Rogues Gallery Uncovered – bad behaviour in period costume
Non-judgmentally prying into the scandalous lives of history’s greatest libertines’ lotharios and complete bastards
This podcast contains adult themes and the occasional bit of colourful language – if this is likely to offend – considering this week’s subject, you’re in good company.
Pride and extreme prejudice
Ignorant, bigoted and permanently outraged
With
Col Charles de lat waldo sibthorp
Before we start a roguish shout out to Tim in Thailand who emailed me to suggest a 1960s rogue based in southeast asia.
Nicknamed “Cowboy” this particular reprobate ticks many rogues boxes and will be featured in an upcoming episode.
Cheers Tim, it’s great when listeners get in touch and I heartily encourage it.
simon@roguesgalleryonline.com – the address is in the show notes.
Or visit roguesgalleryuncovered.com
What do you think of the podcast? who would you like to hear featured? do you have a roguish story you would like to share? - whatever the reason it would be fantastic to hear from you.
You might initially think that the subject of this week’s episode would be placed in the “Complete Basterds category of rogues as he clearly had some outrageous views – they were even outrageous at the time.
I however have placed him in the libertine’s section as – ignorant and comically ill-informed as he was, he appears to have been more of a laughable eccentric than outright malicious.
And as the podcasts definition of libertine is someone who lives their life exactly as they please without giving a damm what society thinks about them – I reckon he fits in there quite nicely.
You might of course disagree – or agree wholeheartedly – email me to let me know.
Anyway
The following tale is written in the present tense of the period in which its set…. and as such, may contain attitudes and opinions of the protagonists and their times which would today be considered unacceptable.
As I am most definitely not a somewhat confused 19th-century letter writer who is terrified of the future and anything he doesn’t understand – like trains.
Those attitudes and opinions are OBVIOUSLY not mine.
England 1852
Sir –
As a proud Englishman – who despairs of the depraved cesspit of moral filth into which this once great country has become immersed – may I use the pages of your august (if somewhat “Liberal”) newspaper to extol the virtues of the one gentleman who, alone, stands between Albion and the blackest pits of hell. Namely, Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp
I heartily agree with this visionary man when he says that foreigners should be distrusted, science and “Progress” is ruining this country and the world was a far, far better place in the halcyon days of our golden youth.
He speaks his mind and stands by his principles and I for one think he should be Prime Minister (he’d make a damn sight better job of it than that half-wit Lord Derby.)
Col Sibthorp may be routinely mocked by those over-educated young vipers at Punch along with that upstart Dickens, but none who have seen him addressing the House of Lords (as he has done frequently for the past 25 years) can doubt his sincerity.
His recent opposition to the so-called “Great Exhibition” is the perfect illustration of the man… “An exhibition of the trumpery and trash of foreigners who had no business to be here at all” .is how he described it, and I for one agree.
Col Sibthorp maintains that last year’s Great Exhibition was nothing more than an excuse for foreign nations (especially the French) to flood the Great British Isles with hordes of devious spies and malcontents. These European “visitors” only intent was to take away with them, details of our country’s defences while leaving behind their disgusting continental morals.
He passionately maintained that the exhibition would also lead to a debasing of the Sabbath, political disharmony – possibly even revolution – and the entire country becoming bankrupt.
Although none of this has yet come to pass, it can surely only be a matter of time.
I will speak little of the Crystal Palace itself suffice it to say that I am with Col Sibthorp who calls it “A palace of tomfoolery” and “An unwholesome castle of glass”.
He warned of good honest labouring folk leaving their farms and journeying to London to see it (the nation could starve!!)
These labouring poor, unused to the greater expenses of our glorious capital may need to pawn the very clothes from their backs in order to afford the fare. Thousands of them might roam our streets, destitute and quite naked. This cannot be allowed to happen!!
And as for the number of English trees that needed to be cut down to accommodate this architectural folly, well, it’s a scandal.
Col Sibthorp was only man brave enough to stand proudly in the House of Lords and raise the possibility that the entire enterprise was a subtle plot by His Royal Highness Prince Albert (A German!!) to overthrow the entire British Empire.
Of course, like the good colonel, I have never visited the Crystal Palace myself and have no intention of doing so. He said that the thought of setting foot in the structure physically sickened him and hoped that God would share his misgivings and destroy it utterly with lightning bolt or hailstorm.
The Almighty could do worse than listen to Col Sibthorp, this country is teetering on the edge of a precipice and yet I have heard him described as a man of “bigoted views and limited intelligence”
If he is…then so am I!!
