mad jack harmer 1821 - ???? from sussex to new jersey and
TRANSCRIPT
Mad ‘Jack’ Harmer 1821 - ????
From Sussex to New Jersey and Back Again
Being a humorous pamphlet to be recited and distributed at the
Harmer Family Reunion, Pennsylvania, August 2019.
© Anna Antoniou 2019 – https://johnharmer.org.uk
Greetings from England, Harmers and Harmer descendants!
Firstly I must confess that I am not one of your kin. But I do hope that my research into John
Harmer’s life is of interest to those attending this much anticipated reunion. I wish I could
have journeyed from the UK to be with you all.
My John Harmer is not famous – he doesn’t even command the level of interest as his
Heathfield relative Jonathan Harmer of terracotta grave topper fame. But in 1860s
Brighton, the seaside town where I was born and bred, he was a household name, being
known as ‘Mad Jack Harmer’ to be precise! Indeed, by August 1860 he was so infamous in
Sussex that the thronging crowds at Lewes Races split their attentions equally between John
and the world-famous pugilist Tom Sayers. So I thought it might be fun to share some
anecdotes about his eccentric personality with you all.
Whilst all of us genealogy nerds take great delight in confirming that our tree entries are
authentic, we also know the thrill of adding someone with a dramatic life or life event. John
amused me so much that I ended up creating a whole website about his exploits and his
tree, which you can find at johnharmer.org.uk. I dearly hope that descendants of John living
in America can be located, and connected with their English heritage, so please take a look
at my site and spread the word.
My interest in John began with researching the history of my street, which, it turns out, he
built. It forms part of the Wellington Estate, although that name is long forgotten – a project
commenced by John to build a mixture of villas and affordable housing on downland which
had historically been grazing pasture for sheep. I started out with census returns, old maps,
street directories, planning applications, and probate and land registry records, but when I
subscribed to the British Newspaper Archive a whole new world opened up. John was
cropping up in the Brighton Gazette almost weekly, for one chaotic reason or another, and I
quickly became hooked. Clippings from and full bibliographical references to the newspaper
articles cited in this talk can be found on my website, as can many more of John’s exploits
and my genealogical research into his siblings and descendants.
So – let us begin!
Getting to know someone posthumously who never made it into the history books is a
tough if not impossible task; we can build a picture of their life through a variety of sources,
but they rarely left behind diaries or letters. Finding clues about their personalities can be a
major challenge. With this John Harmer we have an exception, thanks largely to the local
press.
I am very grateful to Gill Price, UK Secretary of the Harmer Family Association, for verifying
my research into John’s Harmer line. John was a descendent of Richard Harmer of
Heathfield (1712 – 1792) and his wife Sarah Harmer née Dalloway (1716 – 1781) via his
grandmother, Elizabeth Harmer who passed in 1836.
Anyone who has researched the Heathfield Harmers will be aware that many children were
born out of wedlock in this small and isolated part of the Sussex weald during the 18th and
19th centuries. Records survive of multitudinous bastardy charges brought by Harmer
women against the fathers of their children, the modern equivalent of child maintenance
orders.
It would be easy to associate a certain romanticism with these crude facts; the notion of
rustic peasants having a roll in the hay at May Day and the community stoically managing
the consequences nine months later and for decades to come. But we do have to consider
the unpleasant certainty that some of these pregnancies resulted from less consensual
situations, or had life-changing consequences. This is especially poignant for us viz. Harmer
women who, stigmatised by their illegitimate children, no man subsequently wished to
marry.
John’s grandmother Elizabeth Harmer was one such lady. There is significant evidence to
suggest that the father of her only son George was George Lovell, a successful local farmer
who was unhappily married at the time of George’s conception. Ironically, he couldn’t have
married Elizabeth even if he wanted to. George Lovell and Elizabeth were born and died
within a year of each other, and never left their home village of Heathfield. How strange to
think that the three members of this potential ‘love triangle’ today lay buried inches apart in
the churchyard at All Saints, Heathfield! It does have something of a reversed Wuthering
Heights narrative about it, if we choose to look at it that way.
