| Product: |
The London Monster - Jan Bondeson |
| Date: |
26/03/02 (58 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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London's had a wide and varied history. Pretty much everything's happened there at some point. Most of it's quite dull (the growth of commerce, medieval guilds, laws about wool etc). But that's OK, the history books tend to focus on the exciting (i.e. nasty) stuff, like plagues, fires, executions, riots. Occasionally things in London get a bit crazy. Weirdness abounds. Some of the most spectacular strangeness in the city's history has focused around sensational crimes. Outbreaks of what is usually described as mass hysteria have resulted from a variety of slightly off-the-wall violent criminal acts. The Ratcliffe Highway murders, Spring-Heeled Jack (and whatever was going on there, it was pretty strange), and, of course, Jack The Ripper all excited and disturbed Londoners to the extent that they quite lost their reason.
The London Monster, the subject of this book, had just that effect. His reign of terror started in 1788 and lasted for about two years. Several (at least 40) women, usually young and pretty, and from all walks of life, were attacked by a man of loutish appearance who would shout obscenities and physically accost (usually by kicking or pushing) his victims. He would follow them through the streets verbally abusing them, only fleeing when they reached their destination or prevailed upon a passer by to help them. He would often go even further, and stab them with an unidentified sharp object, usually in the thighs or buttocks. Occasionally he would ingeniously ask his victims to smell a nosegay he was carrying, and then stab them in the face with a small knife he'd concealed in it. No one died as a result of his attacks, although obviously his victims would have been pretty unhappy. Quite what kind of gratification he got from this is a mystery to me, but he must have felt it was worth his while, because he kept at it for two years.
Londoners became obsessed, of course. Women were afraid to walk the streets, vig
ilante gangs roamed the streets, the press had a field day, anyone acting unusually was suspected. A generous reward was offered for the Monster's capture. Some women claimed to have been assaulted by the Monster when they evidently hadn't been. Men would shout out accusations of Monster-hood against people they didn't like, which caused mobs to form, attacking the unfortunate victim. Eventually an arrest was made. A 23-year-old maker of artificial flowers called Rhynwick Williams was charged with the crimes.
Williams was tried and convicted, although there were some who believed him innocent. His cause was championed by one Theophilus Swift, a descendant of Jonathan Swift. A vainglorious and unpleasant lawyer, he waged a vicious hate campaign against those who accused Williams. In a pamphlet he accused John Coleman, the man who had collared Williams, of being 'a frog-blooded coward,' a 'despicable buffoon' and a 'Catamite,' amongst other things. (That seems to have been how people behaved in those days - slandering each other in a way you'd never see now.) He forced a second trial to take place, and defended Williams himself. The trial descended rapidly into farce, and ended up with Williams being sent to Newgate prison for six years.
This is a very entertaining book - because no one actually died, and because it was so long ago, it's fairly easy to appreciate the silliness of the Monster scare. Although the book offers a pretty comprehensive account of the crimes themselves, it's obvious that the author is far more interested in the ways in which people reacted to them. The press of the day is almost unrecognisable as such by today's standards, with stories invented or embroidered to please the reader, satirical attacks on politicians thrown around randomly, and even little poems commenting on news stories. They had a field day with the Monster case, as did satirical cartoonists.
The a
uthor has an enjoyable writing style, and throws in lots of amusing extraneous details. Early on, he gives a brief description of London as it was then. It seems to have been a pretty bloodthirsty place (I suspect he focused on the gory aspects more than the humdrum because, frankly, they're funnier). He tells us, all too briefly, of a man who ate a live cat in a pub for a bet, and who later hacked off his own right hand with a billhook. That's the kind of stuff I want to read about! This sentence made me laugh out loud:
'The common man of 1790 did not much care for reading from the works of Shakespeare, or indeed anything that hinted of intellectual activity, as long as there was hope of going down to the pub to have a jug of ale while watching a badger with its tail nailed to the floor being harried by three fierce fox terriers.'
I love our ancestors. They thought they lived in the age of enlightenment, but they were so wrong in so many ways. (Of course, it wouldn't be funny if people did that today, but badgers alive in 1790 would be dead by now anyway, and it was a different time with different values, and if we can't laugh at the past then what's left to us, eh?)
These extra details are part of what makes the book so great, especially when dealing with the crazy reactions to the Monster case. At the height of the scare, a club of young men took to wearing cardboard badges proclaiming that they weren't the Monster, so they wouldn't scare off prostitutes (who apparently regarded the approach of any prospective client with great trepidation). Enterprising criminals impersonated Monster victims, and then picked the pockets of the kindly souls who stopped to help them. Theatres put on hastily written plays about the Monster (a drunk Irishman got so caught up in the action one night that he tried to physically assault the lead actor). Women took to wearing porridge pots under their dresses, to protect their bottoms
from the Monster's attentions.
The bulk of the book is taken up with the Monster. It also briefly describes other, similar cases of slashers (a reasonably widespread phenomenon in Europe). It also discusses mass hysteria, mentioning examples of widespread panic in London about crimes that appear never to have taken place. These include scares about garrotters and roaming gangs of hoodlums, which I'd be interested to learn more about, although Bondeson's attempts to explain away Jack the Ripper as a series of copycat crimes inspired by the press and public hysteria isn't terribly convincing. These are relevant to the case of the monster because the huge public interest in the case seems to have inspired other men to go out and attack women (it is most unlikely that all the victims of the Monster were attacked by the same man). It's also likely that at least two of the victims weren't genuine. People wanted to be involved in the case to the extent that it acquired a life of its own quite separate from the original Monster.
The book closes with an evaluation of the case against Williams, and concludes that, although he may have acted quite suspiciously, there wasn't really enough evidence against him to prove that he was the Monster. He may well have been up to no good, but obviously we can't tell what really happened, as it all happened such a long time ago. And of course we never will, and it really doesn't matter. Bondeson doesn't even pretend that he aspires to solve the case.
This is a great book. It offers a fascinating glimpse at life in London a couple of hundred years ago, when men were voracious sexual predators, women fainted a lot and no-one could write the letter 's' properly. It has it all: violence, sex, drama and comedy. 220 pages, quite a few pictures. Recommended to everyone.
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