Like the Colonel, I grew to manhood in the glorious days of the late 18th century. A time of hot summers, staunch morals, little crime and general public happiness. The only dark cloud hovering above this Elysium was caused by a Frenchman (Napoleon) and we soon sent him packing.
Everything since those days has been confusing, degenerate, unnecessary, liberal and unchristian. Life would be much better if we could go back to living how we did sixty years ago (without the constant warfare and smallpox, of course)
Col Sinthorp wisely rejects modern clothing (“Trousers” ha) and instead wears the frock-coat, top-boots, and quizzing glasses which were more than good enough for respectable men of fashion in 1799.
But what of morality?
In the days before modern factories, the moral fabric of Britain was unbreakable. Col Sibthorp has often loudly despaired of the moral laxity of these so called “Victorian Years” which creeps, like a noxious vapour, across the fabric of our society.
True, his wife was awarded an uncontested separation from him back in ‘28 because of his long-term assignation with a “Woman of low character” but it seems obvious to me that he was taken advantage of in a two-year moment of weakness by a lewd and designing female.
I regard stories that he would often attend Parliament after spending the evening at a bawdy house as the spiteful rumour-mongering of foreign agitators. His enjoyment of “rough congress” I treat with the same disdain – although there is nothing wrong with a good flogging as it builds a man’s character.
The Colonel may not have actually graduated from Oxford but the man has good old-fashioned English common sense by the cartload.
This, he would have displayed thirty years ago at his very first political hustings, had he not been struck on the head and rendered unconscious by a missile thrown from the crowd, at the exact moment that he got up to speak.
Undeterred, he campaigned vigorously against parliamentary reform, his opposition to even the slightest change an inspiration for us all. With the greatest respect, I quote him as follows.
“On no account would I sanction any attempts to subvert that glorious fabric, our matchless Constitution, which has reached its present perfection by the experience of ages, by any new-fangled schemes which interested or deluded individuals might bring forward, and those who expect any advantages from such notions will find their visions go like a vapour and vanish into nothing.”
It was on this intransigent basis that he was elected and he proudly stands as MP for Lincoln to this very day.
Sadly, Her Majesty refuses to set foot in Lincoln. In 1839, on the eve of her marriage, Col Sibthorp wisely persuaded the government to reduce the amount of her “husband-to-be” Prince Albert’s annuity payment because he was a foreigner. She appears to have taken extreme offense at this and maintains her show of displeasure to this day.
Col Sibthorp’s behaviour however only highlights what a financially vigilant man he is. Who else would suggest that all British diplomats work for no salary (after all, they are not performing their duties on British soil) and that building work which takes longer than its allotted time to complete, such as The National Gallery, should immediately be pulled down?
And I fear his concerns over the insidious spread of “The Railways” is well founded.
He has often described steam trains as a new and “Degrading form of transport” which will cause a “Wholesale slaughter” of those foolish enough to climb aboard.
In common with many of my generation, I suspect that they are simply a passing fancy and will soon go the way of the hot air balloon. Mark my words, by the 1870s we shall have returned to travelling along turnpikes in well-appointed stage coaches as God Himself intended.
In regarding anything modern, foreign or forward thinking as a “Humbug” Col Sibthorp reflects the thoughts of a great many elderly Englishmen and women.
As those thoughts (all of which I share) are invariably well-founded and correct, I demand he be elevated to the highest ministerial position or failing that, be made Pope (his opposition to Catholic Emancipation notwithstanding.)
Yours
CB rtd
In chapter 18 of Sketches by Boz Charles Dickens described Sibthorp as a
“Ferocious-looking gentleman, with a complexion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose huge black moustache would give him the appearance of a figure in a hairdresser’s window, if his countenance possessed the thought that is communicated to those waxen caricatures ...
He is ... the most amusing person in the House. Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk’s head in a cheap Dutch clock? ... He is generally harmless, though, and always amusing.”
Several other people who met him commented on his excessive hirsuteness, his wearing a regency frock coat, top hat and Wellington boots, decades after they had gone out of fashion and his habit of walking around everywhere carrying a magnifying glass.
Many said that he was not the sharpest knife in the cutlery draw but all agreed that he had a belligerent, total and unshakable belief in the absolute veracity of everything he thought and said.
He knew exactly what was right and most definitely what was wrong.
I’m not sure if he was a pathological contrarian – is that a recognised condition? - but he certainly was against much more than he was for.
I read a list while I was researching this of all the parliamentary bills, he opposed his 30-year career and it’s huge – if you proposed a thing between 1826 and 1856 the chances were that sibthorp would be passionately against it.
He was against both Catholic and Jewish emancipation, the reform act and the repeal of the corn laws.
