The following article will be published as the cover story in the upcoming April/May issue of History Magazine.

Laura Grande looks at the controversial story of the “Nazi who said sorry.”

“The previous leadership of the German nation bears a collective guilt for the fate that now hangs over the German people. Each member of that leadership must personally assume his responsibility in such a way that the guilt which might otherwise descend upon the German people is expiated.” ~Albert Speer, writing to Johann Schwerin von Krosigk, the chairman of the ministerial cabinet in 1945~

Albert Speer is known to history as both “the Devil’s architect” and “the Nazi who said sorry.” These two conflicting monikers would appear to suggest Speer was a willing participant in the plans of Adolf Hitler – that is, until he realized the war was lost for Germany and tried to distance himself from the dictator. However, the truth is far more complicated than the simple notion that Speer tried to save his own skin by turning on Hitler at his hour of need.

It’s a rare thing for society to be granted unlimited access to historical events that would have, arguably, remained shrouded in secrecy had they not been documented in a memoir. When Speer sat down to write his story while incarcerated in Spandau Prison, he set out to reveal the whole truth – both the highs and lows in his remarkably rapid rise from architecture student to one of Hitler’s most trusted companions.

What has inspired generations of history buffs to pick up his Inside the Third Reich memoir is not only for a glimpse of Hitler in his darkest hour, but to witness the decisions made by Speer – a man who admitted to his mistakes and errors in judgment and accepted his later lot in life. His brutal, uncensored honesty enabled Speer to admit his hatred, fear and love for one of history’s most reviled figures.

An Unlikely Nazi

Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer was born on 19 March 1905 to a wealthy middle class family in Manheim, Germany. The second of three sons born to Albert and Luise Speer, he had a passion for math that didn’t sit well with his father’s desire to see him become a fellow architect.

Speer set off to the University of Karlsruhe in 1923 to study architecture and appease his father. In 1928 he married Margarete Weber, a woman from a lower class family of whom his parents did not approve. All in all, Speer led an average life. The recently married young man began his career as an architect, leading a quiet life away from the growing turmoil in Germany and without any admitted political views.

So how did someone as educated and morally sound as Speer get caught up in the political furor enabled by Hitler? How did this average young man, leading a perfectly regular life, get himself involved in a political and social whirlwind known for its secret police, concentration camps, Aryan ideology and anti-Semitism? Speer had quite a few Jewish friends and admitted, in his memoir, that he initially attributed anti-Semitism as nothing more than “a children’s disease” – something no self-respecting adult actually fell sway to. Speer was not one of the poor, unemployed and angry young men who wandered the city streets.

In 1931, Speer encountered Hitler for the first time. He had just finished reading Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. Within the text, Speer saw parallels between the current state of Germany during inflation and unemployment and the fall of the Roman Empire. Therefore, when he first heard Hitler speak at a beer hall amongst university students, Speer was finally starting to take notice of the political unrest in his country. In his impassioned speech, Hitler scorned Jews and Communists, using them as scapegoats to explain away the current financial problems within Germany. It was the power and passion of that speech that ignited the long-dormant political nature within Speer, a self-proclaimed “apolitical” German. He saw Hitler’s speech that day as the perfect anecdote to Spengler’s more cynical outlook for the future of the western world. Although uncomfortable with Hitler’s anti-Semitism, Speer believed Germany may have found the right man to lead them from the darkness they suffered ever since the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. For all intents and purposes, Hitler appeared to be a man of action. He had mapped out a blueprint for Germany’s recovery and it was blueprint Speer felt he could support.

On 1 March 1931, Speer joined the Nazi Party and was given membership number 474,481. His first job was with the Nazi Party’s motorist association in which he was assigned to drive Hitler around.

It was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s fiery Minister of Propaganda, who first took notice of Speer. He heard of his degree in architecture and hired Speer to design the first Reichsparteitag on Zeppelin Field in Nuremberg, which would become the annual Nazi rally party. Hitler, a failed architecture student himself, was fascinated by Speer’s work and, in order to impress Hitler, Speer tailored his style to suit the dictator’s grandiose tastes. Speer rapidly moved up the ranks, continuously impressing Hitler with his artistic talent and grand-scale vision for Germany, including his creation of the Zeppelinfield Stadium and the Third Reich Chancellery. He became the official architect of the Nazi Party and was named the Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer had the ambition, but did he sell his ethical beliefs for wealth and fame?

Hitler Under Ground

Some of the more remarkable passages in Inside the Third Reich deal with Speer’s detailed descriptions of Hitler’s final days hidden in a bunker in Berlin. Speer recalled a conversation with Hitler only a few short weeks before the dictator’s death in which Hitler admitted he planned to commit suicide. “A brief moment and I am freed of everything,” Hitler told Speer. “Liberated from this painful existence.”

Without Inside the Third Reich it is unlikely the world would have been provided with such an intimate glimpse of the downfall of a dictator. It’s fortunate for historians that Speer wrote his memoir so soon after his initial imprisonment, when memories of what occurred were still vivid in his mind.

Speer wrote that he took that particular moment when Hitler spoke of his impending sui- cide to admit that he had betrayed him. In the months leading up to April 1945, Hitler had issued the Nero Decree, a “scorched earth policy” in which he ordered his troops to systematically destroy all buildings and camps related to Nazi Germany in an effort to prevent the Allies from discovering the Nazi’s darkest secrets. Speer begged to be put in charge so that he could intentionally go against Hitler’s orders and preserve as much as he could, to avoid further mayhem and cover-up. As of 1944, Speer had started questioning his alliance with Hitler.

Speer revealed to Hitler that he had disobeyed his order and prevented the demolitions he had ordered, leaving buildings standing and still filled with documents and other evidence. Speer wrote that Hitler’s eyes filled with tears, but he made no comment.

Speer recalled a broken, trembling man in place of the fiery dictator Hitler once was. The chapters in Inside the Third Reich that deal with the final weeks of Hitler’s life are among the book’s more compelling sections. As Speer wrote, “I was convinced that it was urgently necessary, although already much too late, for Hitler’s life to come to an end.” His anger towards Hitler and his refusal to follow orders contrasted with Speer’s renewed emotional bond with Hitler during the final days of the war. After all, he wrote, they had been friends for 12 years.

When Speer went to visit Hitler in the bunker for what he knew would be the last time, the dictator simply said, “So, you’re leaving? Good. Auf Wiedersehen.” With that, Hitler shook Speer’s hand and turned his back on the man who had ultimately betrayed him in the end.

Spandau Prison and Inside the Third Reich

Spandau Prison was once situated in western Berlin. Built in 1876, it was demolished in 1987 after the death of its last remaining pris- oner, Rudolf Hess, in order to prevent it becoming a shrine for neo-Nazism.

On 18 July 1947, the Spandau Seven arrived at the prison from Nuremberg after their war crimes trial. Speer was jailed with fellow Nazis Hess, Walther Funk, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Kon- stantin von Neurath and Karl Donitz. Sentenced to 20 years, Speer separated himself from the others, preferring his own solitude to the company of his former allies. The other prisoners disliked him anyway because he admitted his guilt during the trials at Nuremberg and revealed that he had disobeyed Hitler’s orders on more than one occasion.

The prison kept a rigid schedule for the incarcerated men. They rose at 6 AM, cleaned their cells, shared a breakfast and spent a large portion of the afternoon in the garden before lunch at 5 PM After dinner, the remainder of the evening was spent in their indi- vidual cells. The four occupying powers rotated guard duty in the prison. The months spent under guard of the Russians was dreaded by the Spandau Seven, Speer later wrote, because they were only fed bread and potatoes by order of the Russian director. However, Speer still bonded with some of the guards from Russia, as well as Britain, France and the United States.

Speer prepared a mental and physical workout regime for him- self. He checked out travel books from the prison library and went on “walking tours of the world.” He would, essentially, go on laps around the prison, visualizing whatever route and destination he chose from a book on any given day. Meticulously organized, Speer later wrote that he “travelled” around 24,000 KM in Spandau.

An avid gardener, Speer requested that his work detail be spent in Spandau’s garden, an unkempt wilderness that became what one American guard called “Speer’s Garden of Eden.”

When it came to Inside the Third Reich, Speer originally meant for it to be read by his wife and children only. He started out scrawling the tiny words on pieces of toilet paper and torn bed sheets until some of the British, French and American guards found out that he was documenting his time with the Nazi Party and agreed to smuggle him some paper.

In what was eventually published as his memoir, Inside the Third Reich, Speer candidly explained why it took him so long to see the error of his ways. His honest self-analysis, combined with the secrets he provided on Hitler and the Nazis, made his book an instant bestseller when it was published in 1970.

“I had participated in a war which, as we of the intimate circle should never have doubted, was aimed at world domination,” Speer wrote. “At the lowest ebb of my existence, in contact with these ordinary people (the prison guards at Spandau), I encountered uncorrupted feelings of sympathy, helpfulness, human understanding; feelings that bypassed prison rules …”.

Speer was as unrelenting to himself as he was to his fellow collaborators, writing about the slave labour that occurred in factories under his command and his partnership with SS guards from concentration camps, which would provide him with prisoners to work on the production lines. Although Speer, like many Germans, were not aware that concen- tration camps were death camps that harbored Jews instead of actual convicts until weeks after the end of the war, he did not let himself off the hook and wrote that he could have easily learned more about the camps but chose not to.

Written on more than 20,000 pieces of paper, Speer completed Inside the Third Reich in 1954. There was still more than 10 years left on his jail sentence.

On 1 October 1966, Speer was released from Spandau after serving his full 20-year sentence.

In Conclusion

Inside the Third Reich likely served as a form of therapy for the reflec- tive Speer, a way for him to assuage some of his guilt and come to terms with his decisions through the sharing of his experi- ences. As he wrote after his release, “my intention was not only to describe the past, but to issue warnings for the future …At the time I was often startled by the ruthlessness with which I judged others and myself.”

Regardless of how one might interpret Speer’s intentions in writing his memoir, what is undeniable is that he has provided his- tory with a unique, insider’s perspective on a tragic war that may have been lost forever and never fully understood.

As historian and author Eugene Davidson wrote in 1970, “It is in this long, painful struggle for self-enlightenment that we may see that whatever he (Speer) lost when he made his pact with Adolf Hitler, it was not his soul.”

Recommended Reading and Viewing

-Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1970.

-Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

-Downfall (original German title, Der Untergang), 2004. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Available on DVD.

Laura Grande looks at the storied author’s influence on how we celebrate Christmas.

