Whipping Tom, The Crack's Terror
In my search for obscure references and bits of information on London immigrants, often from unlikely sources, I came across the story of Whipping Tom, the 'Tall Black Man' of Fleet Street during the late 1670s. As it turns out, he probably wasn't Black, but dressed all in black and covered his face with a black cloth. The idea that he was an immigrant is cast into even further improbability by his peculiarly English perversion: spanking. Yes, Tom would wait in dark alleys for unsuspecting ladies out and about at night, grab them, lift up their skirts and beat 'an Alarum' upon 'their Tobies' with his bare hand as he cried out 'Spanko!'.
Tom's speed and skill led him to be described 'as nimble as an Eel' in the execution of his work, and made him impossible to resist, or to catch. He often assaulted prostitutes, or 'Cracks', but any lady walking alone at night could be his target. His attacks went no further than a harsh spanking, but a contemporary account recorded that one one occasion 'he so swinged her tail, that tis thought, she will not be capable of her Trade for some time.' It is clear from the records involving Tom that he was seen as something of a joke. He was clearly a pervert who gained sexual gratification from his activities, but there is no record of him doing anything other than spanking, which the pamphlet pictured above describes in great detail. Especially detailed is the tale of the poor, stunned pease-pudding seller:
Another time the Woman that cries hot Gray Pease about the Streets, coming up Ram Alley in Fleet Street … a cold hand was lay’d upon her, and up flew her heels, and down fell the Pease Tub, when (as she has farther related) her sences were so charmed, that she lost all power of Resistance, and left him to Tyranize over her Posteriors at pleasure, the which when he had done, he left her to scrape up her ware as well as she could, for the use of such longing Ladies as are affected with such Diet.
Such anecdotes are amusing, but the relish with which it was reported places some culpability upon the victim, who must have enjoyed the attention in some way to be so acquiescent. Whipping Tom achieved no small fame, and Aphra Behn hit the nail on the head in her 1682 play The City Heiress when one of her characters chastises the other for his drunken moaning on women:
I shall have you whining when you are sober again, traversing your Chamber with Arms across, railing on Love and Women, and at last defeated, turn whipping Tom, to revenge your self on the whole Sex.
The belief was that Tom's victims were out and about alone at night (although the pease-pudding seller had every reason to be), and therefore deserved a spanking: Tom was an agent of social and sexual justice. He disappeared as quickly as he had come, perhaps leaving London, perhaps dying, but his legend lived on. Whipping Tom had passed so far into the London sub-conscious that in 1751, a Thomas Wallis was named Whipping Tom in the press after a sex-crime spree in, wait for it...yes, it's Hackney! Even better, our faithful Hackney Nightwatch came to the rescue. Thomas Wallis was a dangerous deviant whose attacks began with a spanking, but soon evolved into serious sexual assault. In 1751, Mr Hawkins had the trial and details printed up as a pamphlet to satisfy the popular curiosity. As always in the popular press at this time, coy wording and especial attention to the rude bits go hand in hand:
Mary Sutten the Milkmaid of Hackney also deposed that when the Prisener whipt'd her Backside in a Ditch near Shoulder of Mutten Fields, to prevent her Crying out, he stuff'd his Handkerchief into her Mouth, and wuld have thrust something else into another place, had not the Watchmen come happely to her assistance.
Thomas Wallis was dealt with in the appropriate 18thC manner for rapists: hanging. His namesake never quite fell out of the minds of Londoners walking the streets at night, but he was followed by more unpleasant attackers such as the piquerisitic London Monster (more on him another time). The reporting of Whipping Tom's attacks is uniquely English and a great illustration of the humour of the time. His assaults were viewed as terrifying for the victims, but ultimately harmless and with heavy comic potential. Poor Robin even implied in his Intelligence of 1677 that women walked the night-time streets of London in anticipation of having their 'Butt ends' made to cry 'Spanko!' Come on ladies, own up, you know you want it really....