George the farmer looks to have played an active part in his bastard’s life including
influencing his career as a shoemaker. Goodness knows how his wife felt about that! In time
George Lovell Harmer married, and sired nine children including our John who was born in
1821. George was remembered in the will of both his mother and his uncle John Harmer,
which gained him the right to vote via an inherited freehold cottage.
The dynamics of this isolated part of the world must have been very similar to small-town
life today, with everyone knowing their neighbours’ histories, business and suspected
parentage. Career opportunities were limited, and an ‘ag lab’ life or that of a shoemaker did
not appeal to John. He wanted to break free, and set his sights on the bustling and
developing town of Brighton, quitting Heathfield when he was just 17.
Brighton c.1835 (c) Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
The coming of the railways, especially the line connecting Brighton with London, had led to
a massive boom in property development. The speed with which John improved his
circumstances was phenomenal; he was an incredibly motivated person, and quickly worked
his way up from a house labourer to a supplier of bricks and timber. Within five years he
had his own timber yard, and had forged a niche for himself, building up a large network of
contacts in the trade and supervising the erection of many of Brighton and Hove’s fine
houses. It was at this time that John dropped the middle name ‘Lovell’.
In 1841, when he was 20, John married Brightonian Mary Ann Downer, who would find
herself standing by her husband and his mad cap antics throughout 46 years of marriage.
John was illiterate at the time of their wedding, and signed the marriage register with an ‘X’.
Marriage entry for John Harmer and Mary Ann Downer 14th Nov 1841
It was imperative that John learned to read and write, however, and we know that he did so
from the many property conveyances which bear his signature. I wonder if Mary Ann taught
him?
Signature of John Harmer with wax seal circa 1855
John and Mary Ann had nine children together, eight of which survived to adulthood, and
John was a fiercely loyal and protective husband and father. If people owed him money his
most common accusation was that they had stolen his children’s inheritance, indicating that
his workaholic nature originated in part from the desire to build a good life for his family.
But John also seems to have been driven in other ways. A phrase which the courts and
newspapers frequently used to describe him was ‘excitable’. It is impossible to definitively
state what kind of neuroses John was afflicted by, but his erratic behaviour – especially
when he had been drinking heavily – does suggest that he could have been bipolar. He may
also have lived with adult ADHD, which is only today becoming recognised. John never
seemed to stop, and survived on very little sleep, often walking the clifftops at night
brooding and plotting. Many of his immediate relatives experienced episodes of ‘acute
mania’, and either committed suicide or were sent to the County Lunatic Asylum at
Haywards Heath, and there could have been a strain of hereditary mental illness in the mix
either down the Harmer or Lovell line.
This possibility – and alcoholism – aside, one cannot help observing that a lot of John’s
exploits were simply endeavours to amuse himself – and to see how much he could get
away with. In the days before TV and Netflix, John made his own entertainment, and kept
the town in thrall in the process. Curiously, when John moved to my part of Brighton and
was running the Race Hill Inn (yes, he had a career as a pub landlord as well as a successful
property developer!), he didn’t get into too much trouble, probably because he could stay
up in his own pub as late as he liked. When the mood took him, however, he would race his
horse the Jersey Maid at an alarming pace up and down the Lewes Road hallooing at
passers-by. John was rather addicted to riding fast, and if he were alive today would
doubtless own a sports car! On one occasion when the courts needed to serve a subpoena
on him ‘one of the County Court officers endeavoured to serve him in the street, but Mr.
Harmer rode so fast the officer could not overtake him!’ Similarly in 1859 we read that ‘John
Harmer, who has lately become rather notorious in connection with some cases at the
Brighton Police court, was summoned for evading the turnpike tolls at the Ringmer Gate’.
Knowing John he probably just jumped over it – and at high speed! John was also known to
bomb around town in a fly carriage with a fellow publican who was not adverse to speeding,
drink driving and knocking over pedestrians.
Around this time John batted for the Wellington Club – a local cricket team named for his
estate, and for 12 years he hosted Brighton’s May and September fairs on one of the fields
he had acquired. This was much to the disgust of the town commissioners, who considered
the fairs to be vulgar events which resulted in brawls, pregnant housemaids and general
debauchery. This merely made John even more determined to facilitate the annual fracas.
