I am the Only Running Footman
Having a carriage in 17C London was all very well, but the streets were narrow and full of people, barrows, animals and so on. Tradition has it that the footmen went before the carriages and cleared a route, carrying a stout stick for the purpose. After the Great Fire the streets were better, everyone was used to carriages rumbling about and the need for footmen lessened, although they stayed on as house servants. Being a footman was a pretty cool job. The average wage in 1750 was advertised at about £7, but it is thought that the 'vails' or perquisites, were worth about £40, which means it paid extremely well for a servile role (somewhere in the region of £60,000 in today's money). You had the best uniform in the house, including a good supply of white stockings and shirts, and your job was to look fit, nonchalant and as handsome as possible. The downside was that you usually had to sleep two to a bed with your colleagues and you weren't allowed to marry, in theory. Of course, footmen did marry, and have girlfriends, but saw them on their days off. You also got to spend a lot of time standing around with attractive women far above your station. Footmen were notoriously the source of the best gossip, and trusted with clandestine errands. They were also famed for being cocky and 'above their station'. Hardly surprising. The Swiss scientist Nicolas Theodore de Saussure visited England in 1725 and noted in his diary:
If you take a meal with a person of rank you must give every one of the five or six footmen a coin on leaving. They will be ranged in a file in the hall, and the least you can give them is a shilling each, and should you fail to do this you will be treated insolently the next time.
A common misconception of the Georgian period is that everyone wandered around half-crippled with rickets, tooth decay and scrofula. Not so. Surviving childhood meant a strong immune system, and the ideal standard for a footman was six feet tall. Six footers wouldn't have been that common, but they wouldn't have been a rarity either. (The Industrial Revolution was key in causing the overcrowding and poor diet resulting in shorter stature.) Runners were also useful in a household to fetch things and take messages before a reliable postal system had been introduced (perhaps we should reintroduce them until The Royal Mail gets its act together). Charles I's household accounts for 1635 detail 2 shillings paid to a footman for running from London to Hampton Court, although no errand is recorded.
Costing nothing and being good for a wager, running races have been popular throughout the ages. The Puritans banned shows of athleticism during their short rule, but with the Restoration they were back up and 'running' and by 1663 Samuel Pepys recorded the following in his diary for 3rd July:
The town talk this day is of nothing but the great foot-race run this day on Banstead Downs, between Lee, the Duke of Richmond's footman, and a tyler, a famous runner. And Lee hath beat him; though the King and Duke of York and all men almost did bet three or four to one upon the tyler’s head.
Pepys records two other races in his diary, both feature a footman as one of the contestants. Running races, with footmen or not, became very popular towards the end of the century, and 6,000 are recorded as turning out to see Preston, the 'Flying Butcher of Leeds' in 1688. Victorian concerns for ladylike behaviour had not yet prevailed and women ran as well as men. There are tales of a Scottish lady distance runner in the 1750s who could cover seventy miles in a day. Rowlandson records 'The Smock Race' in his 'Rural Sports' illustrations of 1811 (copyright prevents me from showing you).
The name of The Only Running Footman pub in Berkeley Street, Mayfair dates from the early 19C (although the pub itself dates from 1749), when the tradition of having footmen precede a carriage died out, and one of the last ones bought a pub at the back of a mews better to cater for his old friends. William Makepeace Thackery records the decline of the noble role of the running footman in The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century:
Lacqueys, liveries, footmen--the old society was encumbered with a prodigious quantity of these. Gentlemen or women could scarce move without one, sometimes two or three, vassals in attendance...they swarmed in anterooms: they sprawled in halls and on landings: they guzzled, devoured, debauched, cheated, played cards, bullied visitors for vails:-- that noble old race of footmen is well-nigh gone. A few thousand of them may still be left among us. Grand, tall, beautiful, melancholy, we still behold them on levee days, with their nosegays and their buckles, their plush and their powder....But the race is doomed...and Jeames with his cocked hat and long cane, are passing out of the world where they once walked in glory.
The Duke of Queensberry is said to have kept the last ones as a mark of his own virility. The Survey of London records an incident (possibly anecdotal) in which 'Old Q' met his match:
The duke was in the habit of trying the pace of candidates for his service by seeing how they could run up and down Piccadilly, watching and timing them from his balcony. They put on a livery before the trial. On one occasion, a candidate presented himself, dressed, and ran. At the conclusion of his performance he stood before the balcony. "You will do very well for me," said the duke. "And your livery will do very well for me," replied the man, and gave the duke a last proof of his ability as a runner by then running away with it.
