The Devil of Deptford - a poltergeist tale from 1699

For Halloween here's a spooky story from late 17th century Deptford. 'The Devil of Deptford' is a pamphlet by the clergyman Edward Fowler.  According to the historian Peter Elmer,  the 'haunted' house in question 'almost certainly' belonged to 'Henry Godman (d.1702) who combined preaching with medical practice and had resided at Deptford since at least 1672' (The Miraculous Conformist: Valentine Greatrakes, the Body Politic, and the Politics of Healing in Restoration Britain, OUP, 2013). Looking at old maps I believe that Back Lane was near to Deptford Green about where Gilbert House now stands.

'The Devil of Deptford... being a true relation of the strange disturbances, ludicrous feats and malicious pranks of an evil spirit in the house of Mr G. living in Back Lane at Deptford near London, in April and May 1699. The truth whereof is known, and can be attested to by a great number of the inhabitants of that town...

there are evil spirits or devils, which do infest this lower world, and of which we have a fresh convincing argument in the following instance: all the particulars whereof were acted, not in the dark, or at midnight, but at Noon-day in the face of the sun, in the sight of a great many persons, and the effects thereof were felt by divers of the family

Upon Saturday April 25 1699... about Twelve a Clock at Noon, a stone was thrown against the parlour window next to the street, which breaking the glass came into the room.The boys that were in the street were charged with doing it, but they all denyed it; when instantly another stone was thrown, which broke the glass likewise... Soon after for many days together a great number of stones were thrown against the back and side windows next to the garden, seeming to come from the fields behind... At length they nailed strong deal board on the outside of the broken windows, after which the disturbance ceased from without, but began within the house. One time all the china cups and glasses were removed from the mantel-piece in the parlour, and set on the floor... Several pewter plates were seen to come out of the kitchen below stairs into the parlour of themselves... A candle and candlestick being left in the dining room, which was locked, was thrown upstairs, and their looking out at the noise found it there, and yet the door continued locked as before'.

(the full text may be available at Early English Books online,
if anyone has a login)

History Corner: Charles II returns from exile via Blackheath and Deptford.

On this day in 1660, King Charles II entered London on return from exile in Holland. Having landed at Dover on May 25th, he spent time at Canterbury and Rochester before making his way into the capital on his 30th birthday, May 29th.  The journey is described in a contemporary pamphlet 'England's Joy or a relation of the most remarkable passages from his Majestry's Arrival at Dover to his entrance at White-Hall' (1660).

While personally I don't think that the restoration of the monarchy was anything to celebrate, the pamphlet is interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing it shows the significance of the road between London and Dover, now the A2/Old Kent Road/New Cross Road/Shooters Hill. Almost all traffic heading from Kent into London passed along that road in the days before railways, which meant that royal processions, peasant insurgents, visitors from the continent etc. all came through Blackheath/Deptford/New Cross. In the case of Charles II, such points along the route were marked with festivities which are vividly described in the pamphlet: 

'he set forth from Rochester in his coach, but afterwards took horse on the farthest side of Black-heath, on which spacious plain he found divers great and eminent troops of horse, in a most splending and glorious equipage; and a kind of rural triumph, expressed by the country-swains in a morrice-dance, with the old music of taber and pipe, which was performed with all agility and cheerfulness imaginable...

... proceeding towards London, there were placed in Deptford, on his right hand (as he passed through the town) above an hundred proper maids, clad all alike in white garments, with scarves about them: who having prepared many flaskets covered with fine linen and adorned with rich scarfs and ribbands ; which flaskets were full of flowers and sweet herbs, strewed the way before him as he rode.
From thence passing on he came into Saint Georges Fields in Southwark, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London in their scarlet, with the Recorder and other City Council, waited for him in a large tent, hung with tapestry'

A 19th century re-imagining of Charles entering London, painted by Alfred Barron Clay

As discussed previously at Transpontine, the restoration was followed up by repression of religious and political dissidents, with hundreds of Quakers, Baptists and Fifth Monarchists rounded up, and reports of planned uprisings at Deptford and elsewhere.