On one occasion in June 1859 the Brighton Gazette reported upon a ‘ “CURIOUS ACCIDENT”:
We are told that a man at a travelling circus, exhibiting in Mr. Harmer’s field on Tuesday
afternoon, put a number of boys on the elephant, and then told the animal to shake them
off; he did so, and the result was that an arm of one of the boys was broken.’ Who needs
rules and health and safety when your name is John Harmer???
Embracing his new-found middle-class existence, John joined the West Kent Yeomanry
Cavalry. This largely meant that he got to wear a rather dashing uniform, as illustrated
below, and play with guns.
Official military dress of the West Kent Yeomanry
Indeed, John’s interest in firearms extended to the invention of an early form of cap gun,
which he patented in June 1859. Thank goodness John is not known to have gone out armed
when not in service! We can probably put this down to one of the very few rules which
Mary Ann laid down for him, the other being not to come back half cut in the middle of the
night and wake the whole house up.
Simply put, John’s ethos was to work hard and play hard; I can imagine him raising a toast to
“Eat, drink and be merry – for tomorrow you may be dead!” He was never short of
company, and it has been evidenced that he was very popular, and a good mixer.
The biggest event in Brighton in those days was the political election, and 1859’s election
day provided just a little too much stimulation for John’s excitable nature. It was the
tradition at the time, as it still is now to a much lesser degree, for people who strongly
backed one particular candidate to drive electors to the polls. John embraced this idea with
enthusiasm; he got to gad about in a carriage for much of the day, being seen with well-
known figures and waving to the crowds, and to partake in the general atmosphere of
suspense and riotousness. He also consumed enough alcohol on that day to put the average
person in a coma or worse. Not a good idea at the best of times, and especially as John, by
his own admission, had not slept for nine nights previously.
Crowds outside Brighton Town Hall on Election Day 1841
John’s day started at 5.30am with gin and milk – this passing somehow for breakfast.
Throughout the morning and afternoon he drank neat gin, gin and spruce, and gin with
lemonade liberally, whilst driving 48 or so voters to the poll. During this time he was
cautioned by officials five times for his behaviour. Between 4.00pm and 7.00pm he drank
stout and smoked cigars in the committee room, dozing off with boredom from time to
time. After this he went on a pub crawl, taking in no less than six taverns, where he drank
even more gin. At the last, the Rising Sun, he ordered claret and champagne just before
midnight. When he was eventually ejected at chucking out time he attempted to regain
entry with a friend by breaking a window and clambering in. The police were called, and
John eventually left, wandering around town until 7am when he knew he could safely go
home with minimum chastisement.
The only known depiction of the Rising Sun, painted in 1824
The following day John had the nerve to press charges against the landlord of the Rising Sun
for serving alcohol after hours! This became a bit of a cause célèbre, as several prominent
townsmen had also been in the pub that night, including the bailiff of the County Court who
John accused of dragging him into the smoking room and forcing him to quaff wine against
his will! Then, when the teetotal barmaid swore that she never served John a drop after
midnight, John accused her of perjury! All this nonsense in turn led to John himself being
charged with perjury, and for making the whole thing up (although he did admit trying to
climb in through the window and getting stuck).
During these court appearances John was in his element, and local journalists recorded his
every word - often phonetically. This is how we learn that like all good rural Heathfield
Harmers John dropped his ‘aitches. Conversely he dressed in cords and top boots, cutting
quite the handsome figure. I must admit that although I have never seen a photograph of
John, I do visualise him somewhat as Ross Poldark subsequently!
John also referred to some of the solicitors as sounding like they had swallowed a
dictionary, and as being overly ‘fisshus’ in their attitudes. I just love the way he was able to
parody himself as a peasant, knowing that he had made and had more money than most of
the people present – including those from ‘old money’.
After nine traders from the town and thereabouts testified to John’s good character, he was
eventually found not guilty. The verdict was met with loud cheers by the packed courtroom.
No one, it seemed, could bring John down – except perhaps himself.
