Regency Crime and Punishment: General Cootes

CW: Mature themes, including child SA.

I was perusing some various sites with Cruikshank brother images, when I stumbled upon this ghastly story I had never heard about, and the subsequent trial. I have added a content warning as this is a little darker than my typical content but I still wanted to share because I believe there are some interesting components to the story that can give us some insight into the Regency era from a different angle.

The image: George Cruikshank’s 1816 A Peep Into the Blue Coat School (shown below from British Museum) features an incident involving General Eye Coote (1762-1823) who was a British Army officer, Governor of Jamaica (1806-1808), and was Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Bath before being stripped of his rank and honours when found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. He had distinguished himself in the American War of Independence, eventually becoming a POW at Yorktown, and then fighting in France, the West Indies, and Guadeloupe before the 19th century dawned. His military career would march on with various other campaigns including Alexandria, where he was identified as one of the “Heroes of the Egypt Campaign” and served Lord Chatham in 1809 for the Walcheren expedition. He was promoted to general in 1814, and his conduct was noted as becoming more and more eccentric.

The last straw was when he entered the Christ’s Hospital school for boys and paid some boys money to flog them, and then dropped his pants and paid the boys to flog him. Found out by the school nurse, he was charged with indecent conduct and then brought before the Mayor of London. While he was acquitted after donating one thousand pounds to the school, the Duke of York directed a report be produced by Sir John Abercromby, Sir Henry Fane, and Sir George Cooke. After a lengthy inquiry, their report suggested he was not mad, but eccentric, and his conduct was found unworthy of an officer and a gentleman, removed from his regiment, dismissed from the army, and stripped of his title. He also lost his seat in Parliament and would die in 1823.

Twice married, with eight children, he also had four children with a Jamaican slave. Colin Powell is said to be descended from one of his illegitimate children, Susan Coote.

A competent defense had been mounted, with a rich amount of testimony and letters published in a pamphlet entitled A Plain Statement of Facts, Relative to Sir Eyre Coote that favored the explanation that the General was indeed mad, in an episodic fashion driven by mood swings:

Coote, E., Bagwell, W. (1816). A Plain Statement of Facts, Relative to Sir Eyre Coote: Containing the Official Correspondence and Documents Connected with His Case : and the Proceedings of the Military Board Appointed for Its Investigation. United Kingdom: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones.

For such a decorated and lauded military hero, the scandal rocked the family and scandalized Britain. However, according to one 1904 book, there was a notable penchant for flogging throughout history which this case demonstrates (Bertram, J. G. (1904). Flagellation & the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. United Kingdom: W. Reeves.).

Regardless of the truth or impetus to the incident, I think its fascinating how risque this Cruikshank depiction truly is and that it would have been circulated broadly. According to Cootes’ defense, the story was widely known and talked about, and this illustration would have further increased public interest in such a gross incident that was truly borne of a sick, if not mad, mind. The fact that he had children with an enslaved woman, of course, speaks to pre-existing moral failings of the man that pushed him into the realm of true disgrace toward the end of his life, extinguishing decades of good will he had built up being a hero of the military.