Yeomans and the Tax Collector

Yeomans and the Tax Collector

Yeomans, Longford, Middlesex

Thomas Streeting was not a popular man. He lived in the biggest house in the village of Longford, Middlesex, and employed many of the villagers to work on his farm. This non-conformist land-owner might have received the respect of his labourers, but in some households he was unwelcome. He was the parish tax collector and twice a year he visited every house in the village to collect taxes. 

The tax collector’s job was unpaid. The gentry of the parish formed the Vestry Meeting (parish council) and oversaw the parish governance. Each member of the Meeting was expected to play an important, but voluntary, role. One member would be appointed as tax assessor. His job was to assess the rental value of each property, and this would be the figure on which the land and poor relief tax was based. The assessment varied little from year to year. Then the nominated tax collector, in this case Thomas Streeting, would have the job of extracting these sums from his friends and neighbours in the parish.

There were government taxes to be collected, too. In 1748 there were 34 land tax payers in Longford. This was a regular tax paid twice yearly from 1692 until 1963. However, in the reign of George III, this was not enough to fund the various conflicts that Britain was fighting in Europe and Colonial America, and so other sources of taxation had to be found, some of them very inventive. In 1696 window tax was introduced which was easy to assess. The Longford records for the years 1766/1767 show who had to pay window tax. Most houses, with seven windows or less paid a flat amount of two shillings a year. For larger houses there was a variable rate. In 1767 Thomas Streeting, as owner of one of the largest houses in Longford with nineteen windows, was paying twelve shillings for his window tax and £4.17.6d for his land. Thomas Streeting died in December 1773 and his son-in-law, Thomas Weekly, at the Weekly house took on his role as Tax Collector. Thomas Weekly’s voluntary job of collecting taxes was now not just a time-consuming, form-filling, distraction from his farm and his Baptist chapel, but was an onerous role to perform when individuals objected to having to pay extra tax when they were struggling to survive after the poor harvests of 1795.[1]

There were so many different taxes to collect that parish tax collectors received a preprinted form from the government to help them enumerate them all. Previous tax collections in the parish had just been noted in a hand made notebook. One new tax was on male servants (1777-1852). A male servant was considered a luxury and their employers' were liable to pay tax for this privilege. Those servants engaged in husbandry, trade or manufacture were exempted. The servants of tavern-keepers, shop-keepers and merchants were also exempt unless they performed any personal duties like scrubbing floors or cleaning shoes, or saddling a horse. In 1779 this tax was one guinea per servant per year.

Another tax was Horse Tax (1784-1874). This was liable on riding horses, including racehorses, but not working horses. In 1785 an amendment exempted those farmers occupying a farm worth not more than £150 a year rent in which the horse was used only for riding to church or market. The yearly rental exemption rate was reduced in 1802 and thus many more owners were liable.

There was also a dog tax (5 July 1796 to 5 April 1797). This was a tax on non-working dogs, and people receiving poor rate were exempt. Most people in Longford had just one dog, but Mrs Bedford at the Kings Arms inn (now the Grade II listed King Henry or The Stables) had two dogs.

The following tax year, there was also a clocks and watch tax with a variable rate depending on whether the watch was gold, silver, or of another metal. Thomas Weekly’s tax bill was 4s.10½d on his thirteen windows, and 11s.3d on his five horses. He had one clock and one silver watch for which he paid five shillings seven and a half old pence. Of the 60 householders/rate payers in the parish only 35 had a clock and 5 had two clocks. No one had a gold watch. This tax was repealed nine months later. It was difficult to collect because people hid or disposed of their clocks and watches. Inn-keepers were happy to pay the tax when they found that their clocks attracted customers who came in just to check the time, but it was devastating for the clock and watch manufacturers when people no longer bought them.[2] Not only was the tax payer liable to these sundry taxes, but in some years a surcharge of 20% was added to the total.