Amidst all this craziness John was still building houses and working his butt off, as my friends
across the pond would say! And not just in Sussex. Sometimes John had reason to stay in
London on business, and on one of these occasions, a Thursday morning in April 1860, he
received a telegram from Mary Ann informing him that a timber merchant named Austin
had called at their home requesting that John settle his account of £27 and was returning
the next day. In all likelihood this is all the message said, but it sent John into a frenzy. He
cut his trip short and got the first train back to Brighton, making straight for where he knew
Austin would be – the weekly market at the King and Queen public house. Bumping into his
old adversary, the public prosecutor, en route he openly informed him that he was “obliged
to insult someone at the market”. This was where all the movers and shakers of Brighton
met to trade corn and building materials and to conduct property deals, and the room was
packed.
John proceeded to jump onto a table, and deliver a furious speech to the company present,
accusing Austin of grossly insulting Mary Ann. He then leapt down, and jumped up and
down on Austin’s toes, before spitting in his face.
A warrant was issued the next day for John’s arrest, but when the court officers called at his
home they were out of luck. According to the papers, the last heard of John was that he was
at nearby Shoreham over-night, fighting with a fly man, and was now gone out of town to
play a game of skittles! John had indeed been at Shoreham, tearing up the town on another
of his indefatigable pub crawls, and breaking the windows of those inns which had shut for
the night.
John’s whereabouts between his witching hour raging at Shoreham and his arrest 24 hours
later in Brighton are lost to history. He was eventually picked up by the police late on Friday
night walking the cliffs, very lame and with a severely bruised left eye. He was held in the
cells overnight, and the case was heard the following morning. A somewhat dejected John
requested that Mary Ann be called to court as a witness, but this was denied as she could
not testify against her husband if questioned by the prosecution – something which would
not happen today in the UK.
John was found guilty and bound over to keep the peace, with a £100 surety to be put up by
himself, and two friends to stand sureties of £50 each. No one came forward, and John was
taken down – facing six months in prison. Two old friends predictably did turn up with the
money and John was released, but a few days later he was behaving so irrationally that his
friends rescinded their sureties. John, unable to let the matter lie, had approached Austin
once more at the market, and asked if he wanted his face spat in again, for ‘he would soon
do it’. Fortunately for John two other friends put up £50 each, one of whom being his
sister’s husband, and he was again released.
The following Sunday morning at about 1.30 am John was at the end of the street where I
live today, causing a rumpus which must have woken up half the neighbourhood! John and
two builder friends of his had been out drinking and as usual did not want the night to end.
They therefore decided to bang on the door of the Admiral Nelson public house and
demand entry. When the landlord shouted from the bedroom window telling him them in
no uncertain terms to ‘go home’, John shouted back “If you don’t come down, I’ll kick the
bloody door down!”, which he proceeded to do. The landlord found John in the passageway,
demanding a bottle of champagne. When he was refused, John altered his request to half a
dozen of the same, and after being refused again blew the landlord’s candle out.
When the case inevitably came to court John claimed that the only reason he wasn’t served
the champers was that the landlord was too cheap to stock it. To add insult to injury he
laconically sucked on an orange throughout the proceedings, and bombarded the landlord
with irrelevant questions to the irritation of the court and the great amusement of the
crowd. At one point John demanded to know of the officers whether he was ‘dealing with a
lot of shoemakers, or a Bench of honourable gentlemen.’ This is a curious remark for the
son of a shoemaker, descended from a line of Heathfield shoemakers. John’s stated reason
for being in that part of town so late at night was that he was debt collecting, which may
well have been true. He certainly rambled quite a bit about the £30,000 he had expended
on the Wellington Estate by that point, and was in the process of disposing of all his
property there in advance of moving to America.
The stress of all this was clearly taking its toll, as throughout April 1860 John was attending
court daily even when he had no case of his own, apparently simply to provoke the
magistrates. He produced sovereigns from his pocket and paid fines for complete strangers,
interrupted hearings, and demanded that warrants were issued for four men he had got into
a scrape with at the Lord Nelson. I sometimes stop by at this olde-world pub, which is still
open today, and imagine John getting forcefully ejected for causing a scene. The fight in
question seems to have started over a servant of John’s by the name of Starley refusing to
hand over some keys, and John lost a watch and chain in the scuffle.
