History of the Plaistow
(Extracts from 1900 )
From Chapters five
Silvertown & Neighbourhood – chapter V
Plaistow – Dr Dodd – Dick Turpin – East ham – Barking Road – Body
snatching – Smuggling
Several interesting old buildings still survive in Plaistow [1900], Cumberland
House Farm, which lies to the south of the Northern Outfall sewer, and only a
mile and a half from Silvertown, used to belong to Henry, Duke of Cumberland,
brother of George III. Here he kept his racing stud, on account of the excellent
pasturage, afforded by the marshes. The duke died in 1790, at the early age of
twenty four. The house, with its wainscoted walls and double doors, remains just
as it was in the lifetime of its royal possessor. Still older is the barn in the
adjoining farmyard. It is said to have been a tithes barn, to which tenants
brought their tithes in corn, and no doubt, originally belonged to Stratford
Langthorne Abbey. Its beams are made of horse chestnut, which the wire-worm will
not touch.
Mr John Spencer Curwen, in his “Old Plaistow”, has given an interesting account
of Old Plaistow houses, many of which have been pulled down within the last few
years. In one of the latter resided Dr Dodd, who was hanged for forgery towards
the close of the eighteenth century. Dr Dodd became curate of All Saints church,
West ham, in 1751, and renting a house in Plaistow took pupils to augment his
income. Amongst them was Philip Stanhope, the illegitimate son of the earl of
Chesterfield, and the recipient of the celebrated letters. An old boot maker
names Piegrome, who lived in Plaistow, used to show a pattern for a pair of
buckled shoes marked “Honble Philip Stanhope”.
Four of Lord Chesterfields letters are addressed in 1766 “T Master Philip
Stanhope, at Dr Dodds house at West ham, in Essex”. In a letter written about
this time, he speaks of Dr Dodd as “the best and most eloquent preacher in
England, and perhaps the most learned clergyman. He is now publishing notes upon
the whole Bible, as you will see in the advertisements in many of the
newspapers”. The noble Earl fortunately did not live to see the learned
annotator of the Scriptures die a felon’s death upon the scaffold.
A taste for extravagant living seems to have been the cause of Dr Dodd’s
downfall. In 1766, he took a chapel in Pimlico as a private speculation, and the
fashionable world soon flocked to his sermons. The flatteries of his wealthy
congregation did much to spoil him, and their society tempted him to live beyond
his mans. In 1777 his affairs became so embarrassed that he forged a bond for
£4,200 in the name of his late pupil, who had now become Lord Chesterfield. The
forgery was easily detected, and in spite of the efforts of numerous
sympathisers – amongst them the celebrated Dr Johnson – and a petition signed by
23,000 persons, the unfortunate clergyman paid the extreme penalty of the law.
Brunstock Cottage, where Edmund Burke lived from 1759 to 1761, is still to be
seen in Balaam Street, Plaistow. Part of the house was pulled down to make room
for a new road, but the main portion is the same as when the great orator
inhabited it. In Richmond Street tands Richmound House, once, according to local
tradition, the residence of the Duke of Richmond. The secretary of Jeyes
Sanitary Compound Company Ltd, whose manager now inhabits it, has informed the
writer that the name of the Duke of Richmond does not figure in the title
deeds..
In Greengate Street, Plaistow, the walls of a house that once belonged to the
earl of Essex still stand, a coronet surmounting the wrought iron entrance gate.
The Earl of essex, who was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and subsequently
beheaded by his fickle sovereign, is said to have resided here. The house – a
large one , containing sixty bedrooms – was pulled down in 1836, and the present
building, which now serves as a lodge to the new Recreation Grounds, erected.
