May 4, 2019 • 24 mins
We're going back to a 2016 episode today. In early modern London, there was a tradition of sorts where apprentices would amass on holidays and physically destroy brothels. One of the largest such riot took place during Easter week in 1668, and it was a complicated event.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. This week on the show, we talked
about the fifteen seventeen Evil May Day Riots and we
mentioned at the end of the episode that riots among
London's apprentices became something of a tradition in early modern London.
And here's the episode where we've talked a little bit
more about that. It is our February episode on the
(00:23):
Body House Riots of sixty eight and Joy Welcome to
Stuff you missed in History Class, the production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Uh. Possibly
(00:47):
the weirdest thing that I've ever learned on this podcast,
and that includes having done a podcast about people who
turned into soap after they died. In early modern London,
when apprentices had a holiday, the thing to do was
to go knock over some brothels like that's not right now.
And I don't mean knock over like uh like slang
(01:09):
for robbing them. I mean knock over like literally pull
them down. And today we're going to talk about one
such riot, and it took place during Easter Week of
sixteen sixty eight. Although this particular riot was a lot
bigger and a lot more complicated than just the normal
apprentices having a day off tearing down some brothels, which
(01:29):
was a thing that they like to do. So heads up,
today's podcast is not explicit and we are not going
to talk about what goes on in a body house.
But yes, parents and teachers, body house means what you
think it means. So today's show is maybe not for
the youngest of the listeners. So, as Tracy just suggested,
(01:50):
lots of people rioted at London's brothels in sixteen sixty eight,
not just apprentices, but apprentices are sited again and again
is making up the bulk of the crowd in this story.
So we're going to take a moment to shed some
light on who these young people, nearly all of them
young men were. For a few hundred years in England,
apprenticeship was a seven year indenture that combined both work
(02:13):
and instruction, and originally people had been apprenticed to the
master of a guild. Came quite a bit of prestige
and was kind of a systematized organization for apprenticeship. But
by the seventeenth century, when we're talking about today, London's
guild system was really in decline, and that meant that
the apprentice system was showing some strain as well. What
(02:35):
had been a really prestigious appointment directly with the master
of a guild was instead moving closer and closer to
just flat out unpaid servitude that did not come with
many advantages, and this is probably why by the mid
sixteen hundreds a lot of people were quitting were quitting
their apprenticeships after two or three years, even though they
(02:56):
hadn't really finished. You can look at charts of the
average of how long people stayed in their posts, and
there's a precipitous decline between year three and four. If
people had the opportunity to get out of their apprenticeship,
they did. Although people came from all over England to
apprentice in London, most of London's apprentices were from the
surrounding area. The farther away you got from London, the
(03:19):
fewer people went to London to be apprenticed, and most
of the apprentices were from relatively affluent families, at least
ones who either had or could borrow enough money to
make an initial payment to a master in exchange for
taking their son on as an apprentice. Once that money
was paid and the apprenticeship actually began. Though apprentices usually
(03:40):
did not make any money of their own because they
were being paid in instruction and experience, not in wages,
sort of an extreme version of the unpaid internship. They
also had very few freedoms. They needed their master's permission
to marry, to socialized, to go to the theater, to
go to a tavern, basically anything fun. In sixteen sixty
(04:01):
the average age of an apprentice was seventeen or eighteen,
So with all that in mind, it may be a
little less surprising than A popular pastime among London's seventeenth
century apprentices was the brothel riot. On holidays, particularly Shrove Tuesday,
which is the last Tuesday before lent. Apprentices frequently wrecked
(04:21):
London's brothels. Between sixteen o six and sixteen forty one,
there were twenty four Shrove Tuesday brothel riots that we
know about. That's twenty four full scale riots in thirty
five years. And in case the name Shrove Tuesday doesn't
ring a bell, folks might know it better as Fat
Tuesday or Marty gras Is. It's observed or celebrated in
(04:44):
a lot of different ways all over the world, but
Shrove Tuesday is what people were mostly calling it in
in England at this time. During a brothel riot, rioters
would use tools like staves and bars to literally pull
down building and this naturally caused a lot of property
damage and it displaced anybody who had been living or
(05:06):
working inside the damaged or destroyed structures. And regardless of
what your personal feelings are about brothels, a lot of
times these are people who did not have any other
option for supporting themselves, so they would be out of
work in homeless after the riot. And in spite of
their popularity in terms of having a pretty consistent customer base,
(05:29):
brothels were not popular from a religious or social standpoint.