When the magistrates retired to consider his request, John amused the courtroom by
launching into a diatribe, in which he claimed to speak all the languages of the land, to have
been in all the colonies round about (the closest this comes to the truth is the seven years
which Jonathan Harmer of Heathfield had spent in New York), and that it was his punctuality
and perseverance which had put him in the proud position he then occupied. He alluded to
himself as having often shone in “public print”, referred to himself as “Young England” (an
obscure political reference) and “Jack Shephard the second” – Shephard being a then
famous jail-breaker. John also informed his listeners that he had once spent a fortnight in a
straightjacket, and that he should have been a lamb if he had not been made a lion. Clearly
working the crowd, he concluded energetically that there were ten acts in the piece, and
one act was not half over yet. It had been a farce, but he was damned if he didn’t make it a
pantomime. John then left the building, but 15 minutes later was back, having been taken in
charge by the police upon leaving the court. It is notable that the police officer in question
did so reluctantly for the public good, and when cross-examined by John stated that he
regretted having to do it, and had been remonstrating with him for days to calm down –
having known John personally for five years. John’s retort was to ask “Have you ever known
anyone as larkish as me, and to drink so much?”
Two surgeons were called for to ‘examine him as to the state of his mind’. The first, Mr.
Tatham, concluded that John had ‘abandoned himself to intemperate habits, and his brain
was in an excited state in consequence. He had had haemorrhage of the lungs that day, and
would, no doubt, have another if his excitement continued. He thought he was temporarily
deranged; but in time, when the effects of the excitement had passed off, he would be sane
enough’. He was ‘excessively ill, and though he threw up a half-pint of blood on Sunday he
was not in bed all the night.’ The second doctor, George Lowdell, who had attended John
for 17 years, described him as “one of the cleverest men in Brighton and one of the biggest
fools, too”, which made the court and John laugh. Lowdell also mentioned that one of
John’s lungs had been terribly diseased the whole time he had known him, and that it was a
wonder to all medical men that he had lived to his present age – which was 39. Lowdell also
informed the court that he had previously treated John for his ‘excitement’. Could this have
involved the straightjacket which John referred to in his ravings?
John’s wife Mary Ann was called to court, and spent half an hour in private conversation
with the surgeons and officials. Eventually it was agreed that John would be allowed to
return home, on the proviso that Mary Ann and Lowdell looked after him, and attempted to
control him. The assistant overseer of the court concluded ominously that ‘the kindest way
to deal with the case, if Mr. Harmer could not be controlled, would be for the two medical
gentlemen to sign a certificate and send him to some place where he would be under kind
treatment and control, – not to Haywards Heath but to some asylum in London’.
It is striking indeed just how lenient and supportive the officials were to John on this, and
pretty much every other occasion he appeared in court. Whilst John was a major land
developer he had no real political influence, and we can only conclude that it was his
loveable and engaging personality which saved him from the horrors of committal to a
Victorian lunatic asylum. It seems to have been generally accepted that if John would only
sleep more and drink less, he would be a perfectly fine to person to be around and no threat
to society. Everyone involved also seems to have been very worried lest John’s ‘excitement’
exacerbated his lung complaint, with fatal consequences. This 1860s comprehension of the
workings of the lungs seems quite naïve in the present day. Was John suffering from
consumption? We will probably never know.
As we have learned, John got very animated around election time, and he outshone himself
at the Brighton election of July 1860. He had no sincere intention of standing as a
candidate, but having personal beefs with those who were standing, he engineered a parody
campaign of his own. According to the Brighton Gazette, at a riotous meeting at the Town
Hall a week before the election ‘a placard was held up, on which was printed “John Harmer,
Conservative for Brighton”, which created deafening cheers, and the eyes of the crowd
involuntarily turned to the door-way, expecting every moment to see that eccentric
character enter the room; but he did not put in an appearance.’ John’s cult of personality
seems to have attracted a lot of followers, who shared his anarchic, anti-establishment
sense of humour. On election day itself, When the Mayor asked if there were any other
nominated candidates to come forwards, loud cries of “Where is John Harmer?” and
“Harmer! Harmer!” rang out.