Plaistow, in the eighteenth century seems to have been the resort of men who
broke the laws and paid the penalty for it. Dick Turpin, the famous highwayman,
who, like Dr Dodd,came to a violent end at the hands of the public executioner,
figures largely in its annals. Dick Turpin was the son of an innkeeper who owned
“The Crown Inn” at Hempstead in Essex, and who combined the trade of butcher
with that of retailing beer and spirits. Born in 1705, this son was apprenticed
at an early age to a butcher in Whitechapel, from which post, presumably for ill
conduct, he was dismissed. The young man then obtained a situation with a farmer
called Giles, who lived in Richmond Street, Plaistow. From this employer Dick
Turpin stole two oxen, which were recognised as he was trying to dispose of them
at Waltham Abbey Market. Constables were sent to arrest him, but their quarry
jumped out of a window and escaped.
Dick Turpin now became the leader of a gang of smugglers operating between
Pliastow and Southend, and made the calling unusually profitable by
appropriating the goods of rival smugglers. While engaged in this congenial
occupation he married an east ham girl called Hester palmer. The district soon
became too warm for him, and Turpin withdrew to Epping Forest, where he varied
the pastime of stealing deer with daylight house breaking. While dividing the
spoils at an alehouse after an adventure of the latter kind, he and his gang
were surprised, but though all his confederates were captured, their leader
managed to make good his escape.
Dick Turpin, and a man named King now became partners, making a cave in Epping
Forest their head quarters. This cave is still pointed aut at High Beech,
between the Loughton ann Kings Oak Roads. The two men are said to have lived
here for six years, Dick Turpins faithful spouse spouse journeying to and fro to
keep them supplied with food. According to popular report there was a certain
element of generosity in the highwayman’s lawless disposition. Hearing that a
widow whom he had robbed was being pressed by her landlord for rent, he threw
some gold pieces in at her doorway as he galloped past her house. On another
occasion, he stopped a country dealer who had only 15 shillings – all that he
was worth – upon his person. Turpin said that he must have the money, but told
his victim to stand in Newgate Street at noon the following Monday, with his hat
in his hand, and wait to see what would occur. The man did so, and a stranger
dropped ten guineas into it.
Thus poor people felt a good deal of sympathy for Dick Turpin when, in 1737, the
Government issued a proclamation offering £200 for his arrest. This proclamation
described him as a man “about thirty”, by trade a butcher, about 5feet 9 inches
high, brown complexion, very much marked with small-pox, his cheek bones broad,
his face thinner towards the bottom, his visage short, pretty upright, and broad
about the shoulders”. From the description it would appear that the admiration
which he excited among the fair sex was more due to his glamour of his deeds
than the beauty of his person.
Soon after the proclamation had been issued, Dick Turpin, during one of his
rides, fell in with a gentleman mounted on a thoroughbred horse. As his own was
a poor one, Turpin invited the stranger to exchange with him. There was no
refusing the highwayman’s invitation, supposed as it was by his usual method of
persuasion, and when the gentleman reached home, his mount was found to be a
horse which had been stolen from the Plaistow marshes. A few days later, a
London Inn Keeper recognised the thoroughbred which Turpin had with him, and
tried to arrest its rider. In the scuffle which ensued Dick Turpin accidentally
shot hi partner King. The notorious highwayman effected his escape, but the loss
of his friend, which he seems to have felt a good deal, gave him a distaste for
his old haunts, and it was now that he is supposed to have made his celebrated
ride to York on Black Bess.
Unfortunately for those who like to cherish this tradition, there is good reason
to believe that the description which Harrison Ainsworth gives of the ride in “Rookwood”
is solely the offspring of the authorsa imagination. The story is traceable to
an earlier malefactor named Nicks, who in order to prove an alibi, performed or
attempted to perform the ride in 1676. Daniel Defoe refers to the story in his
“Tour of Britain”.
