Interested in Scottish history, Delair named himself after the body-guard of Mary Queen of Scots.

When he was small boy, in order to amuse himself, Delair learned to swallow
small quantities of water, which he was able to regurgitate. After his military service
in 1900, he began to work his regurgitation act, calling himself, The Human-Aquarium.
His act consisted of swallowing water, beer, bread, goldfish and frogs.

He performed in various music halls and circuses in nearly every European country, including before Tzar Nicolas II of Russia in 1912.

Later he traveled extensively, performing on five continents, including the countries of Argentina, Brazil, USA, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.

Mac Norton worked his act up until he was 70 years old— in his later years appearing mostly in English music halls.

Claude Louis Delair died in 1953.

Translation from the French of the Mac Norton show poster pictured above:

Mac Norton

The Aquarium Man
I say I am an extraordinary scientific phenomenon like the quadruped mammal
with four stomachs (the cow).
I drink a punch bowl(?) of water containing 220 liters in 2 hours 30
100 glasses of beer in 10 minutes.
I eat 208 loaves of dry bread of 1 pound each in 48 hours.
I swallow fishes, turtles, frogs, water snakes alive by the dozens
I keep them not more than 2 hours in my stomach, just as Jonah in the whale,
then I return them alive, even more alive than ever in their respective
aquariums.

Thanks to Jean-Paul Delair— grandson of Claude Louis Delair for contributing the information for this page. You can find his page about Mac Norton in French at http://www.udenap.org/personnalites/mac_norton.htm