The Deer & The Hangman

This story begins in the all too familiar climate of economic downturn.  In 1711, the South Sea Company was set up with monopoly trading rights in South America.  While the company failed to realise any profits from this monopoly, there was huge speculative investment in the company, causing an expediential rise in its stock.   This effect became known as the South Sea Bubble when it inevitably burst in 1720.  What followed was Britain’s first modern economic crisis as investors lost millions of pounds.  Sir Isaac Newton reportedly lost twenty thousand pounds (£2.4 million in today’s terms) in the crash. He was quoted as saying “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.”

The South Sea Crisis quickly became a target for satire in the press and in engraved prints by artists such as William Hogarth.  It also led to a rise in crime.  Highway robbery increased, although it had declined again by 1724.  There was also a sharp increase in deer poaching.  Furthermore, in the 1720s England had no police force and even the Bow Street Runners would not exist for another thirty years.  Watchmen and parish constables, many of them quite elderly, were meant to keep the peace in towns, but there was little provision for fighting crime in the country.  The primary means of catching criminals was offering rewards for information leading to their capture.  Members of gangs who gave evidence against their cohorts were pardoned.  Land owners armed their game keepers to defend against the deer stealers, leading to violent clashes.

Forests like Waltham Chase were a source of cheap meat, yet only the wealthy land owners were permitted to hunt in them.  The depression inevitably increased social tension and this became apparent in the activities of two particular gangs of deer stealers.  The gangs became famous for covering their faces with gunpowder to disguise their features and frighten people.  Because of this they became known as the ‘Blacks’. 

These gangs, one operating in Windsor, the other in Hampshire, went into forests in daylight armed with pistols and rifles to shoot and take deer.  The Hampshire gang primarily targeted the Bishop of Winchester’s park in Farnham.  The first major incident occurred in October 1721 when 16 poachers raided the park. Five deer were killed, a deer stealer shot (although he recovered) and four other poachers were soon caught.  Two were released and the others made to stand in the stocks, sentenced to a year and a day imprisonment and given a twenty pound fine.

The gang sought revenge.  They broke into the park at Farnham again and shot or stole more than twenty deer.  The deer stealers passed through the nearby town in triumph and without any opposition.  After this attack, rewards were offered for information leading to their capture and soldiers were stationed in Farnham.  So the deer stealers turned the focus of their attacks to Waltham Chase.  It took only two months for them to deplete the deer herds there.  These Waltham Blacks also sent letters to the local gentry, threatening to burn down their houses if there was any opposition to their hunting.

It was widely claimed that the deer stealers were Jacobites - supporters of the Catholic pretender to the throne James Stuart, who were attempting to incite rebellion against the Hanoverian George I.  The gentry and the government stoked public fears over Jacobitism to turn opinion against the Blacks.  However, there is little evidence that the Waltham Blacks supported the Jacobite cause.  Their leader, an unidentified man known as ‘King John’ distributed a pamphlet asserting that the Waltham Blacks were loyal subjects of King George.

That is not to say that they were not politicised. Shortly after the printing of this pamphlet, 16 of the deer stealers - armed, faces blackened, some wearing coats and caps of deerskin - converged on a public house near the Chase.  ‘King John’ appeared and proclaimed that they were loyal to the king and that their aim was justice.  They wished to see that the rich did not oppress the poor.  They were determined to remove the deer from the Chase because the area was intended for grazing cattle, not to fatten deer for the tables of the wealthy.  Three hundred people had gathered to see the Blacks.  No one tried to catch them as they rode away.

Their attacks diversified, often suggesting socio-political motivation.  When an estate owner near Farnham charged poor people for picking small firewood on his estate (customarily free) the Blacks destroyed a stand of trees on his land and warned they would pay him a second visit if the money he had charged was not returned.  Soon afterwards a shipment of venison and wine for the Prince of Wales was intercepted outside Winchester.  Following this, a significant reward was offered for the capture of the Waltham Blacks.  With arrest being a real danger, the deer stealers went to ground.

