Category Archives: 17th century

1620: Somerset man shows wife, a penny a peek

In 1620, a farmer named Cutte from the village of Halse, near Taunton, appeared before a Somerset magistrate. Cutte was charged with gross indecency towards his unnamed wife. The alleged offence was committed at a village gathering where several people, including the defendant, were drunk.

According to witnesses, Cutte:

“..made an offer to diverse [people] then present, that for a penny a piece they should see his wife’s privities… and there withal he did take her and throw her upon a board and did take up her clothes and showed her nakedness in [the] most beastly and uncivil manner.”

Cutte’s behaviour apparently shocked those present, who called a halt to his enterprise by blowing out the candles and casting the room into darkness. The court found Cutte guilty and admonished him but no punishment was recorded.

Source: Session Rolls of the Somerset Quarter Sessions, 1620, f.36. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1662: A recipe for preserving severed heads

Thomas Ellwood (1639-1714) was an English Quaker, a friend of the poet John Milton and a significant author in his own right. Ellwood was born into a Puritan family but joined the Society of Friends in his late teens. He was twice arrested for writing inflammatory essays on religion and attempting to recruit others to Quakerism, and in late 1662 was thrown into Newgate prison for several weeks.

In his autobiography, published the year after his death, Ellwood recalled his experiences in Newgate, where he mingled with the scum of London: pickpockets, thugs and petty criminals. He remembered prostitutes being let into the prison on a regular basis:

“I have sometimes been in the hall in an evening and have seen the whores let in unto them… Nasty sluts indeed they were… And as I have passed them I heard the rogues and they [the women] making their bargains, which and which of them should company together that night.”

Ellwood also recalled his disgust at discovering the quartered bodies of three executed men stashed in a closet near his cell. He also witnessed their heads being treated by the executioner, so they could be put on display on a spike somewhere in London:

“I saw the heads when they were brought up to be boiled. The hangman fetched them in a dirty dust basket… he [and other prisoners] made sport with them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeering and laughing at them, giving them some ill names [and] boxed them on the ears and the cheeks. When done, the hangman put them into his kettle and parboiled them with bay salt and cumin seed, [the first] to keep them from putrefaction, [the second] to keep the fowls from seizing on them.”

Source: The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, by the Same, pub. 1715. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1658: Cure bad breath by holding your mouth over the toilet

Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) was an English writer, diplomat and a courtier to King Charles I. Digby was also something of an amateur physician. One of his better known medical texts, republished several times, suggested recipes for the ‘weapon salve’ or ‘powder of sympathy’. This bizarre early modern medical theory was based on the premise that a victim’s wound could be treated by applying ointment to the weapon that had caused it.

Digby also believed in Galenic concepts of physiological balance and harmony. These principles were reflected in Digby’s suggested treatment for bad breath:

“Tis an ordinary remedy, though a nasty one, that they who have ill breaths [should] hold their mouths open at the mouth of a privy [outhouse] as long as they can… by the reiteration of this remedy, they find themselves cured at last, the greater stink of the privy drawing unto it and carrying away the lesser stink, which is that of the mouth.”

Source: Kenelm Digby, A Late Discourse [on] Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy, London, 1658. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1602: Severed head lives on for a quarter-hour

Franz Schmidt was the city executioner in Bamberg, northern Bavaria, during the late 16th and early 17th century. Like many other medieval and early modern executioners, Schmidt had taken over the role from his father, Heinrich.

During his 45 years of service, Schmidt the younger despatched 361 convicted criminals. He also dispensed various forms of torture and corporal punishment, including floggings, brandings and the removal of fingers, eyes and ears.

Schmidt kept a comprehensive diary that recorded each of his 361 executions, noting the victim’s crime, the method of execution used and other interesitng details. One of the more curious entries recalls the execution of George Praun, a cook from Mannsfeld. Praun was an inveterate thief beheaded by Schmidt, who recorded something peculiar about Praun’s severed head:

“When placed on the stone, his head turned several times, as if it wanted to look about it… [It] moved its tongue and opened its mouth, as if wanting to speak, for a good quarter of an hour. I have never seek the like of this before.”

