A wall plaque in Park Street, Bankside, commemorates one of the proudest days in London’s history – when a gang of brewery workers beat up a 63-year-old tourist.
Julius Jakob Freiherr von Haynau (1786-1853) was an Austrian general who, during the revolutions which broke out across Europe in 1848-9, played a major role in crushing the pro-democracy uprisings. His methods were so brutal (especially, it was said, towards women) that he became widely infamous as “The Hyena of Brescia,” “The Hangman of Arad,” “the woman flogger,” and, simply, “the butcher.”
Haynau retired in 1850 and visited London as a tourist, presumably unaware of how much he was hated and despised there. In those days one of the sights on every sightseer’s list – and one of the most famous industrial premises in the world - was the Anchor Brewery in Park Street, Southwark. It existed from 1616 to 1981, and in the early 19th century it was the world’s biggest brewery. A fire in the 1830s led to a massive rebuilding, and it was this modernisation which attracted trippers such as Bismarck, Bonaparte, and Dr. Johnson.
And, on this day in 1850, General von Haynau.
One thing you need to know about the butcher baron is that his moustaches were unmistakably comical, even by the fashions of the age. They stretched far beyond his face, like a kind of nasal beard, and had an unkempt, slightly feral look to them. They were also (going by surviving portraits) piebald.
All this meant that, by the time the general reached the entrance to the brewery, many people had a pretty strong suspicion of his identity – which was confirmed when he cheerfully signed the visitors book in his own name.
Within moments, brewery employees and local residents were attacking