The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1886-01-21
THE THREE q
Three Famous Inns in Merry
England.
Mother Red Cap, Mother Black Cap, and
Mother Shipton.
Superstition Surrounding Them.

~ SODAS VA tAoAAN VAeA OA1S
mother, and so they should be in the
course of nature. / have, however,
writes a London correspondent to The
Boston Herald, discovered in one por-
ton of London three mothers, and all
of them mothers of the same offspring,
all living at C~amdentown and Kentish-
town, all easily reached by a tram-car
starting from Kings Cross railway sta
ton, which is situated in the northern
part of this vast city. The offspring of
these mothers three, is-what do you
suppose? Briefly, then, since you prob
ably give up the riddle, it is a bar, not a
legal bar, but a public bar, or, in Eng
lish ~abbreviation, "a pub" The moth
ers are the three, names of inns of the
past, now degenerated into mere way
side resorts for the expenditure of the
nimble coins of the realm, which seem
somehow to burn in the pockets of the
British workman and his spouse. Gu
rious to learn something of inns, which,
as far as / can ascertain, are the only
ones called mother" this or that, 1
made a little tour of investigation as to
their origin and history, both on the
premises themselves and at that mine of
knowledge, the British museum, which
includes the histories of every sort of
English enterprise and of the books and
literature of all nations. 1t was posi-
BILE, however, to CLEAN most of my facts
from the places under consideration
namely, the Mother Red Cap" '.Moth-
er Black Cap" and Mother Shipton''
hosteleries. The people living near
them have preserved a large amount of
biographical lore, and, save that here
and there a date needs verifying, Cam
dentown and its contiguous Kentish-
town are well grounded in all pertain
ing to their celebrated s"Three Moth
ers." As far back as 1880 these three
inns were in a fiourishing condition.
Mother Red Cap and Mother Shipton
date back to the early seventeenth CEN
fury, and, believing vague rumors, even
further back. Mother Black Cap can
not trace with authority earlier than
1920. With Mother Red Cap it was and
is at rivalry, and its name was doubt
less given in order to be one quite OPP
posite to red, or, likelier still, because
Mother Red Cap was once intended to
have been made a second Tyburn.
Therefore black may have been used in
a derisive spirit. "Orders." wrote The
Morning Post newspaper in 1776 shave
been given from the secretary of states
office that the criminals capitally CON
victed at the Old Bailey shall in future
be executed at the cross-road neal the
Mother Red Cap inn, the half way
house to Hampstead, and that no gal
@leries, scaffolds or other temporary
stages be built near the place"
The first home of Charles Dickens in
London was within sight of the Red
Cap when he came here with his par
ents from Chatham in 1921. 1t was
then about the poorest portion of the
London suburbs. The thoughtful little
lad saw about him that sorry poverty
which he SO graphically portrayed later
o11n his marvellous word paintings. That
his childhood was lonely in consequence
OF his having at that period of his life
no suitable companions was perhaps
the best thing which could have hap
pened for the imperceptible develop
ment of his mental life.
The Mother Red Cap was from earli-
est times a terror to travellers. She was
a character in history, sometimes called
Mother Damnable," of Kentishtown.
At her house the notorious s.Moli Cut
purse" the highway feminine marauder
of Oliver Cromwelrs day, halted and
lodged. Viragos these two beyond all
doubt. In 1850 the old house was taken
and a new one built on its sight,
with the same swinging sign wei the
Door OF a buxom, shrewish-looking wo-
man. with a formidable extinguisher-
shaped hat. The present house is in its
urn a successor to the 1850 one, built
toout 1873. Much of the walls and
tone foundations are not only those
the later but the former
AS many histories are pre-
'ented of this somewhat mythical per-
;onage as there are days in the week.
The venerable dame, witch, or alewife
S identified by many writers as the cele-
,rated Eleanor Running, of Leather
head. in Surrey, who lived in the days
If Henry VIII. This old alewife is de
by the poet laureate of bluff
King Hal as being most uncomely OF
ace, s.ugly of cheer, her face all brow
", wondrously %wrinkled, her zen
and she gray-haired."
In a work on the history of st. Pan
,reas is the account of her life which is
most probable, and the one nearest the
traditions still extant in Camdentown.
''She was,' says this record, ''some-
times called, besides Mother Damnable'
md Mother Red Cap the 'Shrew of
Kentishtown.'" She was the daughter
of one Jacob Bingham, a brickmaker in
the town and neighborhood. firing of
the humble labors of a bricklayer, he
enlisted in the army and went to Scot
land, marrying there a Scotch peddler's
daughter. The result of their union
was our Mother Red Cap, whom they
named Jinney. At last the father wear
led of the army and returned to his
bricks, sometimes relieving life's mon
otony by travelling, with his wife and
child, as a peddler. Thus the girl got
into vagabond ways, and at 16 had an
intrigue with one Gypsy George, or. as
he was less frequently known, George
Coulter, an idle ne'er-do-well. This
man was a deal of bother to the magis-
trates, and, truth compels us to record,