Government Created Crimes

In the 18th century, the British government collected a good deal of its income from customs duties - tax paid on the import of goods such as tea, cloth, wine and spirits. The price of imported goods could be up to 30% tax so smuggled goods were a lot cheaper than those bought through official channels.

Smugglers on the beach
George Moreland (1763-1804)

Smugglers operated all around the coasts of Britain, but were particularly aggressive and well-organised gangs worked on the south coast, only a night's sail from France. The gangs were often too big for the Customs officials to deal with as, with the death penalty a certainty if they were caught the smugglers were prepared to use violence.

Disney's The Scarecrow, 1963

Many ordinary people approved of smuggling, or took part in it. Labourers could earn more in a night's work carrying brandy barrels up from the beach than they could in a month's hard work in the fields. Others left their barns or cellars unlocked and didn't ask questions about what was put in there. Quite respectable people were involved, sometimes for money, sometimes because they didn't regard smuggling as a crime.

Ross Poldark ferrying contraband,
BBC series 2

The romance of smuggling comes in part from accounts of characters like  Jack Rattenbury of a village called Beer in east Devon.

Born in 1778 Rattenbury started his life at sea as a fisherman but soon progressed to the more interesting and lucrative trade of defrauding the king. When he was fifteen he was part of the crew of a privateer but was captured and was taken prisoner by the French, and thrown into gaol.

Rattenbury escaped and got back to England. His journal recounts many adventures including one where he tricks his drunken French captures into believing they were heading back to France when all the time he was steering the ship to England. He made his escape by diving into the sea and swimming into Swanage harbour where he raised the alarm and notified the customs authorities that there was a hostile French ship in the harbour.

Beer, east Devon

Smuggling and smugglers have also been a vast source of inspiration of fiction writers. Perhaps the most famous being, The Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn by Russell Thorndike. The first book, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh was published in 1915. The story idea came from smuggling in the 18th century Romney Marsh, where brandy and tobacco were brought in at night by boat from France. Minor battles were fought, sometimes at night, between gangs of smugglers, such as the Hawkhurst Gang and the Revenue, supported by the army and local militias in South Kent and West Sussex.


Three film adaptations have been made of Dr. Syn's exploits.
Doctor Syn (1937) featured noted actor George Arliss in the title role and was its star's last film; Captain Clegg (1962) known as Night Creatures in the U. S., was produced by Hammer Film Productions with actor Peter Cushing in the lead role; and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963) starring Patrick McGoohan in the title role.

Smuggling today is probably just as risky as it was in the past, if not more so as smugglers who use their bodies as a vehicle for drugs put their own lives on the line. The number of swallowed drug packages recovered by customs officers at Heathrow airport is usually between 80 and 150 a year. The drugs are wrapped in condoms, balloons or cling-film, forming neat packages about the size of a large grape, and swallowed with syrup to make them more palatable. Couriers take a constipating agent before they embark and tend not to eat during the flight.

In March this year the Daily Telegraph online reported on a strange case of modern smuggling. A man was caught trying to enter Spain through Madrid airport with a suspiciously large bulge between his legs in much the same vain as the fictional Derek Smalls played by Harry Shearer in the film Spinal Tap. In this case the hidden appendage turned out to be half a kilo of cocaine whereas Smalls' turned out to be cucumber if I remember it rightly.

Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap
with customs officer inspecting
a large appendage in his pants.

When Prime Minister William Pitt lowered duties in the 1780s, smuggling became less profitable and gradually the trade began to fall way. Further removal of duties in the 19th century put an end to the kind of smuggling which went on so openly in the 18th century. It seems to be the case that smuggling is always with us. Whenever governments try to stop, or tax, the movement of goods people really want, smugglers will move in no matter how high the stakes.

The prostitute who married a duke

English society expected, even encouraged, men to pay for sex in the 18th century. Prejudice and the law barred women from all but the most menial of jobs so prostitution with all its dangers was a career option worth exploring for some becasue a typical harlot could earn in a month what a tradesman or clerk would earn in a year.

For a few beautiful and savvy women, the gamble of this dangerous occupation paid off. Some became successful matrons of ‘Disorderly Houses’ while the occasional woman came up trumps and married a duke.

The Harlot's Progress,
The death of Moll Hackabout by William Hogarth

Unfortunately, the majority were destined for a life of disease, despair and early death much like William Hogarth’s Moll Hackabout in  The Harlot’s Progress (1731-2).

