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Corpses in the street! The Black Death decimates Bristol. A stomach full of arsenic! Poisoned puddings and merry murderers. Take that you brute! Suffragettes attack Winston Churchill. Bombs drop on Bristol! Blackouts and the Blitz. Bristol has one of the bloodiest histories on record. One of Britain's key ports, it suffered devastating attacks from every possible invader, from Saxon fleets all the way through to the Nazi bombers of the Second World War. Meanwhile, adventurers, smugglers and pirates sailed from its docks, and more than half a million souls sailed in chains, victims of Bristol's vile slave trade ended only by the Herculean efforts of the abolitionists – Bristol folk amongst them. Containing hundreds of years of history and amazing true stories of eccentric residents such as con-woman 'Princess Caraboo', who ended her days as a Bristol leech-seller, no Bristol bookshelf is complete without this book.
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For my children
Title
Dedication
Introduction
1000s–1102
Bristol’s Saxon Slavers & St Wulfstan
1141–1325
A Right Royal Prison – Bristol Castle
1348
Black Death in Bristol
1399
Bolingbroke’s Revenge
1455–85
A Thorn Between Two Roses
1497
The United States of Ameryke
1555
Burnt at the Stake – Bloody Mary’s Bristol Victims
1607
Tsunami in the Severn & Other Weird Weather
1642–51
An Uncivil War – Spies, Sieges & Sandbags
1656
The Torture of James Naylor
1683
Hung, Drawn & Quartered – The Rye House Plotters
1685
Judge Jeffreys & Bristol’s White Slavers
1702
Robinson Crusoe & the Bristol Privateers
1717
Blackbeard
1750
Bodysnatchers – Resurrection Men & the Bristol Medical School
1762
Witchcraft at the Lamb Inn
1778
Exorcism at Temple Church – The Yatton Demonic
1791
Captain Kimber & Bristol’s Great Shame
1793
Killings on the Bridge – Riot & Shootings
1798
Science Comes to Bristol
1817
A Royal Imposter – Bristol Hoaxers & Conmen
1831
Bristol’s Burning!
1833
Toxic! The Trinity Street Murder
1836
Pirate Pilots at Pill
1849
Let Them Hang – The New Gaol & the Short Drop
1885
Miss Henley’s Remarkable Skirt & Other Lucky Escapes
1896
Suffer the Children – Bristol’s Angel Maker
1909
Revolting Bristol Women
1914–1918
Submarines, Spies & Mustard Gas
1939–1945
The Nazi Blitz
Bibliography
Copyright
HISTORY IS BLOODY. And Bristol has been caught up in some of the bloodiest bits of all.
So take a guided tour through Bristol’s perilous, pestilent past. Raided by slavers, torched by rioters, besieged again and again, and used by monarchs as a royal dumping ground for inconvenient relatives, Bristol has played a major role in bloody British history.
Discover the Welsh prince who spent each night locked in a box … explore the days when churchmen left rotting corpses piled high in Bristol’s streets … or learn which king watched gleefully from a Bristol church as his enemy’s entrails were drawn out before his very eyes.
But it’s about common folk too – the ordinary Bristolians who poisoned, stabbed, strangled, shot and otherwise butchered their way through history. Heads rolled, bodies burned and condemned men swung! Even the dead weren’t left to rest in peace. And if you think that’s grim, wait ’til you meet Bristol’s very own angel of death. Inside these pages the dark history of Bristol brews, awaiting your gaze.
So, on to Chapter One! Sordid Saxon slave sellers arrive in old Bristol …
It was a sad daily sight in the market at Bristol – row upon row of wretched young men and women bound with ropes and offered for sale …
THERE WAS SETTLEMENT in the Bristol area at least 60,000 years ago. Leigh Woods and Clifton Down both boast the remains of Iron Age hill forts, and there was an Iron Age community at Filwood. The Romans left their mark at Sea Mills and there were scattered villas such as the one at Brislington. Yet Bristol – as a unique, definable entity – cannot truly be said to come into existence until much later.
After the Romans left in the fifth century, Anglo-Saxons from Northern Europe gradually transformed occasional raiding into permanent conquest and established settlements in England. The first recorded reference to Bristol is on an Anglo-Saxon coin dated 911, referring to Brycg stowe, or ‘settlement by the bridge’. This name is a clue: Bristol evolved where it did because it was meeting place for commerce; its location on a river near the coast was an ideal trading spot. Unfortunately, this trading wasn’t just confined to food, livestock and pottery. Bristol was the centre of the Anglo-Saxon slave trade.