Plenty of people visited brothels, but plenty of people thought
brothels were a sinful scourge on London. Sometimes these worked
out to be the exact same people. Because brothels, in
spite of their popularity, were viewed as cd and immoral,
the apprentices who tore them down didn't usually get a
(05:51):
lot of harsh punishment. They would see a small fine
and a short imprisonment if anything. The general consensus was
that apprentices were doing a a thing by destroying the
city's brothels. So when it came to the Shrove Tuesday
rioting tradition, English political writer James Harrington called it an
quote ancient administration of justice at Shrovetide. The sixty eight ryant,
(06:16):
on the other hand, was exceptional. It was much much bigger,
and instead of happening at Shrove Tuesday before Lent, it
happened on Easter Monday, after Lent was over, and it
lasted for three days. The property damage is much greater,
and the perpetrators faced much much harsher punishments, even harsher
than might be expected by the increase in the size
(06:37):
of the riot. And we're going to talk about the
sixty eight riot with more specificity after we paused for
a brief word from one of our fantastic sponsors. On
Easter Monday, which fell on March that year, rioters armed
(07:00):
with simple weapons like pole axes, staves and iron bars
started pulling down the brothels and poplar in London's East End.
And yes, fans of Call the mid The Midwife, that's
the same poplar where that show is set. According to
historical accounts these rioters were apprentices. They probably included other
people too, though Poplar was home to lots of sailors,
(07:21):
and many of them were currently at home without a
lot to occupy their time, having been recently released from
service after the end of the Second Anglo Dutch War,
which went on from sixteen sixty five to sixteen sixty seven.
The first brothel to be struck belonged to Demeris Page,
who was known as quote the great bod of the seamen,
by which we mean men who work on the sea
(07:42):
or sailors, not the other possible interpretation. Regardless, these rioters
organized themselves into regiments. Each one had its own captain
and its its own colors. Green was particularly popular. One
of those captains was named Peter Messenger, which is why
sometimes these riots are referred to as the Messenger Riots.
On Tuesday, similarly, armed rioters spread through London, targeting the
(08:06):
districts where the city's highest concentrations of body houses were located.
At least five hundred people were involved in this second
day of rioting and pulling down buildings. This is when
the Crown got involved to try to maintain order. A
letter to the Lord Mayor and Lieutenancy of the city
was sent in the name of King Charles the Second,
ordering the watch to be doubled and for two companies
(08:26):
of militia to be mustered to suppress the riot. Famed
London diarist Samuel Peeps wrote about it in his Diary
for the Day of Marchy f at Whitehall. He said,
there was quote great talk of the tumult on the
other end of the town, about more fields among the
apprentices taking the liberty of these holy days to pull
down body houses, and Lord to see the apprehensions which
(08:49):
this did give to all people at court that presently
order was given for all the soldiers horse and foot
to be in arms, and forthwith alarms were beat by
drum and trumpet through Westminster, and all to their colors
and to horse, as if the French were coming into town.
I remember reading a lot of Peep's diary in like
(09:10):
a literature class. I feel like they left out all
the funny parts. I do too, because I did the same,
and it wasn't until much later in life where I
was like, there's good stuff in there that's really entertaining.
This bit in particular made me laugh every the whole
time I was typing it in there. Tuesday's riots led
to arrests, and some of the rioters laid siege to
(09:32):
Finsbury Jail, where they believed their compatriots were being held.
They did not actually find any other Rioters in the jail, though,
but for unrelated persons did manage to escape in all
the chaos. The rioters were more successful in their goals
at the new prison in Clerkenwell, which did have some
of the arrested Rioters being held there, and they were
(09:54):
broken out. Peeps also went out with his friends to
see the riots in action on Tuesday, but they mostly
found lots and lots of soldiers and people who were
vexed that the soldiers were going after the apprentices. He
repeats a couple of times in his Tuesday diary entry
overhearing people say quote it was only for pulling down
the body houses. He also notes that this whole event
(10:16):
apparently perplexed King Charles the Second. If the body houses
were such a scourge on London so much so that
people supported pulling them down, then again from the Peep's diary,
the question quote why why do they go to them? Then?
As a side note, Uh. I mean, we established earlier
in the podcast that this Strove Tuesday brothel riot was
(10:37):
a kind of a tradition. So why would King Charles
the secing to be so perplexed. A lot of those
riots had happened either before he was born or while
he was in exile in France after the beheading of
his father Childs the First, so it's possible that he
this was the first time he had really experienced firsthand
or heard in more detail about this idea of the
London body house riot. I like that he um can't
(11:01):
see and grasp the two faced nature of humanity in
many cases. I'm like, oh, Chuck, come on, you have
a conversation with Charles the Second about the duality of mankind. Uh.
Then on Wednesday, a very large group of rioters the
exact numbers are unclear, but it was probably in the
(11:22):
thousands continued to attack brothels around more fields. The rioters
started threatening to pull the Palace at Whitehall down and
chanted things like quote, we've been the servants, now will
be the masters, and another rallying cry was reformation and reducement.
All of this rioting continued to vex the crown and
(11:44):
the court at Whitehall. Peeps rode about Wednesday's riots in
his diary as well, and here's what he wrote. Quote
the Duke of York and all with him this morning
we're full of talk of the prentices who are not
yet put down, though the guards and militia of the
town and have been in arms all night and the
night before, and the prentices have made fools of them,
(12:05):
sometimes by running from them and flinging stones at them.