 

Portrait of Lavinia Fenton, actress

One girl who got her man was Lavinia Fenton. She was born in 1708; the illegitimate daughter of a naval lieutenant named Beswick, her mother’s name is not recorded. When her mother’s lover died at sea she married a Mr Fenton, a man who ran a coffee house near Charring Cross. Mr Fenton it seems was a good sort who sent his adopted daughter to boarding school. Therefore, Lavinia had the advantage of not only her beauty but of education and wit.






By 1725 she had attracted the attentions of a Portuguese nobleman who, having run up debts catering for her desires, ended up in the Fleet Prison. It was after this, in 1726, that another unnamed aristocrat used his influence to launch her career on the London stage.

Hogarth's parody of Gay's The Beggar's Opera
with Lavinia and the Duke of Bolton

Her first appearance was as Monimia in Thomas Otway's The Orphan: or The Unhappy Marriage, in March 1726 .









Shortly after she appeared as Cherry Boniface in The Beaux Stratagem and went onto join the company of players at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields but it was as Polly Peacham in John Gay's Beggar's Opera, she found her greatest success.

The play was a runaway success. Politicians smarted at being portrayed as highwaymen, fences, pickpockets and molls, but the public loved it and bought playing cards, fans and parlour screens imprinted with scenes or lyrics of the dashing MacHeath, or of Polly Peachum's true-love.In her first season as Polly Peacham, Lavinia became the talk of the town and the object of Charles Powlett, 3rd Duke of Bolton’s desire.

Portrait of Anne Vaughan, the abandoned wife
of Charles Duke of Bolton

Like many men of his rank he was locked in a loveless marriage to Lady Anne Vaughan, a daughter of the 3rd Earl of Carbery. Lady Anne, Lady Montague wrote, was "educated in solitude with some choice books, by a saint-like governess: crammed with virtue and good qualities, she thought it impossible not to find gratitude, though she failed to give passion; and upon this she threw away her estate, was despised by her husband and laughed at by the public."





Contemporary accounts describe Bolton as "a handsome, agreeable libertine” and, "absolutely a fool" and a rogue. Memoirs of the Reign of George II records him as  "being as proud as if he had been of any consequence besides what his emploments made him, as vain as if he had some merit, and as necessitous as if he had no estate, so he was troublesome at Court, hated in the country, and scandalous in his regiment. The dirty tricks he played to cheat the Government of men, or his men of half-a-crown, were things unknown to any Colonel but his Grace, no griping Scotsman excepted." So, perhaps he wasn’t that much of a catch after all.

Charles, 3rd Duke of Bolton

Lavinia became Bolton’s mistress during the first season of The Beggar’s Opera in 1728 and gave up the stage to become a ‘kept woman’ in 1729. William Hogarth used the scandal in his series pictures of the Beggar’s Opera showing Lavinia looking past Mackheath, to the Duke standing in his box.

Lavinia in stout good health later in life.

The pair eloped to the continent in 1729.  John Gay commented on the event in a letter to Jonathan Swift: "The Duke of Bolton, I hear, has run away with Polly Peachum, having settled £400 a year on her during pleasure, and upon disagreement £200 a year."

Lavinia gave the Duke three illegitimate children. When his wife Anne died in 1751 Lavinia finally got her man and the pair were married in Aachen. By then the Duke had lost most of his income. He died three years later in 1754.



Their sons Charles, Percy, and Horatio had no estate or wealth to inherit. Consequently, Charles went into the church, Percy the navy, and Horratio the army.  Lavinia, now the duchess, died in 1760. She spent her last days at Westcombe House in Greenwich which she and Charles had shared since their marriage, and was buried in the nearly church of St Alfege. Peachum Road, close to the site of Westcombe House, was named in honour of her role as Polly Peachum.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavinia_Fenton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Paulet,_1st_Duke_of_Bolton
Character's Theater: Genre and Identity on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage, Lisa A. Freeman
http://thepeerage.com/ Cokayne, and others, The Complete Peerage, volume II, page 214.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westcombe_Park
http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=1/29/1728
http://www.smk.dk/en/visit-the-museum/exhibitions/william-hogarth-a-harlots-progress-and-other-stories/

Bonnie Prince Charlie and Toad - What could they have in common?

Bonnie Prince Charlie Leaves Scotland
John Blake MacDonald

It is a surprising thing to say but Bonnie Prince Charlie and Kenneth Graham’s character Toad, (Wind in the Willows, 1908) have much in common. Both were good-natured, kind-hearted and not without intelligence but they were also spoiled, reckless and obsessive.

Toad fooling a policeman
in a TV adaptation of Wind in the Willows

Although one is a character of fiction and the other of history and legend they both escaped the forces of law enforcement dressed as a woman, a washerwoman in Toad’s case, whereas the Bonnie Prince took the disguise of an Irish seamstress, Betty Burke when he climbed aboard the Bonnie boat to Skye with Flora MacDonald on his way to France in 1746 leaving a trail of destruction behind him.

