Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - 18th Century Graffiti: Sex, Murder & Rebellion

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Whether it's a declaration of love, anger or rebellion against the government, graffiti can give us incredible insight into the social history of everyday people.By the 18th century it's recognised by authorities a serious social problem and a threat to their positions of power.How was graffiti used to fuel political unrest? How was it used to aid the sex trade? And how was it used in solving a murder trial? Joining us today is Maddy Pelling, co-host of sister podcast After Dark and author of the book Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Britain, released on March 28th and available for pre-order now.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely of loveliest betwixters, how are you doing? I'm fine. Thank you so much for asking. Are you doing all right? I hope you are. To make sure that you're doing all right and that everybody's doing all right,

let's do the fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. feel safer? I think I feel safer. But while you're here, if you are enjoying Betwixt, and I really hope that you are, it would be a huge favour to us if you would consider following along and subscribing wherever it is that you get your podcasts. I know this is a very tired line said by

every podcaster from here to Timbuk 2, but it really would help us out. And now we've got past that lot. On with the show. Join me for a little stroll, Betwixton. in an 18th century Covent Garden. Mind your step, though. It is a far cry from the expensive shoe shops and street performances that you'll find there today. Although, if you are on the lookout for a particular type of performer in 18th century, London,

this might be the place for you to come. A kind of a sexy performer, a sort of spicy adult performer? Yes. Covent Garden was a hub for London sex workers in the 18th century. If you're looking for naughtiness, you have come to the right place. But it's a competitive place. Word of mouth and reviews are a very important part of running a sex working business.

Still is today. And in the 18th century was no different. But this was before only fans or adult work. So how would you do that? Well, there's some graffiti written on a wall. Let's go and have a look at it. And it reads, Here I lay my celia down.

I got the pox and she half a crown. Huh. Not a fantastic review, but a review nonetheless. Yep, welcome to the world of 18th century graffiti. We are going to be having a look at what was daubed on the walls all around London, what it has to tell us, why people were writing it, and even who was writing it. Let's do this.

What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boy. by just turning a knob and pushing the fun. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for a beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society.

With me, Kate Lister. Graffiti is often overlooked as an interesting political, medium, art form, satirical work. It could tell us so much about places, people, Politics? I mean, I've definitely read some interesting things scrawled on toilet walls. Who hasn't? But what does graffiti of the past tell us about the lives of those who wrote it and the world around them? Today we are joined by Maddie Pelling, co-host of our sister podcast After Dark, and author of The Writing on the Wall, Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of 18th Century Britain, which is out on the 28th of March. How did graffiti aid 18th century desires for a revolution? and what part did it play in the murder trials of the day?

I am ready to find out if you are. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Maddie Pelling. How are you doing? Hello. It's nice to be on here. It feels a little bit weird to be a guest and not host. I'm going to try not to talk over you, Kate, and ask the questions. It's strange when you have to shift gear, isn't it?

And you have to answer the questions and not ask them. I'm going to sit back when you ask the questions and wait for someone else to answer and think this is an easy job. And then remember, I'm the one giving the information. Yeah, we'll get there. I'm so glad you are here, though, because the book that you have written, this is a fascinating piece of social history,

graffiti in the 18th century. I'd never even considered that as a historical resource. But of course it is. That's incredible. I mean, what's more honest and raw and of the people than the obscene things we scribble on walls? Absolutely, and there is plenty of obscene stuff in the 18th century. Yeah, it's a weird one.

I came to it slightly oddly. So my academic training, you know, I did a PhD which was in the history of collecting and specifically the collecting of one duchess. And it was all very, you know, I was looking at she was friends with like George III and Queen Charlotte. And it was all very looking at the very top strata of society. But something that kind of caught my eye when I would go to historic buildings, things like, I mean, who doesn't spend their weekends going into medieval churches? Yeah, I love a good graveyard.

So we do things like that. Go to National Trust properties, go to English Heritage, you know, the kind of stuff you do while you're doing a PhD. And I was noticing a lot of bits of writing on the wall, little carvings, little bits here and there that people would walk past.

And it just seemed to me a completely untapped resource. There'll be like some initials and a date 17, 23 or something. That's incredible. That is the unfiltered work of someone in the past that you can touch. I mean, don't touch it too much. It might wear away. but it's right there on the surfaces all around us.

Of course, a lot of it is lost and we can talk about how you kind of recreate that world when you have a partial archive. But it became something that I would notice all the time and it got to the point, I mean, it's a bit of an addiction. It got to the point where you walk around a National Trust property, everyone else is looking at the paintings on the wall, the China and the cupboard. And it's all very nice. I have a great appreciation for that.

But I'm the weirdo who's walking, just like looking at the wall. And my husband's always so embarrassed of me. me. It's like, what are you doing? People think you're mental just feeling the walls, you know, checking for things, checking the window panes and stuff. But, you know, once you start to notice that, you do see it everywhere and it becomes this really addictive thing. And it is unfiltered, I think, to a certain extent, obviously, you know, you think about areas of our towns and cities that have been demolished, that have been lost. And so there are a lot of marks that have been lost. But the thing that I love about graffiti is that unlike other historic objects,

whether it's paintings, collected items, things that you would traditionally find in a museum or in an archive, they are representative of the tastes of the collectors who've put them into those spaces

and the narratives that they've wanted to prioritize. And there are lots of stories that have been actively erased or fallen away from those stories that we tell ourselves about the past. And graffiti is not necessarily subject to those whims in the same way, those tastes, those ideas,

and those erasures. And so going back to it really gives you this, immediate connection with the past, I think. It's a remarkable resource and one that people haven't looked at really seriously. I will say that there's a huge amount of work that's been done primarily by archaeologists working on medieval graffiti, specifically in churches. And that's the sort of main body of scholarship. But in terms of the early modern world, even into the 19th and 20th centuries, that isn't really that much scholarship. No one's looking

at this stuff. And when you do look at it, you find that actually it gives you a whole other perspective on the past. Do you know what I really like about historical graffiti is they really put the work into it that we just don't do today? Because a lot of this is carved in wood and stone, which is why it's been preserved and why we've still got it to this very day. We just don't commit to our graffiti like that anymore, do we? That we actually sit down and we're going to properly carve. It's interesting that you say that because I think one of the most amazing things I found looking at 18th century graffiti is that there's a huge variety. So even the word graffiti doesn't really come into use until the 19th century

when British, French, German archaeologists are digging up Pompeii and they're dealing with the ancient graffiti in that city and I know that's something you've talked about, Kate, on this podcast before, some of the ancient Roman graffiti in Pompeii, which is incredible, explicit, love it. Yeah, it's amazing.

And in that context in the 19th century, I think it's thought of the 1850s, 1860s, people were excavating those spaces and needed a word to talk about some of this writing on the wall that wasn't formal inscription. but that was worthy of some, you know, interest. So that's when that appears. But in the 18th century, and indeed in the centuries leading up to it,

there isn't really one word for this because it's such a very practice. So yes, we have carvings, which are sometimes the work of a few minutes. Sometimes they are things that people are coming back to and adding to all the time. We know, for example, William and Dorothy Wordsworth in the Lake District, whenever Coleridge would come and visit them, they would go off into the landscape and go to like the same piece of rock where they'd carve their initials to show their friendship and they would go and deepen them every time that Coleridge came. So people are kind of investing a lot of time and effort in this. But then in the

same period, there are people who are doing graffiti with chalk, with paint. Even with blood, I found examples of people cutting their own arms open in prisons in particular to leave their graffiti. And I'm sorry to say excrement. Does that survive? Excrement as well. Wow. Does any of that survive that there's blood or shit graffiti somewhere? Not to my knowledge, but it's often written down. Those are the kinds of graffiti that understandably people do notice in the period. You would do, you would do, yeah. So people do write accounts of that and sometimes actually transcribe the graffiti,

which is another way to kind of come at this, that a lot of the graffiti that I've put into this book has come, yes, from walls, from windows, from pieces of furniture that still exist, but also from pages of books and diaries and letters where people have, you know, quite literally been walking down the street and gone, ha, that's a funny little poem written there, I'm going to write that down, or thinking about sexy poems or kind of things that are maybe a little bit boredy, a little bit rude that you might find in like a tavern window, for example, people were always writing them down in their commonplace books or their diaries

because they're hilarious to us today, just as they were to the people in the past. So there's a real variety, there's a variety in terms of how people are making these marks and in terms of how people to describe them. So in the 18th century words for graffiti are things like inscription, yes, but also device, hieroglyph sometimes. People talk about chalking as a verb, so to chalk something up.

Manuscript, sometimes people will describe writing on the wall as manuscript writing, diary writing. And then you get diamond writing, which is my personal favourite, which obviously, as you can imagine, is something almost exclusively for the upper classes where people are literally sharpening diamonds. So diamond rings, diamond pen.

diamond pens, Robbie Burns famously had a diamond point pen and that is used to write on glass so things like windows or mirrors that kind of thing. So there's a whole variety but the most important thing to think about here

is that graffiti is literally everywhere in the 18th century world. It's not done just by the poor or just by the wealthy. Everyone is leaving their mark which gives it a kind of to a certain extent a democratic feel to it

I think that anyone can have their say in a public place. This is a time when the press is being subject to some level of censorship. Obviously, there's varying levels of literacy. Some people in society are actively denied a voice or any legal status or, you know, whatever it is. And leaving your graffiti can give you that voice. You can leave your point of view, whether it's a picture if you can't read and write, or whether it's a few lines in verse or just a declaration of your anger or your desire or whatever it is, that anyone can leave that anywhere. And it's over the

the 18th century that this starts to become a problem. So at the beginning of the 18th century, graffiti is just an everyday thing. So it's a kind of hangover from the medieval world. People do it in churches, like the priest would do it as well as the congregation. It was totally normal. It would be a way to mark yourself present at church, to leave a prayer. So there's some archaeologists who describe the act of that carving in. Maybe it's, you know, a sort of daisy wheel that's, you know, a circle with a sort of flower petals inside that's thought to be a potrape. so to ward off evil spirits or whether it's a cross shape or whatever it is, that it's kind of prayer like that action of carving it in as akin to saying a prayer. So it's a normal everyday thing. It's

spiritual. It's superstitious. And in the 18th century, people start to do it in relation to who they are, not just what they believe about God or whether places in their small local community, but who they are as a citizen in Britain, in the world. It takes on this kind of transformation. and by the end of the century, it's being legislated against because, of course, you can't have, if you're a state maintaining an empire across the globe that's built on all kinds of racialized gender class hierarchies, you can't have people running around having their say everywhere.

And so it's over that period that this kind of revolution in graffiti happens. In your book, you argue that there is a shift in the use of graffiti in the 18th century, that it kind of moves from what medieval people were doing into, I suppose, a more political arena. I guess as reading rates saw and the press is more active and people become more aware of just what the hell is going on. What kind of things are people writing about? Because if you are going to commit to writing something

in your own blood or your own shit, I don't think you're going to be drawing a cock and balls, for example. You would really need to say this if I'm going to take this particular action. So what kind of things are people writing? I'm looking out my window now and I can see some graffiti on the wall. And that's not worth bleeding for. I can't even really work it out. It's just like a squiggle.

But what kind of things are people writing in the 18th century? I mean, there are cock and balls, Kate. There are lots of cock and balls. Of course there are. Of course there are. Throughout human history, people love to do that. So it really varies. on the one hand graffiti is still at least at the beginning of the 18th century and everyday things so for example if i came to your house and you went in i might take a piece of chalk out of my pocket chalk was something that a lot of people carried i might right on your door kate came by earlier you weren't in really yeah yeah so people would carry that

that seems like quite rude like you've just given me a job now i have to clean my door yeah but it was a way of communicating you know i can't text you to say i've missed you so you'll know that i've come by people did it Things like if you're in a tavern and you're playing cards, you might, again, if you've got a piece of chalk on you, you might keep score on the wall next to you. And there's lots of examples in things like prison records where people have got into fights and all kinds of trouble because they've been playing cards or doing a drinking game. They're keeping track on the wall.

Someone's walked past and smudged it. And they've lost track of who's winning. All hell breaks out. So it's that kind of like everyday stuff. Right. Then there are people who, who are more interested in making a political comment, a comment about who they are,

what their place is in the world. And we get all kinds of people doing this. So we get sailors who are on shore leave, leaving little poems or drawings about their desire to have sex. They've been at sea for so long, or their desire to go back to their families, or the fear of getting on a ship again.

We get in places like Covent Garden, we get sex workers writing, sometimes sort of dire miserable warnings about that trade. And other times it's really joyous and celebratory. It could have been used as an advert for your business or if you're a sex worker. It's a good way of advertising and actually marking the area that you work in. If you're not attached to a brothel, if you're working out on the street, then it's a way of, yeah, marking your turf, essentially.

We get things like reviews on the other hand. So you get the adverts of people's businesses. You get their reviews. you get some really fantastic ones. I will share a couple of these with you. Oh, please do. We get one of a sex worker, and this has come to us from a customer, and it's written in either chalk or pencil, both were quite common, on the wall in Common Garden. And this says, Dear Pat, tis vain to patch or paint, since still a fragrant breath you want. For though well furnished, yet all folks despise a room whose chimney smokes.

So he's saying to this woman, you know, you can do yourself up, you can make yourself look pretty, but your breath, babes, it's not good. Yeah, so we get things like that a lot. There's another really fantastic one where someone, again, around the Combe Garden area, which of course is, you know, known for the sex trade in particular there. Someone wrote, here did I lay my celia down. I got the pox and she half a crown. So, you know, there are warnings, there are reviews. And a lot of these examples come down to us through. the most amazing book, which was published in 1731, so quite early on in the 18th century.

And this is called the Merry Thought or the Glass Window and Bog House Miscellany, which is fantastic title, Stroway. And it's kind of, on the one hand, this typical of the literature genre in the 18th century, this miscellany, this collection of things on a theme. You know, this is an era in which people are scrapbooking, writing down things that they see there of interest. But what's so unusual about this book is the fact that what's been collected, it is graffiti from, first of all, across London.

And the book then becomes so popular, it has a second and third edition. And this goes on to include graffiti from all over Britain, from York, from Bath, from Bristol, all of these places. And it's the most amazing book in that it gives the voices of an entire city and it gives the locations of some of these voices as well.

So you can almost plot onto a contemporary map of London who was where and what they were saying. And it gives you a sort of earthy street level a sense of what it would be like to walk through that city and the voices of the people who are there. And there's a real mixture of joyousness, boisterousness, crime, fighting, desire, loving, all of these things. And it's just remarkable to me. So we get things like we have people commenting on the inequality in this 18th century world. So someone writes on a column at the Royal Exchange, which is a. of course, you know, the centre of commerce in the city. Someone leaves a message that says,

this city is a world that's full of streets and deaths the marketplace where mankind meets. If life were merchandise that men could buy, the rich would only live and the poor must die. So you get these voices of people resenting the world that they live in. One of my absolute favorite pieces. I did put this in the book and I just think it's so funny. It comes from a pub in Chelsea. So a little bit out of the city in this period. It's kind of a little village, you know. And this is coming in the wake of the South Sea collapse, which for anyone who doesn't know is this kind of huge global financial crash that happens when the South Sea Company in the 1720s is kind of set up as it's basically set up using the slave trade, but that's not how it's sold in Britain. It's sold as being a sort of commercial trade venture that just happens to deal with enslaved human beings, but very much out of sight on the other side of the world. so it's relatively palatable to people in Britain.

And people start speculating, investing huge amounts of money in this scheme. And it all goes wrong. It all crashes. People lose loads of money. Sir Isaac Newton loses something like £20,000. MP kills himself over this. It's a really significant disaster. And someone in a pub in Chelsea, you know, after a few drinks,

and he's feeling very sorry for himself. He's lost all this money. He takes to the wall and he says, damn the joke of all the folk I've lost my estate and all men I hate I shall look through the great for tis my fate

the devil take the bubbles I'm in a pack of troubles so he's sat on the side of the Thames having a drink feeling sorry for himself and someone has come along obviously not quite sharing

his misery here and it's written ha ha ha ha underneath it which I just love you do get that don't you like graffiti

and people writing back to the graffiti. I've seen that in modern day settings. Yeah, absolutely. And particularly in pub toilets, right? Yes. And they do that in the brothels of Pompeii, actually. You can see the women that work there talking to one another. And one of the clients, they're making jokes about him and calling him Mr.

garlic farts, which I've always loved. Fantastic. It just reminded me when you're saying the woman with the bad breath in Covent Garden. But I suppose, this is an amazing collection that someone went around in the 18th century documented all this stuff, but we are kind of back to the idea that now somebody's curating it, whereas if I'm walking around a church and somebody from the sixth century, probably not then, a bit later on, has carved a massive cock and bowls, that's quite authentic. Somebody did that.

With this, somebody has curated it again. So you're kind of experiencing it through the lens of somebody else. How have you sort of dealt with that part of this? No, that's a really important point. and the Boghouse Miscellany is kind of as important for what it leaves out. It's fantastic, isn't it? It's a band name, I think, the Boghouse Miscellany. It really is, isn't it?

Yes, I love it. Yeah, it's as important for what it leaves out as what it includes. So whilst we have some of the voices of women, for example, a lot of the graffiti relating to the sex trade, relating to women more generally, is written from a male point of view. Or so it seems, of course, a lot of the graffiti that would have been on the surfaces of Britain

at this time, you can't tell necessarily who's written it. The author of the Boghouse Miscellany, who is anonymous, by the way, he calls himself Hilo Thrumbullo, which is a character name from a play that was popular at the time, a comedy play. So he's kind of, it's a very kind of playful idea of him not wanting to reveal himself. And I think to some extent that's sort of the point that he's just an anonymous, every man going around the city, reflecting it back at itself. But of course, you can see his hand in there.

So because we don't always know who's written the graffiti that he writes, I mean, sometimes he'll say things like written in a woman's hand, but how does he know that? You know, it's ridiculous, especially if it's carved into a surface or, you know, scribbled and shit. Who's to say? Who's written it? But, you know, he kind of puts those ideas onto it. He also doesn't identify any graffitists being, for example, queer or racially diverse. There's no sense of those people, those experiences within this.

It's not to say they're not in there, but they're not identifiable. as such. And so the overall effect of something like the Boghouse Miscellany is a very heteronormative sort of version of Britain that's centred around the male gaze, around male desire. There's a character in it. And I call him a character because I don't really think he was real. And I think we have to take everything in the Boghouse Miscellany with a pinch of salt. You know, there are certainly things in there that are almost too good to be true. And there's one kind of recurring person who leaves a mark who appears throughout all the different volumes and he's called Captain RT, the initials RT, that's all we get of him. He's recorded

as leaving graffiti. First of all, in London, he likes to hang out around Covent Garden, but then we also see him leaving graffiti in taverns along Turnpike Road, so he see him travelling north at one point, and we see him travelling multiple times to and from Bath. And not only does this give us a sense of travel in the period, so some of his graffiti are supposedly dated quite specifically, not only to years, but to the months that he's travelling, you know, along a new road, that's connecting Britain in a new way. So we get a sense of people's movement, people's conversations, ideas spreading in this way.

But the graffiti that he leaves, talking of this underwriting, of this replying to people in conversation, he basically goes to taverns and he's kind of a troll. Like he will go and troll people on the wall. So, I mean, it's kind of sad, but he's quite delicious. And I think he's put in there by the author as a bit of fun.

So, for example, you know, he will reply to a piece of graffiti written by like young boy absolutely going on about how much he loves the barmaid and how beautiful he is and how much he wishes he could kiss her. And then Captain R.T. underneath will be like, well, pay her a crown and have a go kind of thing. It's so disrespectful. It's so misogynistic. But I think there's something so pleasurable in the fact that he keeps appearing again and again. You can almost sort of spot him. And I wonder for 18th century readers of this kind of thing, if that was part of the fun. and there's a kind of intimacy, I think,

between Herlo Thrumbo, the anonymous author and his readers, in that, of course, he's not supposedly, he's not writing this stuff, he's using their words and presenting them back themselves. But there becomes this kind of strange exchange. So by the time the third issue has come out, the third volume, it's so popular. There's a joke in there where someone's left graffiti in one of the theatres in London. And I can't remember the exact lines now,

but it's something about, I'm writing this on the wall in the hope that it makes it into the bog house miscellany. So there's a kind of feeling that you can get famous, you can get some notoriety, your words will get in there. So it becomes a kind of exchange, which I like. And there's a sense of the surfaces in the 18th century world, particularly in Britain anyway, they're sort of buzzing with activity the whole time. Like nothing's, I was going to say nothing's set in stone.

Often it is. But people will come and chisel that away or paint over it and do something new. and there's a whole conversation that's just being turned over constantly. And so it's quite hard to recover it. And we have to be aware of what's lost and the sort of narratives that are being prioritized, I suppose. But it gives a sense of real bustle and busyness, I think, which is, for me, that's just irresistible, having spent years of my PhD looking at these very, you know, worthwhile studying about these very formal settings of the court and of aristocracy and these very choreographed ways of living, ways of being. and actually to step out of that into the 18th century street, into the 18th century brothel, the tavern, whatever it is,

you find it's a very different world, and there's a lot going on there. And actually, they're not that different from us. In terms of the graffiti they're leaving, the things that they're concerned about, the things they find funny, the things that are embarrassed by, the things they find objectionable,

there's a lot of similarity, which really struck me actually and really surprised me as an 18th century historian. Writing this whole book has made me rethink this period, I think. I'll be back with Maddie after this short break. One of the things that has been kind of playing in the back of my mind listening to you describe all this stuff is literacy rates. So, like, in order to write and read graffiti,

you have to be able to read the poor lady who, you know, the person dropped a rhyme about her bad breath. She might have no clue. She might have no idea. But what were the literacy rates in the 18th century like? Would there have been a reasonable chance that just a lad in a bar or a soldier or a girl in a brothel could read and write enough to be able to contribute to this.

Literary rates was certainly increasing. Of course, they weren't universal across society. And in the book that I'm currently writing, my second book, I'm dealing with someone who could not read or write. And actually finding her in the archive is so difficult because she left no written record. And there's only one instance I found where she left her mark, which is just a cross on an official document.

And that's the only time I've ever seen anything left by her. So certainly not everyone can read or write, but that doesn't mean that you can't participate in the culture of graffiti. So a lot of graffiti is still pictorial. So in the big 18th century London prisons like Newgate, the walls were covered in images as well as writing. There's an incredible survival. It's one of the best survival of graffiti.

It's in the Museum of London, although at the moment they're renovating, they're moving their whole site, and so it's not available to go and see. But it's essentially a wooden prison cell. It's actually made up of seven different cells from the same prison, but it's set up to date so you can walk into it as a cell. And it's got these wooden beams that have been squished together to make the walls.

And they are covered in all kinds of pictorial carvings that represent the community that was in there. So they're from well-closed prison, which was a really small prison that was attached to a courthouse in London, not far from the Tower of London, I think. And it was mainly debtors. And you've got a lot of sort of marine, naval maritime people. in there. The square it was in was called Marine Square and it was known for, you know, lots of admirals lived there and things. But if you're a poor sailor who couldn't pay his debts, you went to the prison in the corner. And one of the most amazing things in there is someone at some

point had started drawing the city. Because of course, you're in prison in the city. You can probably see outside your little iron bars, you know, and you're desperate to rejoin it. And of course, in a debtor's prison, you can rejoin at any point as long as you pay the debts that you owe. there's no official time period you're meant to spend it and so there's this hope of like rejoining society and so someone started drawing

a few houses a church, whatever and they're all at sort of eye level so you can imagine the prisoner standing there and that's the other thing about graffiti allows you to stand where they stood and experience the built environment as they did

so someone started and then other people have added to it and actually what's happened is a whole city scape going across the three walls has been left and it's really detailed And it has things like buildings that are clearly shops.

And you can see some of the signs. So in the 18th century, often because of literacy rates, we don't have pub or shop signs that have words on. You know, if you have like the Red Lion pub, it might be an actual Red Lion, carved out of wood, painted, whatever, to show you if you couldn't read that that was the Red Lion. And so you see some of those shop signs carved in this cityscape. There's a pawnbrokers, the three gold balls of a pawnbrokers, which, of course, very fitting for a debtor to prison. They would remember that and want to depict it. And you get other things as well. You get like anchors, lots of sort of ship references, lots of sails, lots of big drawings of very anatomical ships.

You get guns, you get pistols as an incredible carving of a pistol. Right next to a swan, which I can never work out. And I don't know if they were by the same person. It's really hard to tell. Is he shooting the swan? Who knows? But the layering of that that you get there is voices of debtors over maybe two or three decades. And it's their vision of the world they've been removed from.

and they've put it back on the walls and it's sort of an imaginary world that they're occupying while they're in there and it's so incredible. So there's a very long-winded way of answering that not everyone was writing graffiti. Some people were definitely drawing it. Graffiti can also be dangerous, can't it?

I remember when there was the Black Lives Matter marches in London, circa 2020 and there was a lot of controversy because they basically put the Winston Churchill statue, they hid him away, they put him behind wooden panels because they thought, I think I'd describe it as vandalism, or like, but somebody was going to basically graffiti something. So is there a sense of that in the 18th century,

that this is dangerous and that it needs to be controlled? Absolutely. I would say that we owe our cultural perception of graffiti today as being a problem, as being indicative of political unrest, being a nuisance, being antisocial, being vandalism. We owe those ideas to this revolution that graffiti undergoes in the 18th century. So it's absolutely linked. And yet it's so interesting that you say about the Black Lives Matter protest because one of the biggest debates about the value of graffiti and whether it's a historic object in and of itself came when the Colston statue was toppled in Bristol.

And when it then afterwards went on display in the Mshed Gallery in Bristol, the curators made the choice to not remove the graffiti from it. So there was Black Lives Matter graffitied all over the statue. And there was a lot of backlash against that. and people really complained that that was damage to the original artwork. Of course, it's an added layer. It's evidence of a historical moment and a historical idea, and I would argue that it should be absolutely preserved, as the curators did. So this idea very much comes from the 18th century

when around about the middle of the 18th century. So in the first half, we get the Boghaus Miscellany and these rumblings of discontent, people complaining about inequality, some people who maybe have learned to read or write a little bit or who now have the tools, literal tools on their body, to leave their mark, whether it's a piece of chalk, or if you're a woman and you're carrying tiny scissors, for example,

and things like that, you know, if you're a seamstress or whatever, and lots of people did carry these objects on them far more regularly than we do today. There's that kind of discussion around inequality, but in the middle of the century, it becomes really part of the political discourse like never before. So in the 1760s, we see supporters of the populist, really quite bigoted MP, John Wilkes, using graffiti to spread his message. So John Wilkes is, this is in very broad strokes. He's an MP who's anti-establishment.

He's anti-government. He is even anti-monarchy, which, of course, is a very dangerous thing. We have revolutions in America, in France, that topple the system of monarchy that's in place there. So there's real fear in Britain about the safety of the monarchy, what it means. And there's kind of debate around that that's legitimate. But when people openly come out against it, it can be a problem. Wilkes is one of those people. So he owns a newspaper called the North Britain, which spews out this rhetoric against

the government, against the prime minister at the time, Beaut, who is, I think he's Scottish. And so this is kind of anti-Scottish feeling as well. this is an era with the generation after the Jacobite risings when predominantly Scottish-backed armies come all the way down to Derby to fight the Hanoverian king, George. And so the newspaper in its 45th edition criticizes not only the government, the king. And Wilkes has gone too far. There's calls for his arrest.

He has to flee to France for a little while. And the 45, the number 45, because of this, the 45th issue of the newspaper, but becomes this really big deal. And his supporters take this on and they leave it in really remarkable places. And it becomes this really provocative, sort of dog whistle really,

for certain types of intolerance, certain types of anti-establishment idea. And again, we see it a lot being written in chalk. And this is because chalk is not an unusual thing to carry on you. So if you're caught with it and there's a chalked 45 nearby, you can legitimately deny you had anything to do with that. but it's also a really fast way of spreading a message. So they chalk things like carriage doors

that then move through the city spreading that message. They even chalk people's clothing. And two men are actually arrested when they manage to chalk the 45 on the back, the cloak or the coat of a magistrate walking past. They managed to get him. And they are actually punished for that. They're taken to court for it and arrested.

And you get a sense that graffiti is, becoming dangerous, that it's not necessarily just a visible nuisance in the built environment. It's not just a little bit unsightly, but it's actually spreading really scary ideas. We see it again in 1780 in the Gordon riots. So over the course of a week, Britain basically comes the closest it does to its own revolution. The parliament has just passed this bill to give Catholics new civil rights, to allow them to come into the army, all of these things. And this is very much because there's revolution happening in America and they need a big army.

So they think, do you know who we usually don't allow in? Let's give some guns to the Catholics and they can help us out. And this legislation becomes really unpopular and there's a whole march against it. And it turns into basically six days of violent riots, Catholic houses are burned down, schools are burned down. And it escalates to the point where Newgate prison is broken into.

Hundreds of prisoners are released. And these are people, who are in there for the pettiest of things right through to rape and murder, and they're now just free in the city. And the Bank of England is actually attacked by a mob of people. Wow, look at us. We did get hot under the colour, didn't we? We got quite close. And it's all put down when the government calls in the army, including John Wilkes, interestingly, who a decade or so earlier has been this kind of anti-establishment figure. and something like 600 people are shot dead on British streets to put down this revolution.

In the course of this week, graffiti helps to spread initially the anti-Catholic messages. So we get no popery written. Not no popery as in the nice smelling stuff. I was going to say, that's an odd revolutionary stance to go on. I mean, I would argue it's a reasonable one. I'm not one for popery. But no popery isn't no Catholics. It's written.

No popes. No popes, yeah. It's written again on carriage door. It's stitched into clothing. People wear rosettes with it. But it's written on, first of all, the houses of Catholics that are then burned down. So you go along to a Catholic's house that you know, you write no property on there. The mob follows you.

They burn the house down. And really quickly, graffiti sort of shifts and changes how it's being used by the mob as these events unfold. So Catholics in the city catch onto this and part of the Jewish community as well, who are also come under fire in this chaos for being. different or other in any way. And they start to use the same graffiti to make the mob move on. So they'll write it further down their street

or they'll write it on their own house and then stand outside saying, we agree with this message. You know, the Catholics are over there. Go get them. And so they managed to protect themselves. But then really insidiously, other criminal gangs in the city use the chaos to their advantage over six or seven days.

And they adopt a graffiti language that already exists, so a language used by beggars. And we know about this because in the 19th century, the very early 19th century, the early police force include some of these marks in their police handbooks of what to look out for, and they say that it's already decades, if not centuries old. And this is a language of symbols, so thinking again about literacy rates amongst people who are living on the streets. So they're not words, they're symbols, and they signify things like this house is good to beg at, this person's very generous, this person. This person, And we've all begged so much, they don't answer the door anymore.

This house has a big scary dog, don't go there. And the criminal gangs during the Gordon riots, sort of adopt and adapt to this language to signal to their friends what houses would be good to rob, where women are living alone. And it becomes really dark and scary that whilst the city is burning, and it really is burning, there are huge bonfires of furniture owned by Catholics and Jews piled up in the streets seen from rooftops across the city. It's really dramatic. And during all of this, if you look closely, graffiti is working to direct people and to signal to people where you can

go next, who you can attack next. And it becomes this really, really dangerous thing. And it also kind of gives voiced the angry mob. So supposedly, and this is very difficult to say with any certainty, because the records are so scanned. And this is always the way with graffiti when you don't have it written down, or you have it written down second or third hand in the period, and it doesn't exist anymore. It's really hard to say. But supposedly, when Newgate prison is emptied of all its prisoners, the rioters come along with a pot of paint or several pots of paint, and they write the words, His Majesty King Mob, over the front of the prison as a kind of calling card to the authorities to be like, we're in charge now. It's such an incredible moment when the mob is literally

naming itself, giving itself a voice, giving itself authority. and it's using graffiti to do that. So towards the end of the 18th century, really people have become aware that graffiti is no longer this everyday thing. It's not just something to have a bit of fun with. It's not something you can use superstitiously or religiously to protect your home

or to mark yourself present in church. People continue to do that well into the 20th century. That's not to say that that stops. But in the public space and public discourse, graffiti is now something with real potent. and it's feared by the authorities. And so by the start of the 19th century and the regency, we start to see people being prosecuted in certain circumstances,

leaving graffiti in public places. Didn't it also help solve the murder? It did. Was it a French midwife who got? Personally, I think that it's kind of a shame that she came a cropper, but graffiti was her undoing. What was that story? It was.

So this is right at the start of this period. So it's actually in 1688. So at the start of the very long 18th century, And as an 18th centrist, I will defend us and say, we like the long 18th century. We steal decades from other centuries. So the long 18th century runs roughly from 1688, which is the year of the glorious revolution when James II is dethroned right through to maybe Victoria coming to the throne in the 1830s. So in this early period, there's a midwife.

She's a French immigrant. She's called Mary Aubrey. And she's been working in and around Common Garden, which is really a kind of heart of graffiti. and of course the bog house miscellany goes on to really focus on that a few decades later. And she's just happily living her life, helping women give birth. Maybe she's practicing abortions as well. It's kind of unclear. But she's offering healthcare to women in this place.

And her husband is, again, really difficult to work out. He's some kind of merchant maybe. He seems to sail a lot to France. He's going in between France and London. And whenever he's back, he's basically a horrible abuser. He will get drunk, he'll beat her up. and then he'll go off again to France. And on one of these occasions, he goes very far.

And I do talk about it in the book, but maybe we don't need to get into the details here, but it's really grim. And eventually he's so drunk, he falls asleep in the rooms that they're renting in common garden. And she unties the little silk, more likely string tie that's holding up his stockings of his clothes. And she climbs on top of him,

and he's still asleep because he's so drunk. And she strangles him. And he's dead. And she panics. And the first thing she does is pour herself a glass of brandy, which fair. Yep. And she then decides,

because she has all these tools, because she's a midwife, she decides to cut him up, and she cuts off his arms and his legs and his head, and she wraps each piece in cloths and disposes of them in the public privies in and around Covent Garden.

Interesting choice. Yeah, I mean, arguably, what he deserved. I do not feel sorry for him told, no. No, I've limited sympathy for this man. Now, she thinks she's got away with it. carries on with her midwifery. She actually attends a birth the day after she's cut her husband up. She has no choice. She's just going about her normal life. Now, one of his friends, who is sailing back and forth with him, comes to find him to tell him, we've got a new job in France, get on the boat,

we're going. And of course, there's no answer at the door of the lodging house where she's staying. So he takes the chalk out of his pocket and he leaves a note to say, hi to the man. I came by, we've got this new job, come and meet me in this Catholic chapel, because they're French Catholics, round the corner, and we'll get going on this trip. And so Mary comes home, she sees this note and she thinks, I'm going to have to cover my tracks somehow. So she goes to the chapel the next day to meet this man. And she says, he's obviously very surprised to see her. And he says, where's your husband? And she says, there's a warrant out for his arrest because he's been drunk, he's been fighting. And he's actually gone to the new world. So that's the end of that. You don't need to worry about it.

It's all fine. Okay. However, obviously. inevitably the body parts start to be discovered because people go to the public privies and find an arm or a torso or, you know, pieces of him. And this absolutely sparks a nationwide panic, not just a Covent Garden panic or a London-wide panic, a national panic. So this is a time when there's real fear of Catholicism. And it's even feared that James II, who's on the throne at this point, might himself have converted to Catholicism. There's fears of a Catholic plot, there's Catholic spies in London they're trying to take over

and so suddenly this body appearing in pieces people start to whisper in the press this is a Catholic plot and the discussion of this goes up to the highest levels there are government agents who come and check this out

and parts of the body are brought to a local pub and comment garden and laid out on a table the husband's friend who's left the piece of graffiti is about to go to France and he hears of this and all this panic and he goes to the pub and he sees the body parts

and he recognises a scar on the arm of his friend and the head's still missing at this point so he's not 100% sure. But eventually the head is found and he comes forward and says, I know who's done this. I noticed he's been missing for the right amount of time and he essentially seals Mary's fate

and she's executed. She's burned at the stake for the murder, which is pretty grim. And none of that would have happened were not for a piece of chalk. No, exactly. If he hadn't have left that note, he wouldn't have noticed his friend was missing. He would have gone off to France and he wouldn't have been suspicious enough to go and look at the body.

I mean, it was a kind of spectacle that people were going to see as an activity on a Sunday. As you do. But the likelihood is he wouldn't have had it in his mind to think that it was his friend if he hadn't left that note and she hadn't answered it. So yes, she's caught out because of a piece of chalk and a little everyday Monday message. Maddie, you have been fascinating to talk. to today. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? They can find me on Twitter at Maddie Pelling, same on Instagram, and I'll share some images that we've talked about today on there. My book is called

Writing on the Wall, Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of 18th Century Britain, and it's out on the 28th of March with Profile Books, and it's available for pre-order now. Please pre-order it. It's really crucial that people pre-order it. It allows you to get more press interests and all that. So go to Wherever you get your books and order it now, please. Thank you so much, Maddie. You have been a treat. Thank you so much for having me, Kate. It's been great. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Maddie for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along

whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just want to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got episodes on everything from Viking sex to the history of drag all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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