Harry Bensley, who wagered he could walk around the world masked and be married without revealing his identity, here in his sweater emblazoned with the legend “Walking Round the World Masked,” his custom perambulator, and the paid attendent (in matching sweater) who accompanied Bensley on his journey.
Not noted on the postcard are the additional terms of the wager (which Bensley is said to have contracted with J. P. Morgan and Lord Lonsdale), which stipulated that Bensley was to commence his journey with a single pound and a change of underwear, and that he was to subsist entirely on the sale of postcards such as this.
Bensley set off on his journey on New Year’s Day, 1908, and is said in some accounts to have passed through China and Persia before the outbreak of the war in 1914 brought his journey to a halt in Genoa; some latter-day skeptics suggest Bensley never left Britain.
