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Eccentric personalities have always captivated our imagination, and here we highlight ten of the most extraordinary. While many of these individuals are British, renowned for their boundless eccentricity, the list offers a fascinating glimpse into their unique lives. Don’t forget to share your favorite eccentrics in the comments.
“The level of eccentricity in a society has often reflected its abundance of genius, intellectual strength, and moral bravery. [T]he fact that so few dare to be eccentric today highlights the primary peril of our era.” — John Stuart Mill, 1859
10. Hetty Green 1834 – 1916
Hetty Green, famously dubbed the “Witch of Wall Street,” was an eccentric miser whose sharp business skills made her the wealthiest woman globally. To cut costs, she conducted her business from trunks at her local bank to avoid paying rent. When her son fell ill, she disguised herself and sought treatment at a charity hospital. Upon being recognized, she fled, vowing to treat him herself. Tragically, her son developed gangrene and lost his leg. Hetty wore the same black dress daily and only replaced her undergarments when they were beyond repair. She frequently moved between New York and New Jersey to evade taxes.
9. William Archibald Spooner 1844 – 1930
William Archibald Spooner is immortalized in history for the linguistic quirk named after him: the “spoonerism.” This phenomenon involves the unintentional (or sometimes deliberate) transposition of letters, words, or vowels in a sentence—for instance, saying “Go and shake a tower” instead of “go and take a shower.” Spooner, an Oxford professor, gained such fame for his verbal slips that students attended his lectures hoping to catch one. Though initially annoyed by the attention, he grew more accepting in his later years and even granted interviews. Spooner’s mix-ups weren’t limited to speech; he once wrote to a colleague urgently requesting help, only to add a postscript stating the issue was resolved. Some famous spoonerisms attributed to him include:
“Mardon me padam, this pie is occupewed. Can I sew you to another sheet?” (Pardon me, madam, this pew is occupied. Can I show you to another seat?) “Let us glaze our asses to the queer old Dean” (…raise our glasses to the dear old Queen) “We’ll have the hags flung out” (…flags hung out)
8. Simeon Ellerton 1702 – 1799
Simeon Ellerton, an 18th-century fitness enthusiast, was known for his love of long-distance walking. He often took on errands or courier jobs for locals. During his travels, he collected stones from the roadside, carrying them on his head with the goal of building his own house. Once he accumulated enough stones, he constructed a small cottage. After years of carrying heavy loads, he felt uneasy without the weight, so he spent the rest of his life walking with a bag of stones balanced on his head.
7. John Christie 1882 – 1962
John Christie and his wife are celebrated for founding the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, but John was also renowned for his eccentric behavior. During an opera performance, he once sat beside the Queen, removed his glass eye, cleaned it, reinserted it, and asked her if it was properly aligned. When overheated, he would cut the sleeves off his formal jacket, often pairing it with worn-out tennis shoes. He owned 180 handkerchiefs and 110 shirts, yet despite spending lavishly on opera productions, he traveled third class and carried his own luggage to avoid tipping. For a period, he exclusively wore lederhosen and, in 1933, insisted that all opera guests do the same.
6. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
Oscar Wilde stands out as the most iconic figure on this list, and rightly so. In an era of strict moral conservatism, Wilde captivated society with his flamboyant attire and eccentric demeanor, backed by his razor-sharp wit, which cemented his fame. As a student at Oxford, he famously walked the streets with a lobster on a leash. His living space was adorned with vibrant blue china, sunflowers, and peacock feathers, defying Victorian norms of masculinity. However, his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas led to his imprisonment for sodomy, abruptly ending his illustrious career.
5. Sir George Sitwell 1860 – 1943
Sir George Sitwell, father of the renowned writer Dame Edith Sitwell, was a man of many peculiarities. A passionate gardener who studied garden design, he invented a pistol to deal with the wasps plaguing his garden. After relocating to Italy to evade British taxes, he refused to settle his new wife’s debts, leading to her imprisonment for three months. An avid bibliophile, he maintained seven libraries in his home. His eccentricities extended to calculating his son’s allowance based on historical payments made during the Black Death and attempting to pay his son’s Eton fees with garden produce. Most bizarrely, he had the cows on his estate stenciled in a blue and white Chinese willow pattern for aesthetic purposes. He famously posted a notice at his Derbyshire manor gate: “I must request that anyone entering the house refrain from contradicting or differing with me, as it disrupts my digestion and prevents me from sleeping.”
4. Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson 1883 – 1950
Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson, also known as Lord Berners, led a life marked by eccentricity from the start. Raised by a devoutly religious grandmother and a prejudiced mother, he was sent to boarding school at nine, where he had a brief relationship with an older boy that ended abruptly. As an adult, Berners became a moderately successful composer and writer, but his true legacy lies in his eccentric behavior. He dyed the pigeons at his estate in vibrant colors and kept a pet giraffe, with whom he regularly enjoyed afternoon tea. His Rolls Royce was outfitted with a harpsichord so he could play music while touring the countryside. He left his estate to his much younger companion, Robert Heber-Percy, who was equally unconventional.
3. Jemmy Hirst 1738 – 1829
If you thought the previous entries were eccentric, prepare to be amazed. Jemmy (James) Hirst was such a renowned eccentric in his day that King George III invited him for tea. Hirst initially declined, citing his commitment to training an otter to fish. When he finally visited the King, he threw a goblet of water at a courtier who was laughing, believing the man was hysterical. The King gifted him several bottles of wine from the royal cellar. Jemmy adored animals and trained his bull, Jupiter, to act like a horse, even riding him in fox hunts. Instead of dogs, he used trained pigs for hunting. He often blew a horn to invite the poor to his home for free meals, served from a coffin. Upon his death, he requested 12 unmarried women to follow his coffin, accompanied by a bagpiper and fiddler playing cheerful tunes.
Contributor: JFrater
2. Francis Egerton 1756 – 1823
Francis Egerton, the 8th Earl of Bridgewater, inherited both his title and a vast fortune in 1823. He gained notoriety for hosting extravagant dinner parties exclusively for dogs, where the canine guests were dressed in the latest fashions, complete with shoes. Another of his peculiar habits was his unique way of tracking time: he wore a pair of shoes only once, then lined them up in rows to mark the passage of days. Egerton also kept pigeons and partridges, clipping their wings so he could shoot them for sport despite his failing eyesight. Upon his death, he bequeathed a significant collection of French and Italian literature documents to the British Museum and made a substantial financial contribution to the Royal Society.
1. William Buckland 1784 – 1856
William Buckland is renowned for two things: being the first to document a fossil comprehensively and his eccentric culinary habits. His passion for natural history turned his home into a virtual zoo, filled with a variety of animals, all of which he eventually ate or served to guests. He boasted of having tasted every animal, with bluebottle flies and moles ranking as the least palatable. Dinner guests often found themselves dining on exotic dishes like panther, crocodile, and even mouse. A famous anecdote by Augustus Hare recounts how Buckland, upon seeing the preserved heart of King Louis XIV in a silver casket, exclaimed, “I’ve eaten many strange things, but never the heart of a king,” and promptly consumed it, forever losing the precious relic.
