Owing to a want of accord among historians, the searcher after historic
truth in our own day can hardly be quite sure of the identity of the
worthy lady who passed under the above enchanting title. To later
generations the district of Camden Town--formerly a suburb of London
but now a fairly central part of it--is best known through a public
house, the _Mother Red-Cap_. But before controversy can cease we are
called on to decide if Mother Red-Cap and Mother Damnable were one
and the same person. A hundred years ago a writer who had made such
subjects his own, came to the conclusion that the soubriquet Mother
Damnable was synonymous with Mother Black-Cap whom he spoke of as of
local fame. But in the century that has elapsed historical research has
been more scientifically organised and the field from which conclusions
can be drawn has been enlarged as well as explored. The fact is that
a century ago the northern suburb had two well-known public houses,
_Mother Red-Cap_ and _Mother Black-Cap_. It is possible that both the
worthy vintners who offered “entertainment for man and beast” meant one
and the same person, though who that person was remains to be seen.
The distinctive colour line of the two hostelries was also possibly
due to considerations of business rather than of art. _Red-cap_ and
_Black-cap_ are, as names, drawn from these varying sign-boards; the
term _Mother_ held in common is simply a title given without any
pretence of doing honour to the alleged practices of the person whom it
is intended to designate.
There were in fact two notorious witches, either of whom might have
been in the mind of either artistic designer. One was of Yorkshire
fame in the time of Henry VII. The other was of very much later date
and of purely local notoriety. The two publicans who exploited these
identities under pictorial garb were open and avowed trade rivals.
The earlier established of the two had evidently commissioned a
painter to create a striking sign-board on a given subject, and the
artist had fulfilled his task by an alleged portrait of sufficiently
fearsome import to fix the attention of the passer-by, at the same time
conveying to him some hint of the calling of the archetype on which
her fame was based. Prosperity in the venture begot rivalry; and the
owner of the new house of refreshment, wishing to outshine his rival
in trade whilst at the same time availing himself of the publicity and
local fame already achieved, commissioned another artist to commit
another pictorial atrocity under the name of art. So far as the purpose
of publicity went, the ideas were similar; the only differences
being in the colour scheme and the measure of attractiveness of the
alleged prototype. From the indications thus given one may form some
opinion--based solely on probability--as to which was the earlier and
which the later artistic creation, for it is by this means--and this
means only--that we may after the lapse of at least a century bring
tradition to our aid, and guess at the original of Mother Damnable.
Of the two signs it seems probable that the black one is the older.
After all, the main purpose of a sign-board is to catch the eye,
and unless Titian and all who followed him are wrong, red has an
attractive value beyond all other hues. The dictum of the great Italian
is unassailable: “Red catches the eye; yellow holds it; blue gives
distance.” A free-souled artist with the choice of the whole palette
open to him might choose black since historical accuracy was a matter
to be valued; but in a question of competition a painter would wisely
choose red--especially when his rival had confined himself to black.
So far as attractiveness is concerned, it must be borne in mind that
the object of the painter and his patron was to bring customers to a
London suburban public house in the days of George III. To-day there is
a cult of horrors in Paris which has produced some choice specimens of
decorative art, such for instance as the café known as _Le Rat Mort_.
Such places lure their customers by curiosity and sheer horror; but the
persons lured are from a class dominated by “Gallic effervescence” and
attracted by anything that is _bizarre_, and not of the class of the
stolid beer-drinking Briton. But even the most stolid of men is pleased
by the beauty of a woman; so the sign-painter--who knows his art well,
and has evolved from the ranks of his calling such a man as Franz
Hals--we may be sure, when he wished to please, took for his model some
gracious personality.
