by Albert Jack
The end of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was marked when Jack Straw was caught and beheaded, after apparently confessing (under torture) that the real intention of the marchers was to kill the king, bishops, all landowners and rectors of churches. He rapidly became a symbol of the common man rebelling against the oppression of the complacent state. He is even mentioned in The Canterbury Tales – written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late fourteenth century, not long after the Revolt – as a leader of rebels protesting against foreign workers. As I write this, six hundred years later, I see British oil-refinery workers are striking in Lincolnshire over the use of foreign workers and wonder why nothing has been learned.
A popular play written in 1593 called The Life and Death of Jack Straw includes a scene where Straw incites his men to rebellion, crying: ‘The king, God wot, knows not what’s done by such poor men as we, / But we’ll make him know it, if you will be ruled by me.’ The setting is Hampstead Heath (perhaps on the very spot currently occupied by the modern pub), the rebel leader addressing the mob from on top of a loaded hay wagon, which became jokingly known as Jack Straw’s Castle as it was as close as any peasant, Jack Straw included, was likely to get to owning a real castle.
Back in 1721, when the pub was founded, its choice of name was a daring one, even then, still popular with the independent-minded workforce of London but less so with the authorities. The lesser-known Wat Tyler, in Dartford, Kent, is also a reference to the same historic event of 1381.
The John Barleycorn
FROM TRADITIONAL RHYME TO PUB ANTHEM
John Barleycorn is the hero of a traditional English folksong dating as far back as we can trace. A version appeared in the Bannatyne Manuscript of 1586 (a collection of Scottish poems named after its sixteenth-century compiler, George Bannatyne) and many variations have been published since, including one penned by another Scot, the poet Robert Burns, in 1782, and upon which most subsequent versions of the song are based.
In the song, John Barleycorn’s death is prophesied and then enacted in various grisly ways; he then comes back to life again. It has been interpreted as pagan practice or a more symbolic type of sacrifice as enacted in fertility rituals to ensure the return of summer after winter (see also THE GREEN MAN and THE RISING SUN). Indeed, due to his suffering and resurrection, many folklorists have compared John Barleycorn to Christ. A simpler interpretation is that he is the personification of the barley, which needs to be buried under the earth to grow again:
There were three men come out o’ the west their fortunes for to try, And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn must die. They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in, throwed clods upon his head, And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn was dead.
Barley is a crucial crop, both for eating and drinking. In malted form it provides the vital ingredient for both whisky and beer (see THE MALTINGS and THE WHEATSHEAF). The song thus is the pub hymn. In an echo of Jesus’s body and blood being represented by the host (bread) and wine of the Holy Communion, John Barleycorn’s body and blood become, quite literally, bread and beer.
The John Company
THE COMPANY THAT RULED A SUBCONTINENT
Pubs calling themselves the John Company do so in reference to the nickname for the East India Company (see also THE BOMBAY GRAB), which was set up in 1600 by Elizabeth I. Trading in cotton, silk, tea and opium, the East India Company became fabulously wealthy and powerful over the next three centuries. In the process it also became far more than just a company. When local Indian rulers started rebelling against the foreign exploitation of a wealth that had once been theirs, the company built up an army. And when the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies seized Fort William, Calcutta, in 1756, they decided to strike. The popularity of their cause was helped enormously by public outrage back in Britain at the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ incident in which the Nawab’s soldiers had crammed 146 British prisoners into one tiny cell and only twenty-three survived the night. The facts are now disputed but at the time they were a public relations coup for the East India Company, meaning that they were free to act as they saw fit, without question and with public support.
After the inglorious Battle of Plassey in 1757, where Robert Clive’s outnumbered forces mainly prevailed by bribing the general in charge of most of the Indian armies not to attack, the Company came to rule large tracts of India, exercising military power and taking administrative control.
A series of further wars were won by the company and their powers over the subcontinent lasted until 1858, when, following the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British crown assumed direct administration of India in the new British Raj, and thus the John Company became part of the John Bull Corporation.
The John Paul Jones
HOW AN AMERICAN INVASION WAS FOILED BY A LOCK-IN AT AN ENGLISH PUB
John Paul Jones (1747–92) always hated the English. Born in a devastated Scotland (the English had imposed very harsh punishments in retaliation for the recent Jacobite Risings – see THE THREE LORDS), he went to sea at the age of thirteen, sailing from the northern English port of Whitehaven in Cumbria. By the age of twenty-one, and after serving in a number of slave ships, Jones had become disillusioned with the cruel trade, so he jumped ship in Barbados and made his way back to Scotland. He soon found another ship and, having proved his skill as a navigator when he unexpectedly had to take over as captain, was put in charge of his own vessel. All went well at first but then he was accused of killing two of his sailors, after quarrels and problems with discipline, and everything started to go wrong.