Some blood hath been spilt, but a great many houses
pulled down, and among others, the Duke of York was
mighty Mary at that of Demaris Pages, the great Baud
of the Seamen, and the Duke of York complained merrily
that he hath lost two tenants by their houses being
pulled down, who paid him for their wine licenses fifteen
(12:28):
pounds of a year. So, just to recap, the Duke
of York is upset that his tenants, the Bauds who
pay him for wine licenses, have been displaced by the rioting,
but not really concerned about them, just his income. Uh uh.
It was on the inconvenience and loss of income to himself. Yeah,
(12:51):
it was on Wednesday that the militia guards and even
the King's Lifeguard dispersed the rioters and arrested many of
the apparent ringleaders. Happening concurrently with the last two days
of this riot were the publications of a couple of
pieces of satirical writing. We don't actually know who wrote them,
or whether they were the work of the rioters or not.
(13:12):
We don't really have a sense of whether the people
writing these satirical things were working with the rioters, are
opposed to them, or exactly what, in terms of the
writers themselves, uh was going on. We can't accurately say
whether these particular writings reflected the views of the rioters,
but they definitely were reflecting the views of some people
(13:35):
alive at the time who were involved in all of this,
so they shed some light on sort of what people
were thinking out in London. The first, which is presented
in the form of a petition, was known as the
Poor Horse Petition. It was purportedly drafted by the displaced
bods whose brothels had been pulled down, and it came
out on March which was the Wednesday of the riot.
(13:57):
It lampooned both the women who worked in the body
houses and Lady Castlemaine, or more properly Barbara Villiers, Duchess
of Cleveland, who was the notorious and married mistress of
Charles the Second. This faux petition was highly critical of
both the king and his mistress, but it also contained
a plea to Lady Castlemaine that she would try to
(14:20):
protect all these displaced women from the body houses. After all,
goes the logic of this writing, you are one of us,
Lady Castlemaine. The two satirical writings that followed were both
in the form of a letter from Lady Castlemaine back
to the displaced Bouds. They're identical except for the first paragraph,
and they go on to lampoon both Lady Castlemaine and
(14:42):
the Anglican Church. There's a lot of criticism who woven
into both the petition and the response. They criticized Charles
the Second for keeping the mistress. They criticized Lady Castlemaine
for being Catholic, They criticized the Catholic Church for earning
an income from taxes is on brothels. And they criticized
the Archbishop of Canterbury for purportedly keeping a mistress of
(15:06):
his own. And it's these same themes of religion and
hypocrisy that may help to explain why this particular riot
got so very big and why the response to it
was so much bigger. And we're going to talk about
all that after we pause for a brief word from
one of our fantastic sponsors. While London's previous Strove Tuesday
(15:33):
brothel riots had been punished with which was basically a
slap on the wrist, the sixteen sixty eight riots ended
with a great many people being brought to trial. It's
unclear exactly how many people were prosecuted for participating in
the riot. Only seventy seven of those who wound up
in court were actually identified by name, either in the
records or historians having put all the pieces together since then,
(15:55):
but very little is known even about them. Fifteen. Ultimately,
we're guided for high treason. Demeri's page turned state's witness
during the trial, with the court being very careful to
avoid mentioning precisely what her job was so that she
would appear credible in the account she gave of destruction
of her property. And many of the other women who
(16:16):
had worked in the destroyed body houses, on the other hand,
wound up being prosecuted in the aftermath of the riot,
in a punishment that was acknowledged by the High Court
and other people surrounding the case as just incongruously harsh.
Four of the men who were convicted of high treason
were hanged, drawn and quartered. This was by far the
most extreme punishment allowed under the most severe interpretation of
(16:39):
the law. It was far far greater than how body
house riots had typically been handled in England. There are
lots of possible explanations for exactly why the crackdown on
this specific riot was so extreme. One described in the
nine paper on in the Historical Journal is by Dr
Tim Arists, then at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and now at
(17:03):
Brown and his interpretation basically is that the riot itself
was more about dissatisfaction with the Restoration than it really
was about the brothels, and that the rioters were so
harshly treated because of that political and religious undertone. So
an extraordinarily brief recap of the Restoration. When Charles the
Second's father was executed in sixteen forty nine, Oliver Cromwell
(17:27):
came to power, at which point England became a republic.
Charles the Second fled to the continent, and Cromwell remained
in power until his death in sixteen fifty eight. Then
in sixteen sixty Charles the Second ascended to the throne,
at which point the monarchy was restored. That's the restoration.