All the local newspapers, referring to John’s fans as ‘roughs’, reported sarcastically upon
‘the unceasing attempts of a number of non-electors, who seemed enthusiastic in the cause
of the well-known John Harmer. These ‘gentry’ […] kept parading the town “supporting” a
number of empty flys and cheering vociferously at every yard of their peregrinations’. At
the hustings, ‘a number of rabble, supporters and admirers of the notorious John Harmer,
made their way into the crowd and for some time stopped the proceedings. Two of them
bore a figure, dressed as a woman and wearing a hideous mask; others had boughs of trees,
others bills calling upon the electors to vote for Harmer, flags striped with various colours,
and so on. When they had performed various antics and had pretty much tired themselves
by crushing among the crowd, they became somewhat quiet and the business then
proceeded.’
During the polling itself John drove around the town, fantastically dressed and attended by
his “bodyguard”. According to the Brighton Guardian ‘By way of exciting the mob, John
Harmer and his motley group had a procession in the streets, Harmer himself being attired
in a most grotesque manner, and riding through the streets on a timber carriage, drawn by
two heavy cart horses, the mob shouting “Harmer forever,” whilst this eccentric man was
being drenched with rain, shouting at the top of his voice. In the course of the day he
appeared, we believe, in no less than five different costumes.’ John’s exuberance may have
had something to do with the £9 2s worth of champagne which he bought on credit to share
with his friends and the crowd – but forgot to pay for resulting in yet another court case! In
1860 it would take a skilled tradesman 45 days to earn that much money. In the same
month John won a wager for £36 worth of champagne that he could outdrink his
companions all night and still be up at the crack of dawn at an appointed place and time.
Funnily enough the wager took place at the Rising Sun where John had caused such drama
the previous summer – I suppose the landlord must have forgiven him like everyone else
seemed to!
It is highly likely that John’s popularity with the working classes stemmed from his ability to
send himself up. His strong Sussex brogue, his relatively poor upbringing, his modest but
self-made fortune and his reputation as a fair employer made him much easier to relate to
and even perhaps to desire to emulate than the landed gentry who governed the town at
the time. John’s nature inclined him to forgive people, not knock them down, unless they
posed a perceived threat to him or his family’s stability. On one occasion when a young boy
who he was allowing to sleep in his hayloft stole some lead, John claimed to not be able to
positively identify it as his. That was a pretty decent thing to do, as it could have resulted in
transportation to Australia. Similarly when his groom stole his West Kent Yeomanry
emblazoned coat, John forgave him as long as he promised not to do it again.
A couple of weeks after the elections John was in a less favourable mood, when he
discovered that some of the land he had sold in preparation for his emigration was being
marked out with posts – taking in part of an adjacent plot which he still owned. When the
workman in question carried on, after John had warned him that he would “rearrange his
mug”, John did precisely that, giving him a right hook and bashing him about with his own
hammer. He then sued the workman for assault!
On Saturday 4th August John’s temper got the better of him again, when three separate
bailiffs turned up on the same day to seize his goods. He had been illegally subletting a
patisserie, and the owner, having found out, had sued for costs a week earlier and wanted
him out. Apparently she had learned something of his reputation, and wanted nothing to do
with him. When John retorted that he didn’t give ‘a bloody haporth for all the lawyers since
and before Adam’s time’, resulting in the magistrate warning him to show some respect, he
replied with feigned bewilderment “But your honour – I am John Harmer!”, which caused
the packed court room to collapse in hysterics.
Brighton Guardian 16th May 1860
John had genuine intentions; his eldest daughter had married his clerk, and he wanted to be
able to leave for America knowing that they had a business to support them. In reality John
could have paid the various debtors easily enough, and still had several other properties in
Brighton in which he was storing his excess furniture. But he was prepared to let the bailiffs
take what they wanted from the patisserie for a quiet life. This was not to be! Especially
when they all arrived at once. As usual, John had the law eating out of his hand, in this case
the hand that punched its officer! To be fair to John, he did warn him in advance, “Don’t
excite me, or I’ll change the look of your mouth!” After John had backhanded him, the court
bailiff dutifully went to fetch him a half-pint of gin to calm him down. It DID go to court, but
whispered considerations amongst the magistrates about how poor John had been
subjected to so much annoyance that he ‘did not know perfectly well what he was doing at
the time’ resulted in a fine of just 20s.