With his reputation fast slipping from glowing to notorious, Jones decided in 1773 to leave his troubles behind and move to the New World. When the American War of Independence broke out only two years later (see also THE ADDISON ARMS and THE MOLLY PITCHER), Jones wasted no time in joining the American navy, despite the colonies having no ships of the line (custom-built warships). With few qualms about fighting his old masters, he was soon in action attacking British merchant ships along the north-eastern coast of America.
In November 1777 Jones was sent to Europe with orders to ‘assist America wherever possible’, and spent the next six months disrupting British shipping until finally, on 23 April 1778, the commander led his forces to attack the mainland at Whitehaven, the port he had first sailed from eighteen years earlier.
However, on arrival, his ship the Ranger had barely enough fuel left for their oil lamps let alone enough to start the fires they intended among the British fleet of over 300 anchored in the harbour. A small raiding party was set up with the task of stealing oil and other fuel from the local inn that no doubt Jones was familiar with from his youthful days in port. But, with discipline being what it was among eighteenth-century sailors, the men stopped for a few ales and ended up staying drinking with the locals until dawn. Eventually somebody gave their identity away and the Americans were forced back to the ship, where they raised anchor and ran. With the raid all but aborted, Jones instead sailed for St Mary’s Isle, off the Scottish coast, where he intended to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk in the hope of exchanging his prisoner for captured American sailors. But the earl was not at home, so Jones’s men ransacked his manor house instead.
News of these raids, albeit failures, damaged morale within the British forces and government as they showed that the Americans were prepared and able to attack the British mainland. As a result of this, Jones, a sailor from Scotland, was hailed as the first American naval hero and to this day is regarded as the father of the American navy. The raids are commemorated locally with pubs called the John Paul Jones both in Whitehaven and in Southerness, Scotland, close to the place of his birth.
The John Snow
(Soho, London)
WHY IT’S FAR SAFER TO STICK TO BEER
There is only one public house by this name, on Broadwick Street in the heart of Soho, and it commemorates a local doctor, one John Snow (1813–58), who managed to save thousands of lives through his
lateral thinking.
In the mid nineteenth century, London had a vast and growing population and yet no proper sanitation. Many basements had brimming cesspits underneath their floorboards. The rich paid for water to be brought to their houses, the poorer gathered their own water from local pumps. This water was generally piped in from the extremely polluted River Thames, which at that time was little better than a vast open sewer. Waterborne disease, unsurprisingly enough, was rife – especially cholera and typhoid – but nobody knew how it was spread.
In August 1854, after several outbreaks of cholera had already sprung up throughout the capital, a major outbreak struck Soho. In its severest form, cholera is one of the most rapidly progressing diseases known to man: without prompt medical intervention, an infected person can die within three hours. During that outbreak in 1854, 127 people had died within three days. Over the course of the week, three-quarters of the inhabitants had fled, while those that remained were dropping like flies. Dr John Snow, tending the sick, was sceptical about the popular theories of the time, essentially that ‘bad air’, known as ‘miasma’, was responsible for spreading the disease. But he remained unable to explain exactly how the infection was passed so quickly between people who appeared to have no direct contact with each other.
Marking on a map the homes of as many of the victims as he could find, Snow made a startling discovery. Studying the map, he noticed that eighty-seven of the eighty-nine victims he had identified had all drunk water from a pump in Broad Street. By contrast, there had been no reports of the death from cholera of anyone who drank water from a different well, even if they lived close to Broad Street. Snow immediately took his findings to the local authorities, urging them to remove the pump handle. The authorities, believing like everyone else that ‘bad air’ was responsible for the disease, were initially reluctant as closing the pump would inconvenience local residents. But Snow managed to persuade them to remove the handle long enough at least for him to investigate further, as a result of which there were no new cases of cholera in the area. Snow then discovered that the well had been dug only three feet from an old cesspit that had begun to leak sewage directly into the water supply; this, he concluded, must be the source of the disease.
After the epidemic had halted, government officials still refused to acknowledge Snow’s conclusions, terrified that if the public learned they had all been drinking infected water there would be riots. In 1848 John Snow published an essay, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, in which he suggested the disease was spread by germs and not ‘bad air’. A second edition of the essay, with evidence from the infected water supply in Soho, was published in 1855. Taken far more seriously than the first edition, it led to a detailed investigation of the public water supply in London and the eventual acceptance that cholera was transmitted through bad water and not bad air. John Snow rose to greater prominence, too, although he was already well known for his work on anaesthesia, personally administering chloroform to Queen Victoria during the births of her last two children in 1853 and 1857.
Now Londoners had an excuse for not drinking water, and began drinking even more beer and wine instead, knowing that the fermentation process would remove all traces of bacteria and so prevent the spread of water-transmitted disease. This is the reason the expression ‘good health’ is widely used by people having a drink together, because in London in the mid nineteenth century drinking alcohol really was a way of ensuring you didn’t fall ill (or not from cholera, at any rate). Fittingly, Snow, despite being teetotal all his life, is commemorated by a public house bearing his name, built near the old water pump in Broad (now Broadwick) Street. The beer is fine; and, these days, so is the water.
