Hi Peeps,

I was born in a tiny, picturesque fishing hamlet on the east coast of England, formerly known as British West

British West Hartlepool

Hartlepool.  Well, OK,  it might not have actually been a tiny fishing hamlet, more a sprawling Industrial town, but it was called West Hartlepool. I might have made up the British part.    Hartlepool wasn’t particularly notable. It was a typical northern town in many ways. It had a rubbish football team that was often the butt of jokes on TV. It had a brewery called Camerons that made a rather nice ale called Strongarm. It had a diminishing steelworks that,  long before I had completed school and headed off to university, had all but disappeared.  So, it didn’t have much to set it apart. But it did have one thing. One seemingly everlasting and inescapable achievement that has haunted me pretty much everywhere I have travelled.  Why do I mention this? Let me explain.

Currently, I am in Erbil in Kurdish Iraq. A Kurdish colleague has just returned from a vacation in the UK where he was visiting relations who now live in Darlington.  He was telling me all about his trip and the wonderful places he had visited. Redcar, Thirsk, Middlesbrough. I told him that I know these places very well having been born in a town close by. “Oh, really, where is that?” he inquired.  At this point, I usually just say somewhere near Newcastle. However, as he had been specific, so was I. Hartlepool, I said.  There was a pause, then the glint of a smile followed by a pointed finger and the exclamation, “Haa!! You’re a Monkey Hanger”    And there it is.  Hartlepools singular claim to fame or possible infamy.  It’s true (possibly). We hung the Monkey.

The Legend

Legend has it, during the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship was sighted off the coast of Hartlepool. I have no idea why it was there, perhaps it had come close to shore to avoid bad weather. And I am only guessing there was bad weather based on the story that tells us that the French ship foundered and sank.  All hands were lost, but the ships mascot survived and made it to the beach.  Here, it was captured by the good burghers of Hartlepool and taken into custody for questioning as the ship’s mascot, it seems, was a monkey.  As it was a mascot, it was dressed in a miniature French military uniform.   Now, even today, Hartlepool is not what you might call cosmopolitan.  Back in the day, it was decidedly insular, so didn’t get many foreign visitors.  so, never having seen a Frenchman before, the Hartlepudlians were willing to believe that this small, hairy creature that had survived from the French ship, must be a Frenchman.  They tried to establish this by questioning the ‘Frenchman’ and asking it his purpose.  Of course, they couldn’t understand a word that he said. It was just some strange chattering and shrieking. (Probably wouldn’t have made a lot of difference had the monkey been fluent in French, but that’s by the by).  The point is, frustrated by the seeming lack of cooperation from this dastardly Frenchman, it was decided he must be a spy, up to no good. So not wanting to take any chances. They hung him.  And the title of Monkey Hangers has stuck ever since.

The Demise of the French Spy

It’s an improbable story.  But it’s one that has persisted. And it has travelled.  I have been accused of being a Monkey Hanger in various parts of the world. From Australia to the United States. From Indonesia to France. And now in Iraq.  I wasn’t expecting it,  but I wasn’t entirely surprised.   There was a time I used to get a little defensive about it.  On finding out where I was from, someone would ask “Did you hang the monkey?”  whereupon I would mutter under my breath, “Why? Is your father missing?”  But now, I embrace it.   I have become a proud Monkey Hanger.

Proud Heritage

As a  resident or former resident of Hartlepool, you really do have to go with it, claiming your heritage with pride, for

H’Angus the Monkey

over the subsequent centuries,  the legend has been endlessly used to taunt us.   At football matches between local rivals Darlington and Hartlepool United, the chant, “Who hung the monkey” can often be heard. I think it’s fair to say, most Hartlepudlians do embrace the story and even encourage it.   For instance, Hartlepool United’s mascot is a monkey called ‘H’Angus the Monkey’, and one of the local Rugby Union teams;  Hartlepool Rovers,  are known as the Monkeyhangers. I used to play for a rival ( and obviously superior)  club, West Hartlepool, but I still have one of Rovers ties somewhere, with its hanging Monkey motif.

The distinctive Hartlepool Rovers Emblem

We must have a sense of humour about the legend.  In the 2002 local council elections, a gentleman called Stuart Drummond campaigned for the position of Mayor dressed as a Monkey and using the election slogan “free bananas for schoolchildren”.  He won and proved his politician’s credentials by reneging on his banana promise. However, despite this shocking betrayal, he went on to be re-elected two more times. As I say, Hartlepudlians have either a good sense of humour or are seriously deranged.