The retribution that followed the defeat of the Jacobite Army at Culloden in 1746 has passed into legend for its brutality and savagery and has formed the backdrop to many classic stories including Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and more recently Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series of novels.

Today, we are so accustomed to picture of the suppression of the Highlands by the British Army painted in these novels that we are hardly surprised by it. However, when I looked at the records in the Scottish National Archive for this article I found the pastiche of brutality in the  films and TV shows suddenly and shaply transformed from fiction to fact and the true horror of what took place became fresh and alive once more.

I have chosen some examples from the records of the Fraser Clan to illustrate what happened as there is currently so much interest in it due to the success of the Starz Outlander TV series.

James Stuart: The man who arrived too late and left too early

James Stuart, The Old Pretender

When it comes to writing scenes for novels and films authors are often advised to get their characters to behave like good party guests that is: they should arrive late, and leave early. If James Stuart were a party guest he would indeed be a perfect one for this is exactly what he did in 1715.

With Queen Anne barely cold in her grave the Whigs in Parliament grabbed their opportunity to thwart any plans the catholic Stuarts had for their return and invited George Elector of Hanover to take the throne of Great Britain and Ireland while James Stuart was left politely sitting the in the independent Duchy of Lorraine waiting for his invitation to a coronation that of course would never came.


There was no great clamour for another Stuart King in 1715. Instead the rebellion attracted a coalition of support drawn from the politically and religiously driven, those dissatisfied with the 1707 Act of Union and those wanting to settle deep-rooted family or political antipathies like John Erskine the Earl of Mar.

John Erskine, 22nd Earl of Mar

The Treaty of Union had been pushed through the Scottish Parliament and although many Scots were patriotic unionists there were many other Scots who refused to accept the combination of political fixing, selfish economic deals and threats that got the union bill through the Scottish Parliament and saw its as an unforgiveable betrayal of the nation.

James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater

The 'Whig coup' did not go without reaction in England. Their political opponents the Tories were outraged and there were riots in some places but nothing to cause too much trouble to those in power.


A number of prominent English Tories led by James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater and his son Charles, and William Widdrington, 4th Baron Widdrington, Edward Howard son of the Duke of  Norfolk, and Robert Cotton a gentleman from Huntingdonshire were drawn into a pro-Stuart conspiracy.

In Scotland opposition to English Whigs and their king George I coalesced around the issue of dissatisfaction with the Union and the disgruntled and ambitious Tory, John Erskine the Earl of Mar a man who had risen to high office under the Tories and who, since the 'coup', was persona non grata in Westminster and the English Palace.

Treaty of Union between England and Scotland 1707

Despite receiving no commission from James to start the rising. On 27 August 1714 he held his first council of war at his seat in Braemar. On 6 September. Mar raised the standard of "James the 8th and 3rd" accompanied by 600 supporters determined to be the 'King Maker' and retrieve his position.



In London, Parliament responded by passing an Act giving tenants who refused to support the Jacobites the land of their landlords and some of Mar's tenants travelled to Edinburgh to prove their loyalty and acquire title to their land almost as soon as the proclamation was made.

Meanwhile Mar and his English allies, despite much petitioning of the French, found themselves thrown on their own resources which were at the beginning of the rebellion pretty evenly matched with those of the British Crown. Feeling confident of victory Mar marched south gathering men and resources until by the end of October he was more or less in control of whole of Scotland.

Duke of Argyll

With Mar appearing to be making progress the exiled James finally made his move and made Mar head of his army on 22nd October.

Mar however was not a brilliant general. He halted his advance and lost the initiative giving the Hanoverian forces under the command of the Duke of Argyll time to increase their strength.

18th century print showing
James Stuart's arrival at Peterhead

Finally, on 22 December James Stuart landed in Scotland at Peterhead but both the initiative and and the war had been lost by then.  Argyll could not be stopped and on 4 February James wrote a farewell letter to Scotland and sailed for France the following day.

As is usually the case, justice and retribution was meted out deferentially.

After the Battle of Preston 1,468 Jacobites were taken prisoner, 463 of them English including several aristocrats: the Earl of Winton, Viscount of Kenmure, the Earl of Nithsdale, Lord Nairne, and Derwentwater's son all of whom were later sentenced to be executed for treason under an Act of Attainder.