The King’s Head
THE NO BODY INN?
There are many pubs called the King’s Head, all over Britain. The kings painted on their signs vary and most are a straightforward celebration of royalty. Those that feature Charles I, however, are rather more macabre, as in this case it is literally the king’s head that is meant, unattached to the king’s body.
Parliament had agonized over the execution of the king, knowing that while he was living he would remain the focus of constant uprisings, but that once dead he would become a martyr. It was difficult to find an executioner who was prepared to kill a monarch, however anonymously, and several refused, until an Irishman called Gunning accepted the job; in fact his name appears commemorated on a plaque in the King’s Head pub in Galway, Ireland. The execution was set for 30 January 1649, and Charles faced his death with courage, the vast crowd moaning as the executioner’s axe fell. It was common practice for the head of a traitor to be held up and exhibited to the crowd with the words ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ moments after the execution. Although Charles’s head was exhibited, the words were not used, reflecting the popular regard in which he was still held.
In 1661, following his restoration to the throne, the king’s son, Charles II, took his revenge on the man who had organized his father’s death. The body of Oliver Cromwell was dug up (he’d died three years before) and his head placed on display at Westminster Hall, where it remained for a further twenty-four years as a grisly reminder to all those opposing the monarchy. This too is commemorated in another pub name – the Cromwell’s Head. (See also THE DUKE’S HEAD.)
The Lamplighters
IN THE DARK NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM…
It sounds a rather quaint name for a pub, but lamplighters were once a vital part of every urban community. In the days before electricity, they toured towns and cities every evening before dusk and, using a long pole with a burning wick at one end, they lit the lamps illuminating the streets. Lamplighters, who also served as watchmen, had the job of maintaining the lamps, too. They would clean the wicks, repairing and renewing them where necessary and making sure each had enough oil. Perhaps one reason that the Good Old Days are so called is because in the daytime things were good; it was at night that they were less enjoyable. Criminals took advantage of the darkness, while families huddled inside around the fire, telling each other ghost stories.
The invention of street lighting revolutionized people’s lives as the day no longer needed to end at sunset. More than anything, this was, of course, good news for publicans as pubs could stay open much later. One good reason for calling your inn the Lamplighters was to remind your potential customers that you were open late (it’s also why ‘night’ clubs are so called) and to point out that yours was in a well-patrolled part of town, as not all streets were lit.
By the nineteenth century, most oil lamps had been replaced by gas and, although initially these also needed to be lit by hand, a more efficient system was soon developed, enabling street lamps to be turned on automatically. By 1882, when Godalming, a small town near Guildford, became the first in the world to have electric street lighting, the days of the lamplighter were numbered and within a few years the familiar sight of the man with his pole lighting the lamps had become a thing of the past.
One of the first pubs in England to adopt the name is believed to be Lamplighter’s Hall in Shirehampton, near Bristol, first recorded in 1768 when, on 17 December, it was advertised in the Bristol Journal: ‘For let – the public house at Passage Leaze opposite [the village of] Pill, commonly known as Lamplighter’s Hall.’ In 1772 the property was advertised for sale by the estate of Joseph Swetnam, a prosperous businessman who at one time held the contracts to light and maintain the lamps of many Bristol parishes. He built the splendid house as a country residence but soon found the busy, and foul-smelling, River Avon did not suit his family and so the building was converted into a hotel, retaining the name Swetnam had given it, Lamplighter’s Hall.
On 3 March 1793 American naval captain John Shaw went to dine at Lamplighter’s Hall in the company of the notorious pirate Captain Henry Morgan. He noted: ‘I cannot say I was highly entertained by the conversation, it being in a style I much disliked.’ One hundred and fifty years later, the Welsh seaman, terror of the Span
ish Main, was to inspire the name of one of the world’s leading brands of rum – no doubt served at Lamplighters throughout the land.
The Lion and the Unicorn
AGE-OLD RIVALS FIGHT FOR THE CROWN
The lion and the unicorn are the symbols of the United Kingdom. In the same way that the Union Jack cleverly overlays England’s St George cross with that of Scotland’s St Andrew and of Ireland’s St Patrick, the royal coat of arms is supported by the Scottish unicorn on one side and the English lion on the other (see THE WHITE LION). Of course, things aren’t actually equal: the lion, not the unicorn, is generally depicted wearing the crown, but that harks back to a rather less stable time in Britain’s history when a united kingdom was just wishful thinking.
The relationship between England and Scotland has traditionally been a tense one. The two countries were at constant odds with each other since long before the English invasion of 1296. But everything calmed down when James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, uniting the two kingdoms under the Scottish Stuart dynasty. Unfortunately the Stuart dynasty didn’t prove a particularly steady one and not one but two Stuart kings were sacked by Parliament and the people, who then turned to Europe for their new sovereign, in the shape of William of Orange from the Netherlands (see THE GEORGE).
