Men Behaving Badly: Captain Dollupson

Courtesy Yale Center for British Art

Loretta reports:

~~~

CAPTAIN DOLLUPSON OF THE ARMY.

Captain! thou abominable d—d cheater, if captains were of my mind they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them.      Shakspeare.

A LARGE dirty personage, with scratched cheeks and bloody cravat, calling himself 'Captain Dollupson of the Army,' was charged with having assaulted one of the dismounted horse patrol.

The 'captain,' it seems, by way of a little 'life,'* was amusing himself with a knot of costermongers in a back yard behind Little Russell Street, Drury Lane; and doing his utmost to 'knock up a mill' between two of them. The costermongers, however, would not 'come to the scratch' to please the captain, who thereupon felt his choler rise; and the costermongers venturing to laugh at his captainship, he boldly seized one of them by the cravat, and twisted it so that the poor costermonger was all but strangled. The others rushed to the rescue of their companion, and the captain's face was sadly scratched in the scuffle. At this moment the patrol passed by the end of the yard, and having been told what was the matter, he observed that the captain ought to be ashamed of himself, whereupon the magnanimous captain darted upon him and knocked him down by a tremendous blow' on the eye.

His worship made some remarks upon the unofficerlike amusement of the noble captain, and then called upon him for his defence.

• Your worship,' replied he, 'this scoundthrell, who had no business whatever to intrude himself among us, called out to me " Come here, blubberhead, and I'll whop you!" That was language, your worship, which no gentleman could put up with, and therefore I knocked him down.'

'And, therefore, you will put in bail for your appearance to answer it at the Quarter Sessions,' rejoined the magistrate; and the captain was instantly removed by the turnkey, but not before some of the costermongers had offered to prove that he was not called 'Blubberhead' by any body; and that every body called him 'Thickhead.'

His worship observed that the distinction was immaterial, and other cases were called on.

*This was when blood-shedding, blackguardism, and debauchery, was called 'life.'
     —More Mornings at Bow Street: A new collection of humorous and entertaining reports, 1827

Illustration: Rowlandson, A black Leg Detected Secreting Cards, courtesy Yale Center for British Art.

Breakfast Links: Week of December 5, 2011

Served up fresh: our weekly offering of Breakfast Links!  Our favorite links to other blogs, web sites, pictures, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse.

• A 19^th c Manhattan landmark destroyed "by stealth": http://bit.ly/vIXqBr

• What a costume says: Mildred Pierce's 1930s waitress uniform: http://bit.ly/vfjKbN

• Civil War cool: Three young officers of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery, hanging out by a tree: http://bit.ly/rqvuK1

• Check out the festive pug! 19th c chromolithographed Christmas cards from Am. Antiquarian Society : http://bit.ly/uAhqNL

• 'Beyond the Grave: Concepts of Death in Early Modern England' - http://wp.me/p14Gvd-u9

• Grafffiti at the Tower of London: http://bit.ly/tw6W1g 

• Sometime in late 41 BC, Marc Antony and Cleopatra had Cleopatra's sister and rival Arsinoe executed http://ow.ly/7FAys

• On-line book:  'Street Life in London', 1877: Rare descriptions & photographs of ordinary working people:http://tinyurl.com/cyffsy8

• The myth of Krampus, the bad guy of #Christmas out to punish bad children: http://bit.ly/vsZe5w

• If you haven't already discovered the tumblr of smoldering gentlemen in cravats from, you should. Really. :http://bit.ly/jQIVHk

• Modern realities of maintaining British estates: http://on.wsj.com/sFUmoT

• Looking at the work by Betty Ratcliffe, eighteenth-century artist and lady's maid: http://bit.ly/vcWDU4

• Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer: http://bit.ly/u4EMTD

• The Vindication of Christmas, 1652, shows how Father Christmas was perceived in Cromwell’s England: http://bit.ly/uEEsH4

• 'Parting the veil of Faery', 1890s -http://bit.ly/ty9T5z

• Extraordinary pair of ivory, steel, & brass wheellock pistols, c 1655-65 from Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://bit.ly/sFwvy4 

• Illegal marriage, an escape attempt in men's clothing, & finally death by starvation: the life of Arabella Stuarthttp://bit.ly/uKRCTJ

• A history of the 'gin palaces' in Regency England: http://bit.ly/vzt7AQ

• Exploding cuffs: how 1740s women's fashions widened: http://bit.ly/roOtMt

• 18th c horse racing: http://bit.ly/vLy3Ys

• Anyone for a full baron? Roasting the Christmas Beef:http://bit.ly/tfZDhx

• Birds of Paradise http://bit.ly/shmGxP(*gorgeous* hand-coloured engravings)

• Looks like a high old time: Vintage (and embarrassing!) photos from1948 Christmas office party in NYC: http://bit.ly/uQzKSA

Above: At Breakfast, by Laurits Andersen Ring, 1898

Friday Video: O Christmas Tree, Horrible Histories-Style

Susan reporting:

With only a few weeks until Christmas, here's a carol for our Friday Video, especially one sung by the Horrible Histories folk. Most people do know that the Christmas evergreen is a German tradition brought over to England by a royal spouse. It's usually Prince Albert who gets the credit, but in fact the first Christmas trees entered the palace celebrations nearly a century earlier, through George III's queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Still, Victoria and Albert did popularize the custom, and Christmas trees have been part of English and American holidays ever since. This year Windsor Castle has been decorated for the season as if Queen Victoria were still in residence. This article includes plenty of photographs of this Victorian Christmas – including Albert's preference for hanging the trees from the ceiling!

The English Stage Coachman

Loretta reports:

~~~

Cruikshank illustration from  the magazine

 . . .wherever an English stage coachman may be seen, he cannot be mistaken for one of any other craft or mystery.