Almost immediately, a gang of deer stealers began to operate in the royal Windsor Forest.  Maybe some of the Waltham Blacks moved north or perhaps they were copycats, but the attacks they carried out in 1722 and 1723 were as violent, although no proclamations of social justice were made.

The crimes of the Berkshire Blacks reached a peak in spring 1723 when an old poacher was prosecuted for killing game, being fined 10 pounds and his guns deposited with a church warden.  A group of Blacks sought out the church warden and in the ensuing confrontation the warden’s son was shot through the head.  In the wake of such violence, Parliament was spurred to act against the poachers.

The government introduced an Act of Parliament designed specifically to target the poachers.  Formally titled ‘An Act for the more effectual punishing wicked and evil disposed Persons going armed in Disguise and doing Injuries and Violence to the Persons and Properties of His Majesty's Subject, and for the more speedy bringing the Offenders to Justice’ the bill became more widely known as the Waltham Black Act.  It came into effect on the 27 May 1723.  Going into a forest with your face blacked or in any other disguise; wounding, killing or stealing red or fallow deer; and sending a letter without a name or signed with a fictitious name that made monetary demands all became offences punishable with death.  It also made poaching fish or hunting hares in a forest, as well as damaging trees or setting fire to buildings capital offences.  In short, the Blacks could now be hung for most of their actions.

The Secretary of State sent two agents to Berkshire who succeeded in capturing three of the gang’s ringleaders.  A week later 21 other Blacks were arrested and sent to Newgate Prison.  They were returned to Reading for trial on 6 June.  Four of the accused were hanged for murder and six others were transported to the colonies.  The others were discharged due to insufficient evidence.

This put an end to the Berkshire Blacks, but soon the Hampshire deer stealers returned and renewed their actions.  They made numerous attacks in different parts of the county during the summer, including their final attack on Waltham Chase.  On Sunday 1 September 1723, seven men with blackened faces entered the Chase in search of deer.  One of their number, Edward Elliot, an apprentice tailor from Guildford, was captured by armed gamekeepers.  The rest of the gang came to his aid.  Closing to just a few yards, a poacher named Henry Marshall shot one of the keepers ‘unexpectedly in the breast and out the back’.  He died immediately.  More shots were exchanged, during which a keeper received a broken thigh from a shot to the hip and one of the deer stealers was also injured.  Marshall, Elliot and two others were captured in the running battle that ensued.  The remaining three were subsequently caught in their home town of Portsmouth.

Due to the infamy of the gang, they were moved under armed guard to London and kept in the notorious Newgate Prison.  They were tried at the court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall and found guilty of deer stealing and given the death sentence.  They were executed at Tyburn on 4 December 1723.

The Waltham Black Act remained on the statute book for a century, finally repealed in 1823, with the exception of the provisions against arson and shooting a person.  During its time in force, countless people were sent to the gallows for offences that it contained.  However, like many Draconian measures it failed to solve the problem it was devised to address.  The Berkshire and Waltham Blacks orchestrated their own downfall through the audacity of their final raids, while the Act that they had inspired was over-zealously interpreted by the courts to allow them to order the execution of thousands over the next century. But deer-stealing still continued after the law came into force. In the 1730s a large gang began taking the deer from Epping Forest, selling their ill-gotten meat through a butcher named Richard Turpin.  But that’s a different story.

The Curious Case of Francois Courvoisier

In the process of writing the post, The Genius of Jack Sheppard, back in 2011, I had to discard a section recounting a separate but interesting and somehow prevalent story.  If I had included it, the post would have wound up being way too long or I would have to have chopped out a lot of other stuff.  Therefore I decided to write a separate post for the material that I could not fit into the first.  For some reason I don't now recall, I never actually posted it.  Now, rather belatedly, hear it is.. .

