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Image Source: David Davies/PA
The story of the Hartlepool Monkey may be one of the most famous “strange but true” stories to have ever come out of Britain. The story goes like this: during the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship, allegedly a chasse-marée wrecked off the coast of a small British port city called Hartlepool. There was only one survivor: a monkey. The monkey, apparently a mascot was dressed up in a little uniform and when the villagers found the monkey, they noticed its uniform, and the fact that it didn’t respond to questioning. With all those things combined with the fact that the locals of Hartlepool apparently didn’t know what the French looked like, they reached the conclusion that the monkey was a French spy and hanged it after an impromptu trial on the beach. But the question must be asked: did it really happen?
The facts…
At first glance, the idea that the people of Hartlepool would be so ignorant to have mistaken a monkey for a Frenchman seems to be too ridiculous to be real. Of course, given that, 130 years later, British farmers stationing American GIs could be heard saying things like “We like the Americans but don’t care for these white chaps they’ve brought with them,” part of me is more likely to actually let this one slide. After all, if, even with the mass media being able to send photographs and films of Americans, there were still people who believed that all Americans were black, is it really that far a stretch to believe that, in an era where it’s very likely that the people of this small town might have never really seen a foreigner, the French are dead-ringers for monkeys?
However, there’s another reason the story is unlikely to have happened. The original source of the legend as we know it comes several decades after, in a song written by Geordie songwriter Edward Corvan called “The Monkey Song.”
In former times, mid war an’ strife,
The French invasion threatened life,
An’ all was armed to the knife,
The Fishermen hung the Monkey O!
The Fishermen wi’ courage high,
Seized on the Monkey for a spy,
“Hang him” says yen, says another,”He’ll die!”
They did, and they hung the Monkey O!.
They tortor’d the Monkey till loud he did squeak
Says yen, “That’s French,” says another “it’s Greek”
For the Fishermen had got drunky, O!
“He’s all ower hair!” sum chap did cry,
E’en up te summic cute an’ sly
Wiv a cod’s head then they closed an eye,
Afore they hung the Monkey O!
I haven’t been able to gather exactly when this was written, but Corvan was born in 1830 and his career peaked in the 1850s, so, it’s safe to say it was written at least 40 years after the Napoleonic Wars ended. You’ll notice that, even in this poem, the town’s name is never mentioned, and I haven’t been able to find any reference to any prior source for the classic story, and some have traced it back to Corvan’s own appearances in Hartlepool. Interestingly, there’s actually an old Scottish song with a very similar theme, one with the refrain: “And the Boddamers hinged the monkey O!”
It apparently refers to a real event in 1772 in the village of Boddam, Aberdeenshire, when a ship wrecked off the coast of Boddam, and they hanged the sole, primate, survivor. But their reasons were actually far more reasonable; the villagers could only get salvage rights if there were no survivors, so, therefore, the monkey had to go. To this day, people from Peterhead still taunt the people of Boddam with “Fa hangit the monkey?!” (“Who hanged the monkey?”) Needless to say, Hartlepool has embraced the legend far more than the Boddamers, which leads to another mystery.
Why have they embraced it?
You see the picture at the top? That’s the mascot to Hartlepool’s football club, H’Angus the monkey. And not only that, but in 2002, when Hartlepool decided to have a directly elected mayor, all the three major political parties gave their candidate, and Hartlepool United sent their own candidate, Stuart Drummond, the man in the monkey suit. He didn’t actively campaign and his only promise was giving free bananas to schoolchildren. He narrowly won. He was elected two more times, and would likely still be serving if the people of Hartlepool hadn’t decided to go back to the old council system last year. So, while one would expect an incident this bizarre to be a continual source of embarrassment, it seems to have become a source of pride for Hartlepudlians. And, I have to ask myself why? Why have they so embraced it?
A tourist’s guide to Hartlepool may have a key. It says of the legend, “Then there are some who point to a much darker interpretation of the yarn. They say that the creature that was hanged might not have been a monkey at all; it could have been a young boy. After all, the term powder-monkey was commonly used in those times for the children employed on warships to prime the cannon with gunpowder.” Could it be that the reason the reason they’re so proud of the monkey hanging is because they’re trying to convince themselves they didn’t hang a boy? As much as the theory appeals to me, especially the part of me that loved the series finale of MAS*H, I really can’t see that hypothesis happening. At the time, England was under the “Bloody Code,” where at least 220 crimes carried a capital sentence, and minors certainly weren’t let off easy. For instance, one capital crime was grand larceny, defined as the theft of goods worth 1 shilling. Accounting for two centuries of inflation, that’s about £3.14 today. That’s five dollars; just for reference, I recently bought a Nirvana CD for five dollars. And in those days, stealing something that cost so little meant death, or, if the judge was lenient, deportation to an island on the other side of the world where every living thing was potentially dangerous. And, of course, the people were less likely to see that as being in some way wrong.
I think a more mundane explanation is in order; I’ve looked at the history of Hartlepool, and, apart from the monkey hanging incident, I don’t really see much that distinguishes this town. Well, there’s the town football team, but, despite the fact that people like Meat Loaf and Ridley Scott are fans, the club doesn’t seem to have really distinguished themselves in any way. I mean, Brian Clough started his career as a manager in Hartlepool, but he only distinguished himself when he joined Nottingham Forest; and, when the best they’ve done is narrowly missing promotion to the championship in 2005, it’s probably inevitable that the monkey’s all they’ve truly got going for them.
If any Hartlepudlians have an alternate explanation for the Monkey Mythos, please tell me so in the comments.
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