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NOTES ON ISSUE 1: GLOSSARY
PART 3 OF 5
…the highwayman in the dark was a
City tradesman in the light, and being recognized and challenged by his
fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of ‘the Captain,’
gallantly shot him through the head and rode away….
As Sanders notes in his Companion to A Tale of Two Cities,
Dickens gets this story slightly wrong (32). The account in
the Annual Register of 1775 describes the events
of January 4, 1775 as follows:
Mr. Brower, a print-cutter, near
Aldersgate-Street, was attacked on the road to Enfield by a single
highwayman, whom he recollected to be a tradesman in the city; he
accordingly called him by his name, when the robber shot himself
through the head. (82)
The part of London called
“the City” is the commercial center of the metropolis. Baedeker’s
handbook to London and Its Environs (1908) describes this
region as follows: “The CITY and the EAST END, consisting of that part
of London which lies to the E[ast] of the Temple, form the commercial
and money-making quarter of the Metropolis. It embraces the Port, the
Docks, the Custom House, the Bank, the Exchange, … and the Cathedral of
St. Paul’s, towering over them all…. On the W[est] verge of the City
are Chancery Lane and the Inns of Court, the
headquarters of barristers, solicitors and law-stationers” (xxix).
The area described is visible on this portion of Thornton’s map of
London (1784). Chancery Lane is just above Temple Bar at the left side
of the map; the Thames (with Docks and Ports) is at the bottom; the
Bank and the Exchange are marked (but not labeled) to the left of
Threadneedle Street and above Cornhill (the crease in the map runs
through them); and St. Paul’s is near the middle.
Click
on map for larger view
“The Captain” was apparently a stock name or frequent pseudonym for
highwaymen, especially in the 18th century (Sanders 32).
…the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard
shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, ‘in
consequence of the failure of his ammunition’: after which the mail was
robbed in peace…
Dickens is here glossing the events of December 5, 1775, as recorded in
the Annual Register of that year. The notice in the Annual
Register reports the story as follows:
The Norwich stage was this morning
attacked, in Epping forest, by seven highwaymen, three of whom were
shot dead by the guard; but his ammunition failing, he was shot dead
himself, and the coach robbed by the survivors.
Though Dickens identifies the coach
attacked by highwaymen as “the mail,” the incident (in 1775) precedes
the advent of mail-coaches in England (the first of which began to
transport mail in 1784 [Harper 40]). The vehicle attacked was actually
the “Norwich stage” – a stagecoach on the Norwich road.
(Stage-coaches were conveyances traveling in “stages,” which the OED
defines as “division[s] of a journey or process,” or “[a]s much of a
journey as is performed without stopping for rest, a change of horses,
etc.; each of the several portions into which a road is divided for
coaching or posting purposes; the distance traveled between two places
of rest on a road.”)
…the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver
on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious
creature in sight of all his retinue…
Here, Dickens mistakes events of 1776 for those of 1775 (Sanders 32).
The Annual Register of 1776 records that on September 6,
The lord-mayor of London was robbed near
Turnham-Green, in his chaise and four, in sight of all his retinue,
by a single highwayman, who swore he would shoot the first man
that made resistance, or offered violence. (177)
The Lord Mayor of London is the mayor of the capital
city, though distinct from the Mayor of London, an elected politician;
the title “Lord Mayor” was originally reserved for
the mayors only of London, York, and Dublin, but has since been
extended to the mayors of other metropolises, such as Liverpool,
Birmingham, Sheffield, etc. (OED). The first Lord Mayor
was appointed in 1189; in 1775, the Lord Mayor was John Sawbridge;
and in 1776, Sir Thomas Hallifax (Lord Mayor of London,
Wikipedia). The appointment of the Lord Mayor is still attended
with considerable pomp: On the Lord Mayor’s Day, November
9, the Lord Mayor goes in procession from London to Westminster,
where he receives the assent of the monarch to his appointment
(OED).
Turnham Green, to which the London
Underground may now be taken, is in Chiswick, west of London.