History Corner: John Evelyn of Deptford

John Evelyn (1620-1706) has cropped up a few times for me in the last week. The seventeenth century diarist, writer, gardener and government official is remembered in the names of the local Evelyn Street and Lewisham's Evelyn Ward, among other places.

Portrait of Evelyn by Robert Walker

Last Saturday I gave a history tour of the Deptford riverfront to New Cross Commoners, ending up with a picnic on the beach. We looked at the Convoys Wharf site, and I mentioned that part of it covered the site of Sayes Court - Evelyn's home from 1652-1690.

While preparing for the walk, I had been reading a lot of Peter Linebaugh. The historian's various works provide a good context for understanding Detpford history. 'The London Hanged' in particular includes lots of information about the working practices on the Royal Dockyard in the 18th century; 'The Many Headed Hydra' deals with maritime radicalism and the circulation of sailors, pirates and slaves across the Atlantic; and 'The Magna Carta Manifesto' deals with commons and enclosure through the lens of the Forest Charter sections of the Magna Carta which sought to safeguard the common rights of access to woodland  from Royal encroachment.

In the latter, Linebaugh writes of Evelyn as an apologist for enclosure, seeking to put the knowledge of trees at the service of empire:

'English forests were cut down at such a rate that toward the end of the century John Evelyn despaired of the national security, inasmuch as the navy provided the island’s “wooden walls.” The expansion of the British empire was by means of wood products and it was to the end of acquiring wood products. Restoration diarist and gentleman environmentalist John Evelyn (1620–1706) inherited a fortune that his grandfather had accumulated under James I and Charles I through his royal monopoly on saltpeter, essential ingredient (with sulfur and charcoal) to gunpowder. The “saltpeter man” forcibly ransacked stables, barns, dovecots, pigeon houses in search of potassium nitrate. The grandson’s project was to make an inventory of English trees in terms of their use values, and to convey this knowledge from commoners to commercial, scientific, and military markets. Not once does Evelyn mention the Forest Charter. Enclosed woods thrive better than unfenced forest. He wrote disdainfully of “satisfying a few clamorous, and rude Commoners.” He could not escape a millennium of custom, but he could bury it within Latin and Greek obscurantism. He concluded by quoting a Latin proverb of Erasmus, who was paraphrasing the Greek poet Theocritus, Praesente Quercu ligna quivis colligit, “In the presence of an oak every- one collects firewood.” Referring to An Act for the Punishment of Unlawful Cutting or Stealing or Spoiling of Wood (15 Charles II c.2), he coolly noted that ancient law punished the “beheading” of a tree by the forfeiture of a hand'.

Others have seen Evelyn more positively as a proto-environmentalist, writing against London pollution and for the preservation of trees. One strand of the campaign against current development plans for the Convoys Wharf site is the call to acknowledge or even recreate Evelyn's historic garden there (see Sayes Court - London's Lost Garden for lots of interesting historical material).

Evelyn's Cabinet

As reported in the Guardian at the weekend (18 May), a cabinet of Evelyn's features (along with the Horniman Museum's walrus) in a new exhibition in Margate. Curator Brian Dillon writes

Consider this curious item of furniture, which belongs to the Geffrye Museum in London and appears at Turner Contemporary, Margate, as part of Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing. The object in question, at once austere and elaborate, is a cabinet of intricately carved ebony that stands on eight slender legs and opens to reveal a prismatic array of interior drawers and doors, rendered in fruitwood and ivory. The thing is said to have been made by the renowned Dutch craftsman Pierre Golle, though we cannot be sure. What's certain is that it was bought in Paris in 1652 by Mary Evelyn: wife of the polymath John Evelyn, who used it to store prints and small items. The empty cabinet is a reminder of the capaciousness of Evelyn's intellect and imagination: by the time he died in 1706, he had completed not only half a million pages of his celebrated diary, but treatises on medicine, mathematics, air pollution and the cultivation of trees. He had even written a discourse on salads'.

