John Loringe of Tooting and the Highwaymen

Early on the morning of Monday 12 May 1783 a man on horseback set out from the small salubrious Surrey village of Lower Tooting. At 11°C it was cold for the time of year. The day promised to be sunny, windy and cloudy, and therefore typical of an English spring.

John Loringe was riding on his horse to the City of London on business. By seven o’clock he had reached Battersea Rise, an area the antiquarian Daniel Lysons described in The Environs of London as ‘ornamented with several villas, it being a spot much admired for its pleasant situation and fine prospect’.

A field and a hedge

Battersea Rise, in common with much of Surrey, was largely rural with many market gardens that served the city, and Loringe, peering over a hedge, saw labourers already hard at work in a field. They were so engrossed in their task that they were completely unaware of what now happened.

Two men, both on horseback, were approaching. As they drew closer, John Loringe knew that there was to be no convivial greeting or chit-chat about the weather. Indeed, their appearance filled him with dread. The men sported pieces of black crepe fabric around their faces, for they were highwaymen, and they wanted to disguise their identities.

A risky business

Highwaymen were the scourge of the traveller. They haunted lonely roads, ready to rob the unprotected, and numerous encounters of this kind can be found in The Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Only the year before Alderman Henry Kitchen was driving with two friends to rural Hornsey when his carriage was held up by two such blaggards. The thieves got away with a black silk purse, two gold watches, a steel chain, two seals and some cash, a haul worth the equivalent of about £2,000 in today’s money.

But thieves were not always as fortunate as these two. A fisherman by the name of William Frost told the Old Bailey that on a ‘moon-shiney’ night in April 1788 he was heading to market in London, accompanied by his wife and daughter, when their cart was held up by two highwaymen, who escaped with little over a guinea and two virtually worthless steel thimbles.

Highway robbery was a risky business. Earlier in the eighteenth century such miscreants were sentenced to death by hanging. But by 1783, when John Loringe was waylaid on Battersea Rise, execution was usually respited in favour of transportation to New South Wales in Australia.

In broad daylight

And it is to Battersea Rise that we must now return. It is unlikely that the two highwaymen shouted ‘Stand and deliver!’ as Loringe was not riding in a carriage. Instead, they ordered him to dismount, probably with the threat of a loaded weapon. They then proceeded to relieve him of his valuables.

It was not unusual for those who had been robbed, or have-a-go heroes, to pursue escaping highwaymen. They were encouraged to do so by the generous rewards paid by the courts for the capture and prosecution of robbers. And so Loringe’s attackers removed the bridle from his horse and threw it over a hedge — the same hedge behind which the labourers were working — before heading off in the direction of London.

Loringe stood by the side of the road in shock, and no wonder, for he had lost rather more than a guinea and two thimbles. In fact he had been carrying a stupendous £140 in cash and notes, which at the time would have been several years’ wages for a skilled tradesman, and would now be worth over £12,000. He sought no help from anyone, either from the labourers in the neighbouring field, or from the occupants of nearby buildings. Instead he walked home, and it was probably of little comfort that the two-and-a-half-mile journey was for the most part downhill.

The Loringes

So who was this unfortunate man? John Loringe was Lower Tooting born and bred. He was the oldest of four children — and the only son — born to John Loringe senior and his wife Hannah. In 1738 he was christened in the charming but rather rickety ancient church of St Nicholas, which had served the village since before the Norman Conquest.

Tooting at this time consisted of fewer than a hundred and fifty dwellings. It was a favoured rural retreat of those with money, and, as it was only seven-and-half miles from St Paul’s Cathedral, these well-heeled residents included wealthy City merchants. The Loringe family were not Tooting gentry, but neither were they counted among the many agricultural labourers who probably made up the mainstay of the population. They were relatively comfortably off, respectable and well-regarded.

Like father …

John Loringe Senior was a barber who was also heavily involved in parish affairs. At this time the parish vestry or council basically ran the village, its responsibilities ranging from caring for the poor and maintaining the highways to ensuring any beer sold was of a decent standard. Power was exercised by means of several local government positions which were in its gift and some of which came with much-appreciated renumeration.

John Senior held many of these posts during his lifetime. In 1745 he was elected Headborough, the title of a type of village mayor. He served as Parish Constable and also as Parish Overseer of the Poor. As an overseer he was responsible for collecting and spending local rates on the upkeep of the poor, as well as ensuring that those not from Tooting did not benefit from the no doubt resentful ratepayers’ ‘largesse’.

We know that John Senior was literate and had a good degree of education because he was chosen to be vestry clerk from 1749 to 1754. In this role he had to arrange meetings, keep minutes, and carry out any other administrative functions as directed.

… like son

Interestingly, when John Junior reached the age of thirteen, the vestry paid his father five pounds to take him as an apprentice in the barbering trade. Within four years, following  his father’s death, Junior was running the family business. In addition to barbering John was also a peruke or wig maker, which was a lucrative business in the eighteenth century, when wearing false hair was fashionable. Then In 1757, at St Nicholas Church, he married a young widow by the name of Henrietta Turpin. As far as I can tell, Henrietta was not related to Dick, the famous highwayman.

