Category Archives: Fights and feuds

1722: Man murders rival by “breaking the muscles” of his yard

yard
The ‘hanging tree’ at Walworth

In 1723 the mayor of Tenby, Thomas Athoe, along with his son, also named Thomas, were apprehended and charged with murdering George Merchant. According to trial records, the two parties had quarreled over the sale of some cattle. The Athoes also bore a grudge against George Merchant, who had “married a sweetheart of young Athoe’s”.

Seeking revenge, the Athoes tracked Merchant and his brother, Thomas, to a place called Holloway’s Water. Using “great sticks”, the Athoes knocked the Merchants from their horses and beat them viciously. They then fell into a frenzy of genital grabbing, George Merchant coming off the worst:

“Taking fast hold of [Thomas Merchant’s] privities, [Athoe Senior] pulled and squeezed him to such a violent degree that had he continued so doing a few minutes longer, it had been impossible for the poor man to have survived it. The pain he suffered is past expression, and yet it fell short of what his brother endured. Young Athoe… seized him by the privy members and, his yard being extended, be broke the muscles of it, and tore out one of his testicles, and calling to his father said ‘Now I have done George Merchant’s business!’ This horrible action occasioned a vast effusion of blood.”

As George Merchant lay dying, Athoe Junior caught hold of “the deceased’s nose with his teeth [and] bit it quite off”. Surgeons who examined Merchant’s body post mortem suggested that his wounds were “sufficient to have killed six or seven men”. The Athoes claimed to have acted in self defence after been attacked by the Merchants, however they produced no evidence of an assault.

The Athoes were found guilty and transported to London. In July 1723, they were dispatched from a ‘hanging tree’ on the Canterbury Road, near what is now Walworth.

Source: Select Trials for Murders, Robberies, &c., Vol. 1, December 1720-October 1723. 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.

1456: Trial by combat ends with penis biting, eye gouging

trial by combat
A more civilised form of medieval trial by combat, sans genital biting

In 1456, a Hampshire man named Thomas Whytehorne was found hiding in the New Forest, arrested and convicted of several charges of theft. To spare himself from execution, Whytehorne agreed to provide the authorities with names of his accomplices, as well as other local criminals. He also offered to stand combat against anyone who disputed his accusations.

Whytehorne was a large and powerful man so there were no takers – until he informed against a local boatman named James Fyscher. A devoutly religious man, Fyscher did not take kindly to being falsely accused of a crime, so invoked his right to trial by combat.

The local lord agreed to Fyscher’s request and handed down a set of regulations for his combat with Whytehorne:

“[Both] must be clothed all in white sheep’s leather… They should have in their hands two staves of green ash, of three foot in length… and on the other end a horn of iron, made in the shape of a ram’s horn, the small end as sharp as might be made… If their main weapon is broken they must fight with their hands, fists, nails, teeth, feet and legs… They should make their foul battle upon the most sorry and wretched land that can be found about the town… They both must be fasting… and if they need any drink, they must take their own piss.”

The trial by combat took place in Winchester. Public opinion was firmly against Whytehorne, a career criminal with a reputation for dishonesty. Regardless, Whytehorne’s strength won him an early advantage after he managed to break Fyscher’s weapon. The magistrate stopped the trial and disarmed both men, leaving them to fight ‘tooth and nail’.

They wrestled, punched and pinched for a considerable length of time, pausing several times for a rest. Then it turned particularly nasty:

“They did fight with both their teeth, such as the leather of their clothing and their flesh was torn on many parts of their bodies. And then the false accuser [Whytehorne] cast the innocent [Fyscher] down upon the ground, and did bite his private member, causing the innocent to cry out. And then with a new strength, the innocent recovered to his knees that took the false accuser’s nose with his teeth and put a thumb into his eye, that the appellant cried out and prayed for mercy, admitting that he had accused falsely against him [Fyscher] and 18 other men.”

According to a contemporary chronicler, Whytehorne was immediately hanged for making false accusations. Fyscher was cleared and released, though he was by now severely wounded. The only thing said of Fyscher’s fate was that he “went home, become a hermit and within a short time died”.

Source: Gregory’s Chronicle, 1451-60. Cited in James Gairdner (ed.), A Citizen of London in the 15th Century, 1876. 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.

1127: Trial by combat ends with testicle tearing

As every attentive history student knows, trial by combat was a means of resolving disputes in early medieval Europe. If one party alleged criminal conduct or a civil grievance, without witnesses or evidence, the judge or lord might order the matter to be settled by combat. Whichever party emerged victorious – and remained alive – was held to be vindicated both by God and the law.

Trial by combat was practised at various times all over Europe, though it was more common in the German-speaking regions of western Europe. Needless to say it was an ineffective and brutal means of dispensing justice.

One graphic account of trial by combat was recorded by the 12th century chronicler Galbert of Bruges. In April 1127 a knight named Guy of Steenvoorde was suspected of involvement in the murder of Count Charles of Flanders. Guy was ordered to trial by combat against a loyalist knight named Herman the Iron – but it did not go well for the defendant:

“Guy unhorsed his adversary and pinned him down with his lance… Then [Herman] disembowelled Guy’s horse by running at him with his sword. Guy, having fallen from his horse, rushed at Herman with his sword drawn. There was a long and bitter struggle with clashing of swords, until both were exhausted [and] fell to wrestling. Herman fell on the ground and Guy did lay upon him, beating his face and eyes with iron gauntlets. But Herman lay prostrate, regained his strength from the cool of the earth and lay quiet, leading Guy to believe that he was victorious. But Herman moved his hand to Guy’s cuirass [apron armour] where he was not protected and seized him by the testicles, and summoning all his might hurled Guy from him. By this motion all the lower parts of Guy’s body were broken [and he] gave up, crying out that he was beaten and was dying.”

