Jane Gibbs

Jane Gibbs appeared in court at the Old Bailey on Saturday, September 21, 1799, having accused Jeremiah Beck of assaulting and robbing her. In his defense, he declared that she had first taken the money out of his pocket, returned it to the pocket, then screamed for help, declaring he had robbed her of the exact amount of money she had seen in his pocket. When caught by the authorities, he confessed out of fear and desired to give her the money at that time, even though the money was his, if she would drop the charges. That was probably her design, but the officer took him to Bow Street nevertheless and a trial was held. During the trial, eight men, including a clergyman, spoke against the character of Gibbs, declaring her to be a prostitute by trade, half-crazed, and an expert at crying foul in public when no foul was committed. Beck was acquitted, with one of the attorneys being none other than John Gurney, and one of the speakers for the defense another friend of Crabb Robinson, a young lawyer named Andrews who had previously been a debating companion of Robinson and Pattisson at the Quintilian Society in 1796 (Reminiscences, 1796, 1: f. 82). Gibbs was reprimanded, put under watch, and told to desist such conduct. The next month, however, she was back in court, this time facing charges herself for having falsely accused another man, a Mr. Evans of the Admiralty, by using a similar trick to which she used on Beck. She was placed in Bridewell in solitary confinement, but at her trial the jury acquitted her! The account of the first trial in the London Chronicle, September 21-24, 1799, pp. 292-93, along with a broadside of her printed after her October trial, must have impressed Coleridge, fresh from his sojourn in Germany and about to set off for his first visit to the Lake District. If the Chronicle’s description of Jane Gibbs is what Coleridge had in mind for Lloyd, it was truly a damning comparison, a caricature of her appearance and language aimed at Lloyd that made his caricature of Hays seem tame. The writer described Gibbs (and the broadside clearly mimics this) as “tall, bony, thin-visaged, and masculine; her face is somewhat marked with the small-pox, and her features are very coarse; she wants one or two of her front teeth; she has a turn-up nose, and squints most horribly . . . Her language was extremely low and vulgar; and the very tone of voice in which she delivered herself was disgusting. She seldom attended to the questions which were put to her; but poured forth a heap of words without much connection or meaning; and without any endeavour to guard herself against inconsistencies and contradictions” (292).