In 1796 Britain, after years of fighting in the American war of Independence and in the process losing the colonies, was now fighting a war against Spain and a separate conflict with France. The government needed to introduce more taxes to fund these wars. They had already been levying tax on all types of possessions, but then the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, in anticipation of the need to establish a war chest of cash in case of a war with Napoleon who had just became First Console of France, had to think of other means to raise tax. In addition to the supplementary taxes in 1799 the Prime Minister introduced, the concept of income tax as a means of raising funds for the government. It was the first tax to be raised on people’s incomes and was intended as a temporary tax.[3] Anyone earning over £60 per annum had to pay ten per cent of their income. Initially it had to be collected from individuals and was not deducted at source until four years later. However, most of Longford’s labourers earned less than £1 a week and were not eligible. The introduction of this tax reduced Pitt’s popularity.

Those eligible to pay tax sometimes struggled to find the money, especially when the amount demanded varied from year to year. The increasing taxation was inflationary making goods cost more, but wages did not keep up. A pound in 1795 would be worth £117 today. This does not seem an excessive amount to pay today, but compared to the average earnings of an agricultural labourer of fifteen shillings a week, all of which would go on food and rent, for some people it would be a struggle.[4] This is why the parish tax collector was not a popular man.

[1] https://bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/01n1a5.pdf

[2] https://taxfitness.com.au/Blog/the-clock-tax-of-1797#:~:text=The%20tax%20was%20introduced%20by,their%20clocks%20or%20destroyed%20them. [3] www.politics.co.uk

[4] A Short History of English Agriculture by W. H. R. Curtler

This house and the village of Longford in West Middlesex will be demolished if the third runway at Heathrow airport is built.  My book, Longford: A Village in Limbo, which tells the story of Longford over the last three hundred years, is due for publication soon.

 

Tales from Longford: The Weekly House

This house and the village of Longford in West Middlesex will be demolished when the third runway at Heathrow airport is built.

The Weekly House 2018.

It had been ten years since the Great Fire of London, and Thomas Weekly, a wealthy London cloth-merchant was looking for a change in lifestyle. His ride along the Great Bath Road from his home in Westminster led him to the village of Longford, fifteen miles from London, in search of a farm that was for sale in the centre of the village.  Recently married he wanted to build a home for his bride and establish himself as a farmer and maltster.  As a Baptist, and a descendant of John Wycliffe, the medieval theological reformer, he was attracted to this village of non-conformists, who were now openly able to meet without fear of prosecution.

Thomas Weekly bought the farm and built the Weekly House as a family home. It was quite different from the timber-framed Tudor inns and houses that already existed in the village. The house was two storeys high and built of red-brick with two attic rooms, and a high pitched tiled roof. The walls were thick and the large sash windows had internal wooden shutters.

The two main rooms had huge beamed fireplaces large enough to stand-up in, with recesses in the chimney for smoking hams. These fireplaces and those of the bedrooms all connected to the central chimney. The beautiful staircase with wooden bannisters continued up to the attic on the second floor where there were two large attics rooms and a box room. On the northern side of the ground floor was a single-storey cool store room with hooks for storing hams and next to that a white washed dairy. On the eastern wall of the house was a large single-storey kitchen with a huge fireplace matching the one on the other side of the wall in the main house. As well as the kitchen, there was a boot room, log store and outside privy.

Next to the house, parallel to the Great Bath Road, Thomas Weekly built a long, weather-boarded malting barn, and separating the barn from the road was a brick-built wall with sloped and rounded coping.

Grade II listed barn next to Weekly House 2018.

Thomas Weekly and his family, lived in this house from the end of the seventeenth century, until the last surviving Weekly died in the house in 1899. After that the house and land was inherited by their cousins, the Wilds, who occupied the house until 1940. During the war the empty building was used as an ARP Warden’s post, and also an HQ for the local Home Guard. It suffered damage to the roof in 1944 when a flying bomb landed nearby and debris hit the Weekly House. After the roof was patched up the house stood empty. All its farmland had been compulsorily requisitioned to build a war-time airport in the neighbouring hamlet of Heathrow. In 1948 the Weekly House was bought by a local resident, Christopher Challis, who set about restoring it, with the help of the local blacksmith, Tom Adams, and made it into a family home once more. It is for this reason the house has survived. The house is now an office building and the House, barn and wall are now all grade II listed structures. The barn, now overgrown and derelict, is now on the Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register 2020.

