Known as the living skeleton and the fat man, George Moore and Fred Howe performed across the country as a comical circus sideshow. They created their routine in response to doctors’ recommendations that they each increase their exercise—one to gain weight and the other to lose it—but they perfected it as a means to both travel and make money.

https://www.lacma.org/node/40381

Just for extra context

Why wouldn’t The Fat Man, the larger of the two men, not simply eat the other?