Herman the Iron was declared victorious and Guy of Steenvoorde was dragged to the gallows, where he was finished off alongside other conspirators.

Source: Galbert of Bruges, De multro traditione, et occisione gloriosi Karoli, comitis Flandriarum, c.1129. 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.

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.

1662: Maryland magistrate dumped for genital slur

Thomas Baker arrived in the colony of Maryland as an indentured servant, sometime in the mid-1650s. In 1661 the Maryland governor, Philip Calvert, appointed Baker as magistrate of Charles County. This generated a firestorm of protest. There were questions about Baker’s suitability: he was of very humble origins, questionable sobriety and very coarse behaviour. Just how coarse became a matter of public record in 1662, during a series of defamation hearings. Witnesses accused Baker of slandering several men and women, the latter with sexual slurs. He was alleged to have described Mrs Joan Nevill:

“…in so gross a manner that if [the things Baker said were] true… she would not be a creature modest enough to keep the brutals of the forest company.”

Two other witnesses, Richard Roe and William Robisson, testified that Baker had said that:

“…[Francis] Pope’s wife’s c–t was like a shot bag, and Miss Alice Hatch’s c—t would make sauce enough for all the dogs in the town.”

No official sanction or decision against Baker was recorded, however he never again sat as a magistrate, suggesting that the governor quietly ordered Baker’s removal.

Source: Records of Charles County, Maryland, 1658 and 1662. 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.

1623: ‘Whip Her Arse Dick’ loses libel case

In March 1622, Richard Turner, a gentleman and town councillor from Thaxted in Essex, was seen thrashing his teenage daughter Anne. According to Turner, “she had given just cause of grief and offence” and he was delivering “such correction… as to reform some errors in her”.

News of this event soon reached the working classes of Thaxted. Turner, who was unpopular to begin with, became known as ‘Whip Her Arse Dick’. This derogatory nickname was apparently derived from a bawdy song:

“Hurry thee home Anne
Hurry thee home Anne
Whip Her Arse Dick
Whip Her Arse Dick

All those that love puddings
Come unto Parke Street
And learn the song
Of Whip Her Arse Dick.”

There were other verses, including one that compared Turner to an Essex man hanged for murdering his child. According to a witness testimony, the lyrics to ‘Whip Her Arse Dick’:

“..become public, common and notorious in the eyes, ears and tongues of Thaxted. [It had been] reported and sung, published and divulged… in diverse inns, alehouses and other places of the said town of Thaxted and the county of Essex. [It had been] taught and instructed to young children to sing the same, to wrong and provoke him.”

Facing the loss of his good name, Turner sued several individuals for libel. The case was heard in 1623 but the plaintiff was unsuccessful.

According to anecdotal evidence, ‘Whip Her Arse Dick’ was popular with locals for several years. The humiliated Turner became reclusive and suffered financially after neglecting his businesses.

Source: Various, including London Public Record Office, 8/307/9 (1623). 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.

1690: Oxford student sues for chicken-carving slur

In 1690, the chancellor’s court at Oxford University heard a defamation dispute between two Exeter College students: John Colmer and John Crabbe. According to the plaintiff Colmer and his witnesses, Crabbe had been telling malicious and dishonest stories about Colmer for several weeks. Colmer produced witnesses to support his claims, including the respected scholar and future Bishop of Peterborough, White Kennett.

According to their testimony, most of Crabbe’s “slanderous tales” told of Colmer’s alleged promiscuity and “brutish lust”. One story spread by Crabbe was that Colmer had been present at:

“..a supper with the Earl of Warwick [where] he represented to his Lordship the obscene parts of a woman, by the cutting of such a figure from the flesh of a roasted fowl.”

Crabbe also produced witnesses in his defence, though most were exposed as homeless prostitutes. Unsurprisingly, the chancellor’s court ruled in Colmer’s favour.

Source: Oxford University archives, Chancellor’s Court papers, folio 56, 1690.

1640: Dick Head fined for abusing gentleman

In late 1640, magistrates in Kent heard a charge of defamation submitted by Mr William Culpepper, a “gentleman of good quality and of an ancient family”. According to Culpepper he had been been accosted by Richard Head, who had assailed him with:

“..diverse unmannerly and lewd speeches, calling him rogue and rascal and bidding him kiss his arse, with other saucy and unseemly terms.”

The magistrates found in Culpepper’s favour. Richard Head was fined and ordered to apologise.

Source: Centre for Kentish Studies, Q/SO W1, folio 120. 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.

1608: Newcastle women brawl over good white bread

The archives in Durham contain witness testimonies of a confrontation between two Newcastle women in 1608. Elizabeth Waister and Alice Fetherstone were both married, both from Ryton and consequently known to each other. While standing at a bread stall at Newcastle market, Alice accused Elizabeth of jumping the queue and purchasing the last of the “good white bread”.

This accusation unleashed a torrent of invective, which included Elizabeth’s claim that Alice was:

“..a slut that did shit in her cooking pot.”

Alice fired back with an even more poisonous barb, referring to a stillborn child Elizabeth had delivered years earlier:

“Thou art a poisoned, jaded whore… God had sent [you] one example [of your whoredom] and perhaps he might send another.”

Elizabeth subsequently sued Alice for defamation but the outcome of this case is not recorded.

Source: Testimony of Alice Fetherstone and others, Durham County Record Office, vol. 3, 1608. 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.