Brighton became a much more boring place two months later, when John, Mary Ann and six
of their children set sail for the U.S. as planned. The steamer ship which carried them from
London to New York was the Plymouth Rock, a 335ft long vessel which was very beautifully
furnished, boasting ‘the finest beds, bedding, chandeliers, china, cut glass, and furniture
money could buy’ according to historian and author Blake A. Bell. It arrived safely at New
York on the 24th of October 1860, heralding a new life for the Harmer family.
The Plymouth Rock, bound for the New World
We don’t know why they left England; perhaps it was for the good of John’s lungs, or as a
result of his urge to continually take on new conquests. The family settled in Harrison,
Hudson County, New Jersey, where John continued to work as a builder and as an
ornamental plasterer. I have managed to trace most of his children’s children, and identified
many descendants, all of whom are detailed on my website. All of John’s sons stayed in New
Jersey, and most worked in the building trade like their father, or as stonemasons or
plasterers. John and Mary Ann also had a ninth child, Ada, in 1860 – who never set foot on
English soil.
I have yet to find John in one U.S. census return, although he does show up in the Newark,
New Jersey street directories and Mary Ann in one census entry. It is quite possible that he
was homesteading, and living somewhat off the grid leaving Mary Ann at home with the
children. Perhaps this gave her some much deserved peace, although she clearly loved him
very much, as he adored her in return. It would be wonderful to find out more about the
couples’ lives in America, and this is a work in progress.
In 1887, 27 years after leaving England, Mary Ann passed away. A few months later,
satisfied that all his children were by now able to support themselves, John returned alone
to the UK, and rented a beautiful house in Hove, close to where he and Mary Ann had lived
during the early years of their marriage. One of the first things he did was to inspect some of
the land he still owned at a village adjacent to Brighton called Copperas Gap. John was
enraged to find that ten years previously a rival firm of timber merchants had built a locked
gate across an old public right of way which ran though his land, and which John himself had
got in trouble for blocking off way back in 1853. So he did what came naturally to him, and
simply started sawing it down.
By this time John was 67 years old, but his fighting spirit had not left him – and he was in the
right. It was either a very big gate, or John was not as strong as he once was, for it took him
several nights to chip away at it until it was gone altogether. He reportedly worked mostly in
the middle of the night, as local children would bother him during the day and slow down
progress. When challenged by his old enemy, John cheerfully ‘clouted him one’ as we say in
Sussex, and told him to get off his land. He then hired 50 men and boys to dig trenches
around the path rendering the area useless as a timber yard.
Brighton had not forgotten John during his time abroad. At first his machinations were
described as that of an old man, a labourer of very weak intellect. The latter may have been
based on his ravings – who would believe that this seemingly deranged individual really did
own the land? But when a local reporter realised who was behind all this he gleefully told
the Brighton Gazette: ‘Little did I think that the defendant in this case was “Old Jack
Harmer”, whose name is as familiar in the mouths of Old Brightonians as household words.
Everyone of mature years, I dare say, remembers the time when the beating of drums and
the blowing of trumpets proclaimed to the constituency that Harmer was seeking
Parliamentary honours at the hands of the electors of Brighton. Since these things have
been of the past, Jack Harmer has been wandering in America. Now he is home again and
since his return to the old country has been doing his best to revive his former notoriety.’
The local parish council were over the moon to get their road back, and that John had stood
up to the bullyboy tactics of the bogus landowners. For a short time he was hailed as a local
hero. Then – John vanishes. Not one will, street directory, census, burial, death, travel or
probate record has so far given up a clue as to what became of John, either over here or in
the U.S. It would be a very sad end to this story if John ended up in one of his own trenches!
I feel it more likely that he returned to America, and perhaps someone, one day, will find
the missing piece of the puzzle. Again, please spread the word amongst anyone you know
who might be able to help find the last resting place of this extraordinary Harmer, who lived
a life packed with rebellion, hard graft, and above all – fun.
I hope that these tales of John’s doings have entertained you as much as they did the public
at the time they occurred. And I am sure that ‘Mad Jack’ would be delighted if he knew that
he was still giving pleasure to people today, especially his distant kinsfolk.
Thank you very much to Jahnine for reading all this out, and I hope, in the spirit of the 1860
election, you will all raise your glasses and join her in three rousing cheers of “Harmer
forever!”
© Anna Antoniou 2019 – https://johnharmer.org.uk