of Records around 50 years later.
For the following years, there was zero coverage of Jane Bunford in the media. When she passed away, there was no notice of her passing in the local daily, and it looked like she had been forgotten even by her closest friends and relatives. In 1971, however, the Guinness Book of Records learned about a giantess skeleton on exhibit at Birmingham University’s anatomical department, and everything changed.
A photograph of Jane’s skeleton appeared in the Guinness Book of Records issue that was out in October 1971. It was the skeleton of an “Unidentified giantess who died in Northfield, Birmingham, England in 1921 at approximately 24 years of age.” She was estimated to have been around 7 feet 9 inches tall, but she stood at 7 feet 4 inches due to her significant curvature. The person was discovered to have passed away in 1922, so that was Jane Bunford’s skeleton.
Her Posthumous Measurements
In 1971, Jane Bunford’s skeleton measurements were recorded. These included distances such as from the chin to the top of the head, which was 10.75 inches; arm span measuring 8 feet 1.25 inches; length from the top of the head to the waist at 3 feet 0.75 inches; length from the top of the head to the crotch at 3 feet 11 inches; and wrist to the tip of the middle finger at 10.5 inches. For comparison, Robert Wadlow‘s hand size was 12.76 inches from wrist to middle finger (he was the tallest man ever recorded in history). Moving on, the length from the waist to the heel of Jane’s skeleton was 4 feet 10.25 inches; and from the heel to the tip of the big toe, 13 inches.
Although the photos sparked widespread curiosity, Birmingham University was originally reluctant to disclose the skeleton’s name. Due to the fact that Jane Bunford was the only giantess in the Northfield area who fit the description, the university was eventually forced to admit that the skeleton belonged to Bunford in November 1971. Bunford’s story was covered by ATV at the year’s end in 1971, and a brief Daily Mirror article titled “Body Snatch Mystery of Giant Jane” appeared on February 3, 1972.
The identification of the skeleton was confirmed, but Birmingham University declined to disclose where they had found it. An article published in February 1972 in General Practitioner states that at the request of the head of the Bunford family, the university refused to allow any further images to be taken, suppressed more material, and did not enable questioning from the media.
Relatives of Jane disputed in the General Practitioner story that they had donated or sold her corpse to science. The removal of her body may have occurred without her siblings’ knowledge or consent. By the time the issue erupted about the whereabouts of Jane’s bones, both of her parents and several of her siblings had already passed away.
The cause of Jane’s death was listed as hyperpituitarism and gigantism. In October of 1972, Jane Bunford was recognized as the tallest woman in Britain by the Guinness Book of World Records. She held the title of tallest woman in medical history for the following nine years and was included in the book for another thirty years as one of the tallest women in British medical history.
The Tallest Person in British History
Older inhabitants of Bartley Green recalled Jane Bunford as a kind lady with a deep voice when they were questioned in January 1972. On September 22, 2008, a Birmingham man wrote to the newspaper Daily Mail, saying that two of his maiden aunts had been classmates of Jane’s, and that they remembered her as a kind, gentle, and quiet girl who was highly adored by younger children.
Several elderly residents in the region remembered her babysitting little children as a favor and said they saw her cleaning the upper windows of her cottage while standing on the sidewalk. Emma, a local dwarf, was one of Jane’s closest friends.
As the 20th century came to a conclusion, proposals were made to honor her memory by installing a memorial in Bartley Green. While some people wanted the memorial to be as tall as Jane Bunford was in life, her cousin was against its installation. On 10 April 2000, almost 78 years to the day after Jane Bunford’s death, a seven-foot plaque honoring her life and legacy was mounted on the wall of the Bartley Green Local Library. Since the wall was not tall enough, they couldn’t get her plaque as tall as her height of 7 feet and 11 inches.
Changes to the Data Protection Act in 2005 allowed Jane’s family to retrieve her bones from Birmingham University, where they had been on display since their controversial discovery in 1971. They hadn’t been able to view the skeleton before, since it was being utilized in medical research. After a second, private burial and an absence of 83 years, she was laid to rest at the family grave somewhere between January and June of 2005.
However, Jane Bunford’s gravesite has never had a tombstone placed on it. A tombstone was erected just for her mother. The Medical School at Birmingham University confirmed the removal of Jane Bunford’s remains in 2007. They said that two years ago, when they got rid of the anatomy collection, they also buried Jane Bunford’s bones.