However while these aristocrats were languishing in prison awaiting their grisly and humiliating fate the British Parliament passed the Indemnity Act in July 1717. This Act effectively pardoned the surviving rebels with a few exceptions which included the notorious Rob Roy MacGregor. Some two hundred men captured at the Battle of Preston were released at Chester, as were those held at Edinburgh and Stirling. The Act did not undo the effect of the attainders, and confiscated estates worth £48,000 a year in England and £30,000 a year in Scotland were surrendered to the crown.

Mar fled to France, where he would spend the remainder of his life his Writ of Attainder remained in place until 1824. He died in 1732. It is said that his wife Lady Frances went mad in 1728 due to the stress of their exile. She outlived him by 35 years.

Of the ordinary Highland clansmen defeated at the Battle of Preston, many were transported to the Americas prior to the passing of the 1717 Act.This was a fate considered a living death by their families who would never see them again even if they survived their sentence. As prisoners, they were placed in a system of indentured servitude, in effect they became slaves for 7-8 years. Merchants would transport the convicts then auction them off to plantation owners and such like. These Highland rebels would have been part of the estimated 50,000 British convicts to colonial America in the 18th century.

There were fifty-six executions in all: thirty-four in Lancashire in January and February 1716, five in the autumn of that year, a dozen in London between 1715 and 1716, and four military executions but this was less than half the number of people executed after the Forty-five rebellion and a fraction of the number hanged after Monmouth's Rebellion of 1685.

Highlanders retreat after defeat at Perth

Although the 1715 rebellion is one of history's damp squibs for over 70 years, the ruling government in the British Isles was threatened by conspiracies, uprisings and threats of foreign invasion lead by the exiled Scots wandering through the courts of Catholic Europe plotting to turn back the clock.


Sources: 
Sheriffmuir 1715: Stuart Reid
1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion: Daniel Szechi
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13861
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Preston_(1715)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_rising_of_1715
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Radclyffe,_3rd_Earl_of_Derwentwater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_colony

The White Rose of Scotland

Mary's father, James II and VII, last Catholic
monarch in the British Isles.
Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c 1686.

Continuing this month's theme of Law and Order the next three blog posts will cover insurrection.

The 18th century saw two armed insurrections in support of the ousted Stuart dynasty; one in 1715 and one in 1745. Both were unsuccessful but the re-establishment of order was different in the aftermath in each case.

The whole Jacobite movement started when the Stuart King James II was deposed in 1688 and Parilament gave the throne of Great Britain and Ireland was given to his daughter Mary II and her husband and first cousin William of Orange.

William III and Mary II

Rejected by Parliament the Stuarts left England and went into exile.

The Stuarts were not without their supporters however, and there were people who thought that Parliament had no business interfering with the natural line of succession.

These supporters of the natural line of kings were known as Jacobites, i.e. the supporters of James.

Jacobite support was strongest in parts of the Scottish Highlands, lowland northeast Scotland, Ireland, and parts of northern England mostly in Northumberland and Lancashire and there were pockets of support in Wales and southwest England.

To be a Jacobite supporter was a very dangerous game. The stakes were high and if you were discovered you would be guilty of treason, and the death penalty would undoubtedly await you. Expressing allegiance therefore had to be done covertly and through a series of rituals, symbols and secret messages.

The emblem of the Jacobites was the White Cockade. All 69 Scottish Nationalist Party members of parliament wore white roses in their lapels at the swearing in ceremony of the Scottish parliament a few years back. Rosa x alba grows all over Scotland.  It is a bushy, shrub like rose with dark, grey green foliage and a small five petalled flower, similar to a dog rose, which can be white or pale pink. They only flower in spring, and have a beautiful scent with notes of citrus.  The plants are hardy, thrive in poor soil, can tolerate shade and drought and are for the most part resistant to disease. The origin of the rose as a symbol are somewhat lost in myth and legend.  It is said that one of the earliest references refers to the birth of James Francis Edward Stuart, son of the deposed King James II, who was born on 10th June in 1688, said to be “the longest day of the year in which the white rose flowers.

In the years leading up to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, Jacobites were forced to meet and plot in secret, and the white rose or white cockade (a flower made from ribbon, often worn on a hat) was a way of identifying those who supported the cause. The Jacobites had many other secret symbols, including the sunflower to symbolise loyalty, as a sunflower always follows the sun and moths or butterflies whose emergence from a chrysalis symbolised the hope for the return to power of the Stuart family. The Merovingian bee was adopted by the exiled Stuarts in Europe, and engraved bees are still to be seen on some Jacobite glassware.

Another legend tells how Bonnie Prince Charlie plucked a white rose from the roadside and stuck it in his hat as he made his way south from Glenfinnan to start the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

When asked about the significance of the Nationalists wearing of the white rose Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, denied that the flower was a reference to the Jacobites.  Instead he cited the poem “The Little White Rose”, written by the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and claimed the rose stood for “all of Scotland”.  MacDiarmid (1892-1978) was a committed Nationalist and in 1928 helped found the National Party of Scotland, the forerunner of today’s Scottish National Party.