Like other executioners of his age, Schmidt also had a profitable sideline in medical advice – and probably also in the sale of body parts and the belongings of his victims. He became quite wealthy and in retirement was a prominent member of Nuremberg’s affluent classes until his death in 1637.

Source: Diaries of Franz Schmidt, May 20th 1602 entry; pub. 1801. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1656: Dr Schroeder’s recipe for red-headed mummy

Johann Schroeder was a German physicist and medical researcher, best known for isolating and describing arsenic. Belonging to the Paracelsian medical school, Schroeder was also fond of prescribing ‘mummy’ – dried and powdered human corpse – as a catch-all treatment.

In his 1656 book Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chymica, Schroeder claimed the very best mummy was sourced from Egyptian tombs or deserts. This variety, however, was often expensive and hard to come by. As an alternative, Schroeder provided his own recipe for high quality medical-grade human mummy:

“Take the fresh unspotted cadaver of a red-headed man (because in them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence more excellent) aged about 24, who has been executed and died a violent death. Let the corpse lie one day and night in the sun and moon – but the weather must be good. Cut the flesh in pieces and sprinkle it with myrrh and a little aloe. Then soak it in spirits of wine for several days, hang it up against for 6 to 10 hours, soak it again in spirits of wine, then let the pieces dry in a shady spot. Thus they will be similar to smoked meat and will not stink.”

Once dry the flesh could be powdered and used both internally and externally for a variety of ailments – from epilepsy to scrofula, from gout to haemorrhoids.

Source: Johann Schroeder, Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chymica, 1656. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1642: Mob plays football with Catholic priest’s head

Hugh Greene, also known as Ferdinand Brooks, was a victim of anti-Catholic persecution during the English Civil War. Greene was born in London to Anglican parents but converted to Catholicism after his graduation from Cambridge. After studying in France, Greene became a parish priest in Dorset.

In 1642, Charles I banished all Catholic priests from England. Greene complied with the king’s order but was held up and missed the deadline by several days, and was arrested trying to board a ship in Lyme Regis.

Greene was imprisoned for several months, committed to trial on charges of high treason and sent for execution. The sentence was carried out in Dorchester in August 1642. According to the written testimony of an eyewitness, Elizabeth Willoughby, Greene was hanged to the point of unconsciousness, then messily quartered:

“The man that was to quarter him was a timorous, unskilful man, by trade a barber, and his name was Barefoot… he was so long dismembering him that [Greene] came to his perfect senses and sat upright and took Barefoot by the hand… then did this butcher cut his belly on both sides… Whilst [Greene] was calling upon Jesus, the butcher did pull a piece of his liver out instead of his heart, tumbling his guts out every way to see if his heart were not amongst them…”

This barbarous ordeal went on for more than a half-hour, with Greene either praying devoutly or screaming in agony. According to Willoughby, Greene only expired after his throat was cut and his head was hacked off with a cleaver. His heart was eventually removed and thrown into a fire, before it was snatched up and stolen by a local woman.

As for the priest’s severed head:

“An ungodly multitude, from ten o’clock in the morning till four in the afternoon, stayed on the hill and sported themselves at football with his head [then] put sticks in his eyes, ears, nose and mouth and buried it near to the body.”

Source: Letter from Elizabeth Willoughby, Dorchester, June 20th 1643. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1664: Yorkshire gent rides cheeky worker around Rotherham

The Copleys were a wealthy Yorkshire family boasting military officers, Members of Parliament and a lineage dating back to the Norman invasion.

Lionel Copley (1607-75) served as a colonel with the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. Evidence suggests that Copley was an erratic, autocratic and often brutal figure who was both feared and despised by his neighbours.

In 1664, Copley was accused of cruelly mistreating a local artisan who failed to show him due respect:

“At Rotherham on the 25th of September 1664 [he] beat Richard Firth, put a bridle into his mouth, got on his back and rode him about for half an hour, kicking him to make him move.”

Copley’s son, also named Lionel, seems to have inherited his violent streak. The junior Lionel Copley was commissioned in the Foot Guards and in 1681 was appointed lieutenant-governor of Hull. Copley ruled Hull with an iron fist, dispensing corporal punishment, confiscating private property and seizing and opening personal mail.