Slavery was an unpleasant yet integral part of Anglo-Saxon society. Its morality went unquestioned and even King Alfred sanctioned the practice: when he legislated on which days were to be ‘universal’ holidays (Christmas, etc) he specified they were for all free men, but not slaves.
Alfred the Great, who approved of the slave trade. (THP)
There were many ways in which people could end up as slaves in Anglo-Saxon Bristol. Warfare was the usual route, although captured male warriors were far more likely to be executed than enslaved. Sometimes defeated populations offered themselves up freely as slaves, since this at least ensured food, shelter and protection. Enslavement was not uncommon as a punishment for theft and sometimes the wrongdoer’s entire family ended up in bondage. Impoverished Anglo-Saxon parents could even sell their own children into slavery to keep them from starvation. And finally, there was the roaring trade in kidnapping victims for slavery. With so many potential recruits, it is easy to see how the practice became deeply embedded in Anglo-Saxon culture. By the time William the Conqueror (or William the Bastard, as his compatriots called him) arrived in England, a staggering 10 per cent of the population was enslaved.
Yet enslaved Britons did not necessarily remain in England. Slave selling was just as entrenched as slave owning and from the early 900s the Anglo-Saxon slave business began to focus on the export market. This is where Bristol, the ultimate trading community, came into its own.
For over two centuries, Bristol prized itself as the centre of the human export business. Men, women and children – captured during conflicts with nearby Wales, distant Scotland or even taken locally – were all traded through Bristol and shipped on to Ireland. Why Ireland? The Vikings had founded international ports there like Dublin, from where their traders sold Bristol slaves on right across the globe – to Iceland, Scandinavia and Arab traders in Spain.
It was a sad daily sight in the market at Bristol – row upon row of wretched young men and women bound with ropes and offered for sale: the men destined for intolerable hard labour, the women almost certainly sold into prostitution. Even heavily pregnant women were traded as slaves.
After the Norman Conquest, anti-slavery sentiments began to emerge. The Norman clergy wanted in particular to halt the sale of Christians to foreign heathens – keeping them at home enslaved to good Norman Christians was less objectionable, though. It was a start at least.
A captive pictured wearing a golden torque. (THP)
In Bristol the practice proved stubbornly hard to quash and this was where Wulfstan stepped in. Wulfstan was the last of the Saxon bishops, having been created Bishop of Worcester (which then included Bristol) by Edward the Confessor. When William the Conqueror arrived, Wulfstan was the only Saxon bishop allowed to remain in post, and so it was up to Wulfstan to bridge the gap between the old ways of the Saxons and the culture of the new Norman masters. One of these old ways was the Saxon predilection for slavery. Not that the new Norman king was averse to the practice – as with all traded goods, slaves brought tax revenue, which William was fairly keen on. Nor did all the Norman clergy fanatically oppose slavery – many employed slaves on their estates.
Nevertheless, Wulfstan was adamant about abolishing slavery. He was appalled by what he saw in Bristol and spent months preaching and trying to persuade the inhabitants to abandon their horrid habits. By attrition, he eventually succeeded. His work in abolishing slavery in Bristol was an inspiration to all England and in 1102 the Council of Westminster outlawed the slave trade officially, ruling that ‘no one is henceforth to presume to carry on that shameful trading whereby heretofore men used in England to be sold like brute beasts’. Fine words, yet even then the practice did not completely end.
Where there is a demand, there will always be a supply. For decades, Irish traders still regularly kidnapped unsuspecting people from the area around Bristol and sold them into lifelong bondage. When Henry II later conquered Ireland, he declared it was God’s punishment for its enslavement of English people
So, theoretically, slavery was abolished in Bristol under the Normans. Fabulous. But then the Normans introduced the feudal system. Not so fabulous. Under feudalism, serfs were tied to one lord and to one place. Slavery in all but name! Bristolians would have to wait much longer to be freed from their feudal masters.
WULFSTAN: THE MAN
• He tried to persuade monks to remain celibate – a thankless task in those days
• He hated long hair and kept a handy pocketknife to lop off the tresses of unsuspecting lavishly locked men
• He despised extravagance and felt compassion for the poor. On one occasion he invited several hundred wealthy and influential men and women to dine with him. When they arrived, they discovered they were to be servants for the evening – waiting on hundreds of paupers he had invited to dinner!
The impregnable castle that once loomed over Bristol played a key role in some of Britain’s greatest historical events. It also had a more sinister function as a personal prison for monarchs who needed to make undesirables disappear …
Having rid Bristol of Saxon slavery, the Normans set about ruling the locals themselves and built a (comparatively impressive, albeit wooden) castle from which to do so. In 1100 William the Conqueror’s son, Henry I, seized the throne (following his brother Rufus’s suspicious death in the New Forest).