There are entire books about the restoration, and there was
a whole lot more that went on behind the scenes
(17:47):
and what we just said, so that is an extremely
quick summary for those of you who don't remember or
never learned that. In a lot of historical accounts, the
general description of the restoration was that London was really
really in favor of Charles the second's return. There had
been demonstrations against the army and in favor of Charles
as the monarch in the years before the restoration actually
(18:07):
took place. Some of that agitation was as much about
religion as it was about the monarch. Some of the
people who were pressing for Charles the Second's return to
England we're hoping that he would allow a greater degree
of freedom of religion. The religions that diverged in some
way from Anglican teachings, like Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, and Unitarians,
(18:28):
among others. We're all branded as dissenting or nonconformist religions.
Many of London's apprentices were adherents to one of these
non conforming denominations instead. In sixteen sixty, Charles the Second,
still in exile, issued the Declaration of Breda, which was
one of the last steps before he was restored to
(18:48):
the throne. He wrote this statement, quote, and because the
passion and uncharitable nous of the times have produced several
opinions in religion by which men are engaged in parties
and animosities against each other, which, when they shall hereafter
unite in a freedom of conversation, will be composed or
better understood. We do declare a liberty to tender consciences,
(19:11):
and that no man shall be disquieted or called in
question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which
do not disturb the peace of the Kingdom, And that
we shall be ready to consent to such an act
of Parliament as upon mature deliberation shall be offered to
us for the full granting that indulgence. In other words,
people would have freedom of religion provided that their opinions
(19:34):
did not quote disturb the peace of the Kingdom, and
Among those opinions apparently disturbing the peace of the Kingdom
were various nonconformists. Quakers and Baptists in particular, frequently wound
up in court on charges of quote attendance at a
nonconformist compensicle. Harris also cites this as the reason why
this huge riot took place after Easter instead of on
(19:56):
Shrove Tuesday, as had been so common in p or years.
Even though the Declaration of Breda hadn't really allowed the
nonconformist the practice of their religion uh freely, at least
there had been a period of relative laxity in terms
of the enforcement of religious conformity. The Great Plague of
London in sixteen sixty five and the Great Fire of
(20:17):
London in sixteen sixty six had both given Parliament plenty
of other things to worry about, and some of the
laws governing religion had lapsed, but in sixteen sixty seven.
In sixteen sixty eight, bills that would have allowed Presbyterians
religious freedom started circulating in Parliament. The House of Commons
was really deeply opposed to these, though, and the Proclamation
(20:39):
on the matter that Charles the Second ultimately signed on
March tenth, sixteen sixty eight, during lent, less than two
weeks before the riot began, was instead about enforcing obedience
to the existing laws, not about allowing greater religious freedom.
This also circles back around to those satirical petitions and
letters that we talked about before the break. One of
(21:00):
their themes England was willing to tolerate brothels but not
religious nonconformity, which seems awfully hypocritical. Some of the chance
and rallying cries that they used during the riot, like
the ones that were about reformation, also have a lot
more religious tone to them than being about wanting to
strike down the sinfulness of a brothel. Running parallel to
(21:22):
this crackdown on religious nonconformity was also a crackdown on
theaters in London, and a running theme in this increasing
criticism of theater was that theaters were no better than brothels,
and there was a lot of just hateful rhetoric that
was used in all of this. So this stoked dislike
in disdain for both the brothels and the theaters, And
(21:44):
as we said at the top of the show, London
was full of sailors that were recently released from service,
as well as overworked and mostly pennelous apprentices whose system
of apprenticeship was quickly disintegrating. So there's some degree of
supposition and draw ying of conclusions and all of this, uh,
some degree of interpretation of what people's motives might have been. Men,
(22:06):
there's no smoking gun. None of the rioters left a
journal saying I'm really upset about my religious freedoms, and
so how about in the guise of a brothel riot,
I make that demonstration Like there's nothing documenting any kind
of thought presses like that, and there are also no
court documents. It's explicitly saying that the rioters are being
persecuted because of religious nonconformity, although it does seem like
(22:31):
there was some fear that people who were dissenting in
some way, we're also going to work with Cromwell's existing
supporters who were still around to try to overthrow the monarchy. So,
like a lot of events in history, this one was
definitely a confluence of a ton of different factors and
influences without one clear, single explanation that just explains the
(22:55):
motives of everyone involved at the same time. Oh, history,
you're never simple, Yeah, I wish I could remember where.
I wish I could remember where I stumbled across just
the words, uh, the Brothel Ride of sixteen sixty eight,
Like I was doing work on something completely unrelated last week,
(23:15):
and then the that's that series of words was on
my screen somewhere and I went, well, okay, we gotta
talk about that. And then I fortunately was able to
find enough information to talk about that. And then when
I tried to restep retrace my steps to figure out
where I had originally seen reference to it, I could
not find it. So I don't remember. But that's the
(23:37):
Ruthel Riot. Thank you so much for joining us on
this Saturday. If you have heard an email address or
a Facebook you are l or something similar over the
course of today's episode, since it is from the archive
that might be out of date now, you can email
us at history podcast at how Stuff Work stock Com,
(24:00):
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show
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How Stuff Works. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
(24:21):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday, everybody. This week on the show, we talked
about the fifteen seventeen Evil May Day Riots and we
mentioned at the end of the episode that riots among
London's apprentices became something of a tradition in early modern London.