As historian A.N. Wilson wrote, “The early-19^th century in England was the England of Dickens”.  No other author wrote so honestly about the hardships of those suffering extreme poverty during the industrial age. Dickens’s popularity was owed, in large part, to his ability to speak directly to those who endured daily struggles for survival in a society that emphasized work ethic and money above all else.

One of Dickens’ defining characteristics in his novels was the notion of human redemption. While villains always lurked on the edges of his greatest novels, Dickens never failed to instill a sense of hope in even the most dastardly of his creations. Among his most famous is that of Ebenezer Scrooge.

More than 160 years after its publication, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has become a part of people’s Yuletide traditions around the world; the soul at the centre of their holiday season. By simply focusing on one man’s self-discovery on the path to becoming a better person, Dickens superimposed his secular vision of Christmas on the public.

Christmas Under Cromwell

During the Victorian era, old medieval traditions, which were once used to celebrate the birth of Christ, were in a state of rapid decline. However, the disappearance of Christmas traditions was a long time coming, as England had long since stopped celebrating the holiday season on a yearly basis.

In the 17^th century, Oliver Cromwell, England’s Lord Protector and a devout Puritan, wanted Christmas to return back to its original observance of the birth of Christ as a day of religious prayer and piety and not an elaborate celebration with food, wine and gifts. Cromwell and his parliament had soldiers sent out to take food by force if they saw any families celebrating around lavish feasts in their homes. Traditional decorations were banned outright.

Prior to the English Civil War between Cromwell’s faction and those of the Royalists who supported Charles I, the holidays were referred to as Christ-tide. Families prepared large feasts to be enjoyed over the course of a few days, decorating their homes and exchanging gifts. The argument of Cromwell and his largely Puritan parliament was that such extravagance and waste was simply an unwelcome example of Roman Catholicism’s emphasis on materialism.

Prince Albert’s Germanic Traditions

The outcome of Cromwell’s intense scrutiny of England’s holiday traditions resulted in an almost complete lack of observance of Christmas over the course of the following centuries.

Prince Albert married Queen Victoria in 1840 and brought along his Germanic holiday traditions. He introduced Great Britain to Christmas carols, holiday cards and, most significantly, he gave them England’s first Christmas tree. Prince Albert had Christmas trees distributed to schools and army barracks around the country, while newspapers featured illustrations of the Royal Family seated before their fully ornamented Christmas tree at Windsor Castle.

However, Christmas still was not observed by the majority of the population, as workhouses and mills owners refused to recognize it as a holiday, forcing their employees to work their usual shifts, which often ran longer than 10 hours a day. With the majority of England at work, it’s no small wonder that Christmas still went largely unrecognized.

Charles Dickens’s Influences for A Christmas Carol

Between 1837-44, England was going through the worst economic depression to hit their country. An estimated one million people were starving because of lack of employment. The ethics of mill owners and those who ran workhouses created both wealth and poverty.

Dickens himself grew up surrounded by hardships and financial woes. Born in 1812 to John and Elizabeth Dickens, young Charles was taken out of school at the age of nine when his father was imprisoned for debt in 1824. The Marshalsea debtors’ prison, situated on the south bank of the River Thames, became a second home for the Dickens family. In order to help pay off his father’s debt, Charles laboured at Warren’s Shoe Blacking factory at the age of 12, pawning his beloved books to help pay off the debt. While his family languished in the Marshalsea, young Charles lived across the street, on his own, so that he could work every day, visiting his family on Sunday afternoons. Charles’ strained relationship with his father is mirrored in the characters of William Dorrit in Little Dorrit and Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield.

As historian A.N. Wilson wrote, Dickens desired to “put the world of injustice, ignorance and disease behind him” in his adult years. His sensitivity to the plight of the poor was the spark that ignited his passion for writing. Dickens portrayed the two sides of London, where “the harshness of life is tempered by kindliness”. This positive and negative view of the world would become his signature style of storytelling. His 1837 publication, Oliver Twist, had caused outrage among his readers who were shocked by the depravity and struggle endured by the young children in the book. Dickens would garner just as much reader attention for his creation of Ebenezer Scrooge and his penny-pinching ways.

In October of 1843, Dickens attended a three-day fundraiser in Manchester where he was involved in long discussions about combating ignorance and strife with educational reforms for children.  At the time, he and his wife, Kate, were expecting the fifth of their eventual 10 children and the couple was strapped for cash. However, nothing prepared Dickens for what he learned on his visit to Manchester. It was here that Dickens realized the depths of poverty some of his fellow countrymen endured. Welfare applicants were forced to work on treadmills, sometimes for as long as 10 hours a day. Dickens firmly believed that education was a remedy for the poverty and crime that he witnessed. Remembering his own childhood full of work and struggle, Dickens vowed to “strike a sledgehammer blow” for the poor and those displaced by the Industrial Revolution.

During a visit to Scotland that same year, Dickens visited Greyfriar Kirkyard, Edinburgh’s oldest cemetery. While walking among the headstones, Dickens came across a marker that read: “Ebenezer Scroggie, Meal Man”. It wasn’t uncommon for gravestones to cite the person’s job in life, and “meal man” was simply another term for corn merchant. However, Dickens misread the marker as “mean man” and asked a companion what one could have done in life to deserve such a comment even after death.

The combination of the Manchester fundraiser and the cemetery headstone planted the seeds of inspiration Dickens was looking for.

The Messages of Ebenezer Scrooge and A Christmas Carol

Dickens began writing A Christmas Carol in October of 1843 and the novella was completed within six weeks.

Due to Dickens’ religious indifference, the story was not so much about Christianity but an attempt at simply understanding human nature. When the ghost of Jacob Marley laments to Scrooge that “mankind was my business”, it does not involve religious connotations. Jacob Marley simply repents his lack of decency and charity when he was alive.

The first signs of tenderness the audience sees in Scrooge comes when he first notices the ghost of his longtime friend, Marley, weighted down by chains. Scrooge realizes that Marley has given him the gift of (arguably undeserved) friendship when he admits, “you always were a good friend to me. “ Although the story has only just gotten started, this Scrooge is already dramatically different from the one who treated his clerk, Bob Cratchit, so poorly earlier in the evening.

With the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Scrooge goes from conjuring nostalgic memories from his youth to witnessing long ago tragedies, like the death of his beloved sister, Fan. All of these visions culminate into his new outlook on life.

The proof of the ongoing transformation of Scrooge is not related to going to church, but the fact that he both learns to bond with his estranged nephew, Fred, and shows great generosity to the Cratchit family. Scrooge “knew how to keep Christmas well” because he’d transformed into a kind-hearted man and discovered, though his generosity, what had eluded Jacob Marley all of his life. Mankind was still Scrooge’s business, only now it came in the form of charity to mankind.

A Christmas Carol has more to do with industrialization and the loss of cultural traditions than anything else. Dickens illustrates how cities were less inclined to give paid holidays, as witnessed through Scrooge’s poor treatment of Cratchit. Widespread poverty and suffering, illustrated through the ghostly apparitions of Ignorance and Want, was the point Dickens wanted his readers to understand.

For Dickens, and later countless readers, A Christmas Carol was a spiritual experience. As Dickens himself later wrote about the writing process, “I wept and laughed and laughed and wept again.”

Critical Reception and Its Enduring Success

The novella was bound in red cloth and published through Chapman and Hall and was officially released on 19 December 1843. It included four hand-coloured etchings and four black and white engravings. The novella sold for an affordable five shillings, at Dickens’ request. By Christmas Eve, all 6,000 copies had sold out and it continued to sell out with each new edition well into the following year.

Author William Makepeace Thackeray wrote in Fraser’s Magazine in February of 1844. “The last two people I heard speak of it were women; neither knew the other, or the author, and both said, by way of criticism, ‘God bless him!’ …What a feeling this is for a writer to inspire, and what a reward to reap!”

As Scottish novelist, Margaret Oliphant, noted that same year, A Christmas Carol was “a new gospel”, noting that it appeared as though people had started behaving better to one another. By February 1844, less than two months after its debut, A Christmas Carol was adapted for the stage three times. That same year, Gentleman’s Magazine gave their first large donation to children’s charities.

The observance of Christmas had experienced a mid-Victorian revival, with a heavy emphasis on family-oriented festivities. Dickens was hailed as a hero and he did public readings of A Christmas Carol every holiday season from 1853-70. In total, Dickens had read his book aloud to massive crowds 127 times.

In June of 1870, Dickens passed away at the age of 58 of complications from a stroke. Both family and fans alike attended his funeral at Westminster Abbey.

Newspapers reported the news of his passing with the inclusion of a quote, supposedly spoken by a little girl upon hearing of Dickens’ death. “Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?”

In 1988, London’s Sunday Telegraph honoured Dickens with the title “The Man Who Invented Christmas”.

In Conclusion

More than 160 years later, A Christmas Carol has endured as a significant part of the holiday tradition around the world. Whether he expected it to become the phenomenon that it did is unknown, yet his message remains clear and just as relevant as ever. It’s hard to imagine Christmas without Ebenezer Scrooge.

As Dickens himself wrote in the prelude to his novella, his only desire was simply: “may it haunt their houses pleasantly”.

SOURCES

David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page (http://charlesdickenspage.com/).

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843.

A.N. Wilson, The Victorians. London: W&W Norton and Company, 2003.

Laura Grande chronicles Bonnie Prince Charlie’s 1745 Jacobite Rising and the Battle of Culloden.

“No blacker, bloodier page will be found in the history of any country than that which records the atrocities against a brave but vanquished enemy, perpetrated at the command and under the eyes of a British monarch’s son”.

~Liberal Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, 1894~

When it comes to the discussion of the Battle of Culloden, many are drawn into the romanticized image of a tartan-clad prince leading an army of fierce rebel Highlanders against the tyranny of England.

In reality, the nature behind the famous 1745 Jacobite Rising, and its bloody conclusion in April of 1746, is far too complex to be summed up with a single, heroic image. Contrary to popular belief, the Rising had little to do with national pride or fighting for a noble cause. It was not a war that pitted the Scots against the English. It was, instead, a brief rebellion attempting to restore both Catholicism and the Stuart line to the English throne.

Historians and Scottish locals continue, to this day, to debate the merits and disappointments of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s failed campaign and the violent aftermath of Culloden.

Jacobite Origins

Jacobites were loyal supporters of King James II of England (also known as King James VII of Scotland). The devoutly Catholic monarch was deposed and fled into exile in 1689, after only four short years on the throne. It had all come about one year earlier, in 1688, when James II fathered a son, James Francis Edward Stuart. Now that the king had a male heir, the throne would no longer pass to his Protestant daughter, Mary, as the English population desired. A Catholic dynasty was now inevitable and England, as a Protestant nation, feared the repercussions.

