The Troublesome Gibbet of John Haines, the ‘Wounded Highwayman’ of Hounslow.

For this post, I am going to wander into the world of crime in the late eighteenth century, and the grisly fate that befell many who committed the heinous crime of highway robbery. (Full disclosure: I’m not an historian of crime, gibbets or highwaymen…perhaps the case I’m about to discuss is very well known. But he’s new to me, and I love a good story, so he makes it into the blog!)

I was recently reading the The Juvenile Tourist: or Excursions Through Various Parts of the Island of Great Britain, published by John Evans in 1805. Written as letters to a prospective young traveller, it contains descriptions of counties and towns in England and Wales, together with recommendations for tourists for things to see or do. Leafing through the first section detailing departure from London, a particular reference caught my eye. 

Royal Mail Coach 1805 – Image from Wikimedia Commons

The passage began with a situation familiar to any traveller of this period – a change of horses. Journeys by coach or on horseback were necessarily done in stages. Coaches travelled over fixed distances between two points – usually inns – at which point the horses would be changed. Mounting his new horse, the writer soon continued his journey, heading out on Hounslow Heath. Things quickly took a dark turn though. After pausing at a wooden monument ‘marked with a bloody hand and knife’ marking the spot where a local man who had cut the throats of his wife and child had been buried with a stake through his heart, he moved on to another, equally chilling, relic. 

“We still hear not unfrequently of robberies in [this] quarter during the winter season of the year; a recent proof of which is exhibited by a new gibbet, erected not far from Belfont, on which we saw suspended the body of Haines, generally known by the designation of the Wounded Highwayman…”

Who, then, was this mysterious Haines? The problem is that there are potentially many highwaymen Haineses. These include a notable fellow highwayman of the famous Dick Turpin gang, and also one William Haines, sentenced to death in 1783 for highway robbery in Acton, robbing the assistant postmaster of Hackney as he walked home alone through country roads on a dark, foggy December night. While criminal bodies could admittedly be left in gibbets for twenty years or more, becoming more macabre as the years passed and bits and pieces fell off them, 22 years before Evans’ description seemed unlikely. 

Image copyright of Wellcome Images

Professor Sarah Tarlow’s excellent chapter on the afterlife of gibbets (https://rdcu.be/dyItn), however, proved the key to unlocking the identity of the mysterious highwayman. As she reveals, the erection of a gibbet containing Haines’ remains on Hounslow Heath provoked controversy in newspapers, frightened travellers, caused the royal family to avoid the road, and even caused issues when it blew into the garden of a nearby house in a storm. (Anyone who has experienced a neighbour’s trampoline blowing into their garden in a storm should be grateful that it was just this and not a mouldy criminal in a cage!).

The Juvenile Tourist corroborates this, and adds some extra colour. From his description, for example, it is not hard to see how the spectacle of the rotting highwayman might upset delicate constitutions. “He was apparently a large, tall man; his irons were so constructed that his arms hung at some little distance from his body, by which means the hideous sight was rendered more terrific and impressive”.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Clearly no fan of the practice, he noted that Hounslow Heath had once been ‘disgraced with a long range of gibbets’, which had only been removed at the behest of the royal family, fed up with seeing them as they journeyed to and from Windsor. Further Evans noted that the dismal sight of Haines’ body “suggested with full force the horrible idea of a fellow creature deprived of the honours of sepulture” (i.e. burial and memorial) and instead left to rot “to the grinning scorn of public infamy”.

Things start to become clearer from the Old Bailey records, which have lengthy details of John Haines’ trial, and how he ended up in an iron cage by the roadside.  In 1799, Haines and an accomplice, armed with ‘certain pistols loaded with leaden bullets’ held up what they thought was a passenger coach. Unfortunately for them it in fact contained two Bow Street officers, and one other man, acting on reports of robberies in the area, and keen to trap a criminal. The trial report suggests that John Haines clearly played his role to the full, wearing a thick brown coat with a hat pulled low, having a distinctive horse and also scoring highly on his highwaymanly patter: witnesses attested to hearing him shout ‘damn your eyes, you bugger, stop and give me your money’!

