John Julius Angerstein - Monster Hunter

What do we remember John Julius Angerstein for? A railway? A pub? A grubby industrial estate on Greenwich Peninsula? Starting the National Gallery? Some curious theories on interior ventilation? A faux-naive 'accidental' encroachment on Blackheath? As Catherine the Great's illegitimate son? Being a Lloyds Name? Abolitionist slave owner?

I'm willing to bet that whichever of the above - or the many other curious things about his life stick in the mind, the one that hasn't occurred to you so far, but will do forever more is as The Man Who Wrote The Monster Hunter's Handbook.

Of course it didn't have a title anywhere near as snappy as that. He named it An Authentic Account of the Barbarities lately Practised by the Monsters! Being an Unprecedented and Unnatural Species of Cruelty, Exercised by a Set of Men Upon Defenceless and Generally Handsome Women.

Now, those last three words will be important, as will the plural on the word 'monster' - but I think I'm getting ahead of myself. "Monsters, Phantom? What the bloomin' hell are you talking about?"

Well, THE Monster, actually. The London Monster, to be completely accurate (which the rest of this post almost certainly won't be...) A chillingly bizarre 18th Century precursor to all the other perverts, murderers and bugaboos that have stalked the streets of the capital ever since - and a direct link with Jack the Ripper a century later.

But more than that, he was a phenomenon - a classic example of mass hysteria that created its own monster between 1788 and 1790 - and, like all such things, with results that were ridiculous, comic and, ultimately rather tragic.

And in the middle of all this, John Julius Angerstein, a successful merchant living, at the time, in the heart of London's fashionable St James, who volunteered to be the Van Helsing of the story and, in doing so, probably fanned the flames of panic rather than saving the world.

The Monster's speciality was in stabbing women in the thigh or buttocks (naturally the papers and cartoonists of the day seized upon the buttocks-part) as they walked along the street. He'd follow them, muttering obscenities, then quickly plunge his knife into their skirts and disappear.

Sometimes he changed his tactics and carried a nosegay that he would invite girls to sniff. It contained a knife that would cut their faces. Personally I find it a bit odd that any girl would sniff a stranger's posy (and that sounds much ruder than I intended) when all the town talked about was of a monster who got his kicks through such an act but hey - we're not talking sense here, we're talking the Mob.

The newspapers and coffee houses were full of it. Poems were written, ballads sung and lurid caricatures scribbled. Some women became so panicky about walking the same streets as the Monster that they started wearing specially-fashioned copper petticoats. Those who couldn't afford armour contented themselves with cork-rumps (no, I'm not entirely sure what one of those is either) or even giant porridge pots placed over their posteriors - thankfully the fashion for massive skirts meant that the porridge pots probably didn't show much.

Monster Mania only began to take crazy proportions, however, when John Julius Angerstein took it upon himself to start collating all the evidence (despite the handful of John Fielding's Bow Street Runners, the police force was still a bumbling mixture of elderly beadles, useless night watchmen and part time constables, though apparently the Chelsea Pensioners weren't to be crossed...) and create a reward for the capture of the Monster.

The grand sum of one hundred pounds was offered for the capture of the monster, and Angerstein created a series of posters declaring the reward.

Suddenly everyone went berserk. People were accused left, right and centre and it only took someone to point a finger for a mob to form out of nowhere and attack some poor guy for no reason whatsoever.

This had the unfortunate side effect that pickpockets who had been caught by their quarry, merely shouted "Ooh - look! There's the Monster! Quick! He's getting away!" and the poor gent would be chased and beaten up by a crowd of mad people while the pickpocket got away with the loot.

It got to a point where some doughty fellows formed their own group called The No Monster Club and wore badges to prove they weren't the Big Bad, which of course worked really, really well and was completely unfakeable.

Angerstein did his own 'investigations,' which involved him interviewing each of the 'victims' (not all turned out to be - some lied or even cut themselves, for various sordid reasons, the most common being that the monster was only supposed to attack beautiful women, so being attacked by the Monster was a declaration that you were a gorgeous creature...) and making notes, much of which seemed to focus around how attractive he found each one.

His notes got more detailed the prettier the girl, but the annoying thing was that no real picture of the Monster appeared. He was tall, short, thin, fat, big-nosed, small-featured - in short, he could be anyone.

