Tag London

Bridgerton LGBT London

The perils of being LGBT in Bridgerton era London

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

Molly houses, accusations of “sodomy” and moonlit encounters between politicians, soldiers, police and priests. The British capital – London – has played host to a very vibrant LGBT scene for over 300 years. In the decades before the popular Netflix series Bridgerton – set in Georgian England – there were plenty of gay men in London. And opportunities for illicit encounters.

But the likelihood of being discovered was high and gay men risked being robbed, blackmailed or worse.

Here is a legal case from 1732 that illustrates that point only too painfully…

The perils of being LGBT in Bridgerton era London

The Old Bailey website lists court cases at London’s central criminal court going back to the 17th century. And one case caught my eye in relation to this blog post. That was a robbery on 29 May 1732. John Cooper was the victim. After being unable to enter his lodgings near the Strand, Cooper had gone for a drink. While he was enjoying a beer, another man sat next to him and they both had three pints of gin and beer mixed together and heated. A vile concoction called “Huckle and Buss”. Cooper paid for all the drinks.

The other man, Thomas Gordon, then suggested they go for a walk. They ended up in Chelsea Fields and while while strolling through a secluded area, Gordon tripped up Cooper and held a knife to him. He then stripped Cooper of his coat, waistcoat, breeches and shoes plus their silver buckles. The hapless Cooper, not wanting to be left naked, asked to wear Gordon’s clothes – and he agreed.

It’s what happens next that shows how dangerous it was to be accused of being a homosexual. Cooper described the chain of events in court:

“He ask’d me where I liv’d, and I told him. I suppose, says he, you intend to charge me with a Robbery by and by, but if you do, I’ll swear you’re a Sodomite, and gave me the Cloaths to let you B – r me.“

Gordon realised that to silence Cooper about the mugging, all he had to do was allege that the victim was a ‘sodomite’. They walked back to Piccadilly where Cooper regained his composure and called for help to two passers-by. They agreed to restrain Gordon and take him to the courthouse in return for money. Cooper really wasn’t having a good day. But he agreed!

This was a time when you could literally drag your assailant in front of a judge and get punishment on the spot. But, the judge instead insisted that Cooper go and find a constable to formally charge Gordon before he would do anything. So off they went towards Marylebone but at some point, the two men who were supposed to be helping Cooper let Gordon go and then knocked poor Cooper to the ground.

Conflicting versions of what happened between Cooper and Gordon

He remonstrated – asking why they were now attacking him. And it seems they bought into Gordon’s version of events that Cooper was a “molly” (Bridgerton era gay man in London) who had tried it on with Gordon after getting him drunk and when the latter had objected, he had given him his clothes to silence him. So far from being robbed, Cooper had handed over his own clothes in return for Gordon’s silence. This was Gordon’s testimony in court:

“We went into Chelsea Fields, and coming among some Trees and Hedges, he kiss’d me, and put his privy Parts into my Hand; I ask’d him what he meant by that, and told him I would expose him; he begg’d me not to do it, and said he would make me amends. I ask’d him what amends? He said he would give me all his Cloaths, if I would accept of them, and so we agreed, and chang’d Cloaths.“

What undermines Gordon’s attempt to cast himself as the victim is that Cooper wouldn’t let the matter go. Indeed, he managed to track the thief down and have him apprehended again. This time Cooper was able to get a court hearing but things didn’t quite pan out as he might have hoped.

Yet another version of events came up in court, this time with Cooper giving Gordon his clothes as payment for sex. As Cooper was just a servant who needed to look presentable in his job, I find it hard to believe he would have given away what was probably his only suit to a stranger merely for one fling. Especially as Gordon’s clothes were described as pretty filthy.

There is another witness, Edward Pacock, who saw the two men “stripping among some trees” and exchanging their clothes “lovingly”. And there is where the story takes a very unexpected turn…

Cooper exposed in court as a drag queen

And now for the big reveal!

Because several female witnesses like Jane Jones, “a washer-woman in Drury Lane”, and Mary Poplet, who ran a tavern called the Two Sugar-Loaves on the same street, described Cooper as a very well known drag queen by the name of Princes Seraphina. In fact, Poplet didn’t know him by any other name. And in court, without any objection from the judge, they referred to Cooper as “she”, “the princess” and “her highness”.