As we heard he wasn’t a fan of the Great Exhibition or the national gallery.
He also took the side of the cavalry troopers who charged an unarmed crowd of civilians protesting in favour of “Universal manhood suffrage” - essentially one man one vote irrespective of social station, religion or race - at st peters field in Manchester in 1819.
Mounted on horse back and chopping down with sabres these brave men killed 15 people and injured countless more in what became known as The Peterloo Massacre.
When voices of outrage were raised in parliament over the trooper’s conduct, Sibthorp said that their conduct had in fact been “Excellent” and that they were in fact the victims – of the shameful reporting of ‘a base and profligate press’
And that not all…
Sibthorp loudly announced that he thought horse thieves should be strung up the moment they were caught and their bodies used for dissection.
That convicted criminals should not be transported to Australia to serve out their sentences but should instead be executed because it would save the country money.
And that hackney cab drivers should be subject to punishingly stringent regulations because their cabs were so filthy, they were spreading Cholera.
He was also known to regularly play down the brutal reality of flogging as a punishment in the army – grown men’s back torn to ribbons, brushed off with a “ itll do them good” or “they’re scum and probably deserved it”
So, not always the comedy buffoon then.
One witness noted down the reaction I the house whenever sibthorp got up to speak
The moment the colonel rose, he was saluted with a volley of cheers, which were repeated at the conclusion of every sentence, the intervals between being filled up with every variety of laughter and schoolboy noise - the cry of an owl and the mewing of a cat being, ever and anon, heard from the gallery.
The thing is Like all historical figures, Sibthorp was a complex frock coat full of contradictions neither total hero nor total monster.
He was known to have actually supported a petition calling for the Abolition of slavery – although he was dubious about some of the abolitionist’s claims and in favour of offering all the plantation owners’ compensation for their financial loss.
And his support seems to have been more than merely vocal.
There is a story that supporters of William Wilberforce’s emancipation bill who were known as “Saints” often could not get into the houses of commons to take part In or watch the debate because the room was full.
So Sibthorp used to lodge in a nearby boarding house overnight so he could get there early and save them all a place.
This was related to a journalist who wrote
Mackintosh ... went one day to the House of Commons at eleven in the morning to take a place. They were all taken on the benches below the gangway, and on asking the doorkeeper how they happened to be all taken so early, he said, ‘Oh, sir, there is no chance of getting a place, for Colonel Sibthorp sleeps at the bawdy house close by, and comes here every morning by eight o’clock and takes places for all the Saints’
Notice how you can take this story one of two ways. Was it a bawdy house or a boarding house and does it matter.
On the one hand sibthorp can be an anti slavery supporter willing to go the extra mile to make sure fellow abolitionists get to take part in an important debate.
On the other he can be an anti-slavery supporter who shags himself stupid at a brothel and still gets out of bed early to make sure fellow abolitionists get to take part in an important debate.
Either way it seems as though for once the good colonel did the right thing.
There is a final mystery that perhaps any rogues living in the city of Lincoln can answer.
I have seen a brief report of Sibthorp having driven a coach and four horses down the very aptly named “Steep Hill” in order to win a wager.
But aside from one mention, I can find no other reference online – is this an urban myth?
Let me know.
Its very very easy to mock Sibthorp but his permanently offended ignorance and absolute moral certainty can still be found today whether its in the comment section of mailonline on the right or some insane thread on Twitter on the left.
There are probably more sibthorps around than you might think.
Next time on Rogues Gallery Uncovered
What rhymes with Tits?
“Putting the verse into perverse with Russia’s rudest poet.”
Ivan Barkov
This will be the first of two slightly shorter episodes in a row as im going on holiday next week and have sun cream and flip flops to buy.
Don’t forget as I always say, to follow the podcast on Apple if that’s where you are listening to it – or subscribe if its anywhere else
Visit roguesgalleryuncovered.com and sign up to my newsletter, browse the online shop – lots of roguish T Shirt and mug merch to be enjoyed there, or make a small donation to my Patreon page – all monies are gratefully received and go straight back into the podcast – thanks to those of you who already contribute.
Link to the website is in the show notes.
Before I go a quick quiz.
In this episodes tale the letter writing character who was just as reactionary as col sibthorp signs off with the initials CB (rtd)
This is a subtle tribute to another famous – but fictional character who was also famous for being old grumpy, stuck in the past and reactionary – and in the army.
Can you name him?
Drop me a line at simon@roguesgalleryonline if you think you know and I will give you a powerful shout out on the next episode so all can marvel at your intellectual prowess.
Email address is unsurprisingly in the show notes.
Right off the flip flop shop
Have a great week and ill see you yesterday.
