My local paper has a daily section ‘From the Archives’ and today in the ‘200 years ago’ slot is this;

Quote :

“The Baron Gembarb, of whose whiskers, impudence and absurities the public, for the last 18 months have heard so much, and whom we have stated to have been arrested under a warent from the Secretary of State, was sent off to the coast in a chaise and four; from whence, under the Alien Act, he is to be conveyed out of the country. It is said that a correspondence of a very unbecoming nature was discovered between him and persons in Sicily.
This foreign nobleman, who has so successfully availed himself of the credulity of this ‘nation of shopkeepers’ we are well informed, is by birth a German jew, who having married the widow of a Hungarian Baron, assumed the title by which he passed himself off in this country.”

Never having heard of this person I had to have another look and came across these blogs. http://marilynkaydennis.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/the-baron-de-geramb/
The following 3 parts can be accessed from the link at the bottom.

What an interesting character, do any of you know any more about him?
Spoiler alert! – when he dies he is the General Procurer of the Order of the Trappists.

What other colourful characters should be better known?

This fellow is known to the locals I suppose, but probably not to too many others...

Every Maundy Thursday the people of Leon, Spain celebrate the life and death of a local eccentric and alcoholic beggar. Genarin was hit and killed whilst drunk (and going to the toilet on the side of the road) by the town's first garbage truck in 1929.

Yearly, on the anniversary of his death a funeral procession is held in honour of the drunken beggar and in celebration of alcohol and named the Burial of Genarin.

An American who appears in Flashman and the Mountain of Light, a novelist wouldn't invent a character like this;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Harlan

reputedly the basis of Kipling's The Man who would be King.

As does this character;

http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Alexander_Gardner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mytton

Caro - you may have passed the "Mermaid Hotel" at Atcham when you were at Wroxeter - it used to be called (and by the locals, still is called) the "Mytton & Mermaid" I will have a look to see if I can find the legend of Mad Jack and the aforesaid Mermaid.

I don't remember the Mermaid Hotel, Atcham, though I am pretty sure we passed Atcham itself. We spend a few hours at Attingham Park and it's nearby. (Mind you I barely remember some of the cities we have passed through, let alone particularly buildings.) I would remember more the hotels of Much Wenloch where we had to visit four of them before we could get a meal on a Wednesday evening!

New Zealand doesn't have a lot of eccentrics. The first one that came to my mind was The Wizard of Christchurch (though he has been bestowed officially with the title of The Wizard of New Zealand). He generally worked in Cathedral Square orating to passers-by. Some of his social ideas seem a little conservative to the modern mind. He founded Alf's Imperial Army and the Imperial British Conservative Party. He doesn't believe in the cnsus and used to go sailing between Australia and NZ when it was census time.

http://www.wizard.gen.nz/

http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/LocalHistory/Wizard/

But The Wizard certainly isn't unknown in NZ - he is very well known indeed.

And he was British born.

Napper Tandy has to be one of these ...

A man once considered so dangerous that Britain was prepared to start a global war just to arrest him.

The 18th century publisher James Caulfield collected an extensive series of stories and engravings on unusual individuals. They were rather hit-and-miss with some presented in the dubious form of a freak show while others are genuinely fascinating entries. For instance Baron Rokeby of Hythe was a lawyer and MP who lived very frugally, would prefer to walk rather than take a carriage, grew an enormous beard in a clean-shaven age, regularly went sea-bathing and also built an indoor swimming pool in his house. Although he himself only ate cold, raw, food - he could wow his guests with sumptuous dinners including expensive imported Hungarian wines etc. In short he was a timeless British eccentric.

Caulfield's stories were compiled and republished in 1869 under the title The Book of Wonderful Characters.

I haven't heard of these stories, Vizzer. The compendium sounds intriguing though I appreciate your point that some of the contents might be a bit 'iffy' whilst other stories were genuinely interesting.