Poplet gave a vivid description of Cooper:

“I have seen her several times in Women’s Cloaths, she commonly us’d to wear a white Gown, and a scarlet Cloak, with her Hair frizzled and curl’d all round her Forehead; and then she would so flutter her Fan, and make such fine Curtsies, that you would not have known her from a Woman: She takes great Delight in Balls and Masquerades, and always chuses to appear at them in a Female Dress, that she may have the Satisfaction of dancing with fine Gentlemen.“

So, piecing the evidence together, we have two men from modest backgrounds drinking in a tavern in the small hours of the morning. Both men were well known in the area. Especially Cooper who was a drag queen by the name of Princess Seraphina. Cooper was used to borrowing clothes, from men but more so women, to attend balls and masquerades with the hope of picking up rich gentlemen. On the night in question, Cooper – in male attire – had a drunken fling with Gordon that went wrong when instead Gordon mugged Cooper for his (male) clothes.

It’s assumed that Gordon was heterosexual but he could just as easily have been a gay man in deep denial. And violent denial at that. An incensed Cooper set out to prosecute him in the knowledge this would lead to Gordon’s hanging. Later he seemed to have misgivings and must have been concerned that his own homosexuality and transvestism would come out in court. Well it did, but strange to say it never became the central issue.

Sexual fluidity in Bridgerton era London – but not an LGBT paradise

What the court case shows is a city where sexual experimentation was rife. Cooper the effeminate drag queen accepted as a woman by other women living and working along Drury Street. Gordon was a thug but also known to the same people and I detect a hint of almost maternal protection towards him. One female witness advised Cooper to make up with Gordon because many believed the exchange of clothes had been voluntary.

In the end, several residents of Drury Lane claimed Gordon was an ‘honest working man’ and the case against him was dropped. Cooper was lucky that the whole thing didn’t backfire on him. He no doubt drowned his sorrows at one of the masquerades in Vauxhall where he was a regular feature in full female attire. As an aside, one of his drag queen friends had just been transported (sent to work in the plantations of the Caribbean or to Australia) for counterfeiting masquerade tickets. A very harsh punishment!

Well, we will never known what happened among the trees and hedges in Chelsea Fields but what a fascinating story! And an incredible insight into LGBT life in London leading up to the Bridgerton era.

London tornado

The great London tornado of 1091

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

Walking past Bow church yesterday in the city of London – deserted still because of Covid lockdown – I was reminded of another disaster that hit the British capital a thousand years ago. Because in the year 1091, a huge tornado ripped through London demolishing an earlier wooden Bow church and then smashing up London Bridge. It’s a forgotten natural disaster but at a time of pandemic and concerns about the impact of global warming, one certainly worth recalling now.

The United Kingdom is famed for its fairly clement weather conditions. We don’t tend to get hurricanes, typhoons and certainly not devastating tornados. But in the year 1091, a tornado did indeed hit London. At this time, the population of London was under 20,000 – not unprecedented for a medieval city but below its previous Roman height. And the city was mainly constructed of wood. So, the tornado wreaked havoc with the relatively flimsy constructions in its path.

London tornado hits St Mary-le-Bow

The church of St Mary-le-Bow took a direct hit. For many centuries, this church has been a key landmark in London. Traditionally, you can consider yourself a true Londoner if you’re born within the sound of its bells. Those bells came crashing down during the Second World War when the Luftwaffe bombed the centre of London and largely destroyed the church built by Christopher Wren in the seventeenth century. That had replaced a church destroyed in another disaster that hit London – the Great Fire of 1666. So, it’s a place of worship that has been levelled over and over by wind and fire.

The king of England in 1091 was William II, known as “Rufus”. He was the son of William the Conqueror and it was asserted that he was homosexual. His relationship with the church was fraught and no doubt it would have been claimed that this destruction was divine wrath over his conduct. William was eventually killed in a hunting accident. A rather suspicious incident where a courtier somehow managed to shoot his arrow directly into the king.

London tornado – first ever recorded?

It’s often said that this medieval tornado was the first ever to be recorded – certainly in Europe. But Irish historians dispute this. They point to a recorded tornado that hit a place called Rosdalla in Westmeath in the year 1054. The Vikings were in Ireland at this time and one of their chroniclers talks about the tornado lifting a greyhound into the air and then dropping it, causing the poor dog’s death.

Here is a photo I took of St Mary-le-Bow yesterday.

