Category Archives: Politics

1861: Tory MP cleared of fondling himself at his window

Sir John Shelley (1808-1867) was a Conservative politician who served several terms in the House of Commons between 1830 and 1865. Shelley was “also a sportsman of some renown on the turf and with the trigger”, an “eminent agriculturist” and, from all reports, something of a ladies’ man.

In June 1861, Shelley, then the Tory MP for Westminster, appeared in a London court charged with gross indecency. Several witnesses testified seeing Shelley expose and fondle himself in the window of his apartment in St James Street. According to Mrs Susan Stafford:

“I was at the window and Sir John… came to his drawing room window. He had no trousers on but loose drawers and a white or light-coloured dressing gown. I distinctly saw him expose his person. He looked direct to [my house] and used his hands incidentally, and then kissed his hands towards our house. There were ladies and servants at our windows.”

Mrs Stafford’s housemaid also testified in a similar fashion. Miss Mary Griffiths, a relative staying with Mrs Stafford, said under oath that she saw Sir John:

“…standing at the window; he appeared to have some loose gown on and drawers but his legs were bare… He exposed his person and did it again several times in the course of the afternoon.”

Maria Hartley, a nurse, said she saw:

“Sir John at the first floor window, that nearest Piccadilly. I had known him by sight before… I saw him put his hands down and open his drawers and I turned away… I had seen him that day do it two or three times. I have seen him frequently since do it… On those occasions I saw his private parts naked.”

Sir John Shelley’s barrister responded by claiming the defendant had disrobed to his underwear due to the heat; the witnesses, he claimed, had accidentally spied him through a thin curtain. The judge accepted this, noting that Sir John was a “gentleman” and “it was only an illusion”. He dismissed the charge and Sir John “left the court unstained in character by this case”.

Source: Reynold’s Newspaper, London, June 30th 1861. 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.

1867: Karl Marx plagued by painful genital boils

History’s most famous left-wing collaboration, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, kept very little from each other. They corresponded prolifically and their letters touched on a great number of topics: from politics, economics and history, to cookery, gossip and dirty stories.

In a 1853 letter to Engels, Marx paused from discussing British foreign policy and domestic politics to a particular habit of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III:

“That angel suffers, it seems, from a most indelicate complaint. She is passionately addicted to farting, and is incapable, even in company, of suppressing it. At one time she resorted to horse-riding as a remedy. But this was later forbidden [by her husband] so she now vents herself. It’s only a noise, a little murmur… but then you know that the French are sensitive to the slightest puff of wind.”

Marx was also forthcoming about his own medical conditions, including constipation:

“I would have written to you before now, but when the whole person is clogged up for days, in my case a posteriori… it makes him totally incapable of action.”

And a complaint that plagued Marx for several years, painful boils around his genitals:

“I shan’t bore you by explaining [the] carbuncles on my posterior and near the penis, the final traces of which are now fading but which made it extremely painful for me to adopt a sitting and hence a writing posture. I am not taking arsenic because it dulls my mind too much and I need to keep my wits about me.”

Sources: Letters from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, dated March 23rd 1853, August 11th 1877, April 2nd 1867. 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.

1782: US Congress adopts motto – from a recipe for cheese paste

In 1782, the US Congress officially adopted the Great Seal of the United States and its enclosed motto, E pluribus unum (Latin for ‘Out of many, comes one’). The motto was suggested several years earlier by Pierre du Simitiere, a French artist and polymath who emigrated to America in the 1760s.

What is less well known is that the phrase E pluribus unum first appeared in Moretum, a lyric poem outlining a recipe for a popular cheese and garlic spread. Moretum was probably written in the 1st century BC and is usually attributed to Virgil or one of his followers.

An English translation of the relevant section is:

“And when he has collected these [ingredients] he comes and sits him down beside the cheerful fire

And loudly for the mortar asks his wench. Then singly each of the garlic heads he strips…

On these he sprinkles grains of salt, and cheese is added, hard from taking up the salt.

