7 months!
I only popped out for a glass of claret and a quick game of whist.
Rogues Gallery Uncovered
Bad behaviour in period costume
A non-judgmental plunge into the scandalous lives of history’s greatest libertines’ lotharios and complete bastards
This episode contains adult themes, and descriptions of violent acts - but no bad language – so listen responsibly
Hey hey we’re the mohocks
Getting into a right moral panic with the 18th century’s most terrifying teenage gang
With
The Mohocks
Before we start, If you are curious as to why there has been such a long gap between episodes, all will be revealed – although its not that exciting – after this roguish tale.
But seeing as the waits been a lot longer than I anticipated and im very glad that you have stuck around, lets not bugger about with all the personnal stuff but dive right in and say
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 NOT a member of a largely fictitious gang of 18th century hooligans or a permanently terrified consumer of lurid 300-year-old broadsheets those attitudes and opinions are OBVIOUSLY not mine.
London 1712
People of London Beware! It’s no longer safe to leave your house at night.
The streets are paved with danger and you are at risk of grievous injury, abject humiliation and perhaps even death from the moment you step out from your front door.
They call themselves “The Mohocks”… a tribe of feral young men who think it does them credit to inflict the most appalling atrocities upon decent upstanding folk and whose definition of humour would shame the hangman at Tybun.
Since reading of their barbarity in the pages of the Spectator, I have become so gripped with fear that I scarce even visit my garden and keep my curtains permanently drawn.
I’m at present hiding beneath the table as I could have sworn, I heard a noise outside.
There have always been gangs of youths roaming the capitol bringing disorder to the law abiding.
In my grandfather’s day they were known as "Mums" and "Tityre-tus."
My father in turn railed against the "Hectors" and "Scourers" In fact, he used to say of being abroad at night around Covent Garden that "a man could not go from the Rose Tavern to the Piazza once, but he must venture his life twice."
Compared to today how fortunate he was.
As a child I remember the "Nickers,” who thought it great sport to smash people’s windows by throwing fistful of ha’pennies.
All of these seem as innocent as babes compared to the terror which currently stalks our lives.
I will be honest and say that I have not myself, seen a “Mohock” or Hawkubite - as they are also sometimes named - nor know of anyone who has, but the pages of the press are full of them and the talk in the coffee hoses is of little else so I’m sure the threat is very real.
I am told the group named themselves after the “Four Kings of Canada.” These were noble representatives of the Native people of north America who visited these shores two years ago and impressed all with their regal bearing and exotic appearance.
It was also said that they preferred English ale to French wine, which made them especially popular among Londoners.
The Spectator however reported that they “borrowed their name from a sort of cannibals, in India, who subsist by plundering and devouring all the nations about them”.
Which while being totally wrong in every factual aspect was a powerful and fear inducing statement that undoubtedly sold more of their newssheets.
Listen carefully for this is what I know of the gang and its un holy practices.
“Mohocks” sole intention is to create mischief and it is upon that premise that all their rules and orders sit.
They will drink themselves beyond sense or reason before venturing out into the street to harass any and all passers-by – be they man woman or child. If they can make sport or injure a member of the watch then they are held in high esteem.
They have given many of their especially refined cruelties imaginative names.
“Tippling the Lion” for instance refers to a Mohock pushing a victims nose flat into their face before gouging out their eyes.
A Mohock “Dancing master” earns their title by stabbing their victim through the legs with a sword and then watching as they try to run away.
“Tumblers” attack mostly women, upending them so they are standing on their heads with their skirts flowing over their faces.
Some are then trust into barrels and rolled down Snow or Ludgate Hill.
The foul ingenuity sickens me – and its doesn’t end there..
If you were to fall foul of a Mohock group who classed themselves as “Sweaters” then you would be most cruelly ill-used.
Sweaters arrange themselves around you in a circle from which you cannot escape. They then prick you upon the posterior with their swords – moving you around the circle from one blade to you next until you are suitably “sweated.”
You are then rubbed down with a coarse cloth and allowed on your way – the sounds of braying laughter ringing in your ears.
The author Jonathon Swift writes frequently about the Mohocks and their atrocities. I remember him recalling how a maid of Lady Winchelsea was standing in her doorway after seeing out a guest with a lighted candle when she was set upon, beaten and her face slashed open – without the slightest provocation.
Is it any wonder that I no longer stand in my own porch after 4.00 in the afternoon?
It is the use of swords that inspires the most fear.
Mohocks it’s said, use blades to leave premiant reminders of their vile deeds. Noses are cut in two or in some cases completely severed. People are left unrecognisable after encountering them – some have their faces tattooed rather than cut, the result however is the same.