London Blitz

Tragic wedding party deaths in the London Blitz

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

The area of London I live in took a pounding from the Luftwaffe during the Blitz, which destroyed a fifth of London in the Second World War. At both ends of the long road I live on there were tragic deaths including an entire wedding party that had taken shelter from the Nazi onslaught.

Camberwell Green is a small park at the south end of the road I live on. On 17 September 1940, Sidney and Patricia Wright had just got married and were celebrating their reception at the nearby Father Red Cap pub, which is still there though sadly boarded up. Suddenly, the air raid siren went off signifying that enemy German planes were on the way to bomb that part of London.

Deaths at a wedding in the London Blitz

The groom, bride, parents and extended family including children darted outside and down into an air raid shelter – a tunnel under Camberwell Green. Unfortunately, the ground surface scored a direct hit by a bomb and the tunnel caved in. The bodies were recovered the following day.

The dead were Sidney and Patricia aged 21, their parents, Sidney’s five sisters aged between eight and nineteen and several guests aged between fourteen and fifty eight. This is the memorial below unveiled in 2007 at the exact spot where the bomb fell and the Father Red Cap pub today. Read on to find out what happened at the other end of my road.

That is tragic enough but these were not the only deaths in Camberwell, a district of south London, during the Blitz. In the first four months of the Luftwaffe bombing, just this one part of London endured 449 deaths in 1940.

London Blitz deaths in nearby Kennington

Walk along my road and at the other end you come to Kennington Park. And there you can see a stone slab with a poem by Maya Angelou. Behind it is a curious rectangular depression in the ground. This was once a “trench shelter” for people without gardens attached to their houses (three quarters of Londoners during WW2).

They were deep trenches with a concrete floor, timbers to create two walls and corrugated iron placed on top held down with earth to form an added layer of protection. Think of a First World War trench with a cover. Families might sit in these damp, smelly trenches for up to twelve hours while bombs exploded around them.

At just after 8pm on 15 October 1940, the long trench in Kennington Park took a direct bomb hit. The death toll eventually given was a staggering 104 people. The scene was horrific and again, I won’t go into the details but there was a struggle to identify the dead.

London Blitz deaths not publicised

As was often the case, in order to keep up morale, the government didn’t publicise these kinds of incidents. And that explains why a memorial was only put up in Kennington Park in 2003 and one on Camberwell Green in 2007.

The Maya Angelou poem that commemorates the London Blitz deaths reads:

‘History despite its wrenching pain cannot be un-lived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.’

Copyright photos on this page: Tony McMahon. Please credit if re-using.

toppled statues

London – which statues should be toppled?

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

We’re clearly about to have a wave of statues toppled across London. But if so, who should go and what should replace them?

Let me talk about which statues I think should go and surprise you with how many statues and memorials have been replaced or hidden away in London over the centuries. And then, let’s think about who we should be commemorating today with statues?

To me, the current situation is untenable. It doesn’t reflect the country we are and it often accentuates the worst of our past. Take Whitehall for example. Walk down it and it’s a parade of generals from top to bottom. You’d think Britain was a military-police state and not a civilian democracy.

We’ve had some great social reformers, inventors and artists but instead we celebrate Earl Haig. This is a man whose tactics in the First World War earned him the nickname “Butcher Haig”. And that was because of his cavalier attitude to casualties among his own men – not the enemy.

Get to the top of Whitehall and you’re in Trafalgar Square. I’ve got no issues with Nelson. He can stay up there on the column. But King George IV on horseback. This was the most reviled monarch of the 19th century. I’ve got Victorian era history books where the authors can’t bring themselves to say a kind word about him.

Contemporary satirists dipped pens in poison and lacerated him. He treated his own wife abominably. Built a palace at Brighton while men returning from the Napoleonic wars starved on the streets. Indulged every passion until he died a horrendously obese, self-pitying mess. So – he can go.

And then at the top of Trafalgar Square, there’s a diminutive statue to a king of little stature – James II. The brother of Charles II became king in 1685 and set about trying to return Britain to the Catholic faith but more perniciously, creating an absolutist monarchy based on that of Louis XIV of France.

If James had got away with this plan, Britain would have seen its democracy strangled in the cradle. Fortunately, parliament decided that James would not get his way and forced him from power. They brought in a Dutch prince who became William III.

And which statues have already gone?

What might surprise you is that London has been removing statues from view for a long time. Sometimes they go and come back again. So, here are some toppled statues that either disappeared or moved around.