Jacobitism was attractive to members of the English aristocracy who had chosen to remain Catholic after the Reformation. About 2-3% of the English population remained practising Catholics at the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 although there were more significant concentrations of Catholics particularly in the north of England. The movement also found support in the Catholic populations of Ireland and rural Scotland and Wales because they hoped the return of a Stuart king would end their exclusion from many aspects of civic and political life under the Recusancy Acts. The Catholic Irish supported James II due to his 1687 Declaration of Indulgence or, as it is also known, The Declaration for the Liberty of Conscience and because he promised an Irish Parliament.

In lowland Scotland, the Catholics tended to come from the gentry and formed the most ideologically committed supporters of the Stuart cause, drawing on almost two centuries of subterfuge as a minority persecuted by the state and rallying enthusiastically to Jacobite armies as well as contributing financial support to the court in exile.

Highland clans such as the MacDonnels and MacDonalds of Clanranald, Keppoch, Glengarry and Glencoe; the Clan Chisolm, and the Ogilvy were largely still Catholic. Other clans, such as the powerful Camerons, were Episcopalian, and as staunch in their Jacobitism as their allies the Catholic MacDonalds.

Scottish Episcopalians

Scottish Episcopalians provided over half of the Jacobite forces in Britain. As Protestants they could take part in Scottish politics, but were in a minority and were repeatedly discriminated against in legislation favouring the established Church of Scotland which was Presbyterian. However, many Episcopalians were quiet about any Jacobite sympathies the had and were able to accommodate themselves to the new regime. About half of the Episcopalians supporting the Jacobite cause came from the Lowlands, but this was obscured in the risings by their tendency to wear Highland dress.

Actor Sam Heughan as James Fraser
 in Outlander

In the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highland clans Jacobites were known as Seumasaich. The conflict between the clans was more about politics than religion. A significant factor was resistance to the territorial ambitions of the Presbyterian Campbells of Argyll. Another factor in Highland Jacobitism was James VII's sympathetic treatment of the Highland clans. Whereas previous monarchs since the late 16th century had been antagonistic to the Gaelic Highland way of life, James had worked sympathetically with the clan chieftains in the Commission for Pacifying the Highlands. Some Highland chieftains therefore viewed Jacobitism as a means of resisting hostile government intrusion into their territories. The significance of their support for the Stuarts was that the Highlands was the only part of Britain which still maintained private armies, in the form of clan levies. During the Jacobite Risings, they provided the bulk of Jacobite manpower.

Although most support for the Stuart cause came from Tories there were some notable Whig exceptions most notably the Earl of Mar most sympathetic Whigs were merely keeping their options open in case the Stuarts returned.

Jacobites were distinctly unenlightened and un-democratic. They believed in the:
• divine right of kings;
• "accountability of Kings to God alone";
• inalienable hereditary right; and the
• "unequivocal scriptural injunction of non-resistance and passive obedience” to the crown.

Robert Filmer's Patriarcha (1680), in which he defended the theory of Divine Right

The Stuarts mounted two military campaigns to regain the British crown and I will cover these and the law and order issues that arose in more detail in the next two blogs.


Sources:
Scotland, A Concise History, Fitzroy Maclean, Thames and Hudson
Bonnie Prince Charlie, Fitzroy Maclean, Canongate Books Ltd.
The Jacobites, Britain and Europe 1688–1788, Daniel Szechi, Manchester University
The Myths of the Jacobite Clans, Murray G. H. Pittock, Edinburgh University Press
Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–60, Hannah Smith, Cambridge University Press 2006
The Material Culture of the Jacobites, Neil Guthrie, Cambridge University Press 2014

Ross Poldark goes to Bodmin Assizes

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark
 BBC production 2015.

Ross Poldark finds himself fighting for his life at the Bodmin Assizes this weekend. The Assize Courts ran in England from the 13th century right up to 1971 when they were replaced by Crown Courts. For most of English history the criminal courts system in England fell into three categories:

1. Magistrates’ courts where minor offences were dealt with in ‘petty sessions.’ These made up the  vast majority of criminal cases during the 1700s . Magistrates were themselves unpaid officials who were drawn from the ranks of the wealthy, and were expected to defend the English law as amateurs. As a result, many magistrates were easily corrupted. In London, Horace Walpole believed that ‘the greatest criminals of this town are the officers of justice’.

Sir William Blackstone, Judge.

