Shipads for Stalkers - Vesna McMaster

On the 2nd of June 1702, Anne Bramble, originally of Parson’s Lane, Shoreditch, lodged a complaint to the local magistrate that Tom Berridge, of 24 Chancery Lane, had ‘harassed and tormented her through relentless pursuit for the past twelvemonth, such that she was not able to stir abroad without his shadow haunting her, and she knew not what to do.’ Berridge is noted as vehemently denying this accusation, stating that ‘Their butchers and milliners being the same, by chance, they may of times have landed in similar places of occasion, but by no design of his.’ Further, Berridge noted that ‘a gentleman worth two hundred pounds a year with a good standing in his church would not be disposed to pursue a lady’s maid across town.’ The case was dismissed upon a lack of proof, and though several ladies of Bramble’s acquaintance were called on, and referred to Berridge as ‘an incessant menace’ and ‘importunate,’ these were dismissed as being partial; besides which Berridge had not laid hands on Bramble, and there was little cause to answer. A further two months passed before the next recorded incident, in August, when Bramble once again applied to the magistrate. This time her employer provided her with a written notice that Berridge had been banned from the manor house on grounds of ‘loitering with a malicious look.’ Berridge countered this by suggesting Bramble had ‘taken up with the Puritan Zealots’ and was ‘conversing in tongues and calling upon vacant air.’ The magistrate gave the case even shorter shrift and dismissed both parties to take their wrangling elsewhere or face the stocks for wasting time. Court was dismissed early that day and the clerk noted in the margins that the gouty magistrate left in a sedan chair calling on the bearers to ‘stop their infernal jolting or he would have them in Newgate afore evening, for all the devils in hell were tearing at his toe’. Whatever the narrative between then and September 11th, is lost. 

On this date, The Courant reported ‘A Commotion in Shoreditch’.

'Lady Greville was much affronted by a soot-blackened man who burst through the ceiling and near straight onto her coffee table as she sat playing at cards with three other ladies. On the footman’s apprehending him, the man’s face was cleared of soot, and Lady Greville instantly had the displeasure of recognising him as Thomas Berridge, long an unwanted accessory to one of her maids. On questioning, it appears that he had been making a clandestine entry toward the maid’s quarters through adjoining chimney flues, and over the rafters, which happened to be rotten directly above the card table. When questioned about the curious bulbous pads strapped about his shins (which had contributed considerably to the accumulation and spread of soot), Thomas said they were ‘shinpads’ of squirrel fur which he had devised for himself, as crawling about on hands and knees may leave unseemly marks on his legs, of which he was very proud. He did not seem to have considered the possible marks on his reputation before embarking on the venture. Lady Greville’s valet noted that the couch of French tapestry nearby was quite ruined with the copious quantities of soot deposited along with his fall.'