For example, in 1888, a statue of General Gordon of Khartoum was unveiled in Trafalgar Square between the two fountains. Gordon was always a controversial figure whose handling of the 1885 Sudan revolt, that led to his death at the hands of rebels, was frequently questioned.

In 1943, the statue was removed to the Victoria Embankment and never returned despite a demand in parliament from Winston Churchill in 1948 to reinstate it. The statue remains in its current rather obscure location.

The statue of Charles I in Trafalgar Square dates back to his reign in the 1630s. It was toppled under Oliver Cromwell and given to a metalsmith in Holborn called John Rivet.

He claimed to have melted it down and sold cutlery made from the brass. But after the Restoration of Charles II, Rivet revealed that the statue had never been destroyed but buried by him. And it went back on its pedestal where it remains today.

Then there’s the statue of Queen Anne in front of St Paul’s cathedral. It’s a copy of the 1712 original which was attacked several times. Given the queen’s love of a drink, somebody etched on to it: “Brandy Nan, Brandy Nan, left in the lurch; Her face to the gin shop, her back to the church”.

Other statues toppled include one of George I in Leicester Square and a large one of George IV, mentioned above, that once stood at Kings Cross. Sir Robert Peel stood for decades in Cheapside but was carted off in 1935 to the police college in Hendon.

Hyde Park corner was once graced with an enormous equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington. Queen Victoria hated it but while Wellington was alive, it couldn’t really be taken down. His house was nearby! But after he was dead, it was spirited away and is now to be found in far off Aldershot.

And who to replace them with?

I love history. And it’s not all about General Bufty-Tufty beating up the natives in Bechuanaland in 1879. Which is the impression you get from many of our statues.

History is about great social reformers, inventors, people who cured disease, architects and creative artists. Let’s throw up some statues to them and create a more balanced and nuanced picture of our past.

highwaymen London

Highwaymen in the middle of London!

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

Highwaymen were those masked thieves on horseback with 18th century three-cornered hats who held up carriages. The most famous was Dick Turpin. We often picture them carrying out their robberies in the countryside but actually, they were often to be found in the middle of central London.

So let me introduce you to some of the most unbelievably audacious highwaymen whose cheek and daring will amaze you! They terrorised London but also gave people a rather cheap thrill.

LONDON HIGHWAYMEN: Isaac Atkinson

He operated around Lincoln’s Inn Fields about the year 1640. I worked at an office overlooking this large and beautiful square for ten years. One side of the square has been dominated by barristers and lawyers for centuries going right back to Henry VIII.

Atkinson, after being apprehended, said that his conscience was perfectly clear as he had only robbed lawyers – who were bigger rogues than himself. Well, I think we can all agree with that (except you lawyers of course).

LONDON HIGHWAYMEN: Dick Banff

We would think of Dick as more of a cat burglar than a highwayman. His name is also spelt Dick Bauff. He used rope ladders and hooks to rob the houses of rich merchants in Lombard Street – near the Bank of England.

As a young man, he was involved in one extremely violent robbery in his native Ireland alongside his criminal parents. They murdered the occupants of the house and seized the goods. After being caught, Dick was given leniency on condition that he agreed to hang his own parents!

LONDON HIGHWAYMEN: Tom Buckley

Also called Tim Buckley. You tend to find spelling mistakes in names either because the individual concerned was illiterate or census takers were just sloppy. Or some criminals operated under multiple names. Anyway, Tim or Tom held up people on Drury Lane – and that really was slap bang in the middle of London

Buckley developed something of a personal vendetta against a “stock-jobber” (somebody who worked at the stock exchange). This man had got Buckley arrested on one occasion and branded on the hand. Our highwaymen seems to have sought him out and relieved the stock-jobber of a whopping forty-eight Guineas.

Incredibly, the two men then met by accident in central London and the stock-jobber got Buckley arrested – again. The highwayman was sentenced to death but then somehow got a reprieve. After which….he went to Hackney and attempted to burn down the stock jobber’s house.

After going on the run to the Midlands, he was eventually caught and hanged in 1702.

LONDON HIGHWAYMEN: William Cady

This highwayman found his victims in Hyde Park. One woman swallowed her own wedding ring to stop him getting hold of it. So Cady – who was a particularly unpleasant character – ran her through with his sword and then cut her open to get the ring.