Like his father, John Junior was also active in parish affairs, serving as Parish Constable and Overseer of the Poor. He became a Freemason in 1776, probably to promote his position in the local hierarchy, and attended a lodge which met in the King’s Arms in nearby Wandsworth. He diversified, and in addition to barbering and peruke-making he worked as a  grocer and corn chandler, perhaps this was because the wearing of wigs was going out of fashion.

Poor Henrietta

But life did not continue on the up for the Loringe family. At the age of forty-four Henrietta became ill, so ill, in fact, that on 2 May 1782 she was admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital. Records show that she was in St Thomas’s, which was then at The Borough in Southwark, for a minimum of two weeks, but the date of her discharge is not listed.

Of course, the Loringes would have had to pay for the treatment, and it may have been a significant drain on their finances. In any case, it failed to cure Henrietta, and on Wednesday 28 August 1782 she was laid to rest in the graveyard of St Nicholas Church.

An unexpected package

Let us return to the day of the robbery in May 1783, and the moment when John Loringe finally reached his shop, where he also lived. The building was probably at what was then Tooting Corner but is now known as the Broadway. After an anxious day he went to bed, but he passed a sleepless night, and he was disturbed by voices whispering outside his shop. Rather than peering out of the window, or even calling for the night watchman, he stayed abed, scared of whoever it was out there. Had the highwaymen come back for more?

With it was a note — presumably from the highway men — which read:

Mr Loringe, by borrowing your Money we have been saved from inevitable Destruction, and only having Occasion for £132 18s. and 1½d. we return you £17 1s. and 10½d., assuring you, that before the Year is expired, we shall remit the Remainder, with the Interest, on Condition that you do not make this Matter public.

After a time the noises ceased and a nervous John crept downstairs. There he found a small package, which had been pushed under the door of the shop. Inside the package was a ten-pound note, six-and-a-half guineas in gold, five shillings in silver, and fourpence ha’penny in coppers.

A strange business

At this point we might expect the story to end. There are no reports that suggest that the highwaymen were apprehended or made good their promise to return the rest of the money. But there is more to this curious tale.

The Hibernian Journal rather tartly reported that

Mr Loringe seems to think, from this genteel Behaviour of the Highwaymen, that they will perform their Promise; nor should he fret much about the Matter, if all the Money had been his own, but it unfortunately happened that almost the whole of the Sum belonged to the Parish of Tooting, of which he is one of the Tax Officers.

The money was probably Lower Tooting’s contribution to the land tax, and Loringe, as one of the local tax officers, was on his way to a city bank to deposit it before he was robbed.

Matters arising

There are several unanswered questions:

1. Why was John Loringe travelling alone on horseback with such a large sum of money? It would have more sense to have travelled with a companion, such as his fellow tax officer, or to have armed himself with a firearm, or even to have taken the public coach to the city.

2. Why after being robbed did he not call out to the labourers who were working in the neighbouring field? It is understandable that he might keep stum while the highwaymen held him at gun point — but why did he remain silent once they had ridden away? Most records of highway robbery show victims giving chase or, failing that, finding someone else either to do the chasing for them or at the very least to report the matter to a local official.

3. Why there is no mention of this dreadful incident in the Lower Tooting vestry minutes, which still survive in the Wandsworth Heritage Service? This is perhaps the strangest aspect of the affair, as the parish would surely have thought it worth mentioning that such a significant sum had been stolen. Of course, the silence may have been a closing of ranks: John was a long term member of the parish council and only a few months previously had been promoted to the prestigious position of churchwarden.

I believe that John Loringe, far from being the victim of a highway robbery, was actually the person who stole the parish’s tax contribution. All accounts rely on his word alone: there were no witnesses, nor was there any other evidence that he had been robbed. Possibly he needed the money because the treatment for his late wife’s terminal illness had been more than he could afford. Having ‘borrowed’ the money, John may indeed have intended to return it within the year if his financial affairs improved.

A Tooting burial

For the next twenty years John Loringe continued to live In Tooting. He never remarried, and in later life resided with his nephew, Charles Gibling, and a servant, Mary Goodall. There is reason to believe that in his final years he enjoyed increased prosperity, for he is typically listed as a corn chandler, and he appears to have owned land in Mitcham and to have bought the house he had rented for many years. And although he was never publicly accused of theft, he held no further public offices in Tooting after 1783, which makes me wonder if people had their suspicions about him long before me!

On Tuesday 15 January 1805, at the age of sixty-six, John Loringe was buried in the graveyard of St Nicholas Church, and the truth of his encounter with the highwaymen was buried with him. In his will he left approximately £225 to be divided between his surviving sisters, his nephews the Giblings — one of whom followed him in the hairdressing line — and his servant Mary Goodall.