And here's the episode where we've talked a little bit
more about that. It is our February episode on the
(00:23):
Body House Riots of sixty eight and Joy Welcome to
Stuff you missed in History Class, the production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Uh. Possibly
(00:47):
the weirdest thing that I've ever learned on this podcast,
and that includes having done a podcast about people who
turned into soap after they died. In early modern London,
when apprentices had a holiday, the thing to do was
to go knock over some brothels like that's not right now.
And I don't mean knock over like uh like slang
(01:09):
for robbing them. I mean knock over like literally pull
them down. And today we're going to talk about one
such riot, and it took place during Easter Week of
sixteen sixty eight. Although this particular riot was a lot
bigger and a lot more complicated than just the normal
apprentices having a day off tearing down some brothels, which
(01:29):
was a thing that they like to do. So heads up,
today's podcast is not explicit and we are not going
to talk about what goes on in a body house.
But yes, parents and teachers, body house means what you
think it means. So today's show is maybe not for
the youngest of the listeners. So, as Tracy just suggested,
(01:50):
lots of people rioted at London's brothels in sixteen sixty eight,
not just apprentices, but apprentices are sited again and again
is making up the bulk of the crowd in this story.
So we're going to take a moment to shed some
light on who these young people, nearly all of them
young men were. For a few hundred years in England,
apprenticeship was a seven year indenture that combined both work
(02:13):
and instruction, and originally people had been apprenticed to the
master of a guild. Came quite a bit of prestige
and was kind of a systematized organization for apprenticeship. But
by the seventeenth century, when we're talking about today, London's
guild system was really in decline, and that meant that
the apprentice system was showing some strain as well. What
(02:35):
had been a really prestigious appointment directly with the master
of a guild was instead moving closer and closer to
just flat out unpaid servitude that did not come with
many advantages, and this is probably why by the mid
sixteen hundreds a lot of people were quitting were quitting
their apprenticeships after two or three years, even though they
(02:56):
hadn't really finished. You can look at charts of the
average of how long people stayed in their posts, and
there's a precipitous decline between year three and four. If
people had the opportunity to get out of their apprenticeship,
they did. Although people came from all over England to
apprentice in London, most of London's apprentices were from the
surrounding area. The farther away you got from London, the
(03:19):
fewer people went to London to be apprenticed, and most
of the apprentices were from relatively affluent families, at least
ones who either had or could borrow enough money to
make an initial payment to a master in exchange for
taking their son on as an apprentice. Once that money
was paid and the apprenticeship actually began. Though apprentices usually
(03:40):
did not make any money of their own because they
were being paid in instruction and experience, not in wages,
sort of an extreme version of the unpaid internship. They
also had very few freedoms. They needed their master's permission
to marry, to socialized, to go to the theater, to
go to a tavern, basically anything fun. In sixteen sixty
(04:01):
the average age of an apprentice was seventeen or eighteen,
So with all that in mind, it may be a
little less surprising than A popular pastime among London's seventeenth
century apprentices was the brothel riot. On holidays, particularly Shrove Tuesday,
which is the last Tuesday before lent. Apprentices frequently wrecked
(04:21):
London's brothels. Between sixteen o six and sixteen forty one,
there were twenty four Shrove Tuesday brothel riots that we
know about. That's twenty four full scale riots in thirty
five years. And in case the name Shrove Tuesday doesn't
ring a bell, folks might know it better as Fat
Tuesday or Marty gras Is. It's observed or celebrated in
(04:44):
a lot of different ways all over the world, but
Shrove Tuesday is what people were mostly calling it in
in England at this time. During a brothel riot, rioters
would use tools like staves and bars to literally pull
down building and this naturally caused a lot of property
damage and it displaced anybody who had been living or
(05:06):
working inside the damaged or destroyed structures. And regardless of
what your personal feelings are about brothels, a lot of
times these are people who did not have any other
option for supporting themselves, so they would be out of
work in homeless after the riot. And in spite of
their popularity in terms of having a pretty consistent customer base,
(05:29):
brothels were not popular from a religious or social standpoint.