Later known as the Glorious Revolution, the parliaments of the Whigs and Tories put on a united front and rose up against James II, fearing that he would implement Catholicism as the national religion. Once the king had been unseated, Parliament invited Mary, his daughter, to rule over the kingdom with her husband, William of Orange, who would later lead a decisive final battle against James II in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.

The humiliated James II was forced to set up court in France, where he remained until his death in 1701. The Stuart claim to the throne was to be upheld by his son, James Francis. Since early childhood, James Francis was pressured to do his duty and reclaim the English throne, in the name of his father. However, the young man endured malicious rumors about his parentage, as the majority of the English population questioned the coincidence of James II having had a son when he so desperately needed one in order to build a Catholic dynasty. James Francis’ legitimacy would remain under suspicion for the rest of his life. As a result, when he attempted two uprisings in 1708 and 1715, James Francis was referred to as the Pretender. Both attempts failed in their early stages and he eventually retreated to Italy.

It wouldn’t be until James Francis’ own son, Charles Edward Stuart, started his own campaign in 1745 that the Stuart claim to the throne would have a genuine, albeit fleeting, chance of regaining its former glory.

The actions that started in 1688, with the disposal of a Catholic king, had far-reaching consequences, as the outcome of the Glorious Revolution would continue to be played out on the battlefield more than 50 years later.

Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Early Skirmishes

James Francis’ son, Charles Edward Stuart, was born in Rome on 31 December 1720. Raised Catholic and protected by the sanctions of the Pope, Charles was faced, at an early age, with the expectation that he would run a successful campaign to reclaim the throne of England for the Stuart line.

Mary and William of Orange had since died childless, as did their successor, Queen Anne. Therefore, in 1714, six years before Charlie’s birth, the British parliament asked George, the German Elector of Hanover, to inherit the throne of England. Although there were other blood relations of Queen Anne’s with closer ties to the crown, the 1701 Act of Settlement banned Catholics from ascending to the throne. Since George of the House of Hanover was a self-professed Protestant and the great-grandson of James VI, King of Scots, he was deemed an appropriate alternative, becoming King George I of Great Britain until his death in 1727.

As a result, when Charlie began his preparations for an uprising in 1744, it would be George II, son of George I, he would challenge. By this time, James Francis, the Old Pretender, tried to deter his son from heading up another uprising. His two previous failed attempts likely discouraged the would-be monarch and, naturally, he wanted to protect his son from a similar fate, as word of Charlie’s rebellion spread through Europe quickly, earning him the nicknames, Young Pretender or Young Italian, by his Stuart enemies. James Francis was also aware that the Hanoverian line had been accepted as legitimate by both England and Scotland, who were thriving under the new monarchy. Many also considered the Jacobite threat to be long over. However, Charlie would not be dissuaded. He departed for Paris in early 1744 to ask King Louis XV for reinforcements, yet he was turned down.

Left to his own resources, Charlie started his own initiative, sending word to the Highland clan chieftains in Scotland that he would arrive shortly with French troops, weapons and money. True to his word, Charlie finally embarked for Scotland on the Du Teillay, albeit without French support, on 5 July 1745 with 3,500 guns, 2,400 swords and 20 artilleries. The sailing was not a smooth one as the English HMS Lion, alerted to Charlie’s attempts to enter Scotland, violently intercepted the Du Teillay and its partner ship, Elisabeth. With over 200 casualties, Charlie was lucky to have made it to shore on the little Hebridean island of Eriskay on 23 July; however, he had only seven men with him and little money. As result, some Scottish chieftains, who had gathered to meet the prince on the shore, told him to go home.

Charlie allegedly retorted, “I am come home, Sir…I am persuaded my faithful Highlanders will stand by me.” What Charlie lacked in numbers, weaponry and money he more than made up for in youthful arrogance and an infectious optimism. After raising his fathers’ standards at Glenfinnan on 19 August, Charlie welcomed each arriving chieftain and their clansmen in turn, including James Mor MacGregor, son of the legendary Rob Roy. Although some Englishmen and Lowland Scots had fought alongside his father in 1715, Charlie’s men were mostly made up of Highland Scots. Unlike Lowland Scots and their religious and cultural ties with England, the Catholic Highlanders did not have any qualms about assisting another Stuart heir. However, many of the clansmen lacked expertise on the battlefield, as the relative peace under the Hanovers saw the Highlanders put down their weapons in favor of becoming agricultural laborers and weavers.

The blond-haired, blue-eyed Charlie was referred to affectionately by his supporters as the “Bonnie” Prince, for his good looks and charisma. However, according to some sources, the young man was anything but “bonnie”. Yet, despite Charlie’s quick temper, lack of military experience and weakness for alcohol, the Jacobites initially adored their young leader.

Charlie met with success right from the start, capturing Edinburgh on 17 September, setting up residence at Holyroodhouse. The Battle of Prestonpans only days later, on 21 September, would prove to be the finest moment for the Jacobite cause. Led by General George Murray, the Jacobites came upon the Crown’s troops under Sir John Cope by attacking from the rear on a misty morning. The skirmish lasted just under 15 minutes and was a monumental victory for Charlie’s men. However, despite their attempt to be the masters of Scotland, Charlie and his troops had not yet captured a post or garrison, which would have symbolized the threat they posed to the Hanovers.

The prince’s next move would prove fatal to his relationship with the Jacobites. After Prestonpans, there were no battles for five weeks. The Jacobites sat idly in Edinburgh while Charlie schemed to invade England. Despite the fact that he only had 5,500 men, Charlie crossed the English border on 4 December, coming to within 120 meters outside London and the Hanoverian troops lying in wait. Severely outnumbered, Charlie was advised to retreat. As a result, the Jacobites were exhausted from having walked such a great distance in freezing temperatures, only to have to turn back. Charlie’s seeming indifference to the welfare of his troops led to growing discontent amongst his ranks.

The Battle of Falkirk, on 17 January 1746, saw another Jacobite victory, albeit it one that has since gone down in the history books as a draw. Neither side had many casualties while the majority of men on both sides turned and fled. It was reminiscent of the song written about the 1715 Battle of Sheriffmuir, which went, “We ran and they ran, and everybody ran away man.”

It was also around this time Charlie started to notice a decline in his troop’s numbers. Disenchanted with the haughty young prince and the lack of decent meals and warm blankets, many Highlanders decided to return home. The patience of the Jacobites was wearing thin and the chieftains’ relationship with the volatile young prince was irreparably eroded.

By 20 February, when the Jacobites reached Inverness, Charlie was left with fewer than 5,000 men. This did nothing to improve his temperament, as he continued to drown his concerns in alcohol and ignore the advice of his more experienced comrades.

The Battle of Culloden

Prince William, the Duke of Cumberland, was the son of King George II. The young man was sent in to replace Sir John Cope as commander of the Crown’s army stationed in Scotland, fighting against the Jacobites. His military expertise and enthusiasm was exactly what the Hanoverian troops needed. The Battle of Culloden would become Cumberland’s greatest claim to fame and would later earn him the nickname, “Butcher”.

On 15 April 1746, Cumberland opted to rest his troops on a stretch of land on Culloden Moor so he could properly celebrate his 25^th birthday.  Although Cumberland was aware that Charlie was losing men by the dozens and was poorly equipped, he likely chose to wait until all the Jacobite stragglers, exhausted from marching over great distances, had caught up the core of Charlie’s troops before dealing a decisive final blow.

In the Jacobite camp, General George Murray suggested to Charlie that the men prepare for a surprise night attack on the Crown’s troops. The prince was allegedly eager to implement the suggestion, despite the fact that the majority of his men were equipped with little more than axes and pitchforks, while only one if five carried swords. The initial plan had been to cross the Water of Nairn and attack Cumberland’s camp from the southeast with one column, while the rest were assigned to a frontal assault. However, while Murray’s intentions were good, the plan was flawed from the start. The Jacobites hadn’t eaten in nearly two days, other than a small biscuit supplied to each man. They were on unfamiliar terrain and suffering through sleet storms. Nevertheless, Charlie’s army was divided into three columns and they set out around 9:00 PM, leaving their campfires burning so as to disguise their advances. By 2:00 AM, the men had made little progress, having covered only 6 KM. Due to sleep deprivation, hunger and chills, men started to fall behind, resulting in gaps and disorganization in the columns. At the sign of first light, Murray told the men to retreat, although they were within sight of the enemies’ camp. Murray said their surprise attack would be discovered with the light of dawn.

Some of the Jacobites wearily wandered off in search of food, while others collapsed in ditches from exhaustion. And so it happened, that on the disorganized morning of 16 April, Cumberland’s troops were spotted advancing on the Jacobite camp.

Of the 5,000 men remaining in Charlie’s command, only 1,000 answered the initial call to arms at 11:00 AM. Murray sent one of his men into the rain to round up the rest of the men who had wandered off, seeking food and shelter. In some cases, whole companies of men had gone missing; therefore, Charlie was forced to wait until the rest of his troops were located before giving the order to attack. Even once the rest of the troops were found, they outnumbered the Jacobites by 3,000 men.

At noon, Charlie’s men fired first. The battle lasted under an hour. Jacobite officers fought front and center with their men, a grave error that saw them get killed first, leaving companies of men without instruction on how to proceed. Those who had lagged behind suddenly surged forward, clogging Charlie’s columns and causing a jumbled mass of confusion in front of the Hanoverian guns. Once the dust had settled, Cumberland’s troops came out victorious. In a short span of time, between 1,500 and 2,000 Jacobites were killed or wounded compared to the 50 dead and 200 wounded on the Crown’s side.

Bonnie Prince Charlie was reportedly seen crying, sitting atop his horse, looking over the battlefield. Without saying a word, the Young Pretender turned and fled. History has recorded that his bodyguard, Lord Elcho, called out after the prince, “Run, you damned cowardly Italian!” The 1745 Jacobite Rising was over.

The Highland Clearances and the Fate of Bonnie Prince Charlie

The Battle of Culloden was one of the bloodiest in Scottish history. With one fell swoop on the battlefield, Cumberland was free to set out and destroy all remnants of the culture of the Highland Scots. It was, in effect, mass genocide.

The Jacobites who survived Culloden the immediate aftermath of the battle were hunted down by Cumberland’s troops, stripped naked, and left to die where they lay. The road from Culloden to Inverness was littered with slaughtered clansmen as well as innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The surrounding glens were laid to waste, as men were hanged on the spot, women raped, families burned alive in barns and 20,000 cattle driven off lands to be sold. Cumberland’s reign of terror on the Highlands went on without consequence, as no one in London or Edinburgh complained. Aberdeen University even went so far as to name Cumberland as chancellor. He was given a Caesar-like triumph upon his return to London. His victory was even embraced by Lowland Scots who disliked the Gaels in the Highlands and despised their strange language and culture.

Prisons throughout Great Britain overflowed with Highlanders, regardless of whether or not they were Jacobites sympathizers. Of the 3,471 prisoners, 120 were hanged, drawn and quartered or beheaded, 600 died in prison, 936 were sent to the West Indies as slaves, 121 were banished, while the remaining 1,287 were released on various conditions.

The Disarming Acts were put into effect, banning all Highland Scots from carrying weapons, playing bagpipes, wearing kilts and speaking Gaelic. Any remaining Jacobite supporters were forced to turn their land over to King George II and emigrate. These actions, later to be referred to as the Highland Clearances, scattered Highland Scots around the world, effectively destroying ancient Highland traditions and culture in their own land.

Cumberland justified all of his actions, and gathered public support, through the discovery of a general order he claims was written by Jacobite General, George Murray. In the order, Cumberland alleged that Murray ordered that no mercy was to be spared on any captured men of the Crown’s troops. It wasn’t until years later that the document was discovered to have been doctored, likely by Cumberland himself in order to maintain support.

Deemed a vicious stain on the record of the British military, Lord Rosebery, the Liberal Prime Minister in 1894, over 150 years after Culloden, announced, “No blacker, bloodier page will be found in the history of any country than that which records the atrocities against a brave but vanquished enemy, perpetrated at the command and under the eyes of a British monarch’s son.”

As for Bonnie Prince Charlie, he went on the lam for five months, jumping from location to location throughout the Highlands and Hebridean Islands each time the Crown’s troops drew near. Fortunately for the fallen Jacobite leader, he still had loyal supporters left. Most notable among them was 24-year-old Flora MacDonald, who found him safe passage to France, by way of Skye, by disguising him up as her maid. On 19 September 1746, Charlie bid farewell to a small group of supporters who came to see him off. He reportedly told those assembled before him, “My lads, be in good spirits. It shall not be long before I shall be with you and shall endeavor to make up for all the loss you have suffered.” However, Bonnie Prince Charlie never returned to Scotland again.

The Young Pretender, who would go on to live another 42 years, received a heroes reception in France before overstaying his welcome by impregnating his married cousin, Louise de Montbazon, and publicly drinking himself into drunken stupors. His son by Louise died in infancy and Charlie cut off ties with his cousin. After daring to travel to London in disguise, he reunited with Clementina Wilkinshaw, embarking on a nine year love affair. Despite not being married, the couple had a daughter, Charlotte, in 1753. Clementina eventually fled to France with her young daughter when Charlie became abusive. Charlotte would later spend much of her youth in French convents, neglected by her father who refused to acknowledge her as his legitimate child.

Charlie eventually left for Italy in 1760, living off the charity of his younger brother, Henry, who was a cardinal. In 1766, his father, James Francis the Old Pretender, died in Rome, having not seen his son for over 20 years, after their dispute over Charlie’s raising another Stuart rebellion.

In 1772, at the age of 51, Charlie married 19-year-old German princess, Louise of Stolberg. Their relationship was violent from the start, as Charlie would often beat her in a drunken rage. After only two years of marriage, Louise separated from her husband and Charlie made no objection. The aging would-be monarch was eventually reunited with his estranged daughter, Charlotte, in Rome in 1784 after altering his will to make her his sole heir. After awarding her the title of Duchess of Albany, acknowledging her as his legitimate daughter, the two were inseparable. They were both sickly and provided comfort to one another. Charlie was unable to walk without assistance and his fading memory required him to be constantly looked after.

On 30 January 1788, Charlie died with his daughter by his side at the age of 67, followed by his beloved Charlotte only months later at the age of 36. Despite the fact that Charlotte had a husband and three children back home in France, she never left her father’s side again after traveling to Rome to visit him four years earlier.

Bonnie Prince Charlie was interred next to his father, James Francis, in a crypt in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. And, with the death of the last Stuart prince, the Jacobite cause and, consequently, the Stuart dynasty died with him.

Caption: An oil painting by David Morier depicting the Battle of Culloden on 16 April, 1746.

Sources:

Reid, Stuart. Culloden 1746: Battlefield Guide.

Scott, Walter. From Montrose to Culloden: Bonnie Prince Charlie’s and Scotland’s Romantic Age. London: Routledge, 1828.

BBC History: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/

Laura Grande looks at different aspects of freak shows in England and the US in the 19th century.

Lazarus and Johannes Baptista Colloredo were one of the world’s most famous siblings. Many cities played host to the brothers as they traveled throughout Europe during the early-17th century. Since their birth in 1617 in Genoa, Italy, the Colloredo brothers both fascinated and horrified the general public.

Lazarus was thought to be quite handsome, appearing otherwise perfectly healthy, but for his conjoined twin brother. Joannes Baptista protruded, upside down, from his brother’s chest. He was significantly smaller than Lazarus, and only his upper body and left leg visibly extended from his brother’s torso. Although his mental capacity will never be fully ascertained, it is believed by historians that Joannes Baptista likely had very limited mental capabilities. It has been recorded that he could neither speak nor appeared to act under his own volition. His eyes were constantly closed and his mouth hung open at all times. The only response Joannes Baptista ever made to human contact was a squirming motion if someone laid a hand on his chest.

Lazarus went on tour with his brother in order to earn a living, even traveling to England to make an appearance at the court of King Charles I in the early 1640s. When not on exhibition, Lazarus would shield his brother from public view by covering him with a cloak. While little documentation exists on the Colloredo brothers, their popularity throughout Europe was neither unique nor unexpected, considering their exceptional physical condition.

The historical traditions of freak shows and exhibitions date back to the reign of England’s Elizabeth I. As early as the 16th century, severe physical deformities and abnormalities were no longer deemed as bad omens or evidence of evil spirits residing within the person. Those with unusual physical characteristics became a public curiosity and were shuttled throughout Europe under the guidance of sideshow managers. While it is unknown whether Lazarus Colloredo employed a performance manager or operated under his own authority when touring Europe, many so-called “freaks” readily agreed to the notion of working under a manager and splitting the profits.

However, it wasn’t until the 19th century that freak shows and novelty acts caught the imagination of a larger viewing public willing to pay for the opportunity to witness human medical oddities. It became a booming business, as people with physical abnormalities grew into a highly profitable market, specifically in England and the United States.

A Brief Description of Sideshows

Sideshows, or freak shows as they are sometimes referred to, contained various forms of entertainment in one evening. Ten in One shows displayed 10 freaks on a platform in front of an audience, as people slowly walked past them. Every now and then, a magician would be thrown into the mix to give the crowd a brief respite from some of the more unsettling abnormalities they were witnessing. However, not all performers were “natural” freaks born with physical deformities. Some were performance artists who had unusual talents, such as fire eating, sword swallowing or full-body tattoos.

Some shows were regarded as inappropriate for women and children and were categorized as “men only” performances. These often included the display of exotic or unnatural objects, such as “pickled punks” which were abnormal fetuses preserved in glass jars. The Piccadilly Egyptian Hall, for example, was home to British naturalist and antiquarian William Bullock’s array of curiosities from around the world, which were on display in the early-19th century.

A Growing Phenomenon

In 1844, American circus pioneer and entertainment business manager P.T. Barnum traveled to England with his latest sensation, Tom Thumb. Born Charles Stratton, Tom Thumb was Barnum’s distant cousin and most recent success story. Barnum trained Stratton in the arts, teaching the young boy how to sing, dance and impersonate famous historical figures. Once Stratton was properly groomed for a life in the public eye, Barnum gave him the stage name of General Tom Thumb.

At just over two feet tall, the diminutive Stratton was instructed to lie about his age, claiming he was 11 years old instead of his actual age of five. Barnum believed that, in making Tom Thumb older than he actually was, it would make his short stature seem all the more remarkable. In order to draw curiosity seekers in London, Barnum also changed Stratton’s nationality from American to English to bring in larger crowds of people hoping to catch a glimpse of a “local” sideshow performer. Tom Thumb was eventually presented to Queen Victoria on two occasions, as she was, herself, a fan of sideshows.

Small American freak shows first started to spring up in 1829, around the time of the arrival of Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins. As American sideshows began hitting its stride in the 1840s, English versions gained similar popularity. The Victorian era is often viewed as the heyday of the freak show. It was an age of scientific and medical advancements and, consequently, the public was naturally curious about unexplained oddities. Freak shows were staged at both enter- tainment and scientific venues, drawing everyone from young children to seasoned medical professionals.

With the growth of industrialization in large English cities came rapid imperial expansion and the discovery of “exotic” people. Families left the countryside for the city, seeking job opportunities brought about by the countless mills and workhouses that were springing up throughout the nation. Men, women and children were all put to work, making London the greatest and most profitable industrial city in Europe.

As a result of those steady, albeit labor-intensive, hours on the job, people sought new forms of entertainment, to take their minds off their hardships and financial woes. For a small fee, they could enter a world of medical wonders and human oddities, unlike anything they’d ever seen. In an age where scientific reasoning started overshadowing traditional religious values and medicinal advancements claimed stories of miraculous and life-saving surgeries, freak shows introduced the average layman to medicine and science, while enthralling them with tales of exotic locales and mysterious people discovered via colonial expansion.

One famous incident involved Hoo Loo, a Chinese man with a 56-pound tumor on his scrotum. Although he was not publicly displayed as a freak, he was brought to London for a medical procedure. When people got word of Hoo Loo’s arrival, crowds swarmed to the operating theater in Guy’s Hospital to witness the medical wonder. Although Hoo Loo died on the operating table after having bled to death, his story swept through England. Historian Meegan Kennedy argues in her essay, “Poor Hoo Loo: Sentiment, Stoicism and the Grotesque in British Imperial Medicine”, that as a medical oddity, Hoo Loo came to symbolize both the limits of Western medi- cine while also representing the “recovery” or acceptance of the patient (or freak) through empathy from a large audience. He embodied the contrast of both the positive and negative aspects of drawing attention due to a severe deformity. A man like Hoo Loo provoked discussion among those who perhaps knew very little about medicine, science or “exotic” Oriental ideologies in understanding such severe medical anomalies. Although not a sideshow performer, Hoo Loo’s medical predicament was just the sort of “freakery” gaining popularity by the mid-19th century.

The Role of the Showman

The showman was an essential component to the freak show. His talent was in the ability to recruit a person with an unusual disfigurement, disability or talent and use them as an attraction. A showman would often have an alter ego; a stage persona that became a public identity that his audience could recognize. Showmen rarely allowed their freaks to be seen before the show in order to preserve the element of shock and surprise.

The larger-than-life personalities of Victorian-era showmen became an art form in and of itself, as they created narrative histories for each of their freaks in order to create drama and heighten the excitement in the audience. As England’s Tom “The Silver King” Norman later wrote in his memoir, The Penny Showman, “it was not the show, it was the tale that you told”.

The average showman was also often susceptible to the spreading of the occasional lie in order to swindle a little extra cash from the crowd. P.T. Barnum was a shrewd businessman and was not above deception in an attempt to amass large crowds. One of his few faux creations was the Fiji Mermaid, which he debuted in 1842, prior to traveling to England with Tom Thumb. Barnum commissioned a colleague to obtain the skull of a monkey and attach it to the skeletal tail of a large fish.

Tom Norman was the English counterpart to Barnum, picking up where the American showman left off, as Barnum briefly struggled through debts incurred during the 1850s after a handful of poor business ventures. Raconteur-extraordinaire, Norman earned his nickname, “The Silver King” from Barnum himself when the two men met in 1882, after one of Norman’s shows at the Royal Agricultural Hall. Barnum introduced himself and noticed a heavy and expensive-looking silver watch hanging from Norman’s pocket and called him “silver king” and the name stuck.

Like most other showmen, Norman relied on the kindness of strangers in order to house his exhibits. It was common practice for poor tradesmen to rent out their stores for the display of oddities. Norman rented the shops of small businesses for a few days, erecting a small stage or a large curtain inside. In the 1870s, he had debuted Eliza Jenkins, the Human Skeleton, and Balloon-Headed Baby, among others. He traveled with them from Nottingham to Glasgow, renting tiny trade shops along the way. By the early 1880s, around the time of his meeting with Barnum, Norman’s traveling freak show was a surefire hit wherever it went. By the latter half of the 19th century, London’s West End appeared to be a revolving door of exhibitions featuring freaks and novelty acts. It became a permanent fixture at entertainment venues around the city. By 1883, Norman had acquired two of his greatest freak show sensations: Mary Anne Bevan, the World’s Ugliest Woman, and Joseph Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man.

Sideshows were often categorized each night, depending on the entertainment for the evening, whether it was dwarfs, tall men or bearded ladies. It was also com- mon to have specific exhibits set aside solely for women and children. Norman would resort to this tactic on occasion, advertising certain shows as family-friendly and others as geared more towards adults. However, a sideshow exhibit, such as that of the Elephant Man, would have been open to all ages due to his notoriety.

In an attempt to avoid any damage to the reputation of their exhibits, showmen often resisted having doctors visit their performers for fear that a diagnosis of the freak’s ailment or a classification of their deformity would ruin the appeal of the show. Their conditions would appear less mysterious or exotic if given a medical definition and the public would lose interest. Contrary to popular belief, freaks were rarely mistreated by the showmen who controlled their schedules. When Dr. Frederick Treves attacked Norman in his 1923 memoir, The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences, Norman retaliated. Even though, by that time, it had been years since the death of Joseph Merrick, Norman had no intention of allowing Treves to portray him as the villain in the short life of the Elephant Man. Treves had accused Norman of abusing and mistreating Merrick, forcing him to display his body against his own free will. In February 1923, Norman published a response in the World’s Fair and stated that, “the big majority of showmen are in the habit of treating their novelties as human beings, and in a large number of cases as one of their own, and not like beasts”. Barnum likely would have approved of Norman’s published rebuttal, having built a strong rapport with the majority of his freaks in the US, specifically with regards to his enduring friend- ship with Tom Thumb.

The Freaks!

“Perhaps she would get me, after all!/If the links should break, I might feel small,/Young as I was, and strong and tall,/And blest with a human shape,/To see myself foil’d in that lonely place/By a desperate brute with a monstrous face,/And hugg’d to death in the foul embrace/Of a loathly angry ape”. ~Arthur Munby’s “Pastrana”~

When discussing freaks shows in England, it is impossible not to mention its connection with British ideology and imperial imagery. The narrator of Arthur Munby’s poem, Pastrana, feels his masculinity is under threat after he first lays eyes on Julia Pastrana, one of the Victorian eras most well-known freaks. He feels small in comparison to a human being who more resembles an ape than she does a woman. It illustrates the argument historians make about the role of the freak in 19th-century England. In a time of social upheaval and global expansion, such an extraordinarily abnormal figure as Pastrana would have helped drive home to the public what it meant to be British, as opposed to an exotic, foreign “other”. The shows came to represent a national identity, reinforcing the notion of what makes one quintessentially British and what does not. Julia Pastrana was a Mexican-born woman suffering from hypertrichosis, a disease that results in the person being covered from head to toe in long, thick hair. Other indicators often included exaggerated facial features, including a large nose and thick lips. She toured Europe in the 1840s and 1850s under the guidance of Theodor Lent, the man who would eventually become her husband. However, Pastrana died shortly after giving birth to a stillborn baby who had similar features to her own. Therefore, instead of abandoning the tour, Lent had his wife and child mummified. Even in death, Pas- trana was destined for a life in the eye of the public.

Despite the sad circumstances surrounding Pastrana’s life, there were many freaks that were able to separate their stage persona from their own identity and gen- uinely enjoyed their newfound fame. Far from considering themselves exploited, these freaks became self-consciously complex in their stage presentations. Tom Thumb, Barnum’s tiny sensation, is an example of one who made his stage persona a caricature, completely separate from his identity as Charles Stratton, a man who eventually got married and had children of his own. Like an actor, Stratton was able to shed his guise as Tom Thumb at the end of each day.

Krao Farini, a Burmese girl who had been performing since the age of six, worked for Barnum from the 1880s until her death in 1926. She was billed as “The Missing Link”, a play on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, thus integrating science and Darwinism with entertainment. Farini had simian-like qualities, including flexible limbs and a hairy body. Despite her youth, she often performed scantily clad and audience members were allowed to reach out and touch her at the end of each show. This outrageous performance contrasted with her much more reserved personality, thus separating her personal identity from that of her shocking role as the Missing Link in entertainment venues.

Freaks were often perceived as apprehensive, docile and unhappy with their lot in life. In many cases during the Victorian era, nothing could be further from the truth. Many defended themselves against their managers, talking back and demanding raises. As early as 1851, it had become popular to sell trading cards of popular freaks throughout England and the US. Profits from these images went straight into the pockets of the performers themselves, as opposed to the showmen. Isaac W. Sprague, the American Human Skeleton, had one of the most successful trading cards. At 5’6”, Sprague weighed only 43 pounds. As he toured with Barnum in the 1860s, he made a good sum of money off of the sale returns from the card. Some of the more willing performers, like Sprague, even penned their own biographies to be published in freak show pamphlets.

Although showmen and freaks would often split the profits from ticket sales and money made off of pamphlets or cards, the client was better off in the end. While the showmen had to pay for store rentals, heating and lighting, profits given to the sideshow performers went straight into their hands. It was not uncommon for freaks to be better off, in terms of wealth, than the majority of the public who came to see them perform.

It was no small wonder that both showmen and performers, alike, argued that it was better if the freaks were in public, displaying their abnormalities for profit, rather than struggling to live among everyday people without a job and in complete isolation.

The Decline of the Freak Show

By the 1890s, the popularity of freak shows started to dwindle. A variety of factors played a pivotal role in its almost complete disappearance by the 1950s.

British social historian and journalist, Henry Mayhew, had always been opposed to the very existence of both the popular sideshows and “penny gaffs” (considered a bawdy type of entertainment). As early as 1861, in his study, London Labour and the London Poor, Mayhew wrote vehemently against them. He rejected the notion of such shows as a valuable form of entertainment, dismissing them as nothing more than moral corruption and human degradation. He wrote that, “instead of being a means for illustrating a moral precept, it turned into a platform to teach the cruelest debauchery”. In Mayhew’s opinion, the “men who preside over these infamous places know too well the failings of their audience”.

Although Mayhew voiced his aversion towards “low forms” of entertainment in the 1860s, it wasn’t for another 30 years before the rest of the public started to adapt to his way of thinking. In the early years of the 20th century, a rise in disability rights inspired people to turn against sideshows and what they deemed as exploitation parading as entertainment. With railways, steamships and more access for people to travel, the idea of the foreign and exotic “other” started to lose its appeal as people left England or the US to explore the world for themselves.

With advances in medicine, freaks were faced with actual diagnoses. As a result, sideshows began losing their appeal as their physical or medical conditions were no longer thought of as miraculous or entirely unique. Some even stayed away from sideshows for fear of catching the freaks’ “diseases”.

The First World War glorified its returning heroes, while sideshow performers were ignored as they stayed at home, performing for reduced price rates, while men and women fought on the front. By the 1930s, sideshows were deemed as lack- ing in dignity and the value of novelty acts was wearing thin. Tod Browning’s 1932 American film, Freaks, was universally reviled upon release. Featuring real-life freaks, such as the limbless Prince Randian, the legless Johnny Eck and conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, the plot revolved around a woman who marries a midget sideshow performer named, Hans (played by Harry Earles). Due to the controversy surrounding the film, many scenes were heavily edited and, as a result, have been lost over time. However, Freaks is now considered a cult classic and is still screened around North America at cult film festivals.

Many nations took to banning sideshows, including Germany in 1937. With the rise of television, the entertainment provided by freak shows was all but lost. More and more people shunned this “low brow” form of entertainment in favor of staying at home and watching television in the comfort of their own home.

Unable to land proper jobs and unwilling to fade quietly into the background without any money, freaks took to performing in traveling carnivals and museums for small amounts of cash.

Coney Island in New York remains one of the few providers of sideshow entertainment left in the world. Although well past its heyday during the early-20th cen- tury, Coney Island remains a staple of the type of old-fashioned freak shows that were once so popular. Since 1983, “Sideshows by the Seashore” has been a popu- lar tourist attraction. It also boasts the last true Ten in One freak show in the world.

Despite their diminished popularity, the history of freak shows continue to ingite our curiosity.

Photo Captions

Image One: A 17th century sketch of the Colloredo brothers, Lazarus and Joannes Baptista.

Image Two: Charles Stratton traveled to England with P.T. Barnum in 1844 under the stage name, General Tom Thumb.

Image Three: Julia Pastrana toured Europe as either the Ape Woman or the Bearded Lady.

Image Four: The poster for the 1932 film, Freaks.

Sources:

Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Thompson, Rosemarie. Freakery: Cultural Spectacle of the Extraordinary Body. NYU Press, 1991.

Laura Grande looks at the short life of Joseph Merrick, London’s most famous sideshow performer.

“Ladies and gentlemen …with your indulgence, I would like to introduce Mr. Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Before doing so, I ask you please to prepare yourselves. Brace yourself to witness one who is probably the most remarkable human being ever to draw the breath of life”.

~Tom “The Silver King” Norman, 1884~

The large canvas draped outside Michael Geary’s greengrocer shop at 123 Whitechapel Road featured the grotesque illustration of a man in the midst of transforming into an elephant. Paired with the description, “The Great Freak of Nature: Half-a-Man and Half-an- Elephant”, professional showman Tom “The Silver King” Norman knew he had the upper hand over all the other sideshow novelty acts performing in London in November of 1884.

The image had the desired effect, drawing in numerous patrons hoping to catch a glimpse of the deformed man. Among the curiosity-seekers was a young surgeon, Dr. Frederick Treves, who was employed at the Royal London Hospital across the street from the little shop. Treves paid two pence to Norman, requesting a private viewing of The Elephant Man. Norman, ever eager to earn quick cash on the side, readily consented.

The scene that followed was later recorded by Treves in his 1923 book, The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences. Although his account is often wrought with embellishments and sentimentality, the effect is nonetheless powerful. Treves was led into the darkened shop, with only the glow of the blue-flame gas burner to light the way. Treves noticed a red curtain, suspended by a cord, hanging across the length of the floor. Without warning, Norman pulled the curtain back to reveal the Elephant Man.

The young man was hunched on a stool with a brown cloak draped across his shoulders, looking “the very embodiment of loneliness”. Treves recalled Norman yelling at the man to stand up, “speaking as if to a dog”. The Elephant Man slowly rose and turned around, showing Treves the cauliflower-like growths and masses of bony material that made up his form. “At no time had I met with such a degraded or perverted version of a human being”, Treves later wrote in his Reminiscences.

The Elephant Man was covered from head to toe in tumors and scaly skin. His head was abnormally large, with thick skin folds hanging off the back of his skull. The tumors pressed down so hard on the right side of his face, that his eye was almost completely swollen shut. He was diminutive in stature, being not much taller than five feet, and had a crooked spine, swollen left hip and clubbed feet, forcing him to shuffle instead of walk. Growths hung off the rest of his body, while many of the tumors were covered in warts. His right arm hung limp at his side; his fingers five inches thick and his entire arm misshapen, resembling a club. It was difficult for the Elephant Man to talk, due to the tumors protruding from his mouth, and his speech was often incomprehensible.

Upon closer inspection, the only thing that appeared normal to Treves was the Elephant Man’s left arm. It was the size and shape of the average man’s, with dainty fingers and smooth skin. Treves was instantly drawn to this medical oddity, aspiring to learn everything he could about the mysterious Elephant Man.

Joseph Carey Merrick was born in Leicester on 5 August 1862, the eldest of three children born to Joseph Rockley Merrick and his wife, Mary Jane. Joseph was born healthy, with no visible abnormalities. However, by the time the infant was 21 months old, Mary Jane began noticing growths on Joseph’s face, including a thick, tumor-like mass that protruded out of his mouth, making it impossible for the baby to close his jaw. It would be this particular deformity that would later earn Joseph the stage name, Elephant Man, as the mass resembled an elephant tusk. As the years went by, the child’s deformities progressively worsened. Mary Jane, herself a cripple, was at a loss as to what to do and resorted to shielding her son from public life. While the next Merrick son, William Arthur, was born healthy, a daughter, Marian, was born a cripple like her mother. Mary Jane was overwhelmed with caring for two sickly children and, when Joseph was 12, she died after a brief illness.

His father quickly remarried and Joseph’s stepmother consid- ered him a useless nuisance due to his inability to contribute to housework. She convinced Joseph’s father to send him to the Leicester Union Workhouse, where he would toil off and on for the next few years, completing menial tasks and suffering verbal abuse at the hands of the nurses and other inmates. He would sometimes travel to stay with an uncle; however, he always returned to the workhouse when he needed money.

In August of 1884, when he was 22-years-old, he was discovered by the sideshow manager Tom Norman, “The Silver King”. Suddenly, Merrick was making more money than he’d ever imagined, earning approximately 50 pounds, a generous sum, which was in stark contrast to the meager one pound income most families earned in the same time frame. For the first time since his mother’s death 10 years previously, Merrick was well- treated. Norman never hedged on payments to his performers and The Elephant Man was an instant success upon his arrival in London that year. Merrick even penned a brief autobiography so that Norman could use it in a pamphlet advertising his show. Despite Treves’ later accusations that Merrick was mistreated by Norman, no hard evidence supports his suggestions. Norman’s supporters claimed that Treves’ charges were little more than baseless slander.

However, by the mid-1880s, sideshows and traveling circuses were on a gradual decline, as moral outrage over the supposed exploitation of the performers reached a fever pitch. Police patrolled the streets, handing out fines to anyone who dared to charge a fee to look at one of the sideshow freaks. Norman sold Merrick to a traveling performance manager in 1885; however, this new manager, known only as Mr. Ferrari, abandoned him in Belgium the following year when a public outcry over the Elephant Man’s deformities threatened to derail Ferrari’s show and put it out of business. With less than 50 pounds of savings left to his name, Merrick made his way back to London by ship and train, his face shrouded by a large black mask and cap. His arrival at the Liverpool Street train station on 24 June 1886 was not the sort of homecoming Merrick sought.

Due to his mask and the fact that he walked with a cane, he was harassed by locals who tried to pull off his mask. When the police intervened, they found Merrick babbling to himself in a corner, shielding his face. On his person, they found a worn-out business card with the name of Dr. Frederick Treves on it. Although two years had gone by since he last saw him, Treves never forgot the Elephant Man and willingly took him in.

Treves used his connections at the Royal London Hospital to secure Merrick his own basement apartment on the grounds. This enabled Treves to check in on Merrick every day, while giving the former sideshow performer his own privacy. In his spare time, Merrick developed hobbies he’d never previously been able to pursue. He enjoyed building and painting cardboard structures (which he would give to the nurses as gifts) and reading (Jane Austen’s Emma being a particular favourite). Merrick also developed a keen sense of fashion and Treves would sometimes treat him to a new suit or a grooming kit. Treves also took him to the opera, where Merrick enjoyed the theatre from a sheltered private box. Merrick even had the honor of meeting with Princess Alexandra of Wales and Queen Victoria.

Treves recalled that Merrick seemed content in those final years, writing in his Reminiscences that, “the one thing that always struck me as sad about Merrick was that he could not smile. He could weep, but he could not smile”. Despite his physical deformities, Merrick had a sharp intellect and enjoyed the company of Treves and his high-society friends.

On 11 April 1890, at the age of 27, Merrick was found dead in his bed by one of the hospital nurses. He was discovered lying on his back. Due to his physical condition and the weight of his head, Merrick was supposed to always sleep sitting up, with his head bent forward and propped on his knees. It is unknown whether Merrick intentionally lay down on his back that night or whether he’d accidentally tipped over in his sleep. An autopsy later confirmed that Merrick died of a dislocated neck, due to the weight of his skull, and likely died instantly.

His body has been previously displayed at the Royal London Hospital, the place he once called home, although it has since been moved into a private quarter of the hospital. However, Merrick’s belongings are still on public display, including his mask, cap, a cardboard structure he made of a church and the only surviving copy of his handwriting.

In 2003, a DNA test was done on samples of Merrick’s hair and bones to determine which disease ailed him throughout his short life. It was often speculated that he suffered from elephantiasis (a rare disorder caused by parasitic worms, which results in deformities). However, the majority of scientists and medical professionals agree that Merrick may have had Proteus Syndrome, which attacks the tissues and nerves in the human body. It’s not a genetic condition and is so rare, that there are only approximately 100 known recorded cases in the world.

Since the publication of Treves’ much-debated account in 1923, the Elephant Man has endured in popular culture as a sym- pathetic figure portrayed in dozens of plays, books and films. Interpretations of Merrick’s life often suggest he was a refined and gentle man trapped in a grotesque body, while Treves is often elevated to a (some would argue undeserved) heroic status.

Whether exhibiting himself on stage with “The Silver King” or studied by Dr. Treves and his colleagues, Merrick never had full control over how his body was viewed. Yet, even in death, Joseph Merrick is the embodiment of how human dignity can overcome life’s hardships.

Photo Captions:

(Image One): Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man) photographed in 1889 while being studied by Dr. Frederick Treves. The photograph was published in the British Medical Journal on 19 April 1890.

(Image Two): Joseph Merrick in 1889. This photograph was published in the British Medical Journal on 19 April 1890.

(Image Three): Dr. Frederick Treves in an undated photo. Treves used his connections to secure Merrick a permanent room in the Royal London Hospital.

Sources and Suggested Reading:

• Howell, Michael and Peter Ford. The True History of the Elephant Man. London: Allison & Busby Limited, 1980. Reprinted in 2006.

• Montagu, Ashley. The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity. Acadian House Publishing, 1971. Reprinted in 2001.

• Treves, Frederick. The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences. London: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1923.

Laura Grande looks at the life the enigmatic artist whom some believe was Jack the Ripper.

Walter Sickert was a man of mystery. Even those who were close to the acclaimed artist only saw a small glimpse into the life of the intensely private man. Sickert’s main devotion was his passion for capturing the darker side of life on canvas, holding a mirror up to society and its flaws.

However, his many artistic accomplishments have since been overshadowed by rumor and speculation.

In 1976, 34 years after his death in 1942, Sickert was moved to the top of the long list of Jack the Ripper suspects, which had been accumulating since the 1888 murders in London.

Authors Stephen Knight, Jean Overton Fuller and, most recently, Patricia Cornwell, have all published books citing Sickert as Jack the Ripper, claiming he even went so far as to sketch the bodies of his victims and display them in galleries around the world. Art historians and Sickert’s fans have since voiced their outrage over the allegations.

Was Sickert really Jack the Ripper or were these accusations a malicious smear campaign? Depending on where your opinion lies, the revelation that Sickert was the Ripper is either a remarkable achievement after the passage of so much time, or an irresponsible and slanderous attack on a good man’s character.

A Troubled Childhood

Walter Richard Sickert was born in Munich, Germany on 31 May 1860. The son of Danish artist, Oswald Adalbert Sickert, and his English-Irish wife, Eleanor, Walter was the first of six children born to the couple.

