Ready for some role playing, just for a moment? Come back in time. Become
someone else. Become John Metcalf.
It's the late 1760s. Northern England. You've been hired to design and build
a highway between Huddersfield and Manchester. The distance is about 25
miles. Between the two towns lies a bog considered to be uncrossable. There
are also a number of small lakes, with their feeder and outlet streams.
You are to survey the route, hire and supervise the crews, and build the
road (including any necessary bridges, culverts, etc.) Sounds like quite
an undertaking.
One other obstacle. What if you were also blind?
John Metcalf was born into a poor family in the village of Knaresborough,
about 15 miles north of Leeds, on August 15th, 1717. Six years later an
attack of smallpox left him permanently sightless. For many men there would
be little to look forward to the rest of their lives. At best perhaps the
life of an itinerant fiddler, at worst life as a charity case in a world
where there was little enough charity to spare. Metcalf, being prepared
for the former, was given fiddle lessons. Overcoming his handicap, he grew
up leading a otherwise normal life, swimming and diving, fighting cocks,
playing cards, riding, and even hunting. He had a special affinity for horses
and by the time he was twenty-one, the robust, wild, six-foot-one Yorkshireman
had gained a reputation, both for winning races and for being a sharp trader.
In 1739 Dorothy Benson, daughter of the local publican, caught his attention.
The fact that she was engaged to a Mr. Dickinson didn't strike him as unsurmountable
(very little did). The night before she was to become Mrs. Dickinson, they
stole away to a nearby town, and the next morning she became Mrs. Metcalf.
It was around this time that Metcalf gained a patron, Colonel Liddell. The
colonel decided to take his young protégé to London, some
190 miles to the south. John rode in the coach for awhile, but most of the
gentry were used to taking their time when they traveled for pleasure. There
most likely were frequent stops along the way for leisurely meals. Whatever
the reason, John decided he could make better time on foot. He did, reaching
London ahead of Liddell's coach, checking out the capital and returning
to Yorkshire before the carriage and the colonel made it back to the Liddell
barn.
Shortly afterwards Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland and rallied
the Highlanders against Britain. Lack of sight wasn't going to keep John
Metcalf out of a good scrap. He recruited 140 of Knaresborough's finest
and was given command of a 64-man contingent, setting off with his townsmen
to join the King's forces at Newcastle, where they were attached to Colonel
Pultney's right. On January 17, 1746, the opposing sides clashed at Falkirk,
where 448 years before William Wallace had barely escaped with his life,
fleeing Edward I's army. History almost repeated itself, but this time it
was the English who fled annihilation, Metcalf among them.
Three months later the tide was reversed at Culloden. Metcalf was there
for the English victory, although it's not mentioned what part he took in
the action/slaughter. Mustered out, he settled down to a quiet life. For
a day or two, perhaps. Moving on to Harrogate and back to the trading fairs,
he turned his knowledge of good horseflesh to commercial use. He knew a
good horse when he felt one. He soon added trade in brandy and in tea to
his repertoire. It may be that some of his trading was not quite legal,
but smuggling was an honored pursuit in most small towns of the day. Who
likes to pay taxes?
Whatever the ingredients of enterprise are, John Metcalf had an ample supply.
By 1754 he had set up a stage line between Knaresborough and York. Not only
set it up, but drove a coach himself, making two trips a week during the
summer and one a week in the winter months. He personally bought his own
fuel. It's claimed he could measure a load of hay with his arms and mentally
convert the results into cubic feet and inches. And yet it wasn't enough
to control the vehicles, the horsepower and the fuel; Metcalf wanted to
reinvent the route. He became an expert bridge and road builder. In 1765
he won a contract to build a three-mile section of a new road between Harrogate
and Boroughbridge. Exploring the intervening three miles of countryside
between Minskip and Fearnsby, alone, he formulated the most practical path,
hired a crew and began his career as a builder of highways. Over the next
thirty years he would earn a total of £65,000, a considerable sum then.
Through these years he acquired a unequaled mastery of his trade. He had
his own method of calculating costs and necessary materials, but which he
could never successfully explain to others. But results were what counted.
He became an expert in constructing roadway structures that would hold up
under all weather and over all terrain.
The uncrossable bog proved to be quite crossable, once a series of rafts
made from ling (a variety of rush or marsh grass) and furze (heather) tied
in bundles was laid across the unstable terrain. Pontoon bridges were centuries
old, but Metcalf was able to use the abundant natural materials at hand
to pioneer the bridges' use in road building.