When the deputy-postmaster of Hull complained, Hull had him arrested and hog-tied:

“..neck and heels, with extreme violence that the blood gushed out of his nose and mouth, and kept him in that intolerable posture for two hours and a half, till [he] was utterly deprived of sense and put in extreme hazard of his life, and remains to this day miserably crippled, disabled in his limbs and impaired in his sight.”

Copley’s behaviour in Hull triggered so much protest that he was shipped off to the American colonies, where he served as the royal governor of Maryland (1692-93).

Source: Depositions from the Castle of York, relating to Offences in the Northern Counties, v.40. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1648: Charles I organises lavatory sexual liaison

In late 1647, King Charles I was detained in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. For more than a year the deposed king attempted to recover his throne – first by organising a counter-revolution, then by negotiating with parliament.

Charles also found time to initiate a sexual affair with Jane Whorwood, the stepdaughter of a prominent Scottish royalist. Whorwood was a married 36-year-old with bright red hair; according to contemporary accounts her face was scarred by smallpox but she was otherwise “well fashioned”.

From April 1648, the king and his mistress exchanged dozens of coded messages. According to letters deciphered by the historian Sarah Poynting, Charles told Jane Whorwood:

“There is one way possible that you may get a swiving [shagging] from me… you must excuse my plain expressions… you may be conveyed into the stool-room [lavatory] which is within my bedchamber while I am at dinner; by which means I shall have five hours to embrace and nip you.”

Source: Cited in Sarah Poynting, ‘Deciphering the King: Charles I’s Letters to Jane Whorwood’, Seventeenth Century, vol.21, 2006. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1650: “Play him out, Cat Keyboard”

A late 19th century artist’s impression of the cat piano.

Athanasius Kircher was one of the best known Jesuit scholars of the 17th century. Writing in 1650, Kircher described a grotesque musical instrument called the ‘cat piano’:

“To raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was pressed, a mechanism drove a sharp needle into the appropriate cat’s tail. The result was a melody of miaows… who could not help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy.”

While there is no extant historical evidence that a cat piano was ever constructed, it remained a popular piece of whimsy during the 18th and 19th centuries.

A similar device was apparently constructed by the Abbot of Baigne around 1470 but it used pigs rather than cats. According to the chronicler Jean Bouchet, this ‘pig organ’ was built at the request of Louis XI, who asked the Abbott:

“…to get him a concert of swine’s voices, thinking it impossible. The abbot was not surprised but asked for money for the performance, which was immediately delivered… he wrought a thing as singular as ever was seen.”

Bouchet claims the abbot assembled “a great number of hogs of several ages” and above them erected a giant musical keyboard, with one key over each pig. Each key was laced with:

“..little spikes which pricked the hogs [and] made them cry in such order and consonance as highly delighted the king and all his company.”

Source: Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, 1650; Jean Bouchet, Annales d’Aquitaine, f.164, c.1550. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1627: London woman accused of privy part boasting

In May 1627, two London women, Mary Peters and Elizabeth Welsh, accused each other of defamation in the city’s Consistory Court. Peters and her husband John, a clerk employed at the Tower of London, were tenants in Welsh’s house, near The Strand.

According to witnesses, both women had slandered each other with terms suggesting infidelity and prostitution. Another lodger testified that Peters had called Welsh:

“..a bawd, pocky bawd, toothless bawd, strumpet… [and] impudent whore.”

Welsh responded by accusing Peters of debauchery while under her roof. Welsh testified that her maid, Elizabeth Hobcock, told her of an exchange between Peters and the acclaimed poet Michael Drayton. According to Hobock’s report to Welsh, Peters:

“..did hold up her clothes unto her navel before Mr Michael Drayton… she clapped her hand on her privy part and said it was a sound and a good one, and that the said Mr Drayton did then also lay his hand upon it and stroke it and said that it was a good one.”

The claim was dismissed when Drayton himself took the stand and denied the incident ever occurred.

Source: London Consistory Court archives, fol.2r-3v, 11r-22r. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.