Now the artist of the lady of dark headgear let his imagination run
free and produced a face typical of all the sins of the Decalogue. We
may therefore take it on the ground of form as well as that of colour
that priority of date is to be given to Mother Black-Cap. There is
good ground for belief that this deduction is correct. Naturally the
owner of the earliest public-house wished to make it as attractive as
possible; and as Camden Town was a suburb through which the northern
traffic passed on its way to and from London, it was wise to use
for publicity and entertainment names that were familiar to north
country ears. Before the railways were organised the great wheeled
and horse-traffic between London and the North--especially Yorkshire
which was one of the first Counties to take up manufacturing and had
already most of the wool trade--went through Camden Town. So it was
wise forethought to take as an inn sign a Yorkshire name. The name
of Mother Shipton had been in men’s mouths and ears for about two
hundred years, and as the times had so changed that the old stigma of
witchcraft was not then understood, the association of the name with
Knaresborough alone remained. And so Mother Shipton of Knaresborough
was intended as the prototype of the inn portrait with black headgear
at Camden Town. In the ordinary course of development and business one
of the two inns succeeded and lasted better than the other. And as
Mother Red-Cap has as a name supplanted Mother Damnable, we may with
some understanding discuss who that lady was.
She was a well-known shrew of Kentish Town, daughter of one Jacob
Bingham, a local brickmaker, who had married the daughter of a Scotch
pedlar manifestly not of any high moral character as shown by her
later acts and the general mistrust which attended them. They had
one daughter, Jinny, who in wickedness outdid her parents. She was
naturally warm-blooded and had a child when she was sixteen by a man of
no account, George Coulter, known as Gipsy George. Whatever affection
may have existed between them was cut short by his arrest--and
subsequent execution at Tyburn--for sheepstealing. In her second
quasi-matrimonial venture Jinny lived a cat-and-dog life with a man
called Darby who spent his time in getting drunk and trying to get
over it. Number Two’s end was also tragic. After a violent quarrel
with his companion he disappeared. Then there was domestic calm for a
while, possibly due to the fact that Bingham and his wife were being
tried also on a charge of witchcraft, complicated with another capital
charge of procuring the death of a young woman. They were both hanged
and thereafter Jinny found time for another episode of love-making and
took up with a man called Pitcher. He too disappeared, but his body,
burned almost to a cinder, was discovered in a neighbouring oven. Jinny
was tried for murder, but escaped on the plea that the man often took
refuge in the oven when he wished to get beyond reach of the woman’s
venomous tongue, to which fact witness was borne by certain staunch
companions of Miss Bingham.
Jinny’s third venture towards happy companionship, though it lasted
much longer, was attended with endless bitter quarrelling, and came
to an equally tragic end, had at the beginning a spice of romance.
This individual, whose name has seemingly not been recorded, being
pursued in Commonwealth times for some unknown offence, had sought her
aid in attempting to escape. This she had graciously accorded, with
the consequence that they lived together some years in the greatest
unhappiness.
At length he died--of poison, but by whom administered did not
transpire at the inquest. For the rest of her life Miss Bingham,
who was now old, lived under the suspicion of being a witch. Her
ostensible occupation was as a teller of fortunes and a healer of
odd diseases--occupations which singly or together make neither for
personal esteem or general confidence. Her public appearances were
usually attended by hounding and baiting by the rabble; and whenever
anything went wrong in her neighbourhood the blame was, with overt
violence of demeanour, attributed to her. She did not even receive any
of the respect usually shown to a freeholder--which she was, having
by her father’s death become owner of a house which he had built for
himself with his own hands on waste ground. Her only protector was that
usual favourite of witches, a black cat, whose devotion to her and
whose savage nature, accompanied by the public fear shown for an animal
which was deemed her “familiar,” caused the mob to flee before its
appearance.
The tragedy and mystery of her life were even exceeded by those of her
death. When, having been missed for some time, her house was entered
she, attended only by her cat and with her crutch by her side, was
found crouching beside the cold ashes of her extinct fire. In the
tea-pot beside her was some liquid, seemingly brewed from herbs.
Willing hands administered some of this to the black cat, whose hair,
within a very short time, fell off. The cat forthwith died. Then the
clamour began. Very many people suddenly remembered having seen,
after her last appearance in public, the Devil entering her house. No
one, however, had seen him come out again. What a pity it was that no
veracious scribe or draughtsman was present in the crowd which had
noticed the Devil’s entry to the house. In such case we might have got
a real likeness of His Satanic Majesty--a thing which has long been
wanted--and the opportunities of obtaining which are few.
One peculiar fact is recorded of Madame Damnable’s burial; her body was
so stiff from the _rigor mortis_--or from some other cause--that the
undertakers had to break her limbs before they could put her body in
the coffin.