It was toward the end of the 18th century that growing labor costs and a
rapidly expanding use of canals eclipsed road building. When a contract
for £3,000 yielded only a £40 profit in 1792, Metcalf retired.
Dorothy had died in 1778. John lived another 18 years after retirement,
dying on April 26th, 1810, in his home in Spofforth. Although his name may
be best known today for a Knaresborough pub, Blind Jack's, he also left
behind four children, 20 grandchildren, 90 great-grandchildren and over
180 miles of roadway.
If history hadn't given us John Metcalf, novelist Henry Fielding might have
had to invent him - Blind Jack, a Tom Jones with fewer senses but more sense.
Fielding would have been writing from personal knowledge, through the sightless
eyes of his own half-brother.
Henry himself was born in 1707, in Glastonbury, England, to Edmund Fielding,
one of John Churchill's generals. When Edmund's first wife died, he remarried
and it was this union that produced John Fielding, born in London in 1721.
Henry's career path was varied. Best known today as a novelist, he also
followed careers as a playwright, theater owner, and a political commentator.
If that were not enough to occupy him, in 1740 he was called to the bar.
It was about this time that John, now 19, was blinded in an accident. In
December of 1748, Henry was appointed justice of the peace at London's Bow
Street Police-Office. Casting about for a career a sightless young man could
pursue, John decided to follow in some of Henry's footsteps and go into
the law, becoming a magistrate himself in 1750.
He joined Henry at the Bow Street Office in 1753. Henry would die in Lisbon
the following year while traveling and John would replace him as chief magistrate.
But in the short time they worked together they made a formidable team.
Both were concerned not only with bringing London's criminals to justice
but also sought ways to analyze and change the causes of crime, especially
among the capital's juveniles. Reforms were also instituted under the Fieldings
at Bow Street. Descriptions of known criminals were distributed to police
and civilians alike. But perhaps the most far-reaching reform was the formation
of the Bow Street Runners, an informal, unofficial network of law officers
empowered to roam the street of London attempting to solve crimes, partially
through the use of paid informers. Soon they were even allowed to range
into the countryside. They were not salaried, but were paid for their work
through a series of fees and rewards. Sometimes not much better then the
criminals they pursued, they often laid themselves open to charges of bribery
and corruption. They were eventually disbanded but not before the idea of
a police detective squad had been planted in the minds of the populace.
It would take Robert Peel a few more decades to create an actual police
force (bobbies, in his honor) but the groundwork had been laid.
Now chief magistrate in his own right, John Fielding built himself a solid
reputation. Some of his people may have been less than honest, but he himself
gained a reputation for toughness and competency, combined with fairness
and compassion, little encumbered by his handicap. Myth claimed he could
recognize nearly 3,000 thieves by their voices alone. In a well-publicized
1760 case he convicted the murderous landlady Sarah Metyard and her daughter/accomplice,
and sentenced them to the gallows. In his efforts to uphold the letter as
well as the spirit of the law, he often stepped on a few toes that didn't
belong to the criminal classes. In 1771, now Sir John Fielding, he convicted
the society hostess Mrs. Cornelys for presenting an illegal performance
at one of her masquerades. And in September of 1773 he complained to theater
manager David Garrick about the presentation of John Gay's popular Beggar's
Opera, feeling it encouraged crime. In his latter years he turned to
the pen, as Henry had done before him. But he kept to his field, publishing
Extracts From Such of the Penal Laws as Relate to the Peace and Good
Order of This Metropolis (1768) and A Plan for Preventing Robberies
Within 20 Miles of London (1775). It was in a mostly safer London that
Sir John Fielding died on September 4th, 1790.
City gangs invade the suburb of Fairport, rioting in a dispute over a woman.
Lyda Southard (Lady Bluebeard) is jailed for killing her fourth husband
with a poisoned apple pie.
Italian composer Giacomo Puccini sues the publishers of the popular song
Avalon, claiming it borrows the melody from his aria E lucevan
le stelle, from Tosca, wins $25,000.
You were asked to identify the non-U. S.country in which William Randolph
Hearst was the leading real estate owner. The answer is Mexico.
At the end of the first World War Frederick Wensley, Chief Detective
Inspector of London's Criminal Investigation Department (C. I. D.), split
London into four detective areas. Each area was the headquarters of a highly
mobile detective unit, able to respond to a crime quickly, whether it remained
within their area or not. What was the popular name of this detective unit?