Other London highwaymen included William Davies – “The Golden Farmer” – who only stole gold. Dick Low was the youngest highwayman aged just eleven! William Page used to dress in the height of fashion and hold people up around Grosvenor Square before being hanged in 1758.

The source for this blog is a book in my archive of material going back 300 years. The book in question is An Encyclopaedia of London, edited by William Kent and published in 1937. Here I am with it. I also used The Complete Newgate Calendar – also in my collection.

Galvanism – Frankenstein science and the dead!

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

The Georgians and Victorians did love the shock of the new. And science provided plenty of thrills and spills. For example, the use of Galvinism to bring the dead back to life. Or so it seemed! What we might call Frankenstein science.

Galvinism turns a dead criminal into a real life Frankenstein!

At the start of the 19th century, a criminal hanged in London was seemingly brought back to life through an early use of electricity to re-animate the dead – something called Galvanism! It was this primitive use of electricity that inspired Mary Shelley to write the novel Frankenstein.

If you go to the Old Bailey in London today, you’ll just see the Central Criminal Court and nothing much else. But in the late eighteenth century, you would have encountered Newgate prison next to the Court of Justice and close by, the Surgeon’s Hall.

This was pretty much the journey that those condemned to death took on a single day: prison cell, hangman’s rope and then dissected on the surgeon’s table.

While on the surgeon’s table – the dead criminal might be exposed to the new technological trick of Galvanism – a Frankenstein technology that involved using electricity to bring corpses back to life!

Galvinism turns dead murderers into entertainment

The bodies of murderers, once executed, were subject to a display of anatomy in front of an audience of students and other interested individuals – who may have paid to get access.

It seems incredible, but operations on the living and the dead were a spectator sport in London two hundred years ago. Although those present would have claimed they were there to be educated and informed!

A man called Foster was executed for killing his wife. Following the usual routine for the accused, he was brought from the typhus-infested Newgate prison out to the Court of Justice and condemned to death.

The sentence, up until the 1860s, was carried out in front of the court house on a platform for crowds to watch. He was then cut down and his body taken over to the Surgeon’s Hall.

Mr and Mrs Galvini – pioneers of Galvinism!

It was then subjected to what was described as the “Galvanic Process” – invented by Luigi Galvani (pictured below) and his wife, Lucia Galvani. They found that frogs’ legs could be made to twitch using an electrical current long after the animals had died. In London, they decided to see if this would work with dead humans. And yes – we are talking about the period when the author Mary Shelley wrote her novel Frankenstein.

The thrill for the spectators in the anatomy theatre was to see a dead murderer brought back to life using Galvanism – a brand new science. What would the killer do? Would he lunge at the audience? Would he speak? Could he be made to do their bidding?

Truly – Frankenstein stuff!

A nephew of the Galvani duo was present as the doctors began applying electricity to the dead man’s face and jaw – at which point, one of his eyes opened! According to a contemporary account, “the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted”. Then the right hand rose up, clenched. Following that, his thighs and legs began to move.

Tony McMahon investigates how criminals were brought back to life using Galvanism in 19th century London

The contemporary account goes on to say that the object of the exercise was to show “the excitability of the human frame when animal electricity is duly applied”. It was hoped that this Galvanism could be used for victims of drowning, suffocation or even stokes (“apoplexy” as it was called) “thereby rekindling the expiring spark of vitality”.

Unfortunately, the account then claims that the right arm of the deceased rose with such force that it actually struck one of the employees of the Surgeon’s Hall “who died that very afternoon of the shock” (most likely a heart attack).

So instead of Galvanism presenting hope to those feared drowned – it became more associated with a the sort of Frankenstein horror that of course Shelley would immortalise.

Tragedy as Jews expelled from England 700 years ago

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

This is a curious and terrible story I heard about years ago and found again in an old book on London history dating from the 1870s in my library. The story goes that when King Edward I of England expelled all the Jewish people from his kingdom, one ship captain deliberately murdered a group of Jews on the river Thames in London.

Under King Edward I in medieval London a terrible murder of a group of Jewish people took place on the river Thames as retold by historian Tony McMahon
Jewish people faced discrimination in medieval London

The book is called Old and New London and dates from about 1875. It details how Jewish people at that time still spoke in hushed terms about a terrible event that occurred near London Bridge in the 13th century.

After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, Jewish families were protected by the Norman kings and prospered. But things started to turn two hundred years later and then Edward I – famous as the king who executed Braveheart – decided to expel every Jew from England.