…prisoners in London goals fought battles with their
turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them,
loaded with rounds of shot and ball…
Dickens is referring here to the events of March 14, 1775, recorded in
the Annual Register as follows:
Robert Rous, one of the turnkeys
of the New Gaol, Southwark, seeing a prisoner, who was committed there
for different highway robberies, with rags tied round his fetters,
ordered him to take them off; and, on his refusing to do it, he
immediately cut them off; when, finding both his irons sawed through,
he [the turnkey] secured him [the prisoner], and then sent up two of
his assistants to overlook a great number of prisoners who were in the
strong room. Upon this the prisoners immediately secured one of the
assistants in the room, and all fell on him with their irons, which
they had knocked off. Rous hearing of it, went up with a horse-pistol,
and extricated his fellow turnkey from their fury, and then locked the
door. All the turnkeys, as well as constables, now surrounded the door
and the yard; and the prisoners fired several pistols loaded with
powder and ball at two of the constables; when, the balls going through
their hats, and the outrages continuing, one of the constables, who had
a blunderbuss loaded with shot, fired through the iron grates at the
window, and dangerously wounded one fellow committed for a burglary in
the Mint. At length a party of soldiers, which had been sent for to the
Tower [of London], being arrived, and having loaded their muskets, the
room was opened, and the prisoners were all secured and yoked, and 21
of them chained down to the floor in the condemned room. Some of the
people belonging to the prison were wounded. (98)
“Blunderbusses” are a kind of gun,
described in Fairholt’s Costume in England, A History of Dress
(1860) as “Short hand-guns of wide bore.” The odd name, “blunderbuss,”
attracts attention, and Fairholt quotes a 17th-century opinion that “I
do believe the word is corrupted; for I guess it is a German term, and
should be donderbucks, and that is ‘thundering guns,’ donder
signifying thunder, and bucks a gun” (370). The OED gives a
similar, but more elaborate etymology: Describing “blunderbuss” as an
adaptation of the Dutch word “donderbus” (“donder” meaning “thunder”
and “bus” meaning gun or, originally, box or tube), the OED
suggests that “donder” was “perverted in form” to blunder, perhaps
intentionally as “some allusion to its blind or random firing.” The OED’s
definition of blunderbuss is “[a] short gun with a large bore, firing
many balls or slugs, and capable of doing execution within a limited
range without exact aim (now superseded, in civilized countries, by
other fire-arms).” Date charts and examples of the use of the word
“blunderbuss” suggest that this kind of gun was most frequently in use
between the 17th and mid-19th centuries.
“Shot and ball” refers to the ammunition with which blunderbusses were
loaded. According to the OED, “shot” and “ball,” in their
association with firearms, originally referred to the missiles
appropriate to various kinds of large, early weaponry. “Ball”
originally referred to the projectile missiles of catapults and
crossbows, and later of cannons, muskets, etc; “shot” was usually
associated with cannon or other artillery in which these projectiles
were propelled “by force of an explosion.” In later usage, shot and
ball both came to refer to the smaller discharges of hand-held guns.
…thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of
noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’s,
to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers,
and the musketeers fired on the mob…
According to the Annual Register, on June 22, 1775,
Being the day appointed for
keeping the anniversary of his Majesty’s birth-day, who entered into
the 38th year of his age on the 4th instant, it was celebrated with the
usual joy and splendour. Lord Stormonth’s St. Andrew’s cross, set round
with diamonds, and appended to his ribbon of the order of the Thistle,
was cut from it, at court, by some sharpers, who made off with it
undiscovered. It was worth several hundred pounds. (132)
And on September 27, 1775,
In consequence of an information
given of a considerable quantity of contraband goods being lodged at a
house in Buckridge-street, St. Giles’s, Mr. Phillips, a Custom-house
officer, attended by a number of peace-officers, and a file of
musqueteers from the Savoy, went in search of the goods; and, in one
room where they got entrance, they found a bag and eight pounds of tea,
which were lodged in the Custom-house. Immediately after the officers
and guards had left the house, and got into the street, they were fired
at several times from the mob, and pelted with brick-bats, &c. but
no person received the least hurt from this outrage but Mr. Phillips,
who had his nose cut by a piece of glass bottle. Not content with this,
the mob followed them; and, after pelting, fired at them; on which the
guard returned, and discharged their musquets among the mob, when some,
it is said, were killed and wounded. One of the ringleaders of the gang
was taken before the magistrates of Litchfield-street, who committed
him to Newgate. (163)
In this and other entries in the Annual
Register, a “mob” appears to materialize out of nowhere, suggesting
that chaos threatened, at any moment, to break out in the London
streets. In fact, mobs were somewhat frequent in 18th-century London,
but were usually motivated by some kind of social or political protest
(Johnson 31-2).