In Yorkshire Dick Turpin, under the name of Palmer, set up as a horse dealer,
the majority of the horses which he sold having been acquired by his usual
methods. He did well in business, and had excited no suspicion till arrested for
shooting a game cock in a foolish freak., and Dick Turpin was thrown into
prison. The inquiries which followed elicited the fact that many of the horses
found in his possession had been stolen from their rightful owners. In this
extremity, Turpin wrote to his brother at Hempstead, asking for assistance. He
neglected, however, to pay the postage, and his brother refusing to do so, the
letter lay at the village Post office. Here it caught the eye of the village
school master, who recognised the hand writing. “Thus it was”, says Mr Curwen,
to whom the writer is indebted for most of these particulars, “that the
Yorkshire people found that their prisoner was the great Turpin”.
The identity of Palmer, the horse dealer and Dick Turpin the highwayman was
satisfactorily established at York. The prisoner was tried at the Assizes for
horse stealing and condemned to death, the sentence being carried out on April
7, 1739.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Plaistow was still a sleepy little
village, altogether out of the beaten track and hidden by th lofty elms which
grew around it. The Barking Road was not yet built, and the only route from
London to Barking lay through Ilford. There was, indeed, a narrow bridge over
the Roding at Wall End, called Cow Bridge, but this was only large enough for
cattle, and when a trap made use of it one of the wheels had to be taken off. A
man at the bridge gatehouse used to charge so much for assisting in the
operation.
The upland farms of Plaistow were devoted to potato growing whilst those on the
marsh grazed sheep. The habitable world ended and the marsh began at Greengate
Inn, which still stands at the bottom of Greengate Street. From Greengate Inn
the shipping in the Thames could easily be seen, and at high water with good
glasses the names of the ships were legible.
A hundred years ago there was only one constable in Plaistow. He wore no
uniform, but carried somewhat ostentatiously a pair of pistols, which no doubt
had quite as good a moral effect. Very few of the inhabitants possessed a
parliamentary vote. In the General Election of 1768 only four persons from
Plaistow voted, and they had to go all the way to Chelmsford to do so. London
was reached by a daily coach, the fares for which were 3s return inside and 2s
outside. For this formidable journey of six statute miles, the seats had to be
booked on the previous night. Another way of getting to London was to walk.
Still more remote from the public highways, if possible, was the village of East
Ham. Owing to its proximity to Barking, a good many sailors lived there. The
village used also to suffer from the raids of the press gangs, who would steal
up from barking Creek at night in search of prey.
In 1807, the remote little village of Plaistow and East Ham were roused from
their sleep of many centuries duration by the commencement of the making of the
Barking Road. The East India Dicks, which lie on the Middlesex side of Bow
Creek, had no means of communication with the Essex side, except by a wide
detour across Bow Bridge. The dock company decided to build a new road, which
would give facilities for goods from Essex intended for their docks, and also
provide a shorter route from Barking – where all the fish for London were landed
– to the metropolis. An iron bridge was thrown across Bow Creek close to the
eastern end of the docks, and an almost straight road built to Barking along a
line which separated the uplands of Plaistow and East Ham from the marshy levels
to the south of them.
The road, which was completed in 1810, did not at first realise the expectations
formed of it. Being built for the most part on marshy ground, it became very
rotten, and heavy traffic avoided it. The driver of the barking coach used to
send his team along the paths on either side of it. Several years elapsed before
the man at the toll gate on the Iron Bridge took enough money to pay his own
wages. The foot passengers were nearly all of the poorest class, and the toll
keeper was often driven to accept a pocket knife in pawn, owing to the
unavoidable absence of the regulation halfpenny. As late as 1845, there were
only six houses between Plaistow and the Iron Bridge.
The Barking Road did not at once bring full enlightenment to the old world
villages of Plaistow and East Ham, and body snatching survived its advent a good
many years. A regular gang existed at Barking, and whenever a burial took place
at East Ham church, the grave had to be watched at night till nature had
rendered the corpse valuless for sale.
Smuggling also continued to flourish, in the neighbourhood, though this was
winked at, if not actually encouraged by the inhabitants who got their luxuries
cheap on account of it. Smacks used to bring tobacco and spirits up Barking
Creek, and land them on the marshes. The goods were taken away in deep-bodied
carts fitted with false bottoms.