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

But what of his nickname, ‘the wounded highwaymen’? A report in the Northampton Mercury provides the last piece of the puzzle. During the robbery there was in fact an exchange of fire. While most of the robbers’ bullets went through the back of the coach seats, one of the officers believed that he “had hit his man”. This was later proved true when witnesses stated that Haines returned to an inn later that night, saying that he had been wounded.  When Haines was later arrested  “A surgeon described him to have had one ball pass through his shoulder; he had extracted one and he believed there were more in his body”. The ‘wounded highwayman’ was clearly aptly named.

Whoever, he was, and whatever he did, though, there is undoubtedly something disquieting about the image of the desiccated body of the highwayman, the metal locks and hinges of the iron gibbet screaking, and the skirts of his tattered greatcoat waving in the wind!

Creams, Clothes and Cases: The material culture of pre-modern travel.

I am currently on study leave, getting on with research for my new project on the history of travel preparations. One thing that I’m particularly interested in is the material culture of travel, and what sorts of things were available for travellers as they got ready for their journeys. 

Today, ‘things’ are incredibly important both before and during our travels, and we are usually accompanied by a wealth of ‘stuff’. First there is the right luggage, whether finding bags small enough to qualify as ‘carry on’ for the plane, or cases large enough to contain all the necessaries for two weeks in the sun. Then come decisions about clothes: do we take a bare minimum, or instead give ourselves lots of choices? Do we have the right clothes for the right weather or environment? (Authorities in Naples are fed up of people trying to walk up Mount Vesuvius in Crocs!) These types of decisions about what, and how much, to take were all ones that were faced by travellers over the past three centuries.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

But perhaps the other most common type of products that accompany us on journeys are those related to health and hygiene. Commonly travellers will take some form of medicines, cosmetics or personal grooming products, sun cream, insect repellent, deodorant …the list goes on and the market for these kinds of products is massive. And if you’re anything like me, this often takes up more space than the clothes!

It’s perhaps easy to assume that these type of health/cosmetic travel goods are a feature of modern tourism, but in fact they have a much longer history.  I’ve long been interested in the history and advertising of products, and my project on the history of facial hair explored the world of shaving products in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Another big strand of my work looked at the early modern medical marketplace and the ways in which all manner of remedies and preparations were touted as the universal cure for all ills. By the nineteenth century, of course, newspapers were stuffed full of advertisements for products, with many makers and sellers starting to target the growing numbers of British travellers and tourists heading off to foreign climes.

(Copyright Wellcome Images)

Travelling cases, for example, containing everything necessary to attend to appearance on a journey had been available since the eighteenth century. In 1780 the razor maker Daniel Rigge advertised his ‘Travelling cases and leather pouches, which contain the whole apparatus for shaving’ as well as bottles and space for other items of personal grooming. As tourism expanded, so did the range and design of these types of travel ‘furniture’. One notable maker was the firm of Mechi and Sons in Cornhill, London. ‘Mechi’s Dressing Cases’ for travellers contained tooth and nail brushes, soap and other requisites and were, according to the advertisement, an ‘invaluable acquisition’ for the ‘steam boat or travelling companion’. 

(Copyright Wellcome Images)

Soaps were particularly popular, offering tourists something familiar from home with which to perform their daily ablutions. In 1830 James Atkinson’s Almond Soap was particularly noted as a useful accoutrement for travellers, as well as the army and navy, and sold in ‘neat portable pots’ for ease of carriage. 

Health was another common topic, offering solutions for various problems. ‘Lamplough’s Effervescing Pyretic Saline’ offered to replenish the vital salts lost from ‘exciting causes’ which included excessive heat or tiredness. ‘Dr Locock’s cosmetic’ was a refreshing cream that could be used to treat sunburn or tan, whilst his asthmatic customers could also treat themselves to some of his ‘pulmonic wafers’ which promised relief in ten minutes for those suffering in cold climates or inclement weather. Even food was not neglected. Nineteenth century tourists could purchase ‘Mellin’s Food Biscuits’, recommended particularly for travellers who often require a sustaining and nutritious food, that can be easily digested and assimilated’.