Evelyn and Slavery


It can't be denied though that Evelyn had a role in the administration of slavery. A royalist during the Civil War, he was later appointed by the King as an official to the Council of Foreign Plantations in a period when plantations were expanding in America and the Caribbean on the backs of slave labour. Even in this period, there were controversies about this in the face of slave demands for freedom. In his diaries Evelyn mentions the arguments about whether slaves should be allowed to be baptised as Christians - since some argued that as Christians they should no longer be treated as slaves: 'I may not forget a resolution which his Majesty made, and had a little before entered upon it at the Council Board at Windsor or Whitehall, that the negroes in the plantations should all be baptized, exceedingly declaiming against that impiety of their masters prohibiting it, out of a mistaken opinion that they would be ipso facto free; but his Majesty persists in his resolution to have them christened'. Evelyn also mentions the attempted slave revolt in Barbados in 1692: 'there was a conspiracy among the negroes in Barbadoes to murder all heir masters, discovered by overhearing a discourse of two of the slaves, and so preventing the execution of the design' - alleged conspirators were hanged, burned alive and castrated by the authorities.

For Lovers Everywhere

Happy Valentine's Day all you lovers and want-to-be lovers. On this day in 1661, Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that he celebrated Valentine's Day and visited Deptford and Woolwich:

'Up early and to Sir W. Batten’s, but would not go in till I asked whether they that opened the door was a man or a woman, and Mingo, who was there, answered a woman, which, with his tone, made me laugh; so up I went and took Mrs. Martha for my Valentine (which I do only for complacency), and Sir W. Batten he go in the same manner to my wife, and so we were very merry. About 10 o’clock we, with a great deal of company, went down by our barge to Deptford, and there only went to see how forward Mr. Pett’s yacht is; and so all into the barge again, and so to Woolwich, on board the Rose-bush, Captain Brown’s ship, that is brother-in-law to Sir W. Batten, where we had a very fine dinner, dressed on shore, and great mirth and all things successfull; the first time I ever carried my wife a-ship-board, as also my boy Wayneman, who hath all this day been called young Pepys, as Sir W. Pen’s boy young Pen. So home by barge again; good weather, but pretty cold'.

Not sure exactly what he was getting up to with Mrs Martha - who I believe was Sir Batten's wife. But seemingly at that time the custom was to choose a friend of the opposite sex to be a Valentine for the day and give them gifts - there wasn't necessarily a romantic/sexual element.

Anyway here's a Valentine's Day treat for 21st century lovers, a 'South London Bass Valentines Disco Special with DJ Controlled Weirdness' , a selection of 'sensual disco, throbbing funk and sexual grooving' first broadcast live on ILL FM on 12th February 2010. A couple of classic 'cockney love songs' alongside the sexy New York grooves.

'Lovers Rock'
 - the legendary reggae label started out in Upper Brockley Road

Save Lewisham Hospital say: 'Send your message of love to Lewisham Hospital! If you were born or have been treated there, or just want to save our hospital, tie a balloon outside the railings of the hospital between Valentines Day and Sat 16th. Take a picture and post on our page and send it into your local paper or South London press. We want to show our hospital is HERE TO STAY. Lets make a spectacular visual no one can ignore!!'. There's also a Save Lewisham Hospital campaign Lunchtime Rally at the war memorial opposite Lewisham Hospital tomorrow (Friday 15th February) at 1PM! For more information go to www.savelewishamhospital.com or phone Lewisham Pensioners Forum on 020 85907869

In Brixton this evening, 'as part of the global One Billion Rising campaign, a range of events will be taking place all over the world in a call to end violence against women and girls. At 4.30pm Brixton’s Ritzy cinema will screen a short film about the issues surrounding domestic violence, Lambeth Rising, made by local film makers, community groups and students. The film screening will be followed by a flash mob dance takeover of Windrush Square at 5.30pm, led by around 25 children from the Wippersnappers After School Club' (more on Brixton Blog)

There are other One Billion Rising events happening locally today at Greenwich Study Centre (1 pm) and at Goose Green Roundabout in East Dulwich where also at 1 pm there will be a ten minute zumba dance flash mob (get there at 12:30 to learn the moves!)

History Corner: The Fifth Monarchists, 17th century London religious radicals

In 1660, the monarchy was restored in England after 11 years in which the country had managed fine without a King. Charles II wasted no time in tracking down and killing the 'regicides' associated with the execution of his father, King Charles I, at the end of the English Civil War in 1649.