When Thomas Weekly journeyed to Longford in 1676 he was not to know that he had founded a dynasty that continued for three centuries in the village of Longford. The family saw the village prosper and grow, and witnessed many historic events on the only road through the village, The Great Bath Road.

The Weekly House when it was a working farm.
Early twentieth century

My book, Longford: A Village on the Edge of Extinction, which tells the story of Longford over the last three hundred years, is due for publication soon.

 

Tales from Longford: The Strawberry Season

The village of Longford in West Middlesex will be demolished when the third runway at Heathrow airport is built.  

  

Zion Cottage

At first light, the front door of Zion Cottage opened on a glorious June morning in 1900.  Mrs Clara Brain, dressed in a shawl and head scarf with a white apron over her long black skirt, walked towards The Farm in the centre of Longford.  Even though it was 3am she were joined by a growing stream of similarly dressed women all moving in the same direction. The village was quiet as most residents had yet to begin their morning routine.  When the women reached the field they replaced their white aprons with coarse hessian sacks, criss-crossed their shawls across their bodies, under their arms and tied them at the back. They pulled their long skirts up between their legs and hitched them into the front of the waistband.  In the field, the boy from the village with his wooden rattle had been scaring the birds away since first light.  He was pleased to have some company.  The women immediately set to work.  The foreman allocated a row of strawberry plants to each girl.  He handed out wooden punnets and the girls picked the ripest fruit handling only the stem. The punnets were lined with a strawberry leaves before the fruit was laid gently on top.  Later in the packing shed, each punnet would be weighed to make sure it weighed exactly a pound, then 36 punnets would be packed in a wooden crate and the lid nailed down.  About sixty of these crates would be stacked ten-high on a lightweight yellow strawberry van that with one fast horse could travel the fifteen miles along the Bath Road to Covent Garden market in one and a half-hours.  Strawberries with the dew still on them would sell at a premium price in the market.

 

Fruit was one of the main produce of the market gardens in West Middlesex in the nineteenth century, but there was often a glut.  An enterprising farmer in nearby Sipson, Jonathon Smith, had started a Jam Factory there in the 1890s which would buy any farm surpluses.  One of the main crops in mid-summer was strawberries.  The berries ripened in the open fields where the strawberry plants were laid out in long rows and the plants packed with straw around them so that the slugs could not reach the ripe fruit.  The strawberry-picking season was relatively short, but labour intensive, and because the plants were at ground level, back-breaking.  The warm sun of mid-summer made the job easier, but in pouring rain it was unpleasant work.  Women were regarded as the best pickers of strawberries because of their light touch and Longford had an army of women who would rise at dawn to pick them.

 

Clara Brain was born in Weston on the Green, Oxfordshire, in 1856. She and  married the boy next door, West Brain, in 1889 when they were both 33 and moved to Longford  before the end of the century. Her husband worked as an agricultural labourer for H.J. Wild the biggest employer in Longford. Most of the farmland is now under Heathrow airport, but the main farmhouse still survives as the Grade II listed Weekly House.  West Brain was always known as Brother Brain because of his way of greeting people by calling them ‘brother’.  He was a lifelong Baptist and never missed going to chapel every Sunday.  His employer described him as a “salt of the earth”.  West died in Longford at the age of 87. Clara worked in the fields at harvest times, but was mostly a housewife. She won prizes for her bread and pastry-making in local produce shows.  She died in Longford aged 90 in 1947.

My book, Longford: A Village on the Edge of Extinction, is due for publication soon. 