A group of Jewish Londoners hired a “mighty tall ship”, loaded all their possessions and sailed off down the Thames to an uncertain exile abroad. Accounts vary as to what happened next. One report claimed that at a place called Queenborough – near the mouth of the river Thames as it meets the sea – the captain set down the anchor.

They were on dry sands and the captain popped over the side to take a walk. Then he suggested that the Jewish exiles might want to join him and stretch their legs. And so they did. But without noticing that as the tide rose, the captain shot off back to the ship and was hauled up quickly by a rope.

This took the Jewish group by surprise. As the water rose rapidly, they cried out to him for help. And he gave them a sarcastic response:

He told them that they ought to cry rather unto Moses by whose conduct their fathers passed through the Red Sea

“Raging floods” then gradually engulfed them and the captain with his crew made off with their goods. In some accounts, the captain and his fellow mariners went to see King Edward I and were rewarded for their murderous cruelty. But another account claims they were hanged for their “fraudulent and mischievous dealing”.

In the 1875 book I have, it claims that “the spot in the river Thames where many of the poor exiles were drowned by the perfidy of a master-mariner is under the influence of a ceaseless rage”. That no matter how calm the Thames was elsewhere, this stretch of water was always “furiously boisterous”.

And some tellings of the tale had this unusual river current occurring under London Bridge, for some reason. Apparently it became a point of pilgrimage with young and old Jews rowing out to the supposed location to see if the river really did rage non-stop as a constant reminder of the killing.

typhus jail fever

Prisoners infect judges with typhus – jail fever!

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

Eighteenth century courtrooms were a dangerous place. For the convict there was a good chance you’d dangle from a rope. But even for the judge – the risk was high. The prisoners were so filthy and disease ridden that you might catch jail fever. Or what we call typhus these days.

Judges catch jail fever from typhus ridden accused

The year was 1750 in London at England’s top criminal court – the Old Bailey. Three judges were trying a group of prisoners and the death sentence was anticipated.

Capital punishment applied to a whole range of crimes at this time – not just murder but also theft and violent attack.

Unfortunately for the judges, the grubby criminals were seated right in front of the dock. And not only did they stink to high heaven but there had been an outbreak of jail fever within Newgate prison. The place was rife with typhus.

Typhus, by the way, was also referred to as hospital fever, camp fever and ship fever. It was and is caused by poor hygiene, normally when lots of people are grouped together in insanitary conditions. For example, military camps, ships and….prisons.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is newgat0.jpg

The agent of transmission is the humble louse, which gets infected by a sick person and then shares the disease with anybody nearby. So, the judges were infected because of their proximity to the accused. And it’s not a disease that spares the rich and privileged.

One of the judges was Sir Samuel Pennant (pictured with a louse) – who was also the Lord Mayor of London. The other two judges were Sir Thomas Abney and Baron Clarke. And they all died – infected by the very prisoners they had been sentencing to hang.

Another little fact about Sir Samuel – apart from being Lord Mayor and dying of typhus – was that he was a prolific slave owner. The 18th century was the height of British activity in the trade and he was actually born in Jamaica on his father’s plantation. I’m shedding less tears about his fate now.

Today, the Old Bailey – or Central Criminal Court – is still standing, though a more recent building. There’s no prison nearby. It was demolished at the turn of the 20th century when Londoners decided they’d rather not have large prisons in the middle of town.

But in 1750, Newgate prison was located right next door to the courthouse.

Jail fever brings typhus straight from prison to courtroom

Prisoners were therefore brought a relatively short distance from the squalid and overcrowded conditions at Newgate, straight into the courtroom of the Old Bailey. And along came the lice and fleas with them.

Therefore, if typhus was raging through Newgate, it was brought direct into the courtroom. Not that anybody fully understood the risk. And certainly not the esteemed judges who were carried off to meet their maker.

French Brexit

London hated the French long before Brexit

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

If you think Brexit is making Britain more xenophobic, then you need to get a time machine and go back to Georgian London. Because two hundred years ago, a French person walking around London might not only endure abuse but come to an unfortunate end!

Eighteenth century London was a dangerous place to walk around if you were French. As England was in an almost constant state of war with France, Londoners often sought out a Frenchman in the city to pick on or worse.

If you think Brexit has made people more xenophobic about the French – eighteenth century London would be a huge shock.

