The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

by Antonia Hodgson

She looks up at last and stares deep into my eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

  I smile at her. ‘Well. That is progress.’

  The carriage rolls over a hole in the road and she is flung forward. I grab her and pull her to safety, holding her close. She laughs, a little, and her shoulders soften as she settles against my chest.

  The carriage moves on through the rain, the driver urging the horses forward with light taps of his whip. He is keen to travel as far north as possible today before the rain turns the roads to a sticking mud. He doesn’t see the small, dark figure slip down from a sodden rooftop. The boy in the clean, patched clothes sprints after the carriage and climbs on the back. He tucks himself into a gap between the luggage until he is quite invisible. He’s good at that.

  the history behind

  The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

  The ‘imprisonment’ of Henrietta Howard

  In the winter of 1727–8 the king’s mistress, Henrietta Howard, was kept a virtual prisoner in her rooms at the palace of St James. Her husband, Charles Howard, had sent her stark messages, demanding that she return to live with him. When Henrietta refused to comply, Howard applied to the Lord Chief Justice for a warrant that allowed him to seize his wife ‘wherever he found her’.

  This was all play-acting on Howard’s part, though no doubt he would have followed through if need be. The couple had lived separate lives for years and clearly loathed each other. But following George II’s coronation in October 1727, Howard saw an opportunity to humiliate his wife and gain a fortune: irresistible for a man of his nature. While in public he continued to press – violently – for his wife’s return, in private he made it clear that he would relinquish all claims to her for the enormous sum of £1,200 per annum. Although he applied to Henrietta for this ‘fee’, it was clear that – as she couldn’t possibly afford it – his demands were really made to the king.

  The implicit threat was clear. The more Howard insisted upon Henrietta’s return, the more attention he would bring upon her intimate relationship with the king. It was generally accepted at the time that kings took mistresses, but they were expected to be discreet. This was messy and embarrassing. If the situation wasn’t resolved swiftly, it could make everyone involved look weak and a little ridiculous.

  However, Howard’s plan had one flaw. He’d waited years for George to become king in order to ensure the maximum embarrassment and thus the best pay-off. But by this time, George had grown tired of his mistress. When he became king it turned out – much to everyone’s astonishment – that Henrietta had no influence upon him whatsoever. People who had paid court to her for years in the hope of gaining a decent position under the new regime were left bitterly disappointed.

  George refused to pay Howard’s bribe. Perhaps it’s not all that surprising: he was notoriously tight with money. He was also proud, stubborn and prone to terrible bouts of temper. (When very angry, he would snatch off his wig and kick it around the room, ranting and raging like a toddler.)

  This left Henrietta in an intolerable situation. The early years of her marriage had been shockingly bad, even in the context of the time. Howard had married her for her large fortune and then gambled it away, leaving them with nothing. Far worse, he had abused and tormented her throughout their life together. Neighbours later testified that she had been beaten often and savagely, and that Howard would then abandon her and their young son Henry for months at a time, leaving them destitute and desperate. Henrietta even contemplated selling her hair, but could not agree a decent price. Howard taunted her about this when he learned the truth.

  Henrietta’s last hope, as a member of the nobility, had been to find a position at court. And so – ironically – it was Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, who had saved her, by making her a Woman of the Bedchamber. Howard meanwhile found a position with George I. Later, when the two courts split, Henrietta was at last given the perfect chance to escape her husband’s control. But it meant leaving her son Henry in the hands of his father.

  Now, ten years later, Charles had returned, swearing that he would seize his wife by force if he caught her. He even threatened to drag her from the queen’s carriage if need be. And so Henrietta – terrified and powerless – was forced to remain within the sanctuary of the palace walls.

  One of the fascinating things about studying the past is discovering how much has changed – and how much has stayed the same. Sometimes, this can be reassuring. Other times, it’s heartbreaking. Henrietta’s abuse at the hands of her husband is horribly familiar. Howard was clearly taking a sadistic glee in terrorising her. Even Lord Hervey, who disliked Henrietta, felt some pity for her ‘extraordinary, difficult, and disagreeable’ predicament, writing in his memoirs: ‘She was to persuade a man who had power to torment her not to exert it, though it was his greatest pleasure; and to prevail with another [i.e. the king] who loved money and cared but little for her to part with what he did like in order to keep what he did not.’

  Meanwhile Howard – frustrated by the lack of progress – arranged a meeting with the queen, alone. Her description of the tête-à-tête (as she termed it) in the novel is very close to the one she gave to Lord Hervey. He has a liking for camp drama, but the words ring true in this account:

  When Mr Howard came to Her Majesty, and said he would take his wife out of Her Majesty’s coach if he met her in it, she had bid him ‘do it if he dare; though,’ said she, ‘I was horribly afraid of him . . . What added to my fear upon this occasion,’ said the Queen, ‘was that, as I knew him to be so brutal, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so I did not think it impossible that he might throw me out of that window (for it was in this very room our interview was, and that sash then open just as it is now); but as soon as I got near the door . . . [I said] I would be glad to see who should dare to open my coach-door and take out one of my servants . . . Then I told him that my resolution was positively neither to force his wife to go to him if she had no mind to it, nor keep her if she had.’