Our story begins on the morning of 6 May 1840 at the London residence of retired MP Lord William Russell.  Maid-servant Sarah Manser was, as usual, the first to wake, at 6.30am.  She left the attic room she shared with the still slumbering cook and knocked on the valet’s door to wake him.   As Sarah descended the stairs to the back drawing room, all was quiet in the house.

When she got to the drawing room, she discovered Lord Russell’s writing desk in disarray, with drawers turned out and papers strew about.  Among them was a screwdriver from the butler’s pantry.  Going down to the ground floor, Sarah made a second unusual discovery; his lordship’s cloak lay a short distance from the street door.  On and around it were various items of gold and silverware from the house.  Opening the dining room door in order to go and pull back the shutters, Sarah saw the disarray in this room and knew the house must have been robbed in the night.  She went to the door of valet’s bedroom and called, ‘Courvoisier, do you know of anything being the matter last night?’

With a simple ‘No’, the door opened, revealing the 28 year old Francois Benjamin Courvoisier.  The Swiss valet-come-butler was fully dressed save for his topcoat.  No more than ten minutes had elapsed since Sarah first knocked on his door.  It had always taken Courvoisier between thirty and sixty minutes to dress.  The two servants made a brief search of the house until Manser urged that they should inform Lord Russell.  The valet entered the old man’s room first, crossing to open the shutters.  The light thrown from the large street-facing windows revealed Russell lying on his side and bloodstains on his pillow.  His throat had been cut.

On seeing this, Sarah screamed and fled the room.  She initially headed for her attic room to inform the cook, but decided instead to go rise the alarm in the street.  Servants from neighbouring households responded to the call and sent for the police, who occupied the house and began a thorough search of the property.  Over the next few days various officers found items and cash belonging to Lord Russell hidden in various places around the house, including the butler’s pantry.  They did not find any compelling evidence of a break-in, other than the debris littering the ground floor rooms.  Suspicion quickly fell on Courvoisier and he was arrested and incarcerated in Newgate Prison.

A media maelstrom quickly sprung up around the trial.  Aside from the obvious interest in such a grisly murder, Russell was uncle to the Colonial Secretary Lord John Russell.  To further complicate things, Courvoisier pleaded Not Guilty.  The trial lasted 3 days, with the defence pursuing the lack of conclusive evidence, as well as implying Manser was the guilty party.  All this was to little avail when during the trial several items from the house turned up at a French hotel where Courvoisier had previously worked.  Courvoisier refused to change his plea, but was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death.

So, you ask, where’s the connection with Jack Sheppard?  In the nineteenth century, just as in the eighteenth, there was a public fascination with condemned criminals, particularly if they had done something as shocking as murder a peer of the realm in his bed.  When Courvoisier gave his confession the papers rushed it into print.  Below is a transcript, taken from the Morning Post of 25 June 1840 and rendered as close as possible to the original printed version.

“After I had warmed his Lordship’s bed I went down stairs and waited about an hour, during which time I placed the different articles as they were found by the police.  I afterwards went to the dining room and took one of the knives from the side cupboard.  I then entered the bedroom and found him asleep.  I went to the side of the bed and drew the knife across his throat.  He appeared to die instantly.”

“FRANCOIS BENJAMIN COURVOISIER

“Prison of Newgate, June 23 1840

“This declaration was made before me this 23d of June, 1840 “William Evans, Sheriff”

This is how it appeared on broadsheets and in many newspapers.  Elsewhere, such as in the Morning Post, there was the following addendum.

The sheriff questioned [Courvoisier] a good deal on the acknowledgement that he had so long contemplated the murder as well as the robbery, and he persisted in stating the murder was premeditated, and not, as had previously been stated, the suggestion of despair at losing his character.  He declared and he wished the sheriff to let it be known to the world that the idea was first suggested to him by reading and seeing a performance of Jack Sheppard.