2. Local county courts where trials were held four times a year at the ‘quarter sessions.’ For more serious crimes such as rape or murder, cases were referred to Crown courts, who sat at quarterly assizes in large towns or at the Old Bailey in London. For the ordinary citizen, trials at these higher courts were hugely intimidating experiences. Business was conducted in Latin. Few of those accused had a defence barristers until the end of the century, and witnesses were usually examined directly by the judge and sometimes by members of the jury. The vast majority of cases lasted for only a matter of minutes, and it was not uncommon for dozens of cases to be heard in a single day.

3. Assizes where the most serious criminal trials were heard twice a year by judges appointed by the monarch who travelled around a ‘Circuit’ of towns dispensing justice. Bodmin in Cornwall was on what was called the ‘Western Circuit’ which covered Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. The lent assizes were held at Winchester, Salisbury, Dorchester, Exeter, Launceston, Taunton and Bristol, and were generally attended in that order. The summer assizes were held at Winchester, Salisbury, Dorchester, Exeter, either Bodmin or Truro, and either Wells or Bridgwater, and were generally attended in that order.

Fictional Judge Buller in Garrow's Law, BBC.

Bodmin Gaol, was built in the late 18th century and was the first British prison to hold prisoners in separate cells although this did not mean each prisoner had their own cell, those awaiting trial as well as convicts were often held in cells up to 10 at a time.

During the 18th century criminals and law breakers were often celebrated in popular culture and seen as local heroes. Stories of daring criminality were reported in printed pamphlets, books and newspapers, and generated high levels of public interest across the country.

Highwaymen, in particular, were held in high esteem by many people. Tales of highway robbery often became the stuff of folklore and legend, and several highwaymen became celebrities in their own lifetime. When street robber Jack Sheppard was hanged in 1724 after making four escapes from prison, 200,000 people attended his execution and when the celebrated 18th-century highwayman John Rann was acquitted of a charge of theft in 1774 he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring admirers as he left court in London.
But anyone being brought before a court of Assize was usually in serious trouble.


Over fifty prisoners were condemned at the Bodmin Assize Court and were hanged in the prison. The prison was also used for holding convicts sentenced to transportation; a punishment that was like a living death to many as they never saw their family or their home ever again.

Henry Fielding

18th-century law enforcement was very different from modern-day policing. The prosecution of criminals remained largely in the hands of victims who organised their own investigations and constructed the case against the accused. Every parish was obliged to have one or two constables, who were selected every year from the community. Service was unpaid and done in the appointee’s spare time. Many simply paid for substitutes to stand in for them. However, from the 1750s this system of local policing was strengthened by a more professional force of officers. In 1751 London magistrate Henry Fielding founded the Bow Street Runners, who for the first time provided a permanent body of armed men to carry out investigations and arrests in London.

The 18th-century criminal justice system relied heavily on the existence of the ‘bloody code’. This was the list of crimes that were punishable by death - by 1800 there were over 200 capital offences. Guilty verdicts in cases of murder, rape and treason - even lesser offences such as poaching, burglary and criminal damage - could all see the accused at the gallows. Executions were elaborate and shocking affairs, designed to act as a deterrent to those who watched. Until 1783 London executions took place at Tyburn eight times a year, where as many as 20 felons could be hanged at the same time.

Judges also had at their disposal a range of other unsavoury punishments including transportation to the American colonies and later in the century to Australia and those convicted of lesser crimes could be fined, branded on the hand with a hot iron, or publicly shamed by being whipped ‘at the cart’s tail’, or being set in the pillory. The pillory was not an easy option. After many years of successfully plying her trade as the keeper of a ‘Disorderly House’ otherwise called a brothel in St James London, Elizabeth Needham was fined 1 shilling and required to stand twice in the pillory in 1731. She was so severely pelted on the first occasion that she died two days later and never completed her sentence.



Sources:
https://www.bl.uk/georgian-britain/articles/crime-and-punishment-in-georgian-britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodmin_Jail
http://www.bodminjail.org/

'X' marks the spot - Where to find real pirate treasure

Isle of Chance Treasure Map

We know as soon as we are old enough to pick up a book or watch TV that any pirate worth his grog buries his loot in the golden sand of an idyllic island. Then he makes a map to remind him where his cache is hidden marking the location with a huge  'X'.





Pirate treasure is always hard to find and the scurvy sea going villains are always fighting each other for their share of the loot but what if pirate treasure was real; where would you find it?

The answer is on the silver screen.

The pirates we have come to know and love are essentially the creations of Robert Louis Stevenson and J.M. Barrie. Stevenson's characters are historical and real while Barrie's are magical and charming. Despite these differences the essential elements of their different stories have been remodelled and re-worked time after time to provide a plethora of plot lines over the years.