Plenty of people visited brothels, but plenty of people thought
brothels were a sinful scourge on London. Sometimes these worked
out to be the exact same people. Because brothels, in
spite of their popularity, were viewed as cd and immoral,
the apprentices who tore them down didn't usually get a
(05:51):
lot of harsh punishment. They would see a small fine
and a short imprisonment if anything. The general consensus was
that apprentices were doing a a thing by destroying the
city's brothels. So when it came to the Shrove Tuesday
rioting tradition, English political writer James Harrington called it an
quote ancient administration of justice at Shrovetide. The sixty eight ryant,
(06:16):
on the other hand, was exceptional. It was much much bigger,
and instead of happening at Shrove Tuesday before Lent, it
happened on Easter Monday, after Lent was over, and it
lasted for three days. The property damage is much greater,
and the perpetrators faced much much harsher punishments, even harsher
than might be expected by the increase in the size
(06:37):
of the riot. And we're going to talk about the
sixty eight riot with more specificity after we paused for
a brief word from one of our fantastic sponsors. On
Easter Monday, which fell on March that year, rioters armed
(07:00):
with simple weapons like pole axes, staves and iron bars
started pulling down the brothels and poplar in London's East End.
And yes, fans of Call the mid The Midwife, that's
the same poplar where that show is set. According to
historical accounts these rioters were apprentices. They probably included other
people too, though Poplar was home to lots of sailors,
(07:21):
and many of them were currently at home without a
lot to occupy their time, having been recently released from
service after the end of the Second Anglo Dutch War,
which went on from sixteen sixty five to sixteen sixty seven.
The first brothel to be struck belonged to Demeris Page,
who was known as quote the great bod of the seamen,
by which we mean men who work on the sea
(07:42):
or sailors, not the other possible interpretation. Regardless, these rioters
organized themselves into regiments. Each one had its own captain
and its its own colors. Green was particularly popular. One
of those captains was named Peter Messenger, which is why
sometimes these riots are referred to as the Messenger Riots.
On Tuesday, similarly, armed rioters spread through London, targeting the
(08:06):
districts where the city's highest concentrations of body houses were located.
At least five hundred people were involved in this second
day of rioting and pulling down buildings. This is when
the Crown got involved to try to maintain order. A
letter to the Lord Mayor and Lieutenancy of the city
was sent in the name of King Charles the Second,
ordering the watch to be doubled and for two companies
(08:26):
of militia to be mustered to suppress the riot. Famed
London diarist Samuel Peeps wrote about it in his Diary
for the Day of Marchy f at Whitehall. He said,
there was quote great talk of the tumult on the
other end of the town, about more fields among the
apprentices taking the liberty of these holy days to pull
down body houses, and Lord to see the apprehensions which
(08:49):
this did give to all people at court that presently
order was given for all the soldiers horse and foot
to be in arms, and forthwith alarms were beat by
drum and trumpet through Westminster, and all to their colors
and to horse, as if the French were coming into town.
I remember reading a lot of Peep's diary in like
(09:10):
a literature class. I feel like they left out all
the funny parts. I do too, because I did the same,
and it wasn't until much later in life where I
was like, there's good stuff in there that's really entertaining.
This bit in particular made me laugh every the whole
time I was typing it in there. Tuesday's riots led
to arrests, and some of the rioters laid siege to
(09:32):
Finsbury Jail, where they believed their compatriots were being held.
They did not actually find any other Rioters in the jail, though,
but for unrelated persons did manage to escape in all
the chaos. The rioters were more successful in their goals
at the new prison in Clerkenwell, which did have some
of the arrested Rioters being held there, and they were
(09:54):
broken out. Peeps also went out with his friends to
see the riots in action on Tuesday, but they mostly
found lots and lots of soldiers and people who were
vexed that the soldiers were going after the apprentices. He
repeats a couple of times in his Tuesday diary entry
overhearing people say quote it was only for pulling down
the body houses. He also notes that this whole event
(10:16):
apparently perplexed King Charles the Second. If the body houses
were such a scourge on London so much so that
people supported pulling them down, then again from the Peep's diary,
the question quote why why do they go to them? Then?
As a side note, Uh. I mean, we established earlier
in the podcast that this Strove Tuesday brothel riot was
(10:37):
a kind of a tradition. So why would King Charles
the secing to be so perplexed. A lot of those
riots had happened either before he was born or while
he was in exile in France after the beheading of
his father Childs the First, so it's possible that he
this was the first time he had really experienced firsthand
or heard in more detail about this idea of the
London body house riot. I like that he um can't
(11:01):
see and grasp the two faced nature of humanity in
many cases. I'm like, oh, Chuck, come on, you have
a conversation with Charles the Second about the duality of mankind. Uh.
Then on Wednesday, a very large group of rioters the
exact numbers are unclear, but it was probably in the
(11:22):
thousands continued to attack brothels around more fields. The rioters
started threatening to pull the Palace at Whitehall down and
chanted things like quote, we've been the servants, now will
be the masters, and another rallying cry was reformation and reducement.
All of this rioting continued to vex the crown and
(11:44):
the court at Whitehall. Peeps rode about Wednesday's riots in
his diary as well, and here's what he wrote. Quote
the Duke of York and all with him this morning
we're full of talk of the prentices who are not
yet put down, though the guards and militia of the
town and have been in arms all night and the
night before, and the prentices have made fools of them,
(12:05):
sometimes by running from them and flinging stones at them.