Eventually, just as Angerstein was creating his Monster Handbook, a guy was arrested, and charges (very probably) trumped up. Enough of the women agreed that artificial-flower maker Rhynwick Williams was their man to get him convicted. Despite his cast-iron alibis for several of the attacks and good character witness statements, in the eyes of the mob, he was the Monster.

Williams wasn't actually hanged, which was what I was fearing as I read Jan Bondeson's The London Monster - Terror on the Streets in 1790, (heartily recommended.) He was imprisoned, and people used to go to gawp at him in gaol - using the excuse that they were going to buy his fake flowers - and commented on how weedy and insignificant the Monster looked, unsurprising, since he probably wasn't the Monster.

Reading Bondeson's book, it occurs to me that the Monster was probably many-headed - that the hysteria provoked copycat attacks and there wasn't actually any one Monster but a whole bunch of weirdos who got their kicks from poking women with sharp objects. Angerstein says as much in the title of his pamphlet. The attacks lessened when Williams was banged up, but they didn't stop entirely.

For me this is as much the product of the times as one guy in particular. There was revolution and mass hysteria oing on in Europe; we had our own, almost Carry-On panic. And John Julius Angerstein, however well-intentioned, probably didn't really help matters with his posters, leaflets -and that massive reward...

The Phantom Recommends

If you don't have a lovely, cuddly independent bookshop in your area, like The London Review Bookshop (good cakes if you're ever in the Bloomsbury area) West End Lane Books (good contacts) or the very wonderful Daunts (fab selection and lovely architecture) - and let's face it, it's unlikely we'll ever get another one now - what with the way modern publishing works, the internet and supermarkets - then what's the next best thing?

Someone at the local Waterstones that actually gives a damn, that's what.

Jayson has just started as the assistant manager at Greenwich Waterstones and, as a Greenwich resident, has started beefing-up the Greenwich and London section and making it much more prominent in the shop. He even tells me he's had one book reprinted because he saw it was going out of print. He's keen to stock excellent books about the area, and happy to hear suggestions.

I'm delighted to see this. Of course I'd like to see a lovely independent bookshop and before you remind me, yes, Maritime Books on Royal Hill is lovely - but it's specialised - which is slightly different. So, too, are Greenwich Book Time which sells remainders and the second-hand guys at Halcyon.

Let's get realistic here. We have someone - with clout - who's prepared to go that extra mile for local people - and that counts for a lot in a world where chains usually just plough-along-quite-nicely-thank-you.

Now. Here's the bit where The Phantom's tricorn starts to strain at the band. In places where you sometimes see staff recommendations on postcards dotted around the shop, you may well start to see little "The Phantom Recommends..." postcards on some of the books - they will look like this:

They will be culled from the The Phantom Bookshelf initially (and yes, I AM slowly adding to that - but I'm doing it very unscientifically, working my way along the shelf, and it's taking aaaages...) but I may well be doing a few specific reviews for Jayson. Needless to say, I'm not going to say I love a book if I don't - the same rigorous Phantom standards will be applied to any reviews I write.

In the meanwhile, keep an eye out at Waterstones for a slowly-growing Greenwich section. Of course it can only ever be as large as there are books in print - and there are never enough of those, thanks to the economics of publishing (otherwise Olde Phantome's Greenwich Almanack would have been out by now) but maybe, if a major chain is interested in stocking local books, more publishers will be prepared to take a punt at printing them.

I can only see this as a good thing. Here's something I never thought I'd say. Go Waterstones...

Greenwich

An Architectural History of the Royal Hospital for Seamen and the Queen's House

John Bold, 2000

Do you ever plough along happily, doing whatever you do, and then suddenly get such a jolt that you wonder what the hell you're doing and why you even bother?

This happens with me most times I pick up an Iain Sinclair book. His icy, passionate prose (yes, the two do go together in this instance) his outrage and anger, his love and humanity just floor me every time. But I tell myself that that's okay - he writes about north London on the whole, reserving his comments about Greenwich largely to digs at the Millennium Dome.

But now, in a totally different vein, I've found another book that staggers me in its detail and depth. It's not written with Sinclair's deliberately understated/flamboyant style; indeed it's far more formal and even 'official,' but neither is it a stand-back toe-the-party-line look at Greenwich's architectural history.

John Bold is cool and methodical, and has clearly had the kind of access to records and photographs that the rest of us can only dream of - but he shares it with us (at an admittedly squeakingly-expensive price) in page after page of readable prose, peppered with little details that, even if Bold doesn't elaborate on them in these pages, make the reader's imagination swing off on tangents - by my reckoning a good thing indeed.

