Bugsby has been the cause of a great deal of speculation, most of which has not got very far.
F.W. Nunn raised the question in the Kentish Mercury of 5th January 1923. 'Who was Bugsby'. He cites a 'book published about a hundred years ago' which talked about a robber who had 'a cabin' in the osier beds and who, in order to 'escape the vengeance of the law' 'cast himself into the river' and that later 'much treasure was found'. He also says that there is a reference in a 'Gentleman's Magazine' of 1755 to 'Williams the pirate' being hung in chains at Bugsby's Hole'. A week later a letter from 'H.Kennard' pointed out that 'Hole' merely means 'anchorage'.
E.W.Green above refers to A.G.Linney who, he says, referred to Bugsby in The Lure and Lore of London's River, and says that Linney suggests that he was a market gardener – I think Linney may have been right, but first we need to take a very circuitous route. Green pointed out that the area generally known as Bugsby Marshes was reputedly where executed criminals were hung in chains. He therefore suggested that the real name was 'Bug's Marsh' – in that 'bug' could mean 'spook' and is the origin of the word 'bogey'. Therefore, he reasoned, people are frightened of the marshes because of the gibbets, therefore they think they are haunted and use a name which says so. He says that the name 'bug' meaning beetle dates only from about 1750. The name was then changed out of politeness by map makers. Mr. Green also raised the question of the use of 'by' in the name as meaning a Scandinavian Farm. This point has been made to me by endless correspondents in the last couple of years. My answer to them – which is the same conclusion which Mr. Green came to – is that the name is so recent that it cannot relate to any such Dark Ages feature. Green found the first use of the name on a map of 1822.
Muriel Searle in 'The Importance of being Bugsby' (Port of London January 1975) commented on the loneliness of the spot and air of mystery which hangs over the name.
To comment on all this: First I think we can discount any ghosts or Scandinavian Farms. Bugsby's Reach was not particularly lonely since it was adjacent to a particularly busy stretch of river opposite the East India Company's depot. The story about the robber in the osiers is nice but we have no reference to it, not even to the book from whence it came – and certainly no newspaper reports. The gibbet is discussed below but certainly the reference to Williams in 1755 is the earliest so far traced to Bugsby – and the name seems to date from the early eighteenth century. Pirates in this period have been much studied and I am not aware that a Bugsby has been uncovered among them. Nor am I aware that it is the name of anyone hung in that period. However, Bugsby is not a common name in England – as a trawl of family history sites on the internet will reveal. It is however a common name in parts of America and the West Indies – so was Bugsby perhaps something to do with the eighteenth century trade to those parts or even, heaven forbid, a slaver!
I actually think that the answer is much more pedestrian. In 1715 the Commission of Sewers in Greenwich levied a rate payment from a Mr. Busby. I do not know where Mr. Busby's piece of land was, but it does seem that it is quite a short step from 'Busby' to 'Bugsby'. Perhaps it should also be noted that in the same period there was a 'Bugg's Marsh' on the 'other' bit of Greenwich marshes – in the area now covered by Norman Road adjacent to the river Ravensbourne. Perhaps more cheerfully I can point out another entry in Gentleman's Magazine. This says that in August 1802 a Mr. Barrett took off in a balloon from Greenwich and landed, ' into a field in Bugsby's Hole'.
Gibbets. Numerous writers about the peninsula have claimed that pirates were actually hung there. For instance Iain Sinclair in an article 'All change. This train is cancelled" (London Review of Books, 13th May 1999) 'was once the Execution Dock … the gallows and iron cage moved here from Wapping ..executions and bloated bodies washed over by three tides .. distance and difficulty of access blunted the mob's appetite for blood'. I think this is nonsense – and the authors should stop and think for a moment about what they are saying. It is a very long time ago in this country (if ever!) that criminals were strung up on gallows without the benefit of due course of law, the comforts of religion, a large crowd and the press of the day. If a deterrent is what you want what is point of hanging someone in a place which is difficult to get to! I am sure however that pirates and other criminals were gibbeted around the area.