Some blood hath been spilt, but a great many houses
pulled down, and among others, the Duke of York was
mighty Mary at that of Demaris Pages, the great Baud
of the Seamen, and the Duke of York complained merrily
that he hath lost two tenants by their houses being
pulled down, who paid him for their wine licenses fifteen
(12:28):
pounds of a year. So, just to recap, the Duke
of York is upset that his tenants, the Bauds who
pay him for wine licenses, have been displaced by the rioting,
but not really concerned about them, just his income. Uh uh.
It was on the inconvenience and loss of income to himself. Yeah,
(12:51):
it was on Wednesday that the militia guards and even
the King's Lifeguard dispersed the rioters and arrested many of
the apparent ringleaders. Happening concurrently with the last two days
of this riot were the publications of a couple of
pieces of satirical writing. We don't actually know who wrote them,
or whether they were the work of the rioters or not.
(13:12):
We don't really have a sense of whether the people
writing these satirical things were working with the rioters, are
opposed to them, or exactly what, in terms of the
writers themselves, uh was going on. We can't accurately say
whether these particular writings reflected the views of the rioters,
but they definitely were reflecting the views of some people
(13:35):
alive at the time who were involved in all of this,
so they shed some light on sort of what people
were thinking out in London. The first, which is presented
in the form of a petition, was known as the
Poor Horse Petition. It was purportedly drafted by the displaced
bods whose brothels had been pulled down, and it came
out on March which was the Wednesday of the riot.
(13:57):
It lampooned both the women who worked in the body
houses and Lady Castlemaine, or more properly Barbara Villiers, Duchess
of Cleveland, who was the notorious and married mistress of
Charles the Second. This faux petition was highly critical of
both the king and his mistress, but it also contained
a plea to Lady Castlemaine that she would try to
(14:20):
protect all these displaced women from the body houses. After all,
goes the logic of this writing, you are one of us,
Lady Castlemaine. The two satirical writings that followed were both
in the form of a letter from Lady Castlemaine back
to the displaced Bouds. They're identical except for the first paragraph,
and they go on to lampoon both Lady Castlemaine and
(14:42):
the Anglican Church. There's a lot of criticism who woven
into both the petition and the response. They criticized Charles
the Second for keeping the mistress. They criticized Lady Castlemaine
for being Catholic, They criticized the Catholic Church for earning
an income from taxes is on brothels. And they criticized
the Archbishop of Canterbury for purportedly keeping a mistress of
(15:06):
his own. And it's these same themes of religion and
hypocrisy that may help to explain why this particular riot
got so very big and why the response to it
was so much bigger. And we're going to talk about
all that after we pause for a brief word from
one of our fantastic sponsors. While London's previous Strove Tuesday
(15:33):
brothel riots had been punished with which was basically a
slap on the wrist, the sixteen sixty eight riots ended
with a great many people being brought to trial. It's
unclear exactly how many people were prosecuted for participating in
the riot. Only seventy seven of those who wound up
in court were actually identified by name, either in the
records or historians having put all the pieces together since then,
(15:55):
but very little is known even about them. Fifteen. Ultimately,
we're guided for high treason. Demeri's page turned state's witness
during the trial, with the court being very careful to
avoid mentioning precisely what her job was so that she
would appear credible in the account she gave of destruction
of her property. And many of the other women who
(16:16):
had worked in the destroyed body houses, on the other hand,
wound up being prosecuted in the aftermath of the riot,
in a punishment that was acknowledged by the High Court
and other people surrounding the case as just incongruously harsh.
Four of the men who were convicted of high treason
were hanged, drawn and quartered. This was by far the
most extreme punishment allowed under the most severe interpretation of
(16:39):
the law. It was far far greater than how body
house riots had typically been handled in England. There are
lots of possible explanations for exactly why the crackdown on
this specific riot was so extreme. One described in the
nine paper on in the Historical Journal is by Dr
Tim Arists, then at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and now at
(17:03):
Brown and his interpretation basically is that the riot itself
was more about dissatisfaction with the Restoration than it really
was about the brothels, and that the rioters were so
harshly treated because of that political and religious undertone. So
an extraordinarily brief recap of the Restoration. When Charles the
Second's father was executed in sixteen forty nine, Oliver Cromwell
(17:27):
came to power, at which point England became a republic.
Charles the Second fled to the continent, and Cromwell remained
in power until his death in sixteen fifty eight. Then
in sixteen sixty Charles the Second ascended to the throne,
at which point the monarchy was restored. That's the restoration.
