Paulatic wrote: ↑7 May 2021, 7:45am
They once hung a monkey in Hartlepool can we give credence their judgement?
Interesting if you look into the story. It has a lot of elements to it. It started as a comedian who had a habit of singing ditties ridiculing places he was performing at. It seems he merged a few stories and places to turn it into hartlepool and hanging a monkey as a French man. It also had elements of local rivalry between West Hartlepool and of Hartlepool where the former new industrial town growing looked down on the supposedly lower intellect of the old hartlepool. They're now one town of course.
Then there's more truth. Like years before the first hartlepool reference to monkeys a monkey got hung in a place near Peterhead in Scotland. There's a mention of cossacks with a baboon in Newcastle contemporary to the comedians ditty about hartlepool.
Then there's all the other stories about monkey hanging before the first hartlepool reference. Mevagissey in Cornwall or Slough for example.
Evidence against it include the fact no French vessel sank up the east coast during the time of the napoleonic war period. That was the only "fact" given for the time of the hanging. It was a French boat during those wars that sank with only a monkey surviving. English heritage has records of shipwrecked boats from that period and only English vessels sank.
If course its all fun now right?