The first of the regicides to be hanged, drawn and quartered was Thomas Harrison, who was executed at Charing Cross. He had been one of the Fifth Monarchists, a radical current who believed that the age of earthly kings was over and that Christ would soon return and bring about social justice.

In the aftermath of Harrison's execution, a group of Fifth Monarchists decided to stage an uprising.  On 6 January 1661, around 50 Fifth Monarchists headed by Thomas Venner (a wine-cooper), set off from their meeting house in Swan Alley, off Coleman Street in the City of London. Their manifesto 'A Door of Hope: or a Call and Declaration for the gathering together of the first ripe Fruits unto the Standard of our Lord, King Jesus' called for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the end of the death penalty for theft, and other social reforms, as well as for the overthrow of the monarchy. After several days of fighting, they were defeated. Venner and ten others were hanged for treason.

In the aftermath of the rising, the government rounded up all kinds of religious dissenters, including Quakers, Baptists and Congregationalists. Their meetings were banned, and thousands were jailed: 'Some 400 Baptists and 500 Quakers were arrested in London alone... So many sectaries were committed at the Croydon sessions for refusing to take the oath of allegiance that Sir John Maynard wondered where they could be detained... According to Maynard, the leader of the Croydon sectaries, Dr Bradley, was allowed by the jailer to 'imprecate destruction on the kings and all the Royall Line, in that which they call there devoction"'.

Despite this repression, dissent continued - including in Southwark and Deptford. In 1661 it was reported to magistrates 'that dissidents were meeting daily at the Southwark home of George Tutchins. Having failed in Venner's attempt, he allegedly said, they would rise again on the next moonlit night, and this time would have the use of fifty five barrels of powder stored in Deptford'.

An intelligence report in March 1661 'noted that a Deptford radical was expending funds to win supporters in the army, while another report of about the same date indicated that ministers in the west who were managing a design were corresponding with the Congregationalist Ralph Venning, lecturer at St Olave's, Southwark'. There were clashes between radicals and conservatives at the time of parliamentary elections in 1661 (albeit elections in which many did not have the vote):  'in Southwark, where there was a long-standing radical community, the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers, under the leadership of Colonel George Thompson and Captain Samuel Lynn, were unable to prevent the election of four conservatives. Once their defeat was apparent, the radicals drew swords and fought with the supporters of Sir Thomas Bludworth'.

Another hotbed was Lee - then in Kent, now part of Lewisham. 'Because it was only a few miles southeast of London, it was easily accessible to radicals from the City. On 1 October [1661], a number of ex-Cromwellians were at Lee, including Colonels Robert Blount (or Blunt) and Thompson along with three other officers. The pulpit at Lee was open to virtually all comers. In the opinion of the informer Edward Potter, its congregation of more than a hundred would "prove as Dangerous to the government of England as any if They are not sudenly prevented". The minister at Lee, William Hickocks, contributed to such fears by preaching that the saints must be willing to die for God's cause'.

In 1662, 'Concerned about meetings of armed dissidents near Deptford in January, the king directed a constable with a band of volunteers to seize all concealed weapons in Blackheath Hundred. In March, London authorities discovered that the grocer Thomas Bone had some twelve pounds of powder and six bullets. Bone not only had ties to the Fifth Monarchist preacher Anthony Palmer, who told him "thes times cannot last long" but was also sending provision to men incarcerated in the Tower for treason'.

In another planned rising (the 'Tong plot' of 1662), conspirators considered a plan to seize the king 'at Camberwell on one of his biweekly visits to Henrietta Maria at Greenwich'.

Re-enactment 2013

Inveterate agitator Ian Bone and others are planning a film/history walk/re-enactment of Venner's 1661 rising early next year. He says:  'On January 6th we will be laying a wreath in Swan Alley off Coleman Street in memory of  Thomas Venner and  his fellow Fifth Monarchists who courageously rose  up here  against the return of the monarchy in 1661'. Meet in Swan Alley at noon - more details here.

Not sure if Ian Bone is a descendent of the Thomas Bone mentioned above, or whether his current home in the borough of Croydon is anywhere near the haunts of the anti-Royalist preacher Dr Bradley.   (Most of the information above, and all the quotes, from 'Radical Underground in Britain, 1660-1663' by Richard Lee Greaves)