There are entire books about the restoration, and there was
a whole lot more that went on behind the scenes
(17:47):
and what we just said, so that is an extremely
quick summary for those of you who don't remember or
never learned that. In a lot of historical accounts, the
general description of the restoration was that London was really
really in favor of Charles the second's return. There had
been demonstrations against the army and in favor of Charles
as the monarch in the years before the restoration actually
(18:07):
took place. Some of that agitation was as much about
religion as it was about the monarch. Some of the
people who were pressing for Charles the Second's return to
England we're hoping that he would allow a greater degree
of freedom of religion. The religions that diverged in some
way from Anglican teachings, like Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, and Unitarians,
(18:28):
among others. We're all branded as dissenting or nonconformist religions.
Many of London's apprentices were adherents to one of these
non conforming denominations instead. In sixteen sixty, Charles the Second,
still in exile, issued the Declaration of Breda, which was
one of the last steps before he was restored to
(18:48):
the throne. He wrote this statement, quote, and because the
passion and uncharitable nous of the times have produced several
opinions in religion by which men are engaged in parties
and animosities against each other, which, when they shall hereafter
unite in a freedom of conversation, will be composed or
better understood. We do declare a liberty to tender consciences,
(19:11):
and that no man shall be disquieted or called in
question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which
do not disturb the peace of the Kingdom, And that
we shall be ready to consent to such an act
of Parliament as upon mature deliberation shall be offered to
us for the full granting that indulgence. In other words,
people would have freedom of religion provided that their opinions
(19:34):
did not quote disturb the peace of the Kingdom, and
Among those opinions apparently disturbing the peace of the Kingdom
were various nonconformists. Quakers and Baptists in particular, frequently wound
up in court on charges of quote attendance at a
nonconformist compensicle. Harris also cites this as the reason why
this huge riot took place after Easter instead of on
(19:56):
Shrove Tuesday, as had been so common in p or years.
Even though the Declaration of Breda hadn't really allowed the
nonconformist the practice of their religion uh freely, at least
there had been a period of relative laxity in terms
of the enforcement of religious conformity. The Great Plague of
London in sixteen sixty five and the Great Fire of
(20:17):
London in sixteen sixty six had both given Parliament plenty
of other things to worry about, and some of the
laws governing religion had lapsed, but in sixteen sixty seven.
In sixteen sixty eight, bills that would have allowed Presbyterians
religious freedom started circulating in Parliament. The House of Commons
was really deeply opposed to these, though, and the Proclamation
(20:39):
on the matter that Charles the Second ultimately signed on
March tenth, sixteen sixty eight, during lent, less than two
weeks before the riot began, was instead about enforcing obedience
to the existing laws, not about allowing greater religious freedom.
This also circles back around to those satirical petitions and
letters that we talked about before the break. One of
(21:00):
their themes England was willing to tolerate brothels but not
religious nonconformity, which seems awfully hypocritical. Some of the chance
and rallying cries that they used during the riot, like
the ones that were about reformation, also have a lot
more religious tone to them than being about wanting to
strike down the sinfulness of a brothel. Running parallel to
(21:22):
this crackdown on religious nonconformity was also a crackdown on
theaters in London, and a running theme in this increasing
criticism of theater was that theaters were no better than brothels,
and there was a lot of just hateful rhetoric that
was used in all of this. So this stoked dislike
in disdain for both the brothels and the theaters, And
(21:44):
as we said at the top of the show, London
was full of sailors that were recently released from service,
as well as overworked and mostly pennelous apprentices whose system
of apprenticeship was quickly disintegrating. So there's some degree of
supposition and draw ying of conclusions and all of this, uh,
some degree of interpretation of what people's motives might have been. Men,
(22:06):
there's no smoking gun. None of the rioters left a
journal saying I'm really upset about my religious freedoms, and
so how about in the guise of a brothel riot,
I make that demonstration Like there's nothing documenting any kind
of thought presses like that, and there are also no
court documents. It's explicitly saying that the rioters are being
persecuted because of religious nonconformity, although it does seem like
(22:31):
there was some fear that people who were dissenting in
some way, we're also going to work with Cromwell's existing
supporters who were still around to try to overthrow the monarchy. So,
like a lot of events in history, this one was
definitely a confluence of a ton of different factors and
influences without one clear, single explanation that just explains the
(22:55):
motives of everyone involved at the same time. Oh, history,
you're never simple, Yeah, I wish I could remember where.
I wish I could remember where I stumbled across just
the words, uh, the Brothel Ride of sixteen sixty eight,
Like I was doing work on something completely unrelated last week,
(23:15):
and then the that's that series of words was on
my screen somewhere and I went, well, okay, we gotta
talk about that. And then I fortunately was able to
find enough information to talk about that. And then when
I tried to restep retrace my steps to figure out
where I had originally seen reference to it, I could
not find it. So I don't remember. But that's the
(23:37):
Ruthel Riot. Thank you so much for joining us on
this Saturday. If you have heard an email address or
a Facebook you are l or something similar over the
course of today's episode, since it is from the archive
that might be out of date now, you can email
us at history podcast at how Stuff Work stock Com,
(24:00):
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show
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