Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics

Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics is a reference book first published by Brewer's in 2002 and edited/compiled by William Donaldson.

The book is an esoteric look at some of the wilder characters emanating from the United Kingdom (and, while it was part of the United Kingdom, what is now the Republic of Ireland) and has been described as "a work of maniacal genius"[1]. It featured entries on eccentrics and rogues famous, infamous and little-known, including Beauchamp Bagenal, Lord Berners, John Aspinall and John Wilkes. Some entries, such as that on George Best, reflect a certain cynicism about media-created rogues.

An example entry

Harry Meadows - Pensioner and accidental killer.

In 1961, 87-year-old Harry Meadows, a resident at the Haslemere home for the elderly in Great Yarmouth, England, achieved late-in-life notoriety when he accidentally killed another 3 residents of his care home by dressing up as the grim reaper and peering through the residents' lounge window whilst holding a scythe.

The year before Harry's performance, another resident of the same home, the then 81 year old Gladys Elton, for reasons best known to herself, had conceived the idea of performing a striptease for her fellow residents of the home; unfortunately such was the effect of Elton's performance that it caused the death of one resident by way of a cardiac arrest and the treatment for shock of five other residents.

The home was forced to shut as a result of these two incidents.

See also

• Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable