London, 1814.
There are other tracts, but these are the principal.
/Note./--Mr. A. M. Broadly, of Bridport, kindly supplies the
following note:--
Stourbridge, in the second decade of the nineteenth century, was
a stronghold of the followers of Joanna Southcott. Amongst them
was the Rev. T. P. Foley, a member of one of the leading county
families of the district. In the spring of 1814 the coming of
the Shiloh was announced, and a crib and a pap-bowl were among
the presents which were made by the faithful. The pap-bowl was
presented in June, and was engraved by Lowe of Birmingham. It
has on it a portrait, cherubim in rays of light, the dove with
the olive branch, and a crowned child leading a lion, with two
repetitions of “Glory to God.” The reverse of the bowl contains,
within two branches of laurel and oak, the following inscription:
“A Token of Love to the Prince of Peace. From the Believers of
Joanna Southcott’s Divine Mission in Stourbridge and its vicinity.”
THE STOKE RESURRECTIONISTS
In the year 1829 Mr. Warburton introduced a Bill into the House of
Commons for the prevention of the unlawful disinterment of human bodies
and for the regulation of schools of anatomy. The horrible revelations
of the murders--at least thirty--committed by Burke and Hare, in
Edinburgh, for the sake of providing subjects for the purposes of
anatomy to lecture on, had produced a profound emotion. The Bill passed
the House of Commons, but was thrown out by the Lords.
So long as the European war continued, the period of time required
for the completion of the education of medical students, so as to fit
them for the service in the Army or Navy, was unduly short, and the
study of anatomy was consequently much neglected. At that time the
dissecting-rooms were supplied by men who in general exhumed bodies.
The trade was lucrative; one resurrectionist at his death left nearly
£6000 to his family. Another resurrectionist, after a long career,
withdrew in 1817. He had attended the army in the Peninsula and in
France as a licensed sutler, and after a battle went over the field
extracting the teeth of those who had fallen and such as were dying,
and disposed of them to dentists in England. With the produce of these
sales he built a large hotel at Margate. A leading resurrectionist once
received £144 for twelve subjects in one evening. Sir Astley Cooper
expended hundreds of pounds in the purchase of bodies and in advancing
money to screen these useful auxiliaries of the anatomical school. To
obtain the liberation of one he paid £160.
The proper education of a surgeon demanded that he should be acquainted
with anatomy, and the only provision made by the legislature was that
the bodies of criminals who had been executed should be handed over
to the schools. This did not furnish by any means an adequate number,
and the professors of anatomy were obliged to have recourse to the
professional purveyor of corpses, knowing well enough, or suspecting,
whence they came.
A select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire
into the matter, and several of the profession were had up for
examination.
Here is the evidence of one resurrectionist, condensed:--
“A man may make a good living at it if he is a sober man, and acts
with judgment. I should suppose there are at present in London between
forty and fifty men that have the name of raising subjects. If you are
friends with a grave-digger, the thing will be all right to know what
bodies to get; if you are not, you cannot get them. The largest number
of bodies I have got were twenty-three in four nights. It was only in
one year that I got one hundred. Perhaps the next year I did not get
above fifty or sixty. When I go to work I like to get those of poor
people buried from the workhouses, because, instead of working for one
subject, you may get three or four. I do not think, during the time I
have been in the habit of working for the schools, I got half a dozen
of wealthier people.”
A second said: “The course I should take would be to have the
workhouse subjects; we can get them out of the burial-ground without
any difficulty whatever.”
One of the largest dealers was Israel Cohen, commonly called Izzy,
a Jew, well known to surgeons and sextons. By the surgeons he was
patronized; of the sextons he was the patron; and so complete was
the understanding between the profession to which he belonged and
those with which he was connected, that the interest of all three was
advanced by coalition. He was a square-built, resolute ruffian, with
features indicative of his Hebrew origin, black whiskers, and a squint.
The Plymouth medical men memorialized the Government in 1827 relating
to the necessity they were in of having human bodies for dissection,
and the inadequacy of the legitimate supply. “In other countries,” they
said, “the dissection of the dead, so necessary to the well-being of
the living, is permitted and protected; and is actually prosecuted,
without shocking any existing prejudice or violating the sanctities of
the dead. It follows either that the professional gentlemen of this
kingdom must be contented with a very inferior medical education, or
that they must resort to the Continent to obtain that information which
is denied to them by the laws of Great Britain.” The alternative of
having recourse to resurrectionists they did not refer to. The memorial
produced no results.
In the recent alterations of Princetown Church, it was found that no
inconsiderable number of the graves of the French prisoners who died
during incarceration were empty. There can be little doubt that the
bodies were disposed of to the surgeons in Plymouth. It was generally
supposed that the body-snatchers in exhuming a corpse first proceeded,
as would a novice, in excavating the whole grave, and having arrived
at the coffin would then force off the lid and so get possession of
the body. But this would have been too slow an operation. To do the job
expeditiously they cleared away the earth above the head of the coffin
only, taking care to leave that which covered the rest of the coffin
undisturbed. As soon as about one-third of the chest was thus exposed,
they forced a very strong crowbar between the end of the coffin and the
lid, and easily prised it open. It usually happened at this stage of
the proceedings that the superincumbent weight of earth on the other
portion of the coffin-lid caused it to be snapped across. As soon as
this was effected the body was drawn out, the death-gear removed from
it and replaced in the coffin, and finally the body was tied up in
a bundle or thrust into a sack and taken away, the whole operation
lasting not over a quarter of an hour.
Very generally a hackney coach or a spring cart was in waiting to
receive the body. When corpses were sent from the country to London
they were generally packed in barrels or hat-crates. But when one was
to be taken to a dissecting-room in the same town it was laid on a
large piece of green baize, the four corners were tied together, and
so the body was rolled up in a bundle. The body-snatcher would then,
dressed as a porter, swing the load over his shoulder, and often, even
in broad daylight, carry it to its place of destination through the
most crowded streets.
Every means which ingenuity could suggest was put in practice to obtain
bodies which had not been buried. For this purpose the men, when they
heard of the body of a person being found--drowned, for instance, and
lying to be owned--trumped up a story of an unfortunate brother or
sister, humbugged a coroner’s jury, and thus obtained possession of
the body. In this sort of trickery the wives of the men were often
employed, as their application was attended to with less suspicion,
and it was never difficult to impose on the parochial officials, who
were always anxious to avoid the expense of burying the deceased.
Subjects were thus occasionally procured, but they were more frequently
obtained by pretending relationship to persons dying without friends in
hospitals and workhouses. As the bodies thus obtained were much fresher
than those which had been buried, they produced generally, independent
of the teeth, as much as twelve guineas each.
At the commencement of a new term at the hospitals, the lecturers on
anatomy were beset by the leading dealers in subjects, and “fifty
pounds down, and nine guineas a body,” was often acceded to. The larger
sum down secured to the lecturer the exclusive supply of that dealer’s
wares. The competition for subjects was great, and in some cases twenty
pounds were paid for a single corpse in good condition.
Stoke Church and yard lay solitary amid waste land. It had a wall round
it, but no houses very near, and there were no oil lamps burning in the
road that passed it.
A strong suspicion was entertained that the graves there had been
rifled, and were so continually, and it was proposed to the parish
authorities to have lamps and organize a night watch. But the officials
shrank from the expense, and many people reasoned that it were well
to allow the resurrectionists to get bodies from graves, as bodies
the surgeons must have, rather than run the risk of inducing these
scoundrels to imitate the proceedings of Burke by killing individuals
for the purpose. Within a stone’s throw of Mill Bridge was a commodious
residence called Mount Pleasant, with Stonehouse Lake or Creek on one
side, and Stoke Church on the other. A man, apparently well to do, a
Mr. Gosling, took the house, and brought in a somewhat mixed party
of men and women. The neighbours thought the family was peculiar,
but as he was a pleasant-spoken man and the ladies of the party were
affable and sympathetic, and as he paid his way with punctuality, they
were content. Indeed, they were more than content. The females of the
Gosling household attended every funeral, and expressed their tenderest
feelings of regard and pity for the mourners, asked all particulars
about the deceased, his or her age, and what malady had hurried the
lamented one to his grave, as also occasionally whether the deceased
had good teeth. At night, immediately after every funeral, the men of
the party stole forth, furnished with crowbar and spades, and equipped
with a sack or two, and made their way into the graveyard, where they
worked by the light of a dark lantern. The sexton had been squared,
and he had not made the grave very deep, nor had he heaped the earth
thickly over it.
But the gang did not confine operations to the last interment. They
opened other graves, and if the corpses were too much decomposed to
be of any commercial value they contented themselves with drawing all
their teeth.
Sometimes it happened that the subjects when removed to Mount Pleasant
underwent rapid decomposition. Then they were buried in the garden, and
restored to the graveyard on the next visit.
Neighbours now began to notice that lights were burning in Mount
Pleasant at all times of the night. It was also remarked that the grave
mounds bore a suspicious look of having been tampered with--not those
recently made only, but others more ancient.
In the nearest house was a shrewd, observant servant-girl, and
the lights, the way they moved about at night in the rooms of the
villa--not in the bedrooms, but downstairs, at times when every one
else was asleep--aroused her suspicions. Her bedroom window commanded
the villa of Gosling and Co., and wake at what time she might or
however early in the morning before daybreak, there the lights were.
She resolved on keeping watch; and she stationed herself where,
unseen, she could observe proceedings. Towards midnight she saw dark
figures emerge from Mount Pleasant and make their way to Stoke Church.
Follow she did not. Her courage was not equal to that; but she waited
and watched till the figures stole back, and on this occasion she
distinctly saw sacks being carried on the backs of two of the men.
She now remembered that she had often noticed packing-cases and casks
being taken from the villa to the water’s edge and placed on a barge
apparently waiting there for its load. In the morning the girl told her
master what she had seen, and he at once apprised the police.
These latter now placed themselves behind the wall at night to watch
what would happen; they were rewarded one night after there had been a
couple of funerals in the churchyard. The constables saw the men dig
and shovel for about ten minutes; heard them strike a coffin-lid, and
proceed to force it up. Then by the faint light they saw them remove
a corpse and put it into a sack. Thereupon one of the men came out
of the yard as a scout to see that the coast was clear. After that
they hoisted the body over the churchyard wall and made towards Mount
Pleasant. As the constables on this occasion were but two and there was
a considerable gang in the villa, they returned to Devonport, where
they collected a sufficient force of watchmen and special constables,
and surrounded the building, where the resurrectionists were enjoying
a refreshing sleep after their labours. Scaling the wall by means of a
ladder and advancing in their stocking-soles, they entered the various
bedrooms, and secured four men and two women, pinioned and gagged them.
They were taken completely by surprise.
In the kitchen were found two sacks. In one was the body of a girl
of eighteen, in the other that of an elderly man. The cupboards and
drawers were stocked with extracted teeth and implements of dentistry
for drawing them.
When on the following morning it was noised in Devonport that a
confederacy of body-snatchers had been captured, the greatest
excitement prevailed. The relatives of all who had died and been buried
within a couple of years and more crowded the cemetery demanding that
the graves of their kinsfolk should be examined. The graveyard turned
out to have been a mine well worked. Grave after grave was opened, and
dishevelled shrouds and mutilated bodies, teethless jaws, revealed to
the distracted relatives of the dead that the graves had been violated.
Gosling and his confederates were brought to trial, and confessed their
guilt, and even revelled in their horrible reminiscences. Gosling
grimly recalled how on one night the resurrection party had been so
drunk that they had fought in an open grave under the shadow of the
church.
This took place in 1830. Gosling and his confederates were transported.
It was not till 1832 that Mr. Warburton’s Bill, already referred to,
passed both Houses; and public feeling had been further stirred on
the subject by the case of Bishop and Williams, who had murdered an
Italian boy in London for the sake of providing a subject for S.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, and Bishop had admitted that he had committed
sixty such murders.
The objection raised to the Bill in the House of Lords in the first
instance, and again in the second, was that Warburton’s project was
that such persons as died in a hospital, and whose bodies were not
claimed by relatives, should be given up for dissection. What the
Lords objected to was that this subjected the poor to what might be
considered an evil in which the rich did not participate. But the
serious condition of affairs, the evidence that many murders were
committed so as to provide the anatomical schools with subjects,
overrode the sentimental feeling, and the Bill passed. Happy indeed
would it have been if it had passed thirty years earlier.
“THE BEGGARS’ OPERA” AND GAY’S CHAIR
It is not my intention to give a detailed biography of John Gay, for
such is easily procurable, either in Cox’s Life of the poet, or in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_, or, again, in the Life, prefixed to
his works, by J. Underhill, 1893. All here proposed is to give a brief
sketch, and fill out two points, the story of _The Beggars’ Opera_, and
that of the discovery of MSS. in Gay’s chair.
The Gays of Goldsworthy were an ancient Devonshire family, tracing back
in direct descent from a John Gay, already seated in his warm nest at
Goldsworthy, in Parkham, near Bideford, a parish that nursed as well
the Giffards of Halsbury and the Risdons of Babley. But if Parkham
nursed these families, it did not keep them; Giffards, Risdons, Gays
are all gone, and the Gays had sold Goldsworthy before Risdon wrote
his Survey between 1605 and 1630. But the Gays still retained the old
priory of Frithelstock which they held on a long lease from 1602, and
where lived the widow of a Gay in 1822, when Lysons published his
“Devonshire” in _Magna Britannia_.
John Gay was the son of William Gay, fourth son of John Gay of
Frithelstock. William had married the daughter of a Dissenting preacher
named Hanmer, in Barnstaple, and there John was born on 30 June, 1685.
William Gay died when John was but ten years old, and he was brought
up by his mother in Ivy Street, Barnstaple, and sent to school to
Robert Luck, a would-be poet, who wrote Latin and English verses, in
one of which, “The Female Phæton,” he depicted the career and lapse of
a fast young lady of fashionable life.
[Illustration: _M^r. Gay._]
Gay was bound apprentice to a London mercer, but, his health failing,
he returned to Barnstaple, where he dwelt with his uncle, the
Dissenting minister, John Hanmer. The association must have been most
unsuitable to both. John “_toujours gai_” with a poet’s fancy, a
buoyant heart, what more incongruous than to be lodged under the roof
and nourished at the table of a sour and moody Puritan!
How and when he broke away from this depressing and distressing
environment we do not know. All that is known of this early period
is to be found in a little work called _Gay’s Chair_, written by his
nephew, Joseph Ballard. At the age of twenty-one he wrote his first
piece, _Rural Sports_, which he dedicated to Pope, with whom he
became afterwards allied in intimate friendship. In 1712 we find him
secretary, or rather domestic steward, to the Duchess of Monmouth, in
which station he continued till the beginning of the year 1714, at
which time he accompanied the Earl of Clarendon to Hanover, whither
that nobleman was dispatched by Queen Anne. In the latter part of the
same year, in consequence of the Queen’s death, he returned to England,
where he lived in the highest estimation and intimacy of friendship
with many persons of rank; he became, in fact, the petted lap-dog of
fashionable society.
Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, was interested in him, and
sent to invite him to read his play, _The Captives_, before her at
Leicester House. The day was fixed, and Gay was commanded to attend.
He waited some time in a presence chamber, with his manuscript in his
hand, but being a modest man, and unequal to the trial into which he
was entering, when the door of the drawing-room was thrown open, where
the Princess sat with her ladies, he was so much confused and concerned
about making the proper obeisance that he did not see a low footstool
that happened to be in the way; and, stumbling over it, fell against
a large screen, which he upset, and threw the ladies into no small
disorder.
In 1726 he dedicated his _Fables_, by permission, to the Duke of
Cumberland. From his countenance, and promises made of preferment, he
hoped to have obtained some office in which, without being overworked,
he might be well paid, and able to devote himself more at leisure to
the Muses. Instead of which, in 1727, he was offered the place of
gentleman-usher to one of the youngest princesses; an offer which, as
he regarded, it was insulting to make. In a fit of resentment, and in
ill-humour with the Court, he wrote _The Beggars’ Opera_ as a satire on
the Italian opera, then warmly patronized by the Court.
Swift had observed to Gay what an old, pretty sort of thing a Newgate
pastoral would make. Gay was inclined to consider the suggestion,
but afterwards, hot in his resentment against the Court, turned the
theme into a comedy. He began _The Beggars’ Opera_, and mentioned it
to Swift, but the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried
it on, he showed what he had written to him and to Pope, and they now
and then gave him a correction or a word or two of advice; but it was
wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of them thought it
would succeed. The play was offered in 1727 to Cibber at Drury Lane,
and was by him rejected with contempt. Congreve read it over and
said, “It will either take greatly or be damned confoundedly.”
[Illustration: THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, BARNSTAPLE, WHERE GAY WAS EDUCATED]
The play was, however, accepted by Rich, and produced at Lincoln’s
Inn Fields Theatre. When brought on the stage on the first night, 29
January, 1727-8, Gay’s friends sat in great uncertainty of the event,
till they were vastly encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyll, who
sat in the next box, say: “It will do--it must do! I see it in the eyes
of them!” When Polly Peachum sang her pathetic appeal to her parents--
O ponder well, be not severe
To save a wretched wife,
For on the rope that hangs my dear
Depends poor Polly’s life,
and this, to the air of “The Babes in the Wood,” familiar to the
entire audience from their nurseries, the effect was magical. The
audience broke into a roar of applause, and the success of the play was
established.
The plot of the piece was thin and poor, but the people were refreshed,
and rejoiced to hear again the old familiar notes of English music.
There were sixty-nine airs in _The Beggars’ Opera_, and nearly every
one was an old English ballad or song air. Gay was not himself a
musician, but he had his head full of old ballads and their airs,
most, doubtless, picked up about Barnstaple or Bideford, and he set
to the tunes words suitable to his characters and the dialogue, and
then got a German named Pepusch to note them down for him and write a
simple orchestral accompaniment and an overture. The author, according
to Mace, got the entire receipts of four nights, amounting in the
aggregate to £693 13s. 6d., whereas Rich, the manager, after the piece
had been performed thirty-six times, had pocketed nearly £4000. It was
well said that this play made Rich _gay_, and Gay _rich_.
Lavinia Fenton had been tempted by Rich from the Haymarket to Lincoln’s
Inn Fields to act the part of Polly in _The Beggars’ Opera_ at a salary
of 15s. per week, but owing to the enormous success of the play he
raised it to 30s.; and such was the rage of the town respecting her
that she was obliged to be guarded home every night by a considerable
party of her confidential friends, to prevent her being hurt by the
crowd or being run away with. The Duke of Bolton became enamoured of
her--took her under his protection, as the euphemism went. The Duke
was then in the prime of life, living apart from his wife. “Polly” was
not remarkably pretty, but she had a charming manner and a delicious
voice. Wharton tells us that he knew her, and could testify to her
wit, intelligence, and good manners. “Her conversation,” says he, “was
admired by the first characters of the age, particularly the old Lord
Bathurst and Lord Grenville.” She and the Duke had several quarrels,
and after one very serious explosion he gave her notice to quit the
house.
She retired to her room, assumed the costume of Polly Peachum,
returned, and presenting herself before him in all the grace and charm
with which she had first won him, with tears in her eyes, sang--
Oh, what pain it is to part!
Can I leave thee? Can I leave thee?
Oh, what pain it is to part!
Can thy Polly ever leave thee?
to the air “Gin thou wert mine ain thing,” to which it had been set by
Gay.
Touched by the remembrance of the past and by her witchery of
manner, the Duke opened his arms, she flew to his heart, and the
reconciliation was complete. On the death of the Duchess, the Duke
married Lavinia Fenton at Aix in Provence, 21 October, 1751, just
one day beyond the month after the death of his wife, who died on 20
September.
The children borne by “Polly” to the Duke before the marriage were
three sons, who all assumed the name of Powlett. The Duke died on 26
August, 1754, and was succeeded in the dukedom by his brother. “Polly”
Fenton died at West Combe Park, Kent, on 24 January, 1760, at the age
of fifty-two.