Enter William Harrison Ainsworth, friend of Charles Dickens and serial misreporter of English history.  Having essentially fabricated that the highwayman Dick Turpin rode from London to York in a single night in his first novel Rookwood, Ainsworth then turned his attention to John Sheppard.  When it was published in 1839, Jack Sheppard; a Romance was phenomenally successful, far outstripping Oliver Twist in terms of sales.  Among the historical alterations Ainsworth made in the book are moving much of the action from the narrow streets of central London to the new Victorian suburbs of the North West – Finchley, Willesden and Dollis Hill.  More significantly he added the brutal stabbing to death of Mrs Woods, the wife of Sheppard’s master, by one of his associates.

Biographies of Sheppard had appeared in print regularly for the past 112 years, but the implication in Courvoisier’s confession was that it was Ainsworth’s book that ‘inspired’ him, the reference to reading and seeing a performance referring to the many theatrical versions which were commissioned in 1839-40.  The stage was then set for social reformers and moralists to decry Jack Sheppard as a major cause of juvenile delinquency and crime, in an early incarnation of the debates on violence in film, comics and computer games.

Without getting into the wider debate on media influence here, let’s examine the facts relating to F.B. Courvoisier.  According to printed biographies, he had arrived in England five years previous to the murder.   At that time he was "wholly unacquainted" with the English language.  It seems unlikely he would have learnt enough in that time to devour novels, much less attend the theatre.  During this time he worked first as a waiter, then as a valet – not occupations that would have afforded much leisure time.  Also, the Morning Post article and the facts of the case indicate the murder was premeditated rather than a whim to recreate scenes from fiction.

Most significantly, nowhere in the available archival material does the mention of Jack Sheppard appear as a direct quote from Courvoisier.  In every instance it appears after the close, in the body of the article.  The only direct source for this connection is a 3 stanzas-long broadsheet poem that appeared shortly before Courvoisier’s execution.  This might indicate it was not entirely legitimate.  Ainsworth certainly went to some lengths to oppose this slur on his work, asserting in letters to a number of newspaper editors that Courvoisier had “declared he had neither read the work in question nor had made any such statement.”  It is possible that Ainsworth actually visited the condemned man in Newgate.  William Evans, the Sheriff of London and Middlesex countered this by writing his own letter supporting the original statement about the book by simply quoting said statement, which is like saying dogs can talk because I just said they can.  All this conjecture came to an end on 6 July when Lord Russell’s former butler was taken from Newgate to the Old Bailey and put to death.  The execution was reported the following day in the Morning Post, concluding

 “It appears that the work called “Jack Sheppard” has had, in the opinion of those who had the opportunity of observing the prisoner, nothing at all to do with the murder.”

However, the suggestion had caused enough concern in the right places that something had to be done.  The Lord Chamberlain, who had authority to veto the performance of any new plays, decided to refuse any performances of “Jack Sheppard”.  You might see this as an oppression of artistic and civil rights, but in practise it was one of the most lacklustre pieces of censorship in history.  For every play that was refused license, far more were overlooked or simply changed their titles and the names of key characters.  So for the next forty years, Jack Sheppard received such alias as Jack Idle, Thomas Idle, Dick Wastrell and Robert Chance whenever someone wished to dramatise the jail-breaker’s life (or at least Ainsworth’s take on it).  At one performance of a play called ‘OId London’, a member of the audience actually stood up and declared “why, if it isn’t Jack Sheppard!’  This was not, one suspects, the only time there was laughter at the censor’s expense.  By 1880 the Lord Chamberlain (probably a different individual) abandoned the policy and plays entitled "Jack Sheppard" were now permitted without any disguise.  Sheppard, the irrepressible jail-breaker was once again free.

The Genius of Jack Sheppard

 

This is John or ‘Jack’ Sheppard, born in Spitalfields, London on 4 March 1702.  Like most boys at this time, he was indentured as an apprentice to a craftsman, in this case a carpenter, named appropriately Mr. Woods.  Sheppard learnt his craft quickly and was soon idling; distracted by the various elicit enticements of London, particularly a prostitute named Elizabeth Lyon.  In order to supplement his trainee’s wages and pay for his new lifestyle, Sheppard, with help from his friends and brother, Thomas, turned to theft.