Henry I was a seasoned womaniser and had countless offspring to prove it. His favourite was Robert Fitzroy, for whom he found a wealthy wife, Mabel FitzHamon, heiress to a great Gloucester estate that included the Norman Bristol Castle. After his marriage, Robert set about transforming this old timber castle into an impregnable stone fortress.
Meanwhile, what Henry I had produced in quantity out of wedlock (numerous sons), he failed to create in marriage. By 1120 he had just one legitimate heir – his daughter Matilda. Although the barons swore loyalty to Matilda while her father was still alive, they were less than enamoured with the idea of a female monarch. When Henry died in 1135 they shifted allegiance to her male cousin, Stephen. He was crowned but Matilda was not to be defeated so easily.
Engraving of the south prospect of Bristol Castle when it was first built in stone. (THP)
Half-brother Robert became Matilda’s main supporter in the ensuing civil war, the Anarchy, and in 1141 King Stephen was captured. The obvious place for his incarceration was Robert’s mighty castle in Bristol. Here the monarch was held in chains by his cousins Robert and Matilda – that is, until Robert himself was captured by Stephen’s soldiers. Matilda had no choice: she swapped the captive king for her beloved half-brother. Her one chance of an outright victory was lost and the interminable conflict rattled on.
Eventually, both sides tired of the conflict and a compromise was reached. Matilda gave up her (entirely lawful) claim to the throne in exchange for her son, Henry, becoming Stephen’s heir. The civil war was over and Bristol Castle held no more royal prisoners – at least for the moment.
Matilda’s son did indeed become king, as did his sons John and Richard the Lionheart. Another son, Geoffrey, became Duke of Brittany and, although he died young, he left behind a beautiful daughter named Eleanor (1184–1241), variously known as the Damsel of Brittany, the Beauty of Brittany, the Pearl of Brittany or, more commonly, the Fair Maid of Brittany. Clearly she was reasonably attractive.
Being ‘fair’ wasn’t the problem; it was the ‘maid’ part which foiled poor Eleanor, just as it had stymied great-grandmother Matilda. Eleanor was technically third in line to the throne with only her uncle, Richard, and brother, Alfred, being ahead in the queue.
After Uncle Richard died there was a dreadful power struggle between Eleanor’s other uncle, John, and her brother, 12-year-old Prince Arthur, culminating in Arthur’s mysterious disappearance in 1203. Uncle John grabbed the throne but with no heirs of his own, he needed to keep a relative in reserve to take over if he died. It was useful to keep Eleanor around, just in case. But she had to be kept under control; under lock and key, in fact. The last thing King John needed was Eleanor marrying and producing a brood of potential heirs to the throne.
So, guilty of no particular crime, teenage Eleanor was imprisoned in 1202. Most of her incarceration was spent at Bristol Castle. To be fair, it was hardly Alcatraz. Eleanor wasn’t confined to a damp cell but lived in luxury, with fine clothes, servants and even a horse. Yet she was still a prisoner of the state, with no real freedom of movement and no option to marry. When Magna Carta was signed, it stated that all John’s hostages had to be released. Eleanor was specifically excluded.
She was still a prisoner when John died in 1216 and whilst Eleanor should have inherited the throne, the barons allowed John’s son Henry III to succeed. In a posthumous act of avuncular cruelty, John had left orders that Eleanor should never be released, a policy his son was only too happy to uphold. She died at Bristol Castle in 1238 aged 57.
The title ‘Prince of Wales’, as ceremoniously bestowed upon the heir apparent to the throne, is familiar to all. Yet the real story behind the title is rather less glamorous and should be close to the heart of Bristol, for it was here that the last claimants to the original title died. Llywelyn ap Gwyedd, aka Llewelyn the Last, was granted the title Prince of Wales by Henry III but in 1282 he rebelled against Henry’s son, Edward I, and was consequently killed. Llewelyn’s infant daughter, Princess Gwenllian, promptly disappeared into a nunnery for the rest of her life, but it is the destiny of Gwenllian’s two male cousins that concerns us, for they were imprisoned at Bristol Castle.
A plan of Bristol Castle in ancient times. Inside, royal prisoners were going quietly mad … (THP)
For Lllywelyn ap Dafydd it was to be a brief incarceration – he died in 1287 after just four years. His brother Owain ap Dfydd survived much longer. Meanwhile Edward I purloined the title ‘Prince of Wales’ and bestowed it upon his 13-year-old son, Edward, in 1301.