It is interesting to note, though, how some manufacturers began to tailor the advertisements of existing products towards travellers, in turn ascribing new attributes to them specifically related to the rigours of travelling. 

(Author’s own image)

One useful example of this was Rowlands’ ‘Kalydor’. Alexander Rowlands and his son established a perfumery business in London in the late eighteenth century, which expanded through the nineteenth. Rowlands specialised in cosmetic products and undertook something like the modern advertising campaigns across various newspapers, extolling the many and various attributes of their wares. 

‘Kalydor’ was a skin and beauty cream that became their flagship product. In early advertisements in the 1820s ‘Kalydor’ was touted as a refreshing cosmetic compound, ‘imparting a glow of youthful beauty’ on the cheeks of women, ‘keeping their complexions clear and lovely’ whilst also soothing and protecting men’s faces after shaving ‘leaving a softness not to be described’. A decade later, further attributes included protection against wind and damp. 

By the 1860s, however, Rowlands had hitched a ride on the growing numbers of specialist travel advice literature and magazines, adding their by-now-familiar products to the back pages of these publications. By this time Kalydor had become the traveller’s best friend: 

‘Tourists and Travellers, visitors to the seaside, and others exposed to the scorching rays of the sun and heated particles of dust, will find Rowland’s Kalydor a most refreshing preparation…dispelling the cloud of languor and relaxation, allaying all heat and irritability and immediately affording a pleasing sensation’. 

Not only that, adverts often also included Rowland’s ‘Macassar Oil’ (useful in preventing hair drying out and falling off in the sun) and ‘Odonto’ – imparting a ‘graceful purity and fragrance’ to the teeth!

Travellers were obviously a lucrative market. The soapmaker Gibbs turned on the charm in their advertisement, stating that ‘The refined habits of English travellers render a COMPLETE TOILET EQUIPMENT one of the first essentials of the tourist’. Putting their existing ‘Naples Soap’ into an elastic case (keeping the case shut to prevent soggy soap scum from leaking out into the portmanteau), they introduced their new innovation, the ‘Naples Travelling Tablet’.

These are just some of the many products that I’ll be looking into in more detail, especially for what they can reveal about preparations, and what the supposed risks and dangers of travel were. As thoughts begin to turn to summer, many of us will soon be putting ourselves in the shoes of past travellers, and making those awkward decisions about what to take.

Touching the Past: Why History Is Important?

I was talking to a colleague recently about what first got us fired up about history. I’ve loved history since childhood, and it was probably inevitable that it would end up as a career. As an undergraduate, though, I vividly remember a turning point – a brilliant lecture I attended on life in the South Wales coalfields, which began with an image of a miners’ protest in the early 20^th century. The lecturer began with a simple question: ‘what was it like to be there?’ He went on to talk about the men, the town and environment, the sights and smells and the conditions they lived in, bringing it all vividly to life.

But why does history matter? What is the ‘point’ of history? What is the value of humanities in a modern society? Depressingly, these are questions that historians increasingly have to face, and face them we do. A recent post by Laura Sangha gives a great response to just these sorts of questions.

Despite abundant evidence of the public appetite for ‘popular’ history, academic historians are under constant pressure to defend our discipline in the face of threats to funding, the need to recruit students and bring in research income. Sometimes it is easy not only to lose touch with why history matters, but what it was that got us enthused about it in the first place. For me, though, a chance encounter in an antiquarian bookshop in London last week has gone a long way towards bringing back the excitement I first felt when I first became interested in the past, and the people who inhabited it.

I wasn’t even to go in to the shop. But, with a little time to kill before lunch, I wandered in, and asked the owner if he had a section on health and medicine. He looked apologetic and said he had a few on some shelves at the back of the shop, but “mostly vintage stuff’”. What he actually had were two bookcases full of treasures; all manner of 17^th and 18^th-century medical and surgical treatises, histories of the body, anatomical works, medical lectures, books of remedies and pharmacopoeia…for a historian of medicine, a little shop of dreams!