He has commonly a broad, full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his (heels. He wears a broad-brimmed low-crowned hat, a huge roll of coloured handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom; and has in summer time a large bouquet of flowers in his button-hole; the present, most probably, of some enamoured country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright colour, striped, and his smallclothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about half way up his legs.

All this costume is maintained with much precision ; he has a pride of having his clothes of excellent materials; and, notwithstanding the seeming grossness of his appearance, there is still discernible that neatness and propriety of person, which is almost inherent in an Englishman. He enjoys great consequence and consideration along the road; has frequent conferences with the village housewives, who look upon him as a man of great trust and dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air, and abandons the cattle to the care of the hostler; his duty being merely to drive them from one stage to another. When, off the box, his hands are thrust in the pockets of his great coat, and he rolls about the inn yard with an air of the most absolute lordliness. Here he is generally surrounded by an admiring throng of hostlers, stable-boys, shoe-blacks, and those nameless hangers-on, that infest inns and taverns, and run errands, and do all kind of odd jobs, for the privilege of battening on the drippings of the kitchen and the leakage of the tap-room. These all look up to him as to an oracle; treasure up his cant phrases; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back, thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and is an embryo Coachey.
—George & Robert Cruikshank, The Gentleman's Pocket Magazine, 1827.

From the NHG Bookshelf: 'An Introduction to the Tokens of the Foundling Museum'

Susan reporting:

We've written before on the Foundling Hospital, London, a remarkable charitable institution founded in 1741for the "Education and Maintenance of Exposed and Deserted Young Children." The Hospital continued to do exactly that well into the 20th c., taking in and providing for unwanted children, and teaching them a trade to support themselves.

Desperate mothers in the 18th c. turned to the hospital as a last resort, the one sure way to offer their children a better life than they could provide. When the child was offered for admission, a small token was left as well to be used for future identification, the hope being that the mother's circumstances would improve so that she could return and reclaim her child. Alas, few did. Today the tokens are among the most moving pieces in the Hospital Museum's collections.

Last year, the exhibition Threads of Feeling highlighted the textile tokens - ribbons, sleeves, and snippets of cloth - taken from the foundlings' clothing. (Click here for a heartbreaking slideshow of this exhibition.) Now the Museum has published a new book, An Introduction to the Tokens at the Foundling Museum, above left, that features many of the other tokens as well as several of the textile ones. These include coins, paper hearts, baby-sized rings, gambling markers, thimbles, keys, even admission tickets to Vauxhall Gardens; several are shown here, and on the book's cover. It's a fascinating collection of what lower-class Londoners held dear in the 18th c, and what they believed would link them forever to the children they had to give up. There's also a brief history of how the tokens were used in the 18th c., and how they were rediscovered and exhibited in the late 19th c.

But the true heart of this small book are the stories behind the tokens. Some have happy endings, of foundlings restored to their mothers, or growing to independent, responsible adulthood. Others are simply heartbreaking, and hint at the desperation and poverty that too many London women faced each day.

Margaret Larney's story is told in a simple letter that served as a token. Margaret and her husband came from Dublin to London to improve their fortunes. But after a series of menial jobs, Margaret became involved with a group who shaved gold sovereigns. She was arrested and tried for "degrading the coin of the realm," a crime that was considered high treason and punishable by execution. Although Margaret protested her innocence, she was convicted. While she was in prison, her husband disappeared, and her older son was taken and admitted to the Foundling Hospital. Because Margaret was pregnant, her execution was postponed until she gave birth, and then that son, too, was sent to the Hospital. In the letter, lower right, (which she must have dictated) that accompanied the newborn, she begged that the two brothers would be permitted to know one another:

Dear Sir
I am the unfortunate Woman that lies under Sentence of Death at Newgatt. I had a Child put in here before when I was sent here his name is James Larney and this [second son] his name is John Larney and he was born the King's Coronation Day 1758. And Dear Sir I beg for the tender mercy of God to let them Know one and other for Dear Sir I hear that you are a very good gentleman and God's blessing and more be on you for ever

   Sir I am your humbel 
   Servant Margaret Larney

It's doubtful her final  wish was fulfilled. The baby born in Newgate Prison died soon after admission, and soon, too, after Margaret herself was executed at Tyburn by strangulation and burning. But the older boy - renamed George Millett - survived, and became a successful wigmaker in Shropshire: the kind of happy ending that the founders of the Hospital hoped for all their charges.

An Introduction to the Tokens at the Foundling Museum is available here through the Museum's shop in London. Our American readers can also order the book stateside through our friends at Burnley & Trowbridge here.

All images are from the book, and are used with permission of the Foundling Museum. In accordance with the FTC (a rule that probably doesn't apply to Loretta and me since we're writers, not reviewers, but never mind) I received this book as a gift from the Museum.