As Edward I’s life drew to a close he still refused to release Owain, instructing that the prince should each night be locked into a wooden box with iron clasps. By this point poor Owain was a fully grown man in his thirties but years of solitary confinement had affected his mind, as his letter to the king reveals:
Owain, son of David ap Griffin, shows that whereas he is by Order of the King detained in the Castle of Bristol in strong and close prison, and has been since he was seven years old for his father’s trespass. He prays the King that he may go and play within the wall of the castle if he cannot have better grace of the King.
His petition was ignored and he was left to rot in Bristol Castle until his death in 1375.
Joan of Acre was 18 when her father, Edward I, married her off to the powerful Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. Over the next five years Joan dutifully produced four heirs and was just 23 when Gilbert died. Edward decided to marry her off again to the middle-aged Count of Savoy but his plans were scuppered – Joan had already secretly wed a nobody called Ralph, one of her late husband’s servants. A furious Edward swiftly clapped his son-in-law in chains and flung him into a cell at Bristol Castle.
Joan implored her father: no one sees anything wrong if a great earl marries a poor and lowly woman. Why should there be anything wrong if a countess marries a young and promising man?
Ralph was freed – just in time to see his child born!
Three centuries later, Oliver Cromwell ordered the castle’s demolition, judging that it was much more likely to be used against liberty than in defence of it. He may have had a point.
Corpses piled high in the streets – with barely a soul left alive to bury them, the bodies were just flung into pits …
BRISTOL HAD NEVER had it so bad. For three summers in a row from 1314 it rained … and it rained. Waterlogged fields, ruined harvests, livestock drowned. It could only go one way – famine. The Great Famine of 1315–17 killed at least 5 per cent of the population in England. People resorted to eating dogs and horses, and there were even reports of cannibalism. Then, in 1337, the Hundred Years War began. All in all, by 1348 the population in Bristol was depleted and demoralised. The last thing the town needed was what happened next.
The summer of 1348 was unusually wet. There was barely a day between midsummer and Christmas when it did not rain. Crops lay rotting in the fields and famine threatened again, but worse was to come. It began with headaches, fevers and aching muscles. Sufferers soon discovered swellings in their armpits, groins and necks. Red at first, these bulbous, pus-filled protrusions rapidly darkened to deep purple or black. Feeling disorientated, many began to vomit blood. Above all, they wanted to sleep. But giving in to slumber proved instantly fatal. Either way, those infected had only four agonising days to live at most. The Black Death had arrived in Bristol.
THE FLAGELLANTS
The plague terrified the medieval mind. People from all social strata succumbed. Even King Edward III’s 13-year-old daughter, Joan Plantagenet, died. Many thought the devastating disease had been sent by the Almighty as divine retribution for their wrongs, and to assuage this celestial fury, people adopted bizarre acts of penitence: if they punished themselves, God wouldn’t need to smite them with the Black Death. In theory, odd but rational; in practice, pointless.
For this purpose, in 1349, 600 Flagellants arrived from Flanders in 1349. Shoeless and half naked, they marched through the countryside chanting and lashing themselves with nail-embedded whips.
As for cures – there was vinegar to cleanse the disease out of the body; lavender, mint, sage and balm to ease the symptoms; bloodletting; onion poultices and dried toad. The only problem was they didn’t work. Nor did the whipping practiced by the flagellants from the Continent!
A ‘dance of Death’ print inspired by the toll caused by pandemics during this era; here a horse collapses. (With kind permission of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto)
Black Death is a bacterial disease, transmitted by fleas and the rats on which they reside. When these rodent hosts died, the fleas simply leapt onto another home – any passing human would do! Originating in China, the plague spread to Europe via major trade routes and in June 1348 reached Melcombe Regis in Dorset by ship, from whence the pestilence began its inexorable sweep inland.
By August 1348 the Black Death had cast its deadly shadow over Bristol, the first major town to be infected. It had taken forty-seven days for the plague to travel the 69 miles from Melcombe Regis to Bristol. This was surprisingly slow; much longer than even the most cumbersome wagon would take to cover the distance. Is it possible the plague arrived in Bristol independently, via an infested ship?
Already the principal port of entry for the West Country, by 1348 Bristol was the third-largest settlement in England. Some 10,000 people were crowded into its squalid, narrow streets with filthy, cramped houses. Bristol was riddled with rats, open sewers coursed through the streets and the drinking water was contaminated. It was a perfect environment for the plague.
PLAGUE PITS
There are supposed to be several plague pits in Bristol. One was long held to be in Broadmead – until archaeologists dug it up in the 1950s and discovered it was actually part of a church cemetery.
PITCH AND PAY LANE