One, in particular, caught my eye – an original 1667 copy of John Tanner’s Hidden Treasures of the Art of Physick. I pondered for a little while about whether to buy it…I’ve long worried about buying these old books (especially from places like Ebay) and whether it is right to own something that should ideally be in a museum. But, before long, it was coming home with me!

Unwrapping the book from its packaging at home gave me time to look at it in detail, but also to reflect on the incredible journey that it’s had. More than that it reminded me of exactly why I fell in love with history in the first place. Here, on my desk, next to me now in fact, is a tangible artefact – a survivor from another world.

(Thomas Wyck – ‘Old St Paul in Ruins’, Image from Wikimedia Commons)

It rolled off the press in Clerkenwell, London one day in 1667, in a city still in shock after the dual calamities of the plague and the Great Fire of the previous year. What would an imaginary visitor to London that year have seen? Everywhere were burnt-out buildings, piles of rubble and devastated streets still in the process of being cleared. In January that year Samuel Pepys noted that there were still ‘smoking remains of the late fire’ with ‘the ways mighty bad and dirty’. Even as late as the 28^th of February Pepys was still having trouble sleeping because of ‘great terrors about the fire’, and observed ‘smoke still remaining of the late fire’ in the City. On the skyline was the devastated, but still recognisable, symbol of old London – the first St Paul’s Cathedral, whilst the once noted sea of church spires across London was diminished. Clerkenwell itself, however, largely escaped the fire. It was a fairly upmarket area, containing some affluent houses and businesses. Clerkenwell green was a fashionable area, home to some of the nobility.

What, then, of the book’s author and publishers? John Tanner who, according to the blurb, was a ‘student of physick and astrology’ wrote it. In fact, Tanner was a practising physician who resided in Kings Street, Westminster. In other sources he was referred to as a ‘dr in physic’ and a ‘medicus’, possibly even a member of the Royal College of Physicians in February 1675. When he died in 1711, Tanner had done pretty well for himself, leaving gold, silver and money, together with valuable goods, to his children. In his house, according to his inventory, were a ‘Physick room, Chirurgery room and still house’, the last used to distil waters for medicinal use. Tanner was the author of ‘my’ book, but he likely never touched it.

Someone who potentially had more to do with the physical book, however, was its publisher John Streater, a prolific producer of medical texts and brother of Aaron Streater, a noted physician and ‘divine’. Streater often worked in tandem with the bookseller George Sawbridge ‘at his House on clerken-well-Green’. Sawbridge was an eminent bookseller and publisher of medical books by luminaries such as Nicholas Culpeper. According to Elias Ashmole, Sawbridge had been a friend of the ‘English Merlin’ (or the ‘Juggling Wizard and Imposter’, depending on your source!) William Lilly. When he died, Sawbridge was worth around £40,000 – a colossal amount of money in the seventeenth century. It’s not too much of a leap of imagination to picture Sawbridge in his shop, surrounded by shelves and shelves of leather and calf-bound volumes, handing the book over to its first owner.

Who owned it? It’s impossible to say, but let’s speculate. A book like Tanner’s Treasury was meant for a general readership. It’s aim was to help the ‘diligent reader’ attain a good understanding of physick and the body, synthesising a range of different authors. Its medical content might have made it appealing as an easy reference work for a medical practitioner, but far more likely is that it found its way into the library of a local gentleman…perhaps even one of the Clerkenwell nobility who lived hard by. Medical texts were common inclusions amongst the libraries of gentlemen; medicine was one of the accepted intellectual pursuits of elite men. In fact there is only one signature inside the book, which is now, sadly illegible. Only the word ‘boak’ (book) and the date 1726 are now discernible, but show that it was still being used, or at least referred to, at that date. There is also only one slightly unclear annotation, which appears to say ‘used above [unclear] but are fare’. I’ve included the image below.

