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Jacko's Sporting Almanac: Bonesetter Reese

Bonesetter Reese

BBC Radio Wales - Jacko's Sporting Almanac, Bonesetter Reese

From Rhymney iron works to one of baseball’s unsung heroes – Peter Jackson reveals all.

When John Reese died, the Welshman’s name was spread across America. Peter Jackson follows Bonesetter from Rhymney iron works to being one of the unsung heroes of baseball.

The story of John D Bonesetter Reese is untold in Wales. Yet when the self-educated, Eisteddfod-winning, Sunday-school teaching Welshmen died in 1931, his obituaries were carried in newspapers from New York to San Francisco. Because Reese had won the nickname Bonesetter due to his knack of healing ligaments, strains and pulls learned in the iron town of Rhymney. His patients were the miners and metalworkers of Youngstown, Ohio where he went when work was running short at the top of the Rhymney Valley. But when his ability was used by some of the great baseball players of the day, his fame spread and he gained an international reputation. And as well as the sportsmen, he treated show biz stars, chorus girls, acrobats, greats of American industry and even David Lloyd George while the fellow Welshman was on an American speaking tour. Peter Jackson has been to Ohio to speak to Bonesetter’s family, historians and baseball exports to tell the remarkable story of John D Reese.

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