One of the best things about history is the quirky connections that burrowing into it unearths – and being retired, I’m free now to race off down the rabbit hole in hot pursuit.
It started innocuously enough. Researching a piece about the Yeoman Body on postcard parade in 1967 lead to the Illustrated London News 2 November 1858 article “New Costume for the Yeomen of the Guard” and Messrs Batt & Son of Edward-street, Portman-square its designers and suppliers. Ignoring the confusion between Tower Yeoman Warders and Yeomen of the Guard – after 41 years at the Tower you get used to explanations falling on deaf ears (don’t even get me started on beefeaters…) – I launched an Internet search for the company. Eventually I ended up in the delights of the British Newspaper Archive. And joy it was. I found what I needed, right up to their bankruptcy in 1888, three short years after announcing their appointment as tailors to Her Majesty in March 1885. However, it was the fisticuffs of 1837 that really intrigued.
Bell’s Weekly Messenger reported the court case on 22 January titled ‘Curious Assault’, with generous use of quotation marks to accentuate the jargon and enhance the drama. Master Tailor, Richard Batt (defendant) employed 12 journeymen tailors in his workshop including Edward Reed (complainant) ‘a slim-looking journeyman knight of the thimble’. Due to ‘a misunderstanding as to the price he was to have for his labour’ Edward found himself ‘discharged from the shop, after being paid less than he considered he was entitled to.’
Returning to the shop the following Saturday night to repay the shilling he had borrowed from a shopmate, Edward encountered Mr Batt, and taking advantage of the opportunity asked for a ‘trifle more’. Batt’s flat refusal and Edward’s response ‘Very well, it requires no comment’ caused his former employer to run ‘up in a passion, and after administering sundry “cuffs”, finished by “collaring” his coat, and ejecting him into the street’. The Oxford English Dictionary translates cuffs as hitting with an open hand and collaring as a wrestling term for grabbing by the neck. At this point in the proceedings justice Rawlinson intervened and established that Edward Reed was a “flint” ie a journeyman tailor who had refused to work for the wages settled by law. A fellow flint (possibly loan shark?) in the workshop urged Reed to give Batt a “muzzler” – a violent blow in the mouth. The defendant called on his 12 employees to bear witness he had merely taken the claimant by the arm and gently led him from the shop with John Gillot nominated to support Batt’s account. Reed’s objection that Gillot was a “dung” – ie a dunghill having accepted the contentious wage settlement – was overruled. Batt’s testimony was duly corroborated, Reed deemed the aggressor, and the case ‘disposed’ without further ado.
Thanks to the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue for the insight into industrial relations at the time and fighting talk. Edward Reed’s subversive leanings probably damned him and one has to feel for John Gillot caught in the middle. More sobering is the fact that the tailor shop was still working on a Saturday night and one can only hope that Mr Batt had had the foresight and care of his workforce to install gaslighting.
31.3.2023