We have the example of Williams being gibbeted at Bugsby's Hole – but as far the others claimed by Mr. Green (above)? Mr. Green should look more carefully at the gibbet in the picture which I have reproduced on page 30. He will see that it is not anywhere near Bugsby's Hole but in the area of the gunpowder depot – a much more sensible place to put it since there would have been a ready made armed guard on site. Rosemary Taylor (see below) draws attention to a number of gibbetings at Blackwall – one of which, by her account, was definitely downstream of the Point. She also mentions that the 'FloweryLand' pirates of 1847 were gibbeted in the area. In fact, according to both the Metropolitan Police web-site and the Newgate Calendar these pirates were hanged at Newgate in 1864. I find it very difficult to believe that a gibbet for five men was set up within half a mile or so of a middle class house (East Lodge) and active factories, which would have been the case in 1864 – and surely the local papers would have mentioned it
On
the north bank of the River at Blackwall a large shipbuilding and ship repair
depot was in use. This belonged to the
powerful East India Company and all the riverside activities on Greenwich marsh
from the eighteenth century onwards took place to a background of the movements
of the great ships owned by the Company.[1] East Indiamen sailed to the far corners of
the earth to exploit what they found there. To many of the remote people they
visited they must have seemed like the alien spacecraft we imagine today – so high-tech that their
possibilities could only just be grasped.
To Greenwich people they were a sign that the whole world could be
grasped by those with enough capital and the right technology.
At some time in the early eighteenth century the name ‘Bugsby’ became associated with the area. Historians have spent a lot of time trying to discover who Bugsby was, and got nowhere. The name first appears as late as 1735 in a newspaper report that ‘Williams, the pirate’ had been hung in chains – gibbeted – at Bugsby’s Hole. In the river a ‘hole’ means an anchorage, a safe place for ships to stop for a while, and ‘Bugsby’s Hole’ was at the end of the lane which once ran from the Pilot Inn to the river. In time the whole stretch of river became known as ‘Bugsby’s Reach’ – before that it had been called ‘Cockle’s Reach’ or ‘Podd’s Elms Reach’ after a huge circle of trees on the river bank.
Gibbeting didn't stop piracy and in 1816 a robbery took place, described as 'one of the greatest robberies ever to have taken place in this country'This involved the theft of £13,000 in dollars, from the hoy, Coromandel, which was transferring it to another ship bound for India. The pirates were caught because they left some of the chests full of money lying on the foreshore.[2] Perhaps they are the men who were gibbeted below Blackwall Point in 1816[3]. If so, they are just another part of the grisly history of this area.
Ever since the identity of Bugsby has remained a mystery. There are some totally unsubstantiated stories that he was a pirate who hid out in the reeds and osier beds of the Peninsula and another writer has speculated recently that it really means ‘Bugs’ or ‘Bogey men’? [4] There are a number of other Bugsby’s Holes around the world –there is reasonably locally on the outskirts of Sheerness – but also one on St.Helena and on Tristan da Cuhna. If anything this just deepens the mystery – was Bugsby a pirate?
1. The Gentleman's Magazine - Volume 79, Part 1 - Page 471
books.google.co.uk/books?id=toPXggtAD34C
1809 - Read - More editions
... a great part of the cliff-land in
the Isle of Shoppy, about 500 feet in length and 150 feet in braadth, gave way
and sunk into a valley, carrying with it part of the dwelling-house, cow-house,
and other out-houses adjoining, called Bugsby-hole
1.
Handbook for London:
Past and Present - Volume 1 - Page 296
books.google.co.uk/books?id=5aFCAAAAYAAJ
Peter Cunningham - 1849 - Read - More editions
Citron, of London, edited by Sir Harris Nicolas, p. 12S.
"14 March, 1735. Williams the pirate was hang'd at Execution Dock ; and
afterwards in chains at Bugsby's Hole near Blackwall." — Gent. Mag. for 1
7 35. * Aubrey's Lives, iii. 380. f Stow, p.
Thomas Williams sentenced to death old baily for piracy and
murder 21/2/1834 or jan??
A Sessions of
Admiralty was held at the Old Bailey, when Thomas Williams was
arraign’d on 2 Indictments, viz. For being concerned in running away
with the ship Buxton Snow, late Captain Beard, bound from Bristol
to the Island of Malemba Angola in Africa, and selling the
Ship ; and also the Murder of the said Captain Beard, by
cutting his Throat with an Axe ; and was found guilty of Piracy,
therefore was not tried for the Murder.
[1] Dockland, GLC/NELP 1986
[2] Rod Helps, Piracy on the Thames. Bygone Kent, 16/4
[3] Rosemary Taylor, Blackwall, The Brunswick and Whitebait Dinners, 1991
[4] Muriel Searle, The
Importance of Being Bugsby. Port of
London, Jan 1974.
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