  In the end the king was persuaded to pay the £1,200 per annum after many weeks of stalemate. (The queen had drawn the line at paying the money herself, despite being asked by Lord Trevor on Henrietta’s behalf. She pleaded poverty, but in fact she was insulted. It was one thing, she said, to allow her husband’s ‘guinepes’* under her roof, but another to pay for them.)

  It was in Caroline’s interest to keep Henrietta at court – better the mistress you know. The queen had been the clear winner in the battle for influence over the king in the early months of his reign, and it suited her to have a mistress she could manipulate. Who was now, in fact, even more in her debt.

  But before this resolution, Henrietta endured those long, dreadful winter months at St James’s palace, trapped, humiliated and terrified as her husband made his demands and her lover ignored them. Within that gap, I imagined a situation where Howard’s initial demands had been much higher and that perhaps there had been some form of compromise. I imagined the king growing more and more impatient about the situation, and increasingly bored with Henrietta. And the queen having to put up with this every night, and realising she might lose her tame mistress. Caroline was a politician and a pragmatist. Perhaps she might put out secret enquiries to find something she might use against Howard?

  That leap gave me room to create Tom’s investigation and the final deal the queen makes with Howard – but the background is all based on fact.* I did allow myself one small piece of guesswork. Henrietta was deaf in one ear. Courtiers joked that this helped her to endure the king’s infamously dull conversation – she simply turned her deaf ear towards him. But there is no record as to why she had become deaf in this one ear. Given the testimony from her neighbours and her own accounts of Howard’s regular, brutal beatings, I have suggested that it was caused by a particularly severe blow to the head. I have no evidence for this, but it seems a possible explanation.

  This was a time when it was perfectly acceptable for a husband to beat his wife. I
n fact Daniel Defoe (one of the few who spoke out against it) argued that beatings had become more common in his lifetime. Even so, Howard was recognised as an extreme case: ‘wrong-headed, ill-tempered, obstinate, drunken, extravagant, brutal’, according to Lord Hervey. Shortly after the events described in the novel, Henrietta finally won a legal separation from Howard – almost unheard of at the time.

  There is more to this story – not all of it bad – and perhaps I will write a little more about it one day. But I would also urge anyone interested in this subject to read Tracy Borman’s brilliant biography, Henrietta Howard: King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant. I would also like to acknowledge my debt to her work here.

  One thing I’m very sure about: it must have been Caroline who persuaded the king to pay Howard £1,200 per annum. For her own Machiavellian reasons, of course. But I like to think out of some fellow feeling with Henrietta, as well. The two women had been friends and confidantes before they were rivals. And I don’t believe the queen would have delivered Henrietta into the hands of her monstrous husband. She was clever and strategic, but she certainly wasn’t cruel.

  Queen Caroline

  Queen Caroline was a fascinating woman. Fiercely intelligent, she made up for years of poor education as a child by reading voraciously and seeking out the great thinkers of the day. She corresponded with Liebniz and Voltaire and, while Princess of Wales, took tea with Isaac Newton. Her husband, who couldn’t really see the point of reading, used to grumble about the amount of time she ‘wasted’ on her books.

  Caroline was a patron of the arts and also keenly interested in matters of science. She was a great early supporter of inoculation against small pox, encouraging research and later inoculating her own children. She also made sure that her children were educated in the arts, taking them to see private collections around London. (Her husband complained about this, too.)

  Caroline really was the power behind the throne. First minister Robert Walpole relied on her heavily to persuade George to take up his policies. She was quite literally the voice of reason in the household. At the same time, she was careful never to let George suspect she had any power over him. She played a clever and no doubt exhausting dance of flattery, patience and at times humiliating deference to her husband. (Who she did, in spite of everything, truly love.) George would often brag:

  ‘Charles I was governed by his wife, Charles II by his mistresses, James II by his priests, William III by his men, Queen Anne by her women-favourites . . . And who do they say governs now?’

  And no doubt Caroline, hearing this, would compose her face and reply, ‘you, my dear, of course’.

  She must surely rate as the most intellectually engaged of British queens and she was also wickedly funny and mischievous. Is it likely she might also have hired spies to help out with certain private matters? Well, this was a woman who once chattered blithely to Lord Hervey about her concerns that her eldest son Frederick might be impotent, and pondered (playfully) about how they might sneak Hervey into the Prince of Wales’ bedchamber to provide an heir. She had a mind for stealth and strategy and took secret meetings with Walpole. (She nicknamed him ‘le gros homme’ behind his back, which given her own weight issues seems a bit rich.)

  Caroline liked to be kept informed and she absolutely adored gossip. I’m pretty certain she would have had a number of informants about the town. She might not have taken quite such a direct interest in them, but then Tom is a gentleman. (Just.) And also – the legs.

  I used a number of sources for my portrait of the queen, but by far her best biographer is Joanna Marschner. For more details see the select bibliography.

  The Execution at Tyburn

  The procession to Tyburn described in the book is based on a number of accounts. The shrouds for penitents, the black crêpe carts dragged through the town, the prisoners travelling backwards, leaning against their own coffins – these were all part of the theatre.