There are several accounts of unpleasant abuse meted out by London folk against the French in the 1940 history book The Streets of London by Thomas Burke. He details one appalling incident where a French servant went to see a public hanging at Tyburn and nearly got executed himself!

The hanging of two criminals had just finished when three people in the crowd, realising the servant was French, began pulling at his coat-tails and powdered wig (this is the 18th century after all).

At which point the hangman was going past in the cart, in which he’d brought the condemned in to die, and began joining in the harassment by taking to the French servant with his whip.

He began to wonder if his time was up when three other Frenchmen came to his rescue. They beat the English thugs back and got him into a nearby tavern.

The narrator of this story then pointed out that should a Frenchman find himself in this predicament, he should single out one of his assailants and fight him with his fists. If he wins, the typical English crowd would then declare him a good sport and parade him around in a chair!

No matter how bad things are with Brexit – no French person to my knowledge has faced such a terrible threat today in London. But correct me if I’m wrong.

The gang that terrorised Georgian London!

Tony McMahon Leave a comment

So you think urban gangs are a modern phenomenon? Well, 18th century Georgian London was horrified by the activities of the Black Boy Alley gang who showed no mercy to their victims but came to a pretty gruesome end themselves!

Let me take you back to the early 18th century and the wickedness of a group of criminals known as the Black Boy Alley gang. They operated very near to what is now Holborn Circus – or “midtown” as estate agents like to call it. I worked around this part of London as a journalist for many years and it’s a kind of intermediate zone between the City of London in the east and the bustling shops of the West End.

The story of this gang turned up in a book published in 1817 from my large collection of old London related volumes going back three hundred years. The book is called A History and Description of London and was probably written around ten years before by David Hughson – whose real name was Edward Pugh.

It consists of a series of walks through the city that includes some really nasty areas. Hughson seemed determined to expose his readers to the sleazier side of London life! The streets he mentions once led off what is now Holborn Circus roundabout towards the meat market at Smithfield. Saffron Hill is still there but Chick Lane and Black Boy Alley have gone – and maybe not surprisingly!

Black Boy Alley was where a gang operated from in Georgian London

Because under the reign of King George II (reigned 1727 to 1760), Black Boy Alley was “the terror of the whole city” – according to Hughson. The Black Boy Alley Gang used prostitutes to lure passers-by into the grubby tenements. These hapless individuals were then gagged, robbed and murdered. Their bodies were unceremoniously thrown into a ditch with all the city rubbish.

Women played a prominent role in the crimes and three were executed in 1743. These included Ann Duck and Ann Barefoot (I’m not making these names up!!). A man called George Cheshire survived an attack by both of them in nearby Chick Lane. Duck and Barefoot beat Cheshire giving him some severe cuts and bruises. In total, they stole four pence. And for that crime – both women were hanged.

Sarah Bartlet and Martha Ewers were sentenced to transportation for luring a man called Robert Copperthwait into a house on Black Boy Alley and relieving him of his watch. Lucky for him he wasn’t murdered but inexplicably decided to return and they mugged him again – this time taking his money.

The gang included a 21-year-old local lad known as Gugg (real name William Billingsley). He had gone to the free school to learn to read and write but crime was way more attractive than working as a lamp lighter. Then there was Thomas Well, reputed to be the husband of Ann Barefoot mentioned above. At his trial, he was said to have been “much addicted to vile women and drinking, swearing, gaming and every other destructive vice”.

Then there was Dillsey (real name William Brister) and a fourteen-year-old called Scampey (real name Henry Gadd). At his trial, Scampey was asked who was his Redeemer and instead of saying “Jesus”, he scandalised the court by yelling “the Devil!”. Another gang member was a Frenchman called Sulspice du Clot who was a Roman Catholic, as was an Irish gang member, Patrick Bourk.

The Black Boy Alley gang also had two Jewish members: Benjamin David Woolfe who was born in Prague, then part of Bohemia and now the capital of the Czech Republic. And Hannah Moses was from Frankfurt. She had seen her husband executed in February 1743 in London for robbing a silversmith.

The law eventually caught up with the gang and a staggering nineteen were executed on a single day at Tyburn gallows – near where Marble Arch is today at the end of Oxford Street. The mass hanging took place on Christmas Eve 1744. Gugg, Dillsey, young Scampey, the Frenchman Sulspice and the two Jewish gang members all swung from the end of a rope in front of a large, festive crowd.

And so ended the terror of the Black Boy Alley gang!