Greenwich Highwaymen and George Landmann

 

I thought this week I should come back with another episode of the childhood of George Landmann -  the man who built the Greenwich Railway.  All of this story is taken from his autobiography,  the first volume of which is really about his youth, his birth and upbringing in the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich.  Those of you who are fed up with me going  on about George Landmann will be glad to know that once he had qualified from RMA he went off to Plymouth and then  Canada and although he probably came back to Greenwich  to visit his parents  we have to wait another 50 years before  his work on the Greenwich railway and he becomes of interest to us again. 

 So hold your breath for 50 years!.

  I’m also omitting from this description of his childhood and  youth his many accounts of expeditions and meetings with various famous people.   I would recommend anybody to read his autobiography which is amusing and interesting and full of incident but most of it is not relevant to his life in Greenwich  - and I am quite honestly not sure if all of it is true.

George says his father took a house on Blackheath in 1789 when he, George, would have been 10 years old. I’ve been unable to find out where this house was. He says it was  in ‘Sot’s Hole, also called Conduit Vale’.  That is now the area at the top of Hyde Vale where it joins West Grove. In the 18th  century there were houses on West Grove and others facing the Dover Road on areas which are now grassland.. I understand that  the late, and much missed, Neil Rhind compiled a database which has extensive information about her inhabitants of that area but there is no entry for the Landmann family. Maybe because they rented the property they don’t appear in the rate books and directories which Neil used.

We know that in 1812 the Landmann family were living at 28 Crooms Hill. George says they were at Sots Hole for only three years – so where were they from 1792 to 1812?  Did they go back to Woolwich?

Most of what George has to say about life on Black Heath is about highway men and I suppose at a site so near to the Dover Road there were some good views of them – and exciting for a young boy. He describes the robberies as ‘exceedingly frequent and perpetrated in broad daylight’ and I’m quite prepared to believe this. If you look at the local papers for these years there many reports of local  highway robberies.  In 1789, the first year in which George lived on  Blackheath, we find in just one month .........“On Saturday night three robberies were committed on the other side of Blackheath, by three men armed with cutlasses and bludgeons”.....”Saturday night a Mr. Frodshams carriage was stopped on Blackheath by a single highwayman, badly mounted, who took from him a small sum, and rode off towards London”..”On Monday night last, about o'clock, William Thomas and Samuel Goodwin were taken by the patrols upon Blackheath Road, after robbing a Captain Sproul and a lady in a chariot of their watches and some silver - they appear be the gang of footpads which have frequented the Blackheath Road for this long time past.”

George wrote about several robberies which he claims to have witnessed. He records how one Sunday evening when“well dressed inhabitants of the vicinity were prominent in Chesterfield Walk  ..when they were suddenly looking in the direction of the Green Man Tavern”This pub was just across the road on what is now the site of Allison Close – it was there until the 1970 and I’m sure there are people still around who will remember the ‘music hall’nights there.

In 1789 what people in Chesterfield Walk saw was “a man on a horse making the utmost haste on the road to London”. It appeared that this individual had intercepted a resident sitting in his garden, reading a book . He was mounted on a handsome horse and spoke politely in a friendly way to the book reader - but then got out a pistol and held it to the residents head and then rode off with his valuables.

You can be sure they all had ‘handsome horses’- today’s robbers are also said to be fussy on the quality of their cars! Next on Chesterfield Walk that day were two people who said they had just been robbed near the Rising Sun pub, by four armed men

George also records that the artist Paul Sandby, then drawing master at the Royal Military Academy, knocked on their door one evening. He had his daughter with him and said they had been stopped by a robber and both he and his daughter had lost their watches and their money. His daughter was so upset that he had brought her down the Landmann’s house so that she could sit and recover herself.

Next he tells how a General Mcleod, out with his wife, encountered a highwayman on the road to Charlton. The robber pointed a pistol at them saying he would blow their heads off if they didn’t give him their valuables. As he turned to look away the General picked up a Cologne bottle and pushed the end of it into the robbers neck, saying he would blow his head off. The robber clearly thought that what the General was holding against his neck was a pistol and immediately ran off..

George Landmann also says that every month he witnessed the transport of the money to Woolwich pay the artillery stationed there. It was taken across Blackheath with an escort of artillery officers and six private soldiers.  Three of the privates walked on each side of the post chaise carrying the money along with the pay clerk, There was a non-commissioned officer marching in the rear and the soldiers all had fixed bayonets and muskets loaded with ball.

Changing the subject from criminals on horses, George, talks about the “celebrated pickpocket Barrington”. There are a number of websites which describe the career of George Barrington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Barrington) George Landmann’s description of him as “celebrated” says a lot about the glamorisation of criminal in the early 19^th century.

When the family lived in Blackheath George was sent to a school 'of which the Rev. Dr. Egan was the master'.  James Egan had taken over 'The Royal Park Academy' in Greenwich from his father in law, Dr. Bakewell. Egan was interested in methods of teaching languages and encouraged boys to only speak either Latin or French in school and to do so in a way that 'divests instruction of harshness'.  In 1786 the school had won a national prize for its methods of teaching Latin to school boys by making learning fun. It should be noted that as an adult George Landmann spoke several languages fluently.

George says that the school was 'close to the new church, at the corner of King Street, and is now converted into tea gardens'  - somewhere near the park gate at the top end of King William Street. George's 'new church' was St.Mary's –now long gone and which stood on the site now taken by William IV's enormous statue.

Once in his teens George became a cadet at the Royal Military Academy and gave great descriptions of classes there and of the various members of staff who worked alongside his father. I might do an article on that in due course.