This copy of Tanner’s Treasury has had a long journey to this point. It has been passed down – perhaps gifted, bequeathed, sold, resold, lent, scores of times. At some point it ended up in a Birmingham library, and was potentially read by countless scholars, before its journey took it back to where it began – a London bookseller, where an interested party (me!) couldn’t leave it on the shelf. Rest assured that it’s found a good home, and will be carefully looked after.

To me, things like this little book are the reasons I love doing what I do. To be sure, the contents are important, giving us a window into the medical worldview of the time, and the sorts of individuals practising, writing and publishing medicine. The remedies are fascinating (and indeed one of my academic research interests). But there’s more to it than that. The book itself lets us literally touch the past and make contact with an object that was actually there. The people who wrote, sold, bought and passed it on have long gone, but we can still hold and appreciate something that was once important to them. It’s a line of direct contact back through the centuries. For all the academic theorising about grand narratives, discourses, theories and the rest, it’s nice to be reminded now and again of the simple, visceral thrill of letting a source fire up your imagination of what it was like in the past.

And that is why I think history is important.

 

 

 

Fart catchers and Duck F***ers! The world of 18th-century slang

Often, whilst searching for sources in the archives, you come across something that you would perhaps never usually have found. This week was no exception. Whilst looking through Georgian books for evidence of bad posture I had a chance encounter with a rather unusual book –James Caulfield’s Blackguardiana or dictionary of rogues, bawds, pimps, whores, pickpockets, shoplifters etc (London: 1793).

The stated aim of the book was to identify and catalogue the most notorious villains of the day, together with illustrations but, along the way, to provide ‘anecdotes, flash terms and cant songs’ all of which was ‘Intended to put society on their guard against Depredators’. It also sought to help unwary foreign travellers by equipping them with enough knowledge to guide them through the often-puzzling diversity of the English language. The book was fairly pricey, costing one guinea, and few copies were printed.

Arranged alphabetically, the book takes us through a huge range of terms, spanning over 250 pages. There’s not room here to go through the lot, but some specific examples will be enough to get a flavour of the whole thing! Many, for example, are general terms covering a range of aspects of daily life. We learn that to ‘Sham Abram’ is to pretend to be ill. Someone who ‘casts up their accounts’ is vomiting, while someone ‘in their altitudes’ is drunk. A wife scolding her husband was offering him a ‘dish of rails’! To be hungry was to have ‘a long stomach’.

Image from Joanne Bailey’s excellent blog -https://jbailey2013.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/embodying-marital-behaviour-in-the-eighteenth-century/

Interesting along the way are the various slang names for occupations. A maid might be referred to as an ‘Abigail’, while a servant in general was known as a ‘fart catcher’ because of their habit of walking behind their masters. A parish clerk might be referred to as an ‘Amen Curler’, while an innkeeper could be a ‘bluffer’.

An eighteenth-century ‘punk’!

Perhaps reflecting the general lack of love for the medical profession, medical practitioners do not fare well in slang terms. According to Caulfield to ‘talk like an Apothecary’ meant to spout nonsense ‘from assumed gravity and affectation of knowledge’. A long bill might be termed ‘an Apothecary’s bill’ while ‘Apothecary’s Latin’ was ‘barbarous’. The reasons why are unclear, but an army or navy surgeon might be known as either a ‘crocus’ or ‘crocus metallorum’.

The phrase ‘that’s the Barber!’ was ‘a ridiculous and unmeaning phrase in the mouths of common people, signifying their approbation of any action, measure or thing’. A midwife was a ‘rabbit catcher’ while a surgeon’s assistant laboured under the name of the ‘loblolley boy’, named after the gruel often doled out to the sick. Before we feel too sorry for the medics, spare a thought for the person who looked after the poultry aboard ship, who was colloquially referred to as the ‘Duck F**ker’!

Insults naturally feature quite prominently. A ‘beastly, sluttish woman’ might have the name Fusty legges’ levelled at her. A drunk person was a ‘pogy’. A punk, according to Caulfield ‘was a little whore’, while a ‘sad, ignorant fellow’ was regarded as a ‘looby’.