He's best when it comes to original plans and designs - for everything from the grotto originally designed to go at the top of the giant steps (where General Wolfe is now) to stage-by-stage drawings of how the Queen's House and ORNC were built.

The photographs are incredible - loads of pics I'd never seen before. The one that stands out in my memory as I write this, is of the conduit head in the north east of the park (just above the kiddies' playground) before it was unimaginatively bricked up. The picture, an antique postcard, shows the end of the tunnel opening out onto a pond in a most romantic fashion. Why they had to brick it up and lose the pond can only be down to Health & Safety nonsense - why they couldn't have just put an iron grille over the entrance and kept the pond is beyond me.

Much of what I like about Bold's book is what he doesn't write - he gives us huge amounts of historical detail and explores ideas behind what has happened to the place over the centuries (his analysis of the 1980s incarnation of the Queen's House is interesting indeed - something so recent, yet already historic and controversial. Sadly, he refrains from comment on the current incarnation...) but many of the little anecdotes and incidents that make Greenwich so immediate are tantalisingly mentioned, not enlarged upon. I like that. It leaves something to ponder upon at leisure...

If I have any criticism, it's beyond the perameters of the book. There is virtually nothing about the earlier history of Greenwich - he says that other people have already covered it. I guess he has a point, but I would have valued his methodical approach to Bella Court or Placentia.

All in all, thank you to all of you who told me to forego the curries for a while and invest in this instead. I was getting fat anyway. It's a pricey, pricey buy but - frankly - if you get this book, it's unlikely you'll ever need to read this blog ever again...

The Buildings of England - London 2: South

Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner

I was fed up with borrowing a very out-of-date version of this classic from the library, so I asked Santa Claus for my own copy this Christmas.

And Pevsner's still a really good all-rounder for getting a grip on the architecture of an area.

What I like about him is that he gives not-quite-but-not-far-off equal measure to modern buildings as the ancient ones. This is very useful as there are very few local publications that give any notice to modern stuff - especially the ugly buildings. Virtually every book about Greenwich you'll ever read will tell you about the ORNC, Queen's House, Observatory etc, and of course Pevsner pays most attention to these gems, but who else is going to even notice Holywell Close (in Ruthin Road, if you're wondering) which is "a pleasant combination of 1974-5...an early example of the vernacular mode by the GLC"?

Despite this book covering the whole of the South of London (how come whenever books and magazines cover London there's always three sections for the North - North/West/East - and just one to cover everywhere in the south? We're lumped-in with Twickenham and Wimbledon - which are bloomin' miles away...) there's a good-size section for the whole borough of Greenwich - another plus for those not living in the town centre. He's not always polite about buildings, which, of course, is even more enjoyable.

There is one thing that niggles. There's a hint about it on the front cover. "Published with the aid of the Greater London Council."

Hang on - the GLC was disbanded in 1986.

And yes, folks. This book, despite continuing in print, and going through numerous reprints, has not been updated since 1983. Now, admittedly the Great Man Himself died that year, and perhaps the books have been set in aspic out of some kind of respect.

But these are gazetteers, rather than straightforward books. I'd have thought that someone would have picked up the baton on a franchise like this and started updating them.

As a guide to the architecture that was around in 1983, this is a fantastic record. The Old District Hospital, for example, still lives in this book (though he describes one of my favourite modern buildings in Greenwich, the Health Centre as "an ugly A-frame with forceful raking struts.") But it's in sore need of updating. Are there any Pevsner-alikes in the building?

So - that old copy in the library is as up-to-date as they come. But in case you want to get your own, here's the link:

The Phantom Bookshelf is Live

Folks, the Phantom Webmaster has been up all night, Allen-key in sweaty mitt, patiently putting Tab A into Slot B, tightening Nut C and trying to find Washer D, building the Phantom Bookshelf (sadly not bought at MFI...) to replace the housebrick-and-plank combo it was resting on. It can now be found on the sidebar, if you're ever looking to find a book about Greenwich.

Of course my own work isn't nearly done. I've listed about a third of my bookshelf, but it's deceptive as I haven't got to the little racks of pamphlets and really thin books yet and they're the ones who are going to take the serious time. And I keep getting distracted as I pull something down which I forget I've got and start reading it. Invariably I find something that needs 'further research' and that's it for the day...

I'd say 'please bear with me' but I utterly loathe it when someone in a call centre in Arbroathshire tells me to do that...