So far, this could be the story of hundreds of idle apprentices in the 1720s, but in 1723, he broke Lyon out of St Giles parish roundhouse (roughly where the Odeon Covent Garden now stands).  In February 1724 Sheppard was himself committed to the roundhouse and locked in a room on the top floor.  He cut a hole through the ceiling and climbed out onto the roof.  He got down to the ground, passed through the crowd that had gathered and got away. 

After this, Sheppard and Lyon were caught again and imprisoned in Clerkenwell New Prison.  Sheppard cut his way out of the barred window of their cell.  Making a rope from Lyon’s dress and the sheets from their bed; they climbed down into the yard of Bridewell Prison, which stood next door, before climbing over the 25 ft high gate to freedom.  From this point until the end of the year, Sheppard was the top news story in London.

In 1724 London had no police force; even the Bow Street Runners wouldn’t exist for another quarter of a century.  Aside from elderly watchmen and parish constables, the primary means for controlling crime was thief-takers.   These were private businessmen who, through contacts in the criminal underworld, arranged the return of stolen property to the original owners and also arrested suspected criminals, often informing against them.  By the 1720s, a man named Jonathan Wild had such a monopoly in the business that he adopted the title Thief-taker General of Britain and Ireland.  Egotism was hardly Wild’s only sin – his monopoly on ‘policing’ came from the fact that he was secretly in charge of London’s criminal gangs and essentially fencing stolen goods back to their owners for a fee.  His position as thief-taker allowed him to impeach any criminals who didn’t work for him (such as Sheppard) and let the law dispose of them at the gallows. Any of Wild’s own gang who stepped out of line were dealt with in a similar fashion.  Did I also mention that Wild was a bigamist, ran a brothel and had his predecessor arrested for homosexuality?

The robbery that Sheppard would be condemned for was of 118 yards of cloth and other goods to the value of not quite £50.  Sheppard was arrested, tried and sentenced to execution (the theft of goods worth more than a shilling was a capital crime, as was receiving stolen goods).  He was placed in the condemned hold of Newgate Prison.  With the aid of Lyon, he cut off one of the spikes that topped the gate into the hold, climbed over and then, disguised in a dress and bonnet, walked out of the prison.  He was recaptured about a week later and placed in the strongest room, known as the Castle.  On the evening of 15 October, he began his most remarkable escape.  With a nail, he picked the locks of his handcuff and then broke one of the links of the chain that ran between his leg irons and the floor.  He then broke a hole in the chimney breast, climbed up the chimney and, making another hole, emerged into the room above.  He broke the lock on the door, went to the prison chapel and picked the lock.  He broke through four more doors and climbed onto the roof of the prison, which spanned the street.  He then returned to his cell and retrieved his blankets.  Securing them to the side of the gatehouse, he climbed down onto the roofs of Newgate Street.  Climbing into the window of one of the houses, he crept down to street level and got away.

This escape secured Sheppard’s last stint at liberty as well as his lasting fame.  He was returned to Newgate two weeks later, loaded down with 300 lbs of chains and locks.  Despite a last minute attempt at liberation with a hidden penknife, Sheppard was taken to Tyburn on Monday 16 November 1724 and executed.  He was just 22 years old.

Following this, Wild’s power in the criminal underworld began to wane.  After a knife attack from one of his own men outside the Old Bailey courthouse, Wild was bed-ridden for several weeks.  Unable to maintain the service he had provided and with the press casting him as an ogre in his pursuit of Sheppard, doubts began to be cast on Wild’s business practises.  Then, in an outrageous move, Wild attempted to break one of his accomplices out of prison.  Wild was arrested and imprisoned in Newgate, where he attempted to continue his business.  He was tried on several accounts and eventually found guilty of receiving stolen goods.  He was executed on 24 May 1725, drugged with laudanum by himself and pelted with stones, dead animals and poo by the London mob.  That’s all 100% accu-rat.

