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Message 1.Μύ
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Monday, 5th September 2011
There is a new Julia Donaldson book out, called 'The Highway Rat'. I haven't got it yet, but I mean to. The cover depicts a rat in full 18thcentury highwayman kit - boots, hat, mask, frilly shirt etc. This has inspired me to start a thread about highway robbery, about which I know a fair bit. Obviously, the popular image of the highwayman is immensely cool, but not all representations are so favourable. In addition to numerous, factual accounts of highwaymen as viscious thugs, there's the highwayman in Fielding's 'Tom Jones', who is a rather pathetic figure. One myth that needs to be dispelled is that England's original highwaymen were Royalists who took to the road in the wake of defeat during the civil wars of the 17th century - in fact, the tradition of the mounted, pistol-armed English highwayman goes back to the late 16th century, at least. One question that still perplexes me is why highway robbery died out in England in the early 19th century, too early for the coming of the railways to have had an impact. Could it be that their traditional haunts, such as Hampstead Heath, became engulfed by growing cities? Was there a general improvement in law and order stimulated by, eg, the use of mounted Yeomanry to combat political radicals? Did the spread of turnpike roads have owt to do with it?
Anyone looking for general info on highway robbery in English History could do worse than get hold of a copy of Gillian Spraggs's excellent book 'Outlaws and Highwaymen'.
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Message 2
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 5th September 2011
Catigern
On the general point about the end of the age of the Highwaymen the creation of the turnpike trusts and the resulting great increase in stage-coach companies, inns etc may well have made it more risky. More people moving around policing the roads as many people feel might happen if more people got out of their cars and moved around on foot or bicyle.
There are also indications that things like the amount of professional poaching - of the kind that inspired the Game Laws- with "no questions asked" game turning up in London based hostelries- may well have been associated with an increase in the population eaking out some kind of living in those heaths and forests close to London, which had been the best place for Highwaymen, who were most effective when they acted alone.. I retain this idea that when the enclosure movement finished with the arable fields and moved on to the commons, waste and forest that those who "lost out" in the process moved on to the remaining bits.
But with a larger population the odd bit of highway robbery was not enough to support everyone, or in fact make use of the larger Labour force.. Just round here in the remnant of the Great North Wood to the south of London the local forests were famous for gypsies (Gypsy Hill) but also for the smuggler trails along which goods brought up illegally from the Channel Coast found their way into London.
Perhaps you are familiar with the story of the Otmoor enclosure and the arrests, and riots in Oxford c1830, which resulted ,when fence breaking continued on moonlit nights after the trial of the rioters, in the deployment of an army unit in Oxford to keep the peace.. I always wonder whether this was not one if not the triggers for that first Tractarian pamphlet on National Apostacy.. Anyway it is obvious that the resistance of the people of Charlton on Otmoor etc to the enclosure scheme was based upon the fact that the marshes of Otmoor were a nice little earner. The villagers had flocks of ducks and geese. And there were worse ways to make a living than collect a few eggs of a morning and walk into Oxford in time for those wealthy young students to have eggs for their breakfast. Twenty years or so later Henry Mayhew wrote of lots of street venders and othes like the rat catchers who could make a living just picking up what was around just outside London and taking things in to sell.
Perhaps another factor was the length of the French Wars 1793-1815 and perhaps a change in demobbing practice.
In 1764 "The Crying Highwayman " operated on the roads going north of London. He operated with Irish gallantry and not a little blarney, always apologising to the ladies and assuring them that he would take nothing from them. And he deeply regretted asking even the men for their money, being seen to cry with distress. With some credibility he claimed to have been a soldier who had fought in the Seven Years War that had ended in 1763, and was only trying to get his way back to Ireland.
I suppose the highwayman was a development on from the footpads. You may have read the account in John Evelyn's diary of how he was set upon as he was riding across Blackheath by two villains who robbed him of several items and left him tied up. But as soon as he was released he rushed to a printers and had circulars printed and sent to all the likely shops where the villains might try to sell his goods. The goods were recognised and the villains apprehended. A robber on horseback could rob further away from known haunts.
Cass -
Message 3
Posted by Poldertijger (U11154078) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
Hello Catigern and Cass,
At the end of the 18th century the highwaymen were a pest on both sides of the Channel. On this side of the Channel Napoleon did away with them by a policy of Law and Order.