The aforesaid herbs he now does introduce, and with his left hand beneath his hairy groin

Supports his garment; with his right he first breaks the reeking garlic with the pestle

Then everything he equally does rub in the mingled juice. His hand in circles move

Till by degrees they one by one do lose their proper powers

And out of many comes one single colour, not entirely green.”

Source: Appendix Vergiliana, c.20BC. 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.

1848: Abraham Lincoln represents accused pig fornicator

In 1848 William Torrance of Illinois, represented by future US president Abraham Lincoln, filed a defamation suit against Newton Galloway. According to Lincoln’s submission, Galloway had uttered “false, scandalous, malicious and defamatory words” to Aaron Vandeveer and “diverse good and worthy citizens”. Among Galloway’s remarks were claims that Torrance had:

“…caught my old sow and f–ked her as long as he could…”

And:

“…knocked up my old sow and it is now bellying down [heavily pregnant] and will soon have some young bills.”

Torrance and Lincoln demanded $1,000 in damages, however, the case was thrown out and Torrance was ordered to pay costs.

Source: Torrance v. Galloway, 1848, Abraham Lincoln Legal Papers. 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.

1688: Portsmouth mayor abused with turd slur

In 1688, word reached the aldermen of Portsmouth that the city’s mayor, Mr Robert Hancock, had been subjected to a torrent of abuse outside his home. The alleged perpetrator was one William Hale, a servant of Mr William Terrell.

Hale and an accomplice turned up at Hancock’s home late in the evening, pulling boards away from its front and making a loud ruckus. Hancock appeared in the street and challenged the intruders. A witness reported that Hale gave the elderly mayor a frightful torrent of abuse. In doing so he also refused to doff his cap, saying that:

“..he would as soon pull off his hat to a turd as to Mr Hancock.”

There is no record of any sanction or penalty imposed on William Hale.

Source: Portsmouth City Council, Borough Sessions records, 1688. 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.

1770: Angry Regulators storm courthouse, defecate in judge’s chair

In the late 1760s, hundreds of farmers in North Carolina joined the Regulators, a band of anti-government rebels opposed to high taxes, political corruption and state-friendly courts.

In October 1770, a gang of these Regulators, including “men of considerable property”, went on a rampage through Hillsborough. According to reports they swore to kill every “clerk or lawyer” they could find. The gang stormed into the local court house, forcing the judge to suspend proceedings and flee. The Regulators then detained and beat up every lawyer or court official they could lay hands on. According to the Virginia Gazette:

“When they had fully glutted their revenge on the lawyers… to show their opinion of the courts of justice they took from his chains a Negro [slave] and placed at the lawyer’s bar, and filled the Judge’s seat with human excrement, in derision and contempt of the characters that fill those respectable places.”

The colonial government of North Carolina responded by assembling a militia, which defeated the Regulators at Alamance in May 1771.

Source: Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, October 25th 1770. 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.

c.1648: The British king ever fiddling about his crotch

The Court and Character of King James I was probably written by an unknown author in the 1640s. It appeared in print toward the end of that decade.

Though presenting as an objective history of James’ reign, it is little more than an instrument of political assassination, attacking the king’s appearance, health, masculinity and judgement. It implies homosexual tendencies, claiming that the former king liked to surround himself “with young faces and smooth chins”. It suggests that James was physically feeble, if not deformed.

It also says of his physical appearance and mannerisms:

“His tongue too large for his mouth, which ever made him speak full in the mouth and made him drink very uncomely, as if eating his drink… His skin was as soft as taffeta sarsnet, which felt so because he never washed his hands… His legs were very weak, having had (as was though) some foul play in his youth, or rather because he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years of age, that weakness made him ever leaning on other men’s shoulders… His walk was ever circular [and] his fingers, in that walk, fiddling about his codpiece.”

Authorship of The Court and Character of King James I has been attributed to Sir Anthony Weldon, an English courtier who disliked the Scottish generally and the Stuart dynasty specifically. Several modern historians are sceptical of Weldon’s involvement, however.

Source: Anthony Weldon (attrib.), The Court and Character of King James I, c.1684. 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.