This horrific practice could be in tribute to the leader or “Emperor of the Mohcks” a shadowy figure who apparently bears the symbol of the crescent moon engraved upon his forehead.
All is do know is that the last time I visited a coffee shop the table was agog at the story of how a gang of youths trhrust their swords through the sides of one young lord’s sedan chair and it only through gods grace that he avoided serious injury.
The same cannot be said of the unfortunate watchman who was attacked in March. Around twenty young men surrounded him wielding sticks and swords – their intention, they said was to nail him up in his watch house and then roll him down the street.
In a remarkably short amount of time these young demons have become famous or should I say infamous for their deeds.
The poet at playwright John Gay is writing a play about them as we speak and has already penned an ode to their infamy.
I remember some of it reads
Who has not heard the Scourer's midnight fame?
Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name?
Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds
Safe from their blows, or new-invented wounds?
“Scouring” for those who are unaware of the term means the thrusting of a sword into another’s body.
ugh
For all their barbarity the Mohocks never take any money from their victims. In truth they do not need to for all are said to be wealthy members of high-born families who – even if they were to be caught and brought to trial – could buy their way to freedom.
Such is the fear instilled in the populous that it has recently been announced in the London Gazette that Queen Anne has become so concerned for the wellbeing of her subjects that a bounty of one hundred pounds has been offered by her court for their capture.
I hope that proves to be their undoing or I shall never leave the house again.
Sir Roger de Coverley – a fellow getting on in years – was recently of a mind to visit the theatre for the first time in twenty years.
He had already, he says, been followed home in the evening by a group of “dark youths” and feared for his life until he reached the sanctuary of his home.
The terror of attack would surely have robbed this gentleman of seeing The Distressed Mother by Ambrose Phillips’s had not an ex-military man of his acquaintance not offered to travel with him in his coach - both to the theatre and then home again.
This gallant captain pledged to use the sword that had last drawn blood at the battle of Steenkirk in 1692 in Sir Rogers defence should he be accosted.
With the good captain by his side and with his servants flanking front and back, the carriage made its way safely to the playhouse and home again.
Such is the vilification of the Mohock name that I have read that none other than Taw Waw Eben Zan Kaladar – the actual emperor of the Mohock people has issued a declaration in which he publicly disavows all of the nefarious undertaking carried out by groups using his peoples name and has vowed to treat any and all persons suffering injury from them to be treated by his own personally appointed surgeons at a variety of hospitals he is having built for that very purpose.
That was in the Spectator.
It seems not a day goes by that there is not another Mohock outrage reported by the press, in fact the very mention of their name seems to lend wings to all broadsheets that make reference to them.
Some – including the esteemed Mr Swift – have raised doubts as to the veracity of the whole story. It is claimed that the entire Mohock panic is being generated by the newspapers in order to boost sales and that in fact there is not a kernel of truth in it.
I cannot imagine that the British press would knowingly print falsehoods just to create fear among its readership to increase sales.
Others suspect that the Mohocks are being used by politicians of both sides – Whig and Tory – to discredit the other. A political game using voter fear to achieve its own ends.
Again, I find it impossible to imagine that as upstanding citizens as those who devote their lives to politics can be so cynical and duplicitous.
There are even those who claim the mohocks are nothing more than a story told to gullible wives by jealous husbands to stop them walking the streets during the hours of darkness.
Perhaps the most extraordinary claim is that the Scare gripping the city is all part of a Jacobite plot to destabilise Queen Annes government.
If this true my abject terror will become even more debilitating
You know, I was reading a pamphlet the other day entitled “An Argument Proving from History, Reason, and Scripture, That the Present Mohocks and Hawkubites Are the Gog and Magog mention'd in the Revelations, And therefore That this vain and transitory World will shortly be 14 brought to its final Dissolution” and at the end I did not know if it was serious news or juvenile satire.
I decided to walk around the house carrying a cudgel….just in case.
A friend of mine, not given to fanciful notions suspects the whole thing began when Sir Mark Cole and three of his young friends were charged at the old baily for riot and assault.
It was said that during a single night earlier his years they rampaged through town armed with lead weighted clubs.
Between dusk and dawn, they savagely beat thirteen men in a Covent Garden gaming club, abused a watchman, slit two peoples noses and slashed a woman’s arm so badly that she lost the use of it. They rolled another woman down a hill in a barrel, sat upon the head of another and overturned several coaches and chairs.
In their defence they claimed that they had set out to scour the streets of undesirables and anyone out at that time of night was obviously engaged in nefarious business. They were fined 3 shillings and fourpence and sent on their way.