In the midst of them, the hangman … was in constant
requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals;
now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday;
now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now
burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; today, taking the
life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who
had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence.
According to entries in the Annual Register of 1775, the London
executioner was indeed responsible for the various punishments
enumerated here – hanging housebreakers, burning thieves in the hand,
and burning pamphlets outside Westminster Hall. An account of January
and February 1775 describes a series of punishments handed down at the
sessions in which criminal trials were heard, including the sentence of
a thief of a farmer’s boy’s sixpence:
The sessions were ended at the Old
Bailey; when the court passed sentence of death on eight convicts;
sentence of transportation for seven years, on forty-three; and for 14
years, on three more. Three were ordered to be branded in the hand, and
four to be privately whipt. And on the 15th of February, four of the
capital convicts were executed at Tyburn. The fifth was pardoned on
condition of transport for his natural life. One of those who suffered
was for robbing a farmer’s boy of six-pence. (83)
The duty of burning pamphlets outside
Westminster Hall also devolved upon the hangman, apparently as a way of
performing, publicly, the condemnation of seditious tracts. The Annual
Register of 1775 describes this process in application to pamphlets
defending the cause of the American colonies against England:
Lord Effingham complained in the
House of Lords of the licentiousness of the press, and produced a
pamphlet entitled, “The Present Crisis with Respect to America
Considered,” published by T. Becket, which his Lordship declared to be
a most daring insult on the king: and moved, that the house would come
to resolutions to the following effect:
That the said pamphlet is a false, malicious, and dangerous libel….
That one of the said pamphlets be burnt by the hands of the common
hangman in Old Palace-yard; and another, at the Royal Exchange.
That these resolutions be communicated to the House of Commons at a
conference, and that the concurrence of that house be desired. Which
resolutions being read, were unanimously agreed to…. A second
conference now ensued, arising from a complaint of the Earl of Radnor
in the Upper House, and of Lord Chewton in the Lower House, against a
periodical paper, called The Crisis, No. 3 published for T. Shaw,
&c. In the Lower House, the paper in question had been voted a
false, malicious, and seditious libel; in the Upper House, the word treasonable
was added; but, upon re-considering the matter, that was omitted: but
it was, like the other, unanimously ordered to be burned by the hands
of the common hangman…. In obedience to the above orders, these pieces
were burnt, on the 6th of March following, by the common hangman, at
Westminster-hall gate. (94-5)
Westminster Hall is an old building –
erected in 1397 under Richard II – which still stands. It is located
across from Westminster Abbey, on the side of the houses of Parliament
facing away from the Thames (the houses of Parliament are much newer,
having been rebuilt in the 19th century). It was used as a royal
banqueting and coronation hall (a wedding banquet was given there for
George III and his queen on September 22, 1761 [Gaspey 137]), and peers
accused of treason were frequently tried there (e.g. Guy Fawkes
[Woodley 192]). In the 18th century, Westminster Hall contained the
courts of Chancery, King’s-bench, and Common Pleas (Harrison 517-8); it
is now devoted to no specific purpose, but is sometimes used for state
occasions (Woodley 192).
Thornton’s New, Complete, and Universal
History, Description, and Survey of … London (1784)
furnishes us with an illustration of Westminster Hall as it
appeared in the late 18th century.
Old-Palace Yard (identified by the Annual
Register as one of the locations in which the “common
hangman” was to burn seditious pamphlets) was the site
of the original Westminster Hall, a banqueting-house constructed
by William Rufus, which Richard II replaced with the Hall that
still stands.
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