An appreciation for art was instilled in Walter at a young age, as he was later to become the third generation of Sickert artists. Walter’s paternal grandfather, Johann, was once a patron of Denmark’s King Christian VIII.

The majority of information about Walter’s early life that has been gathered by historians over the years was derived from the 1935 memoirs of his only sister, Helena. Without her work, details of Walter’s early years would have been scarce. At the time of the publication of Helena’s memoirs, Sickert was 75-years-old and living in England.

According to his sister, as a child Walter bounced from school to school. Despite his intelligence and the fact that he was fluent in English, German, French and Italian, the boy struggled. He was expelled from University College School in his early teens. He attended King’s College in Wimbledon until he was 18; however, teachers struggled to cope with his erratic mood swings. Over the years, any type of authority figure in Walter’s life would later claim he was arrogant, manipulative and seemed to have no fear of consequences. In short, Sickert was a handful and, as result, had very few friends.

However, Helena’s memoir never mentions the medical trauma Walter endured at the age of five, as a result of three separate fistula surgeries. This was likely because Helena was unaware of what her brother went through, having been only an infant at the time.

Oswald Sickert moved his family to London in 1865 so Walter could have a third, and final, surgery to correct the fistula. Dr. Alfred Duff Cooper oversaw the procedure at St. Mark’s Hospital. However, no documentation exists of the operation, as the hospital did not archive patient files at the time (this only became proper protocol in 1900). Therefore, without a record precisely indicating what Walter’s infirmity was, one can only speculate as to the location of the fistula.

These surgeries, combined with his aggressive childhood behavior, become a focal point in the argument of those who believe Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Patricia Cornwell, in particular, believes that the operations were done on young Walter’s penis, making him sterile, and thus leaving him to take out his sexual frustration on innocent women on the streets of London later in life. Sickert’s supporters, however, are quick to point out that it has never officially been specified in any found document as to where, exactly, young Walter’s fistula was on his body, thereby making Cornwell’s reasoning unsound.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Sickert was a master of disguise. He had a fondness for changing his name and he would frequently dress up and perform for colleagues. His brief stint as an actor with Sir Henry Irving’s company, when Sickert was in his late teens, brought him a lot of joy, as he was able to perform regularly at the Lyceum Theatre in London. He sometimes went by the stage name Mr. Nemo (the Latin word for “no one”) which some have claimed is another link in the Ripper connection, as the alleged Ripper letters were sometimes signed Nemo. However, it was a popular trend, at the time, to take on the name for fun and to add an air of ambiguity. Charles Dickens even used it for a tragic character in his 1853 novel, Bleak House.

However, Sickert eventually returned to his original passion for painting after meeting the American-born British-based artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1879. Although Sickert was only 19-years-old at the time, Whistler was drawn to the young man and asked him to be his pupil and assistant.  In 1881, Sickert exhibited his first piece at the Fine Art Society in London, officially becoming a pupil of the legendary Whistler.

With Whistler as his teacher, Sickert learned to paint from nature in broad strokes and in one single sitting, a style that is referred to as alla prima. Sickert also studied tonal painting, learning how to contrast light and shadow, and imbuing his pieces with an air of dark, intense mystery. Although referred to as an Impressionist painter, Sickert’s style was unique; his subjects often cast in shadow, their faces appearing to be mutilated and covered in blood due to his shadowing technique.

In 1883, Sickert was entrusted with Whistler’s Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, taking it to Paris to be displayed at art shows. It was while in France that Sickert met French Impressionist painter, Edgar Degas. He quickly became a devoted pupil to the renowned Degas, learning how to sketch and focus on frank depictions of everyday life. It was likely through these lessons that Sickert came to be drawn to a darker subject matter, delving into the sordid side of life. Degas took delight in training a young man who was finally coming into his own as an artist. Sickert returned to England in high demand and with a newfound confidence in his artistic abilities.

On 17 June 1885, Sickert married Ellen Cobden, a woman 12 years his senior. They bought a studio at 54 Broadhurst Garden in South Hampstead, where Sickert lived during Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror in 1888.

Jack the Ripper?

At the time of the Ripper slayings, Sickert was 28-years-old and completely devoted to his artwork. Addicted to newspapers, tabloids and journals, Sickert took a keen interest in the case, voraciously following the news reports in late-1888. He would often bring up the case during dinner conversations, reveling in other people’s theories on the gruesome subject.

The murders of prostitutes Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly had the public transfixed. It’s generally accepted by historians and Ripperologists that these five women were killed by the same person. However, there were dozens of other similar murders in Whitechapel during that period that could easily have been the work of either the same person or a copycat.

Art historian and leading Sickert scholar, Dr. Anna Gruetzner Robins of the University of Reading, claims it’s nearly impossible to study Sickert without considering the possibility that he may have been Jack the Ripper. This seems to be less an outright accusation and more of an acknowledgement of Sickert’s attraction to the macabre, especially for the sake of his art.

Eventually, the unsolved murders were all but forgotten by the media outlets. Sickert was never implicated in the crimes or called in for questioning. Suspicion would fall on him decades after his death. However, it was the art he created in the subsequent years after the Ripper killings that attracted the attention of authors such as Cornwell.

In 1896, Sickert separated from his wife, Ellen, after 11 years of marriage. The couple never had any children and Ellen would cite Sickert’s independence and infidelity as the reason behind their official divorce in July of 1899. It was around this time that Sickert had a falling out with Whistler and the two never spoke again.

By the fall of 1898, Sickert had already moved to Dieppe and, soon after meeting the widowed Mme. Augustine Villain, he moved in with her and her children. Many Sickert supporters and historians claim that he fathered a son, Maurice, with Mme. Villain, consequently debunking the theory that Sickert was sterile and, as a result, violent and sexually frustrated. Later in his life, Maurice would insist that he was the son of the famous artist.

Regardless of whether Maurice was his biological son or not, Sickert returned to London in 1905, buying a new studio at Fitzroy and Charlotte streets. It was around this time that Sickert began painting images of music halls and London scenery. He was also an esteemed teacher at the Westminster School of Art, where he remained off and on until 1918.

Sickert focused on sketching prostitutes during this period. He also continued experimenting with light and shadow. Cornwell argues that two early-20th century sketches of Sickert’s resemble the corpses of Ripper victims Catherine Eddowes and Mary Ann Nichols. Cornwell points out the shadows in Putana a Casa resembled the violent slashes on Eddowes’ face, while Venetian Studies’ sleeping woman shares similarities with Nichols.

In September of 1907, a young prostitute named Emily Elizabeth Dimmock was found murdered in her bed in Camden Town. Those who believe Sickert was Jack the Ripper make links between the similarities of Dimmock’s murder and that of Mary Kelly. Sickert was drawn to the murder of this young prostitute, titling one of his sketches The Camden Town Murder, which featured a man sitting on a bed next to the victim, with his hands covering his face. In true Sickert fashion, he provided an alternate title for the 1908 sketch; calling it What Shall We Do For The Rent? The title effectively changes the public’s perception of the image, this time portraying a devastated man sitting next to his sleeping wife, overcome with the burden of his financial woes.

That same year, Sickert drew a haunting sketch of a shadowy figure, face hidden in darkness, standing in an empty room. It was titled Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom. Cornwell argued it was Sickert’s own room in the house where he was living during the time of Dimmock’s murder.

Sickert defenders argue that the gritty images of death do not indicate he was a murderer, as Cornwell proposes, only that, like most of the English population, he was intrigued by the criminal underbelly of Victorian London. If Sickert were the Ripper, they ask, why would he wait nearly 20 years before sketching his victims? Sickert historians believe he likely saw the morgue photos of Eddowes and Nichols (which were rumored to be quietly circulated at the time), hence the similarities between the Ripper victims and Sickert’s Putana a Casa and Venetian Studies. It would also explain why there were no other sketches resembling other Ripper victims. As Sickert supporters point out, the sketches resemble the morgue photos, not the actual crime scenes, thereby diminishing the theory that he had an insiders’ knowledge of the crimes because he was the killer. As for his preference in sketching prostitutes, it is argued that many artists did this, as the women were usually the most obliging and saw it as an easier way of making money.

The Final Years

In 1911, Sickert founded the Camden Town Group, a society for British painters, and married Christine Angus, a student 17 years his junior. However, by 1920, Christine had died and a grieving Sickert flung her cremated remains at the assembled mourners during her funeral. This was to be the start of his breakdown and descent into strange, irrational behavior. Those who support the theory that Sickert and the Ripper were one and the same saw this as proof of his damaged psychology, while Sickert supporters argue it was a moment of extreme grief that was soon made worse by the death of his beloved mother, Eleanor, in 1922.

It wasn’t until 1926 that Sickert started to show stability in his life again. He married his longtime friend, Therese Lessore, who would remain his wife until his death. However, the marital bliss did not last, as only a few months later Sickert suffered a stroke which took him over a year to recover. In his final years, Sickert would mostly paint from photographs, likely due to a lack of creativity after such a long illness. In 1941, the National Gallery in London put on a one-man exhibit in his honor, showcasing the finest paintings and sketches of his illustrious career.

On 22 January 1942, Sickert passed away from kidney failure at the age of 82 in Bath, where his cremated remains were later buried.

To this day, the theory that Sickert was Jack the Ripper is dismissed by those in the art world. Many perceive the research of authors Stephen Knight, Jean Overton Fuller and Patricia Cornwell to be baseless attacks on one of England’s finest Impressionist artists. Sickert is, by no means, the only Ripper suspect; however, the theory has since gained traction due, in part, to Cornwell’s 2002 book, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed.

The continual speculation, nearly 70 years after Sickert’s death, only adds to enigma of this private, erratic and talented artist. Whether Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper or not, he took that secret with him to the grave.

Above: Sickert’s 1908 painting titled The Camden Town Murder, which some believe mirrors the death of prostitute Emily Dimmock. The painting’s alternate title is What Shall We Do for the Rent? which effectively changes how the viewer interprets the painting.

Sources:

Cornwell, Patricia. Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed. New York: Berkley Books, 2002.

Jakubowski, Maxim and Nathan Brand, Ed. The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper. United Kingdom: Constable & Robinson, 1999.

The Official Jack the Ripper website, http://www.casebook.org/.

Previously published in the August/September 2010 issue of History Magazine.

Laura Grande looks at the myth behind one of England’s most enduring urban legends.

The 19^th century was an age of science and reason; however, superstition remained a persistent school of thought, throughout the decades.

Before Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of Whitechapel in 1888, a different sort of terror was said to be roaming the streets of England. The stories of a tall, cloaked man with glowing red eyes who was able to reach spectacular heights with only the slightest of leaps, made its first reported appearance in 1837.

From the moment this figure made its first appearance, this strange phenomenon has gripped a nation, and baffled historians, for more than 60 years. Dubbed Spring-heeled Jack by media outlets eager to latch onto the story of a superhuman villain, this ghostly figure has remained one of England’s most enduring urban legends.

The First Sightings

Barnes village was a notoriously dangerous place to travel by night. This once remote area of London (now a riverside suburb) was the location of the first sighting of Spring-heeled Jack.

On a chilly April night in 1837, an unidentified businessman was late for work when he spontaneously decided to take a shortcut through a nearby churchyard. Aware of the risk he was taking, the businessman picked up his pace. It was then that a dark figure leapt clear over the graveyard’s railings, landing directly in front of the frightened man.

The moment the businessman saw the dark phantom’s bulging red eyes he fled. This was to be the first of many recorded sightings over the years. Minor reports were published in newspapers in the months following the Barnes attack; however, few can be definitively identified as the apparition known as Spring-heeled Jack.

On 19 February 1838, Spring-heeled Jack made another appearance, this time in the outskirts of Old Ford, closer to the city of London. Around 9:00 pm, 18-year-old Jane Alsop heard a knock on her front door. Unaccustomed to such late-night calls, Alsop was reluctant to open the door. She only consented when the man on the other side identified himself as a police officer.

“For God’s sake,” the man pleaded with Alsop, “bring me a light, for we have caught Spring-heeled Jack here in the lane.”

Alsop went to fetch a candle before opening the door. However, the moment she swung the door open, she was greeted by an unnaturally tall, cloaked figure with what appeared to be a lantern strapped to his chest. The glow from the lantern bathed his face in light and Alsop could see he had red eyes, pointed ears and a strange helmet on his head.

Before Alsop could react, the dark figure emitted blue flames from his mouth and began tearing at her clothes with metallic claws. At the sound of Alsop’s screams, her two sisters came running and found her in a headlock, as a dark figure scratched at her face and clothing. Alsop, with the help of her sisters, managed to free herself and slam the door in the intruder’s face. The three young women called for the police from their window, while Spring-heeled Jack slipped into the shadows and disappeared.

On 28 February, Spring-heeled Jack allegedly attacked 18-year-old Lucy Scales and her sister in Green Dragon Alley, a respectable area of Limehouse. Around 8:30 pm, the young women were confronted by a dark figure that released blue flames from his mouth, temporarily blinding Scales and sending her into a series of violent fits. As the sisters screamed, the mysterious figure quickly vanished, having never laid hands on either of the Scales sisters. Their description matched the one Jane Alsop had given to the police only days before.

This was the last generally accepted appearance of Spring-heeled Jack.

The Investigation

On 9 January 1838, a few months after the graveyard confrontation with the businessman and prior to the attacks involving Alsop and Scales, the potential of Spring-heeled Jack being a genuine cause for public concern was addressed at a public session at Mansion House.

Sir John Cowan, Lord Mayor of London, had received an anonymous letter signed “Resident of Peckham.” The writer claimed that they had knowledge of a wager that had been laid amongst some young noblemen. According to the “Resident of Peckham”, the wager involved having the young noblemen appear in nearby villages in the disguise of a ghost or a devil. These noblemen were, in the opinion of the letter writer, “rascals with high families” and “bets to the amount of 5,000 (pounds) are at stake.”

The letter went on to describe specific instances where people had been frightened out of their wits by ghostly apparitions. Once a skeptical Cowan mentioned the issue at the session, other letters began pouring in to the Lord Mayor’s office in the following days, all claiming to know of examples where people were being attacked by a devilish figure.

Cowan was more inclined to believe the attacks were part of an elaborate prank, instead of a ghostly apparition, and ordered a police inquiry.

Two lengthy investigations were set up, one by the newly established Metropolitan Police, the other by James Lea, formerly of the Bow Street Patrol. Lea had earned the reputation of being one of the best detectives during the 1830s and was known for having solved the infamous Maria Marten murder of 1827.

Lea interviewed Jane Alsop and concluded that, “in her fright, the young lady had much mistaken the appearance of her assailant” and the whole matter was the “result of a drunken frolic.” Despite having reached this conclusion, Lea continued looking for the perpetrator, arresting and interviewing dozens of suspects. The trail eventually went cold as the majority of those Lea arrested were town drunks who could hardly recall where they were on the days of the Alsop and Scales attacks. With little more to go on, Lea was forced to drop the inquiry.

The abrupt halt in the investigation did little to quell the public’s desire to learn more about Spring-heeled Jack. Reports continued to be prominently featured in newspapers throughout the city. Several Penny Dreadful publications picked up on the story, thus turning the cloaked phantom into a popular fictional character, hailing him as “The Terror of London.”

Aldershot Barracks and Other Reported Sightings

On 1 March 1838, there were reports of women being attacked by men in disguises both in London and nearby villages. Men were being charged and slapped with fines on an almost daily basis in the days following the attack on the Scales sisters. The name Spring-heeled Jack had become synonymous with ‘bogeyman.’

Eventually, the original public furor over the attacks of 1837 and 1838 died down as sightings became fewer and far between. Spring-heeled Jack now came perilously close to disappearing from the memories of the general public forever.

The period between 1838 and the 1870s are what historians consider to be the “lost years” of Spring-heeled Jack. There were only a few reported sightings throughout England, none of which proved conclusive. This period was likely poorly documented because the attacks that were reported occurred outside of metropolises and away from newspapers. There is only one precisely dated incident associated with Spring-heeled Jack during this interval.

On 12 November 1845, in the decaying tenements of Jacob’s Island, on the south bank of the River Thames, an ominous figure approached teenage prostitute, Maria Davis. The dark figure clawed at Davis’ clothing before lifting her up and throwing her off the bridge. Davis drowned and witnesses recall seeing a figure quickly bounding down the street. For those who believe this was the work of Spring-heeled Jack, the brutal attack on young Maria Davis made him into a murderer.

One of the most famous reports of a Spring-heeled Jack sighting occurred in August 1877, at Aldershot Barracks in Surrey, 60 km outside London. Aldershot was the headquarters of the British army; home to 10,000 troops at any given time. One evening, a young sentry was on night watch duty at the northern end of the camp when he spotted a hooded figure in the distance. The sentry later recalled hearing the faint sound of metal clinking together as the figure walked, as though it were wearing armor.

Just as the sentry called out to the hooded figure, the specter vanished. The sentry turned around to alert his superior officers when the apparition suddenly reappeared, standing next to the soldier in the sentry box overlooking the camp. The startled sentry slapped at the hooded figure’s hand, which had stretched towards him. The soldier later recalled that the hand he had struck was ice cold. The sentry screamed.

As several soldiers came running at the sound of the scream, the hooded phantom took a running leap over their heads and over the side of the sentry box. Landing on his feet, the figure took long, leaping bounds across the field and out of sight.

In the following weeks, many soldiers claimed they saw the hooded figure late at night while on watch duty. The fear became so great that the sentries were purportedly given ammunition and told to shoot any intruder on sight.

The Illustrated Police News, a tabloid dedicated to sensationalized reports of gruesome murders, eerie supernatural sightings and lurid drawings of violent crimes, featured accounts from Aldershot Barracks three times in 1877. Even Sheldrake’s Aldershot and Sandhurst Military Gazette saw fit to publish the reported sightings.

After a couple of months, the reports stopped coming in and the phantom believed to be Spring-heeled Jack never returned to Aldershot Barracks.

His Final Appearance

Three decades would pass before Spring-heeled Jack made his final curtain call. Nearly 70 years had gone by since the cloaked figure made his first appearance in a graveyard in 1837. The mystery of Spring-heeled Jack had been lost in the chaos surrounding the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper, a case that enveloped London in a cloud of fear in the final months of 1888. After the grisly and shocking nature of the Ripper crimes, how could a ghostly apparition even begin to compare to that type of diabolical evil?

It was September 1904, when a crowd of people witnessed a strange figure leaping across the rooftops on William Henry Street in Liverpool. This sighting, if it truly were Spring-heeled Jack, would have been the farthest north the phantom had ever traveled. The figure brazenly attempted this feat in broad daylight, unlike every other sighting.

It is unlikely that the figure, which was never caught, was the same specter as the one spotted for the first time in 1837. Over the decades, Spring-heeled Jack had become a term used to describe anything supernatural or threatening in nature.

It would be another 60 years after the Liverpool sighting before the truth about that day would come out. A Mrs. Pierson, an Everton pensioner who had lived in the district all her life, revealed to the Liverpool Daily Post in 1967 that the man seen leaping across rooftops was, in fact, a mentally unstable local man. Pierson had witnessed the event herself as a child and felt that the record should be set straight, even after so much time had passed.

And, on that disappointing note, Spring-heeled Jack was officially never heard from again.

Man or Myth?

Despite his fiendish appearance, the most startling characteristic of Spring-heeled Jack was his effortless ability to clear walls up to 20 feet in height in a single bound. Did this mean the cloaked phantom was a supernatural being or simply a man with springs on his boots?

Contrary to popular belief, some men did come forward to admit they think they had been attacked by the mysterious figure. If it was, in fact, the same person who committed all of the crimes associated with Spring-heeled Jack, it seemed as though his victims were random, regardless of the victims’ gender or age. At least one gentleman reportedly said he thought he saw springs on the boots of his attacker.

There are no known reports of stolen items, nor did the mysterious figure ever ask for money or jewelry. The murder of prostitute Maria Davis does not fit the pattern of Spring-heeled Jack; therefore, historians often dismiss the idea that she was his victim. The early days of Spring-heeled Jack, in particular, seem to suggest a gentleman playing a prank.

The chief suspect for a time was Henry Beresford, 3^rd Marquess of Waterford. The raucous Irishman had the tendency to gamble, drink and play elaborate hoaxes on his friends. No charges were ever laid.

In the end, Spring-heeled Jack’s true identity is lost in a web of erroneous reports, rumor and conjecture. How many Spring-heeled Jacks were there over the course of nearly 70 years? Was it one man or dozens? Was it all some elaborate hoax by one group of individuals or a handful of imitators, young men looking for thrills? Or, was it just vivid imagination resulting from widespread panic? There are even those who believe Spring-heeled Jack was a supernatural being or an alien visitor, which would explain his jumping abilities and glowing eyes.

The mystery of this leaping madman continues to live on as a part of English folklore.

Sources

Mike Dash (http://www.mikedash.com/original-investigations/shj-about)