The essential elements of a pirate story are:

• Lots of hidden pirate gold
• A blood thirsty baddie 
• Lots of swash buckling and walking the plank
• A survey crew full of treachery
• A damsel in distress
• A hero to kill the baddie and save the damsel

The first pirate story in cinemas was a film called The Pirate's Gold in 1908 directed by D. W. Griffith. It was only 16 minutes long but it started an industry that is still going strong today. In 1912 the first screen version of Treasure Island was made and for the next 14 years years Hollywood film makers produced about one pirate film a year. The first female pirate films appeared amazingly early on before the formula above became really entrenched. In 1916 Lillian Gish starred as Daphne the Pirate and Gladys Hulette appeared in the lead role in a film called Prudence the Pirate!

As Hollywood moved towards its 'Golden Age'  Paramount Studios produced a film called The Black Pirate in 1926. The whole film is available on You Tube and is certainly worth a quick look if you have the time. It stared Douglas Fairbanks and was the first film to set out what would become the model of many pirate stories to come.

The story begins when Fairbanks' character is captured and left to die on an island by a band of marauding pirates who blow up his ship. He swears vengeance on them but to achieve his aim first he must pretend to be a pirate and takes the name, "The Black Pirate."

After much swashing and buckling the Black Pirate kills his adversary, the captain of the pirates but the captain's sidekick and second in command sneers at our hero's achievement saying there is more to being a pirate than a few sword tricks. So to prove his worth Fairbanks says he will capture the next ship of prey single-handed, which he does.

But the villainous pirates want to blow the ship up along with its crew and passengers one of whom the Black Pirate just happens to have fallen in love with and to make matters worse Fairbanks' new love interest is claimed by the second in command as his prize and plans to have his wicked way with her.

Desperate to save his new love from this deplorable fate the Black Pirate finds a way to save her saying that she is a princess and therefore more valuable if she remains "spotless and unharmed” a 1920's euphemism for remaining virgo intacta.

But when Fairbanks is caught, trying to release her, he is exposed as a traitor and the scurvy crew force him to walk the plank. But that is not the end of our gallant hero as he returns with a loyal band of followers to do battle with the villains and save the day. The story ends with Black Pirate being revealed as a Duke, and the "Princess" he loves is of course a noble Lady so there will be no class issues when they marry; and so the elements of the now familiar pirate romance came together to form a formula that would be repeated down the years in countless films and books.

In 1935 Hollywood went a step further transforming the pirate’s greedy, mean-spirited image to that of a fully fledged hero in the film Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. It was based on the 1922 novel of the same name by Rafael Sabatini and tells the tale of an enslaved doctor and a group of prisoners who escape their island prison to become pirates in the West Indies. Flynn's performance made him a major Hollywood star and established him as the natural successor to Douglas Fairbanks. The story was the perfect, if temporary antidote, to the pain of the Great Depression showing the lithe Flynn as the archetypal, unvanquished American man fighting against oppression.

Prudence the pirate becomes
 "Prudence Spitfire Stevens"

In the years that followed and especially through the 1940s and 50s the pirate hero ruled the waves in films like The Sea Hawk starring Errol Flynn in 1940, The Black Swan starring Tyrone Power in 1942, the Princess and the Pirate, a comedy starring Bob Hope and Virginia Mayo in 1944. The formula proved a rich vein for Hollywood well into the 1950s with films like The Buccaneer's Girl, Anne of the Indies, The Crimson Pirate starring Burt Lancaster and the extraordinary Against All Flags in 1952 again starring Errol Flynn as Brian Hawke and Maureen O'Hara as Prudence "Spitfire Stevens" in a remake of the 1916 film Prudence the Pirate.




The darker side of pirating was revived with Robert Newton’s portrayal of Long John Silver in Disney's version of Treasure Island. Newton’s portrayal of Silver like Stevenson’s book became the standard for screen portrayals of historical pirates. Newton also played Blackbeard in 1952 and Long John Silver again in the 1954. The exaggerated West Country accent Newton used to portray these characters is credited with popularising the stereotypical "pirate voice” and Newton has become the "patron saint" of the annual International ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’ held on 19th September every year.


But the most successful adaptation of the genre is without doubt Pirates of the Caribbean, a series of fantasy swashbuckler films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and based on Walt Disney's theme park ride of the same name. The film series started in 2003 with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which grossed US$654 million worldwide. The latest film in the series, subtitled Dead Men Tell No Tales, is set to be released on May 26, 2017.