The King and the Eton Montem

 

Montem mound 2020 from Google Streetview

The second Tuesday in June 1832 was a dull cloudy day, but that did not dampen the excitement felt by eighteen-year-old Richard Weekly, as he mounted his horse in the farmyard at Perry Oaks farm (now under Terminal Five at London Airport) and set off along Tithe Barn lane towards the Great Bath Road.  Richard was taking a rare day off from helping his father run their 300-acre farm.  He rode west along the Bath Road, through Longford and at Colnbrook Bridge was stopped by two Eton schoolboys, called Thackeray and Walker, who were dressed in mock military uniforms. "Give us some salt", they demanded.  Richard was expecting this and good-humouredly handed over some coins.  They were raising charitable donations for the event Richard was about to witness. In return he was given a yellow ticket on which was printed, “Pro More et Monte – Vivant Rex et Regina.”  He stuck the ticket in his hat knowing it would exempt him from any more requests for “salt” and continued his journey.  As he approached the village of Slough, Berkshire, the roads got busier with excited crowds of people and riders. Gaily decorated carriages lined the roads from Windsor to Slough.  Richard eventually found a vantage point where he stopped to view the event that everyone had come to see.

Every three years the boys of Eton College dressed in bizarre clothes marched from the school to an Anglo-Saxon burial mound at Salt Hill,  on the Great Bath Road, where they climbed the mound and performed a mock ceremony. They called the ceremony ad montem (to the mountain), and Montem is the name of the sports centre and ice-rink that now stands nearby.

At eleven o’clock six hundred Eton schoolboys were assembled in the quadrangle at Eton College for the arrival of the seven carriages carrying the Royal Party.  The King had been asked for “salt” at Eton Bridge and had handed over 50 guineas before continuing to the college.  The Montem event, conveniently timed for The Court’s relocation to Windsor for the summer, was witnessed by King William IV and Queen Adelaide and their royal visitors.  They were joined by the Provost and other exclusive guests to watch the boys, who were all assembled in various forms of fancy dress, parade three times around the square in front of the King, until a heavy shower sent the Royal Party into the college to watch the ceremonial flag waving from the windows.  Then the procession started.

Richard Weekly watched as first a schoolboy called Brown and four attendants dressed in Spanish dresses led the parade, followed by the Band of Scotch [sic] Fusilier guards. Then the school Captain, Williams, marched ahead of a group of boys dressed in Greek costume.  Another boy, calling himself the Sergeant Major, in mock-military attire, was accompanied by boys in Indian costume. The parade continued with some boys in military-type uniforms with swords and plumes, and other boys in various forms of fancy dress. Following this motley crew was the band of the First Life Guards and then a pupil calling himself an Ensign with an escort of boys dressed as Highlanders.  Boy musicians were followed by boys dressed in Robin Hood-style Lincoln-green velvet.  Behind the marchers were the carriages of the Royal party, and then an endless line of carriages carrying the nobility and gentry.

Around two in the afternoon the procession arrived at Salt Hill where the King and Queen received a huge welcoming cheer and as they stayed in their carriages the boys once again paraded before them around the Mound.  Then a detachment of boys including the flag bearer climbed the mound, unfurled the flag and waved to endless applause.  With the ceremony now over, the Royal carriages returned to Windsor, and the boys adjourned for refreshments to The Windmill coaching inn across the Bath Road from the Mound.  The Windmill had extensive ornamental gardens around which, after lunch, the boys would normally promenade, but this year a heavy shower of rain prevented that.  Now, soaked and bedraggled,  the boys like a miniature routed army, made their way back towards Eton, the mud and slush underfoot spoiling their elaborate costumes.  About a £1000 had been raised in “salt” and after defraying expenses what was left went to R.D. Williams, Captain of the school, and son of the bookseller and publisher of the Eton Classics.  It was to pay for his education at Cambridge University.

Richard Weekly pulled his hat down hard over his face to stop the torrents of rain hitting his face as he rode the six miles back to Perry Oaks to relate all the sights and sounds of what he had seen to his parents and sister.

The triannual event and the crowds it attracted, was already a magnet for pickpockets and pilferers.  As the years went by and the opening of the Great Western Railway Station at Slough in 1838 bought hordes more sightseers from London for the event by1841 and 1844 the multitude of people became unmanageable. Few of the Londoners understood the age-old tradition of giving “salt” and refused to contribute. By 1847 the Provost and Head-master of Eton College proposed to end the ceremony and give the Captain of the school a gratuity instead.  This sparked protests from former Etonians and a petition was sent to Queen Victoria, but without success and the long history of the Eton Montem, probably derived from a pagan festival, came to an end.