Regards,
Poldertijger -
Message 4
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
...an increase in the population eaking out some kind of living in those heaths and forests close to London, which had been the best place for Highwaymen,...Μύ
I think you may have something there, Cass. One interesting thing about highwaymen is that they were, according to Spraggs, at least, part of an *urban* subculture, rather than a rural one. I'd been wary of the 'growth of cities' factor, because that alone might have been expected to dislocate highwaymen, moving them further out, but not to cause them to disappear. Some sort of change in the nature of the urban/rural 'frontier zone', such as you describe, seems a more likely explanation.
Hello, Poldertijger,
On this side of the Channel Napoleon did away with them by a policy of Law and OrderΜύ
I think highwaymen are cool! I was never very keen on either Bonaparte or 'law and order', and you've just given me a reason to despise both even more...
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Message 5
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
Catigern
Yes. It seemed to me to be an interesting area of speculation.. Obviously the highwayman was generally a loner- and I am not sure just how the increasing use of paper money might have impacted.
William Pitt suspended cash payments during the French Wars and I seem to recall that they were resumed c1821.. The whole point of the bank note was that it was lighter and less risky to carry around. And a stranger trying to pass off a high denomination banknote would incite suspicion then as now.
But at the same time as the prosperity of the country grew so did the legal and illegal opportunities.. William Cobbett refers to the gradual monopolisation of- if not haymaking then - at least hayrick making as a specialist task for gangs of Irish workers who moved across the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Counties following the ripening of the wheat.
One would think that this really was facilitated by the Act of Union making migrant Irish labourers "British" at a time when there was plenty of money in the English countryside and plenty of employment, until 1815 and the lean years when the situation was reversed and the countryside was impoverished with farmers being ruined.
I always suspect that the rick-burning associated with the Last Labourers' Revolt in 1830 was connected with this Irish connection and the fact that Parliament had given in to terrorism in passing Catholic Emancipation while law-abiding English workers were being harshly treated.. It was November 5. The night to remember Roman Catholic gunpowder treason and plot and light bonfires.
Nevertheless I think that there is a good chance that a gang of Irish labourers over here on legal and respectable business- might enhance their respectability by "dealing with" a lone highwayman, one way or another. Even if at the end of the season they were forced to apply to the Poor Law overseer for some help to get back to Ireland a history of "civic responsibility" would do them no harm.
But surely what is generally accepted is that Sir Robert Peel set up the "Bobbies" because by that time c1829 there was a real London Underworld emerging, which suggests probably inward migration .. And ten years later the success of the Metropolitan Police force resulted in a migration of criminals to Birmingham and other hugely expanding cities. We know this because they decided to learn the lesson of London's success and set uo their own local police forces.
Cass -
Message 6
Posted by Poldertijger (U11154078) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Hello Catigern,
You write:
I think highwaymen are cool! I was never very keen on either Bonaparte or 'law and order', and you've just given me a reason to despise both even more...
Μύ
Actually, the Dutch were quite happy that the new regime put an end to this kind of crime, while the old regime had shown to be incapable of doing so.
Ancien regime
New regime
Regards,
Poldertijger
Regards,
Poldertijger -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Polder
I think that I have commented in the past on what seems to me to be your penchant for systems and orderlyness..
I think it was in France that I recently watched a film on the global impact of the way that climate change is impacting on our relationship with water.. One section featured a place in the Netherland where the local authority has opted to flood a region to the depth of about 2 metres in order to keep the situation manageable.. One family whose farm was going to be lost were very "civilised" and understanding about it.
But Catigern- as a Lancastrian - may feel, as many from that county seem to do, that while the great cities are the product of intelligence and calculation, the heart and soul is really in the Lake District, one of the most beautiful places on earth.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills etc
Wordsworth and the worship of Nature.. The Dutch mastered Nature and made her their "mistress"- in the subordinate sense.
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by mismatched (U14242423) on Friday, 9th September 2011
According to popular history Hounslow Heath was invested with highwaymen. Hounslow Heath is now covered by Heathrow Airport, is this significant ?
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Message 9
Posted by ritajoh (U10855204) on Friday, 9th September 2011
You say catigern that highway robbery died out in the 19 century , i beg to differ, its still alive today but under many disguises.
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