I can see how by expanding upon this simple tale of riotous behaviour an entire moral panic can be created for either financial gain or cynical amusement.
But they do say “there is no smoke without fire” and if staying safe from harm means that I must remain at home twenty hours out of twenty-four and only venture out wearing leather armour and brandishing a meat cleaver then so be it.
Fear it is said is used by press, parliament and those with similar agendas to control the minds of men who, once suitably, terrified will believe the veracity of any invented threat – however ridiculous.
I think that’s absolute nonsense.
Thanks goodness I read a pamphlet written just yesterday by the journalist Ned Ward warning of the rise of yet another gang of evil malcontents …” The Farting Club of Cripplegate”
He writes…and I quote “The members of this club are so vain in their ambition to out fart each other that they diet themselves with cabbage, onions and pease-porridge so that everyone’s bum fiddle might be better qualified to sound forth its emulation”
He goes on write
“Judges are appointed to discern sound quality and members drink new ale and juniper water until everyone is swelled out like a blown bag pipe and then they begin to thunder out whole volleys like a regiment of trainbands in a vigorous attack”.
And you tell me there is nothing to be scared about.!
With the amount of noxious fumes being pumped into the air by those flatulent rascals I fear the world as we know it will have ended by 1750.
Do you know where I can buy a nose gay and wind proof overcoat?
Im fascinated by youth movements and the outrage and terror they always create in the older generation from the roaring boys of Elizabethan England to the Teds, mods, punks and ravers of more recent times.
Ill be doing an episode about the Macaroni’s soon so get your periwigs cleaned ready for that.
The Mohocks though were not such a movement in fact it seems likely that they never existed at all.
Even Jonathon swift who once said of them "They cut people's faces every night! but they sha'n't cut mine; I like it better as it is."
Began to suspect that it was all a load of scare mongering bollocks.
In 1712 he wrote
"Here is the devil and all to do with these Mohocks. Grub-street papers about them fly like lightning, and a list printed of near eighty put into several prisons, and all a lie, and I begin to think there is no truth, or very little, in the whole story.
My man tells me that one of the lodgers heard in a coffee-house, publicly, that one design of the Mohocks was upon me, if they could catch me; and though I believe nothing of it, I forbear walking late; and they have put me to the charge of some shillings already."
Even though he suspected it to be nonsense he found his life and livelihood affected by the anxiety of “you never know”
Although their notoriety faded as quickly as it begun, it took about fifteen years before people finally stopped worrying about the Mohocks.
I won’t say any more about the idea of media and government stoking mass fear and anxiety to suit their own ends in this century or the 18th because everyone has their own views about that and this isn’t that kind of podcast.
If you are a member of the farting club of cripplegate however I would advice you to keep your mouth – at the very least – firmly closed.
Now some of you who have been followers of Rogues Gallery Uncovered from its early days may have been curious as to why there was a gap of seven months between my last episode about the explorer Richard Francis burton and this one.
The truth is not very interesting im afraid it’s simply that I was too busy.
Completely out of the blue in June I got offered some projects that were fascinating – very importantly they were paid – and extremely time consuming.
In making sure that I did a good job, while still fulfilling family commitments at home I simply did not have the time or the headspace to produce podcast episodes.
My main reason for doing this was and is to have fun and not let it rule my life and I realised that if I tried to keep all my balls in the air – grow up - id stress myself out and possibly end up producing stuff that I wasn’t happy with, so I stopped.
I’ll be honest I didn’t expect to stop for seven months though.
However now I’m testing the water about coming back and relaunching the podcast with what I suppose could be called season 2 - of which this is the 1st episode.
I have purposefully not looked at any stats or anything in relation to the podcast since June so I don’t know if people have been listening to episodes in my absence or indeed if anyone will be listening to this but I hope that if you are listening you will be glad that rouges is back.
Tell your friends, spread the word, rate and review …you know the drill.
I hope to release an episode once a fortnight which I think is more realistic for me than weekly and means I can work on other stuff, have my own adventures and still hopefully grow the podcast.
If you are a listener new or old and feel like dropping me a line at simon@roguesgalleryonline.com it would be great to hear from you. The address is in the show notes.
You can of course also visit roguesgalleryuncovered.com
Link is also in the show notes
There’s lots more roguish content there and you can sign up to my newsletter and become a “Lovable Rogue”
Next time on Rogues Gallery Uncovered
I LIKE BEER
Enjoy a spectacular night on the lash in Victorian London in the company of one of the ages most energetic party animals
With
Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet Rawdon-Hastings
Im off to check my stats Happy New Year
and …ill see you yesterday.