The Windmill hotel

Windmill Hotel, Bath Road, Salt Hill, Slough, about 1850. From Slough Library collection

The original Windmill hotel, a staging post for coaches on the Bath Road, was burnt down in 1882 and a new pub with the same name was built on the site by the brewery owners.  This was demolished in 2000 and now the name is preserved in a purpose-built Care Centre.

Sources:

Windsor and Eton Express - Saturday 16 June 1832, and other contemporary newspapers.

Richard Weekly’s diary (in possession of the author)

http://www.sloughhistoryonline.org.uk/

 

 

The King, the Assassin, and the Wax Woman.

The first day of Ascot, 19 June 1832, was a dull damp day as King William IV and Queen Adelaide drove down the race course in their carriage procession to watch the races from the Royal Stand. As the King got out of his carriage the military band struck up the National Anthem and he ascended the steps to the Royal Box as fast as his portly 66-year-old body would let him. The usual enthusiastic welcome was subdued and looking around he could see few of the familiar faces of his Lords with their ladies who usually attended. He was puzzled at first until he remembered that he had signed into law the Great Reform Act twelve days earlier.  This Act, so long resisted by the House of Lords, reformed the electoral procedure, making the election of Members of Parliament a fair representation of the people. Was the poor attendance at Ascot a sign of disapproval of the King or just in response to the poor weather? Whatever the reason that day would be remembered for its violent turn of events.

Inspite of the weather and the poor welcome the King was determined to enjoy the racing. The first race, a short one with just two contestants, was easily won by the favourite, Ida. While they waited for the next race the Royal couple were in conversation with their guests when a one-legged dishevelled man, in tattered sailors clothing looking up at the royal box from the crowd below took a flint stone, the size of a potato, from his pocket and hurled the missile directly towards the King.  The stone hit the monarch on the forehead just above the rim of his hat, which probably saved him from major injury. Nevertheless the sound of the impact was loud and the King was stunned and falling back, exclaiming “My God! I am hit!” just as another stone was thrown which missed the King and hit the woodwork. The King was led to a chair where he took off his hat and with the first sign of a bruise starting to appear declared himself unhurt, much to the relief of his party, some of whom had burst into tears in shock.

The would-be assassin was set upon and handed over to Bow-street officers (the police force at the time) who removed him to the magistrate’s room under the stand. When news of the attack permeated through the crowd they pushed forward towards the foot of the royal stand and their horror turned to relief when just minutes later the King made an appearance to show he was unharmed. The sight of such a large crowd bursting into elated cheers of relief moved the King to tears.

The perpetrator, now a subdued wretch awaiting his fate, was examined by the magistrates. He admitted the offence and insisted he had no accomplices. Witnesses, including some from the Royal party, gave evidence after which the Magistrates concluded this was an assassination attempt and therefore High Treason. He was sent to prison at Abingdon.

 Dennis Collins by Thomas Fairland, 1842 NPG D34047. National Portrait Gallery.

 

Meanwhile the King, now fully recovered, and the Queen, stayed watching the racing until nearly six o’clock in the evening. In contrast to their arrival when they departed from the royal stand they left to a crescendo of enthusiastic cheers from all classes. The event caused a wave of public affection for the King after months of division during the long political wrangling before the passing of the Reform Bill.[1]

Although at the time the incident was regarded as a highly treasonable assassination attempt, subsequently historians have dismissed it as a minor stone-throwing incident caused by discontent over the Reform Bill, but it was more than that. It was a cry for help.

The would-be assassin, Dennis Collins was put on trial at Abingdon, on Wednesday, the 22nd of August. He was charged on several counts with assaulting his Majesty, with intent to kill and murder him, with intent to maim and disable him, and with intent to do him some grievous bodily harm. Prior to the trial there was a debate about his sanity and he himself said twice in his lifetime he had been confined as a lunatic, but he believed he suffered from a “hot and irritable temper” caused by the injustice he met from authority.[2]  Any suspicions about his state of mind were dispelled at his trial when he appeared dressed smartly and with a new wooden leg made for the occasion. In his defence the prisoner, clearly more intelligent than his initial appearance suggested, made a compelling speech in his own defence to the Court:

"I own myself in a great fault for throwing these stones at his Majesty. I was in Greenwich Hospital on the 16th of December last, as an in-pensioner. I had been there eighteen months. The ward-keeper was sweeping the place, and I told him he had no business to sweep it more than once a day; the boatswain's mate abused me, and I returned it. A complaint was then made to Sir Richard Keats (the Governor), and I was expelled for life. I petitioned to the Lords of the Admiralty to have the pension which I had before I went into the hospital restored to me. I am entitled to that pension by an Act passed in the reign of George IV. which entitles a pensioner to have the same pension which he had before he became an in-pensioner, unless he struck an officer, or committed felony, or did anything of the kind, which I did no such thing. On the 19th of last April I petitioned the King to have my pension restored. He answered by sending the petition to the Lords of the Admiralty, and Mr Barrow, the secretary, sent a letter to me at a public-house, the Admiral Duncan, with the same answer the King gave. The answer was that his Majesty could do nothing for me. This was partly in writing and partly in print. I had neither workhouse nor overseer to apply to, and had not broke my fast for three days; mere distress drove me to it. His Majesty never did me an injury, and I am exceedingly sorry I threw a stone or anything else at his Majesty. On the 17th of the present month I went to Admiral Rowley's; he swore at me and kicked me. I can only say I am very sorry for what I have done, and must suffer the law. They had no right to take my pension from me, to which I was entitled by Act of Parliament."[3]

Dennis Collins, an Irish-born sailor, was 57 years old. He volunteered for the Navy In 1797 and served for just over two years before he lost his left leg in an accident whilst stowing the booms on HMS Atalanta. He then became a cook on several Royal Navy ships. He received a pension of £8 a year after losing his leg which was later increased to £14 year. He had been admitted to the Greenwich Hospital on five separate occasions, each time exhibiting unruly behaviour and being asked to leave. Since December 1831 he had been begging and now desperate and with no means of support he felt he had no hope and he might as well be shot or hanged. He made the long walk from London to Ascot to make a final protest to the King and let the authorities end his misery.

The Court heard his admission of being guilty of stone-throwing, and the extenuating circumstances, but as Judge Bosanquet told the jury, they had to decide if the act of throwing the stone was aimed at the King with the intention to cause injury, or whether the stone had accidentally caused injury. The jury returned a guilty verdict of intention to do harm to the King, a highly treasonable offence; the highest crime in the land. The whole Court was packed for the jury’s verdict. There was a collective shocked silence, with many people sympathetic to the prisoner’s plight, as the Judge placed the black cap on his head and said: “Dennis Collins you have been convicted after attentive consideration of your case, of the crime of High Treason, in devising and attempting to do some bodily harm to the person of your King and in lifting up your hand against your Sovereign, you have destroyed that bond of allegiance which binds the King to protect the subject, and the subject to obey the King; and it now becomes my painful duty to pronounce upon you the sentences of the law. It is not for my learned brother who sits by my side, and myself, to offer any prospect of remission by us of the sentence which the law passes upon you. You have stated that you are sorry for the offence you have committed; if so, you can only prove your sincere contrition and repentance to your Sovereign, who you have injured; it is to him alone you can apply and in him alone rests the power of sparing your forfeited life. The sentence of the Court upon you, Dennis Collins is, that you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck until you are dead; your head is then to be severed from your body, which is to be divided into quarters, and to be disposed of as his Majesty shall think fit”. [4] The prisoner betrayed no emotion as the sentence was announced. His greatest fear was that he would be acquitted. He had already said that “If my Priest would give me the Sacrament today I would a great deal be executed tomorrow than turned out into the world to undergo all the misery and starvation that I went through for six months before this happened.”[5] The jurors, before leaving the court, drew up a petition to the King for clemency for the prisoner.