Stuart Drummond in Canvassing mode

The Truth

With the legend still going strong, I have often wondered if there is some truth to it.   Not enough to look into it too strenuously, but there is some supporting evidence.  At the time of the Napoleonic wars, the popular press used to often depict the French in cartoons as monkey-like creatures.  The date is a bit vague, i.e. during the Napoleonic wars, so this covers from 1803 through to 1815 when Napoleon was finally beaten at Waterloo.  During this time it’s recorded that some 14 ships sank in the Hartlepool Bay area. Sadly, they were all English ships and mainly fishing vessels. But could not the dastardly French, intent on landing spy’s into Englandshire’s fair green lands, have disguised themselves as a fishing sloop?  There may also be a slightly more dark side to the story.  Instead of an actual monkey, could the good people of Hartlepool have actually captured and hung a small boy? During this period, boys were employed on ships to charge the canons with gun powder and were known as “powder monkeys”.  I prefer to think the Hartlepudlians were less callous and more stupid than that.

Of course, some naysayers claim it never happened and try to wish it away with the flimsiest of explanations.  It’s

Ned Who. Did he invent the Monkey?

alleged that the first actual recorded mention of the monkey hanging was in 1855 in a song by the Victorian entertainer, Edward, “Ned” Corvan.  Ned was a touring performer, plying his trade in theatres up and down the country.  He used to like to lampoon whichever town he was in, by making up a song about the place, so for Hartlepool, he wrote a song about the monkey.  Some commentators suggest Corvan’s monkey song is very similar to one written for Newcastle about a baboon that visited the city with some Cossak soldiers, sharing similar phrases about, ‘hairy French spies’ and ‘Napoleons Uncle’. Some say, Corvan took elements of the Baboon song, added some monkey based bits and set it in Hartlepool. I mean, really?  Who is ever going to believe that ridiculous story?

Monkey Mayhem

It also seems that Hartlepool is not the only place famed for the hanging of primates.  There is a similar story dating from 1772 and located in Boddam in Aberdeenshire.  In this case, a ship sank and again the only survivor was a monkey which was subsequently hanged by the locals. In this case, however, it was hanged not as a spy, but because it survived the shipwreck.  By hanging the poor creature and getting it out of the way, it would mean there were no survivors, which in turn would have given the salvage rights to the locals.  Not stupid these Scots you know.  Meanwhile down in deepest Englandshire, in the Cornish village of Mevagissey, a monkey was reportedly killed for biting a child. This wasn’t a shipwrecked monkey, but an organ grinders assistant.  Obviously, it was a tough and dangerous life being a monkey.

Final Thoughts

None of these other places and their monkey murdering stories seem to have captured the imagination quite as much as the Hartlepool tale.  It’s a recurring story that has appeared on TV, there are books about it,  I received a copy of ‘The Hartlepool Monkey’ one Christmas a few years ago.   There is even a play which had a national tour in 2017 and a run in London. Wonder how that went down?  Probably as well as a hung monkey.

These days it is probably too monkeyphobic, or Francophobic or Xenophobic. There’s bound to be some -‘ phobic ‘ involved somewhere.   None the less, regardless of how much or how little truth there is to the legend,  no matter how irritating it is to be in the back of beyond and have someone point a finger at you whilst smirkingly asking who hung the monkey,  I hope it does continue. At least it’s something to put Hartlepool on the map.

I believe the place has changed significantly since I left, back in the 1980s.  It was a run-down, depressed and depressing place with high unemployment, courtesy of the demise of the heavy industry that used to be the heart of the town. But now I understand that it has gone through something of a renaissance.

So here’s something I never thought I would ever say. I suggest you go and have a look around the place. See what can happen in a post-industrial town trying to reinvent itself.  Stroll along the promenade at Seaton Carew.  Have Fish and Chips from Verrills on the Headland in ‘Old Hartlepool’.  See HMS Trincomalee; a restored frigate and the oldest British military vessel still afloat, located at the Hartlepool Marina.  Try a pint of Camerons Strongarm in the brewery tap. It used to be called the Causeway. Then it was renamed the Tap and Spile. Now I understand it’s gone back to being The Causeway. You can’t miss it, it backs onto the brewery and had some of the best beer in town. It was also the place my eldest son made his 1st public appearance at the age of around 3 weeks old.  No,  he didn’t have a pint  Oh and no need to worry if you are of the more hirsute disposition.  I believe monkeys are a protected species in Hartlepool now.

And on that note, see you all again, later.

Graham

Hartlepool Marina

The Causeway Inn

The monkey is still around in Hartlepool