Thomas Inch

27 December 1881 – 12 December 1963 · Scarborough → Cobham, Surrey

Thomas Inch was a British professional strongman, author and mail-order trainer who won the title of Britain's Strongest Man in 1910. He is remembered above all for his challenge bell, the Inch dumbbell: 172 lb 9 oz with a 2⅜-inch handle that few hands can close around.

Origins

Inch was born in Scarborough, on the Yorkshire coast, on 27 December 1881, and built his early strength through manual labour. He is said to have been inspired by seeing Eugen Sandow tear a pack of cards on stage. In 1902, aged twenty, he was proclaimed "the World's Strongest Youth" by a strongman publication. His height is given as 5 ft 10½ in (179 cm).

The work

Unlike many professionals of his day, Inch concentrated on standard barbell and dumbbell lifts rather than barrels, sacks or pianos; his one concession to the music hall was bent-pressing people. In 1903 he launched a mail-order course — said to be the first mail-order physical-culture business in Britain — which is reported to have sold more than 40,000 copies, and he followed it with Scientific Weight-Lifting (1905) and Thomas Inch on Strength (1907), touring the country with exhibitions to sell them.

In 1909 Inch, then a middleweight, declined to meet the newly arrived Maxick; by 1910 he had become a heavyweight, gave up his middleweight title to Edward Aston, and a match with Maxick was arranged. On 11 June 1910 he won the title of Britain's Strongest Man. After the First World War he helped rehabilitate wounded soldiers at Fulham Military Hospital, and he also trained boxers.

Notable feats

• Two hands anyhow: 356.5 lb.
• Bent press: 304.5 lb.
• A 540 lb deadlift at the age of sixty-eight is also claimed, without good documentation.

The Inch dumbbell

The bell weighs 172 lb 9 oz (78.25 kg) and its thick handle, 2⅜ in (6.03 cm) in diameter, rotates. Inch claimed to have lifted it from the floor with one hand and put it overhead "hundreds of times", and that he never met anyone else who could get it off the floor one-handed; strength historians generally accept that he could deadlift it but dispute the overhead part. Contemporaries recorded as failing with it include Arthur Saxon and the wrestler Ivan Poddubny, and later Reg Park. A newsreel of 1939 shows Inch, then fifty-eight, raising the bell.

After Inch's death the original passed briefly to Reg Park, then, around 1969–71, to David Prowse, who kept it until 2000, when he sold it to Kim Wood, the former Cincinnati Bengals strength coach. In modern times Bill Kazmaier pressed it overhead in 1990 after a two-hand clean, and in 2002 Mark Henry made the first one-hand clean and press — the lift in the form Inch had claimed. Replicas are now a standard test in grip sport.

Writings

Besides his early books, Inch published Inch on Fitness (1923), Away with Nerves (1946), Manual of Physical Training (1947) and Boxing for Beginners, from Novice to Champion (1951).

Death

Inch died of coronary thrombosis at Cobham, Surrey, on 12 December 1963, a fortnight before his eighty-second birthday. His family did not keep his strength memorabilia.

Disputed and unresolved

Whether Inch ever lifted his bell overhead in the way he claimed is unresolved. The handle has a small hole whose purpose Inch never explained; one theory, put forward in an IronMind article, is that a pin through it could have stopped the handle rotating during exhibitions — speculation rather than evidence. The same article mentions the discovery of lighter dumbbells of the same pattern, which Inch may have used on tour.