Most of the newspapers reported the trial in great detail, and there was national sympathy for Dennis Collins’ circumstances and a wish for his sentence to be commuted. The trial followed an inquiry into the circumstances of his expulsion from the Greenwich Hospital which exonerated the Governor after Collins was found to have been a rebellious inmate. Nevertheless the public were appalled by his death sentence, and for several days the newspapers were calling for commutation, which the King, a former sailor himself, commuted ten days later to a sentence of transportation for life. Dennis Collins was kept on a prison hulk on the Thames until he was put aboard the Emperor Alexander which left Sheerness on April 10 1833 arriving at Sullivan’s Cove, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) four months later.

This was not the end of the story. Whilst awaiting trial Collins had been visited by a French lady who had purchased from him all his old clothes, including his wooden leg, and who had replaced them with a set of new clothes which he wore at his trial. By the end of September an advertisement appeared in the Hampshire Advertiser, that an exhibition was to be held at the Royal Victoria Archery Rooms, Southampton for a fortnight only where, for one shilling, visitors could promenade around a display of life-like figures of well-known persons. Among the new figures would be a full-length one of Dennis Collins, taken from life, “inhabited in the identical dress he had on when he made the atrocious attempt on his Majesty’s life.”[6] The French woman who had visited Collins in prison was Madame Tussaud who with her sons made wax figures of famous and infamous people for public entertainment.

Madame Tussaud was not the only one to cash in on the notoriety of Dennis Collins. A publisher in Fleet Street was offering whole-length lithographic prints of Dennis Collins from a drawing by W.W. Waite for one shilling and six pence. W.W. Waite was a well-known Abingdon artist. This image was used in a publication detailing the life and trial of Dennis Collins as told to his solicitor.  Even the Judge, Sir John Bernard Bosanquet, cashed in on the public interest in this trial by publishing his own account of the trial. Music hall comedians joked, “Dennis Collins was asked last week how near he was to the King at Ascot – ‘Within a stone’s throw’, he replied”. Poems were written about him, and for a while there was widespread public interest in his story, but Collins would not know about his notoriety. His imprisonment and transportation isolated him from all of it.

On arrival in Tasmania he was put to work on a chain gang in Port Arthur, a penal colony where the hardest criminals were sent. He wore leg irons and was made to do hard labour in harsh conditions. His behaviour did not improve and he was often punished by being put in solitary confinement. Two weeks after his last solitary confinement, on 1 November 1833, he died and was buried in the Wesleyan Churchyard at Port Arthur.[7] 

He had become a household name, but he was not around to know that. He had got his wish. As a felon he no longer had to go hungry or beg for shelter, but his life was still a misery.

Although the Dennis Collins story has disappeared from history books, it had unexpected consequences. The King, whose dithering earlier in the year over the government crisis had made him unpopular, was now reconciled in the public eye. The shock of knowing that the King might have died gave many members of government a jolt. They suddenly realised that if he died before the Princess Victoria came of age her Mother, the formidable Duchess of Kent, would become Regent, a situation nobody relished, so the monarch’s safety became an important issue.

Madame Tussaud’s astute opportunist purchase of Dennis Collin’s clothes enhanced her waxwork exhibition by tapping into the public’s curiosity about notorious figures. However she might not have foreseen that by giving Collins new clothes to wear at his trial, the public perception of the mariner changed. He was seen as no longer a villain but a character who needed sympathy.   

Would-be lawyers can now learn from the published papers of the trial itself which as a text book can be found in law school libraries all over the world, and which is still in print today. The old prison buildings at Port Arthur, Tasmania, which ceased being a prison in 1877, are now a World Heritage Site and tourist attraction. Britain might have forgotten Dennis Collins, but the Tasmanians have not. Recently a play by Richard Davey called “The man who threw a stone”, based on his story, was performed at the very prison where he ended his days

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[1] Cawthorne, George James; Herod, Richard S., Royal Ascot: Its History and its Associations, (London, 1902)

[2] Morning Advertiser - Saturday 25 August 1832

[3] Griffiths, Arthur, The Chronicles of Newgate, (London, 1884). The Ex-classics website, https://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng612.htm

[4] Saunders's News-Letter - Monday 27 August 1832

[5] Morning Advertiser - Saturday 25 August 1832

[6] Hampshire Advertiser - Saturday 29 September 1832

[7] National Maritime Museum of Ireland, https://www.mariner.ie/dennis-collins/