The Man in the Iron Mask

Thetford is proud of its colourful past. The once mighty home of the Cluniac Priory, the birthplace of Thomas Paine and the town from which Charles Burrell built his steam engine empire.

But there is a chapter to the town’s heritage which many of today’s residents will struggle to believe - the bizarre legend of The Man in the Iron Mask.

This is the extraordinary true life tale of Harry Bensley, the Thetford man who agreed to walk around the world on a $100,000 wager with eccentric American millionaire John Morgan.

The challenge - taken up in a London club over a few brandies - seems odd enough. But the conditions were even more eccentric.

Mr Bensley agreed to complete his walk while pushing a baby’s pram and while wearing a full faced iron mask, which he was prohibited from taking off when soliciting marriage proposals from women across the globe.

Mr Bensley’s bet saw him depart from Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Day in 1908 for what was to become a 30,000 mile, six and a half year adventure.

He left with just £1 in his pocket after agreeing to fund his journey by selling postcards in the countries he criss-crossed.

Ironically Mr Bensley’s only brush with the law was in England when he was arrested at Bexley Heath, Kent, for selling postcards without a hawker’s licence.

Fortunately he was allowed to keep his mask on in court. The mask itself was made to measure and weighed 4lb 6oz. At the court he was fined a half-a-crown (12 1/2p) and allowed to go on his way.

Mr Bensley’s amazing story has come to light inside the new Raising Our Stakes document which has been launched in Thetford.

The 38-page plan outlines a heritage strategy for Thetford and the Brecks. It details the many events and lives Thetford has witnessed including its double defeats to the King of the Danes, Sweine Forkbread, in 1004 and 1010.

The story of the man n the iron mask came to light when Oliver Bone, curator of Thetford’s Ancient House Museum, was researching the town’s well-known and not so well known celebrities.

Mr Bensley did not collect the $100,000 prize despite trekking across England, Ireland, Canada, America, China, Japan, India, Persia, Egypt, Turkey and the Balkans.

He arrived in Genoa, Italy, on August 14th, 1914 - on the last lap of his journey - when he was handed a telegram announcing that the bet was off because of the declaration of the first world war.

The dejected 24-year-old removed his iron mask, returned to England and handed the £4,000 he was given as compensation to charity.

Perhaps his only consolation was that during his amazing around-the-world odyssey, he received 200 marriage proposals. In keeping with the strange tale, he married none. Instead , many years later he married a Yorkshire girl and moved to Brighton where in 1970 both he, and much of the The Man in the Iron Mask legend died.

The most arresting figure to emerge from Raising Our Stakes, a new heritage strategy for Thetford and the Brecks, is surely Harry Bensley, who 90 years ago accepted a bet to walk round the world wearing a full faced iron mask.

It was not sufficient an impediment, Bensley was also required to push a pram and finance his bizarre undertaking by selling postcards.

Six and a half years, 100 proposals of marriage and 30,000 miles late, and just short of collecting his wager, the bet was called off on the pretext of the declaration of war, truth as always being the first victim of hostilities.

As Thomas Paine, a more celebrated citizen of Thetford once observed, the sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately.

Yet is is surely the newly-revealed story of Bensley that will have the greatest impact among those otherwise indifferent to the call and charm of history, and for whom the Thetford luminaries such as Paine and Charles Burrelll, the great engineers, remain figures of shadows and remoteness.

It remains to be seen how far, if at all, Thetford will take Harry Bensley to its civic heart.