  There was also something ritualistic – almost religious – about the procession. Perhaps, consciously or subconsciously, it was meant to mimic Christ’s journey to the cross. The stop at St Sepulchre’s steps for prayers and floral offerings; the offer of a cup of wine at St Giles; the final confession and chance for pardon beneath the gallows . . .

  People were, occasionally, granted mercy at the last moment. And very occasionally, people were resuscitated after being hanged. There are various stories about this and they all helped to give me the idea of Tom’s experience at Tyburn. One prisoner – for ever after known as ‘Half-Hanged Smith’ – was given a last-minute stay of execution when he’d already been hanged for several minutes. He was cut down and revived. Apparently, the process of being brought back to life was so excruciating (rather like waking up with a cramp, but all over your body, I imagine), that he wished those who’d cut him down would hang for it. Which seems a little ungrateful.

  The point is that in this period, there was no ‘drop’ at a hanging. You didn’t die instantly from a broken neck, but were slowly suffocated. It could take up to fifteen minutes. Hence slang (‘cant’) expressions for hanging such as being ‘stretched’, or ‘kicking your heels’, which is where the modern expression comes from. It was so painful, and took such a long time, that friends and family would often pull on the victim’s legs to speed things along and end his or her suffering.

  This act of kindness had an unfortunate result for Jack Sheppard, a legendary criminal who was a folk hero throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century because of his daring escapes from prison. He was hanged in November 1724, and it’s been estimated that 200,000 turned out for the procession and execution – about a third of the population of London at the time.

  Sheppard had put in place careful plans for one final escape. He’d rented a room close to Tyburn and hired the services of a surgeon. The plan was to whisk him through the crowds as soon as he was hanged and smuggle him to the surgeon, who would revive him.

  Unfortunately, because Jack was so popular with the crowds, they took pity on him and made sure to pull down hard on his legs to help him die more quickly. Even then he might have been resuscitated, but when people saw him being carried away, they thought his body was being taken off to be anatomised. Not realising these were Jack’s friends hurrying him to the surgeon, they started a huge fight over the body. By the time the fighting was over, it was too late to save him.

  The plan for Tom was a little different. Because the rope was knotted at the back of his neck, instead of pressing on the carotid artery, and because Hooper was paid to take him down early, Tom was not as far gone, so therefore didn’t need a surgeon to revive him. None of this would be possible once the drop was introduced, of course.

  Again, see the bibliography for further reading, in particular Christopher Hibbert’s fascinating The Road to Tyburn.

  The Society for the Reformation of Manners

  This was a genuine society and particularly active in the 1720s and 30s. The term ‘manners’ was synonymous with ‘morals’. The society’s informers were responsible for sending scores of women to Bridewell for harsh, physical punishment. They also targeted ‘molly houses’ (gay brothels), and at least two men were hanged for sodomy because of the society’s investigations.

  John Gonson (later Sir John) was a prominent member of the society and the magistrate for Westminster. As a judge, he became infamous for giving harsh sentences to prostitutes. On the flip side of this moral crusading, he was a founding member of the Foundling Hospital for abandoned children.

  He is depicted in plate three of Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress bursting in to arrest ‘Moll Hackabout’. Moll is in a state of undress. Gonson has a rather startled, complicated expression on his face.

  ‘Aunt Doxie’s Brothel’

  When I was doing publicity for my previous book, The Devil in the Marshalsea, the (wonderful) author Robyn Young asked if I’d uncovered anything particularly unusual or surprising during my research. ‘I did find evidence of a fetish brothel,
’ I replied. We agreed this was surprising.

  Then again: sex. Nothing surprising under the sun. It was more where I found it, and how casually it was dropped into the narrative. I’d spotted a reference in the British Library records of a short memoir by Thomas Neaves, hanged for theft in 1728, and called it up to read. It arrived in the rare books room, the fragile original pamphlet, looking as though it hadn’t been read in years.

  Convicted criminals would often write ‘confessions’ to sell at their hanging. The money would go to their family or to pay for a decent burial, away from the anatomists. As mentioned in the novel, they would sometimes hire a ghostwriter such as Defoe to write their story. (Which is no doubt how Defoe got his idea to write Moll Flanders, one of the first novels ever written. So you could argue that the British novel owes its very existence to criminal biographies, if you were feeling mischievous and ready for a scrap.)

  Just like the more lurid true crime books and TV shows today, there was a certain voyeuristic element to these biographies. But Thomas Neaves clearly wanted to increase sales by adding in a rather surprising digression. He describes a brothel dedicated to what we would now call fetish – and in animated detail. There is a room where a dominatrix sits eating her supper, feeding little scraps to her customer, who barks at her feet like a dog. The next room . . . well, it’s called coprophilia these days. I’ll leave it there.

  It was very strange to discover this hidden world described so openly in a prisoner’s confession. It confirmed certain suspicions I had about the early Georgians – that they were fascinated by such things (hence the digression in the pamphlet) and that these brothels went relatively unchecked (hence the Society for the Reformation of Manners).