In the early 1990s screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio conceived a supernatural spin on the now classic pirate genre after completing work on Disney’s Aladdin, but there was no interest in their new take on the pirate story then. The pirate story had had its day and no one was interested. Elliott and Rossio had to wait almost ten years before Disney called them back to liven up a pirate film they were working on and so the pirate story with the a dark and supernatural twist was born.

In June 2002 Gore Verbinski was signed to direct the first film The Curse of the Black Pearl. The film's stars Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush were signed the following month with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly following shortly afterwards. Shooting for The Curse of the Black Pearl began on October 9, 2002 and was in the can by March, 2003. Before its release, many film executives and journalists said it would be a flop but the public appetite for pirates was back and The Curse of the Black Pearl was a massive critical and commercial success.

To date Pirates of the Caribbean is the most successful Hollywood franchise ever and has made in excess of $1 billion – and that is real pirate treasure.

The World’s Most Successful Pirate was a Woman!

Jun Ichikawa in the film Singing Behind Screens, 2003
which is based on the life of Ching Shih

Ching Shih, the world’s most successful pirate was born in 1775. Although not much is known about her birth, she was a known prostitute who worked in floating brothel in the city of Canton where she caught the eye of the renowned pirate Zheng Yi. Some stories say that she was taken by force, others that she struck a bargain with the man she would marry for control of half of his Pirate Empire before she agreed to the marriage. Whatever happened the two worked together to run the most successful pirate operation ever seen in the South China Sea.

In the six years they were married their fleet grew from about 200 ships to more than 400. They formed alliances with other pirate leaders creating the Cantonese Pirate Coalition giving them effective control over much of the merchant traffic in the area by 1807 who they forced to pay protection money for safe passage. Zheng Yi’s ship was caught in a storm in 1807 and he lost his life.

His ferocious widow took up the reins of their criminal enterprise and continued to run the empire they had created together. With her newly appointed military commander Chang Pao leading her loyal band of some 400 pirates in raids Ching Shih focused on the “business” side of things. With her pirate army and navy she had effective control of Guangdong province, a vast spy network within the Qing Dynasty; and domination of the South Chinese Sea. This was not a situation the authorities in China would tolerate for long and soon the Emperor raised a fleet against her.

Unfortunately for the Emperor, Ching Shih was a brilliant military strategist and rather than running from her assailants she met them head on taking 63 of the Emperor’s ships and terrifying their crews into joining her by threatening to have them nailed to the deck by their feet then beaten to death if they did not join her. The Admiral in command of the debacle, Kwo Lang committed suicide rather than suffer further humiliation of being beaten and captured by a woman.

The Qing Dynasty government then enlisted the aid of the super-power British and Portuguese navies, as well as many Dutch ships, paying them large sums for their assistance to drive her into submission but although this international task force waged war on Ching Shih’s organisation for two years it met with little success. She won battle after battle until finally the Emperor decided to take a different tack and instead of trying to defeat her, he offered her and most of her organisation an amnesty.

Ching Shih initially rejected it but she wisely changed her mind and signed in 1810. The deal she struck disbanded her fleet but granted amnesty to most of her followers and allowed her to keep her loot. She sacrificed 126 members of her 376 crew who were executed and the other 250 received some punishment for their crimes. Her commander and new husband #ChangPao was given command of 20 ships in the Qing Dynasty navy.

As for Ching Shih herself, not only did she negotiate the rights to keep the fortune she acquired she got a noble title, “Lady by Imperial Decree”, which entitled her to various legal protections as a member of the aristocracy. She then retired at the age of 35, opening a gambling house cum brothel in Guangzhou, Canton, which she managed until her death at the age of 69. She died an aristocrat, a successful business woman, a mother and a grandmother.

Since her death her infamy has led to the creation of several fictional and semi-fictionalised accounts of her pirate years. She first appeared in the 1932 book ‘The History of Piracy’, by Philip Gosse then in Jorge Luis Borges's short story ‘The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate’ in 1954.

In 2003, Ermanno Olmi made a film, 'Singing Behind Screens’, loosely based on Borges's retelling of her story. In 2006 she was re-created as a guardian who fights demons to protect the denizens of the underworld in the graphic novel Afterlife. She appears in book eight of L.A.Meyer's Bloody Jack series, ‘In The Wake of the Lorelei Lee’ and finally makes it mainstream cinema in 2007 in the third film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, where a character called Ching, one of the nine Pirate Lords played by Keira Knightly is loosely based on her.

APirates of the Caribbean franchise, where a character called Ching, one of the nine Pirate Lords played by Keira Knightly is loosely based on her. 

Her most recent incarnation is in a Hong Kong television drama called Captain of Destiny starring Maggie Q.