1772 - Proceedings of the Old Bailey

From International Robin Hood Bibliography
Record
Date 1772
Topic Girl robbed on the way from Bromley-by-Bow to Robin Hood Lane, Poplar
Loading map...
Robin Hood Lane, Poplar.

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2018-06-17. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2022-05-17.

Record

3 Jun. 1772:]
Q. Do you know the nature of an oath? what will become of you if you take a false oath, is it a good or a wicked thing.

Ingram. A wicked thing. I was going along in Bow lane, near Bromley, last Saturday about five o'clock; I was walking on one side of the way, and the prisoner on the other side. He said, my dear, I have not seen you a long time; I thought I knew him at first, afterwards I found I did not; then he said again it is a long time since I saw you; I said, sir, I do not come home but once a week, I live at my master's.

Q. Where is your home?

Ingram. My parents live in Robinhood lane. He asked me to come over the hedge into the field, I did not go over; he said he would give me six-pence; I said I did not want any of his money, I wanted to go home to my grand-mother; then he said he would give me a shilling; I said I did not want his shilling, I must go home to my grandmother; he got over the hedge and stooped down, he saw me run away, and ran after me.[1]

Source notes

IRHB has silently regularized the use of spaces before punctuation marks in the quotation and corrected the HTML text at Proceedings of the Old Bailey from the PDF of the original printed edition.

IRHB comments

I think "Bromley" is Bromley-by-Bow rather than the London Borough of Bromley, but "Bow lane, near Bromley" perhaps poses a slight problem, for though there was a road of that name in Poplar[2] – it ran parallel to Cotton Street – this was c. 1.2 km from Bromley-by-Bow. Would it have been natural at this time to describe a road in Poplar as near Bromley? Perhaps, if Bromley was considered a more important place and/or had a larger population. If Bromley was the London borough, the girl would be quite far from any of the known Robin Hood Lanes.

Lists

Sources

Background

Also see

Notes