As well as name-calling the dictionary gives us some insight into the language of crime. To ‘give someone his bastings’ was to beat them up, as was to give them a ‘rib roasting’. A burly ‘puff guts’ waving a knife at you might threaten to ‘let out your puddings’, whilst if a highwaymen instructed you to ‘tip off your kicks’, it was advisable to remove your trousers (kicks) immediately. If you were ‘kimbawed’ then you had been cheated, Any unfortunate man who was ‘bastonaded in his bawbells’ was likely to have been the recipient of a hefty punch in the testicles!

Image from http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

Again, unsurprisingly, a great deal of space is reserved for sex! A woman ‘riding St George’ was ‘uppermost in the amorous congress’. Two bodies engaged in sex were referred to as the ‘plaister of warm guts’. A man putting his ‘plug tail’ into a woman’s ‘dumb glutton’…or worse still her ‘pratts’ , was engaged in practices against which the stricter clergy would certainly object!

There are, however, many familiar phrases. ‘Against the grain’ is used to denote something that someone does against their will. ‘Riff raff’ were ‘low, vulgar people’ while busy shopkeepers were said to be doing ‘a roaring trade’. Someone talking too much might be told to ‘Shut your potato trap!’ – from which the more common ‘shut your trap’ probably derives. Someone who could not make a choice was ‘in a quandary’.

It’s perhaps easy to see these as humorous examples of eighteenth-century trash talk. Many of them are extremely funny and often surprising. They even still have something of the power to shock. But in terms of historical value they are incredibly important in offering a window into the often-earthy common language, spoken by ordinary people. Our view of eighteenth-century manners and politeness has been created and reinforced through things like literature and advertising and gives us the polite speak of literate elites. Caulfield, however, takes us to the village inn as well as the salon, and lets us hear some of the choice slang, insults and names that were perhaps closer to the daily speak of individuals.

Now, ‘Teddy my Godson’, away before I ‘let out your puddings’!

The 1381 Peasants’ Revolt…in 5 tweets!

Today is a special post to honour a promise made to my fab groups of University of Exeter History students. Yesterday’s session was all about the 1381 peasant’s revolt. We looked at the various ways in which the rioters were depicted in chronicles, and the many striking similarities in the ways that rioters in recent years have been portrayed in the press. If the Daily Mail had reported on the Peasant’s Revolt, Wat Tyler would doubtless have been depicted in a hoodie!
The students were split into two groups, peasants and nobles, and challenged to report the revolt from their point of view in five tweets…complete with hashtags. Both groups did a brilliant job: enjoy!

GROUP 1

Peasants:

1) Not paying tax, time to act hashdaretoTyler
2) Bally said let’s go nuts hashriots hashpolo
3) Lord chancellor seems to have lost his head hashescalating quickly
4) Just met the king hash king hash midget
5) Well that ended well hash awks hash lolz hash hanging

Nobility

1) Heard some aggy plebs rebelling against a system in place 100s of years #feudalbants #1381 #goodluck
2) Bloody gatekeepers have let them in #getoutofourgrill #pray for Richard
3) Alright boys, jokes over now, back to the fields you go #classlessscum #pipedown
4) Ok peasants you win #Smithfield #winkwink #snake #asif
5) Laters Wat #peak #wasteman #Wotusayin

GROUP 2

Peasants:
1) Axes on our taxes #thirdwholetax
2) Burning down the house #burnbabyburn
3) We’re coming to get you @simonsudbury @roberthales #offwithyourheads
4) Our captain is dead, our leader has been treacherously killed #shoot #bows #it’snotover #yesitis
5) RT @JohnBall when Adam delved and Eve span who is then the gentleman? #orderdisorder

Nobility
1) The pessies are outside #offyoupop
2) Never seen so many poor people in my life f#irstworldproblems
3) #ripArchieB You’re not getting your hands on my records #can’ttouchthis
4) Wat Tyler 6 feet under #winning #thuglife
5) Have fun in your mud huts you scum #steaknight #
champersforus