Even before Sheppard died, likenesses and retellings of his life began to appear.  The official biographies of condemned criminals, known as The Ordinary’s Accounts, for 4 September 1724 includes ‘JOHN SHEPHERD, a notorious Thief and House Breaker (whose Life should have been inserted in this Paper, had he not made his narrow Escape from Death on Monday last’.  Sheppard’s escape from the condemned cell afforded the opportunity of a second account of his life, as well as ensuring an audience for it.  Three more lives of Sheppard appeared before the end of the year.

 

During his confinement in Newgate, Sheppard was visited by Sir James Thornhill, the royal painter to George I.  Although Thornhill’s original painting has not survived, a number of sketches and engravings remain (see above).  They show a youthful, somewhat androgynous face, dominated by wide, innocent eyes.  His large hands are a prominent feature of the portrait, as though Sheppard was an artist or architect.  He worked with his hands.

Twelve days after Sheppard’s execution, the first play based on his life, Harlequin Sheppard opened.  In 1728, a far more acclaimed play opened; John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.  The play is innately aware of the expanding cultural world it inhabited, making it one of the earliest post-structural works.   The play shared this awareness with its audience through references to a diverse range of cultural phenomena, such as accounts of condemned criminals.  In the characters of the highwayman Macheath and his rivalry with thief-taker Mr Peachum, the audience would have recognised Sheppard and Wild.  It did not end there either; works of fiction based on these two men’s lives would continue to appear for nearly three centuries. 

The genius of Jack Sheppard’s story is the many ways it can be reinterpreted.  In the hands of clergymen and moral guardians it served as a cautionary tale against the evils of alcohol, prostitutes and of breaking the bonds of apprenticeship.  Ballad-writers, playwrights, authors and directors over the centuries have delighted in what is an essentially exciting, romantic (with a big or little R) story.  Historians have taken it as an important social event in itself, or as an iris through which to explore Georgian London.  Sheppard has also been viewed as a libertine and an archetypal rebellious youth – James Dean in a frockcoat.  And in opposition to rebellion, naturally, is authority.  In the personage of Jonathan Wild, this authority is rife with hypocrisy, brutality and corruption.

As recently as 2009 the art installation/ film The Last Days of Jack Sheppard juxtaposed the jail-breaker’s exploits with the bankers and speculators who caused the South Sea Bubble (the first modern economic crisis, in 1720), as a barely veiled metaphor for the current world financial meltdown.  Sheppard’s story is also part of a long line of narratives, fictional and factual, in which the criminal is less villainous/ more reliable than those who claim to be upholding society’s values. 

None of this is to say John Sheppard was an unambiguous hero.  He was not.  He engaged in house breaking and theft.  He did not, despite what we might like to believe, rob from the rich to feed the poor.  Nor was he coerced into it.  He turned to crime to pay for vices that he could have rejected.  He was a genius of applied thinking, using the skills he learnt as an apprentice to enter and exit buildings almost at will.  Yet this logic seems to have deserted him when it came to fleeing the confines of London, which he only left for a week in his whole life.  On the other hand, his crimes were not violent, he was loyal to a fault and he confessed and regretted his transgressions.  So not an angel, but maybe an honest thief is preferably to a dishonest lawman.   In the dramatis personae of London in 1724, he comes out as the best and the most interesting of a bad bunch.  His story is full of thrills – it's standing on the narrow ramparts of Newgate in the moonlight, six stories above the street and halfway to freedom.  It’s breaking your lover out of jail, or being locked in with them.  It's the crooked thief-taker brought to the gallows by his own arrogance.  But there are also underlying resonances, indelible themes which will continue to resound whenever we live in a world where youth runs amok and authority is corrupt.

Would you like to know more?

Jack Sheppard on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sheppard

Jonathon Wild on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild

Jack Sheppard in the Newgate Calendar http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng173.htm