The resurgent interest in tattooing in western society today sees it being embraced as a kind of skin bling for celebrities, sports people and the fashionable. Its reintroduction to the West is often attributed to an interest in the Polynesian tattoos encountered by the sailors on Captain Cook’s Pacific voyages – and, indeed, tattoo is derived from a Polynesian word.

But nearly a century before Cook’s crew encountered Polynesian tattoos, British adventurer William Dampier purchased in what is now Indonesia a half-share in the heavily tattooed Jeoly. Decorated in a tribal design, Jeoly came from the island of Miangas, close to the Philippines, and Dampier’s initial interest in him was his possible knowledge of local reserves of spices and gold.

After Jeoly failed to deliver these, Dampier saw the potential in his ‘Painted Man’ being exhibited as a curiosity in England. Returning with home to London in 1691, Dampier wrote, ‘I was no sooner arrived in the Thames, but [Jeoly] was sent ashore to be seen by some eminent persons; and I being in want of Monday, was prevailed upon to sell … my share in him.’

Prince Giolo was commissioned to promote this ‘Just wonder of the Age’. The pose of a typical European gentleman in the engraving emphasises Jeoly’s alleged royal status. His striking tattoos ‘full of variety and Invention with prodigious Art and Skill’ were said to have powers to repel snakes, which are seen fleeing his presence in the print, although Dampier himself noted that Jeoly was as scared of snakes as he was.

While Jeoly met the King, he also found himself being exhibited in the Blue Boar’s Head Inn in Fleet Street. He was then taken to Oxford where he soon died of smallpox. A curiosity even in death, an Oxford surgeon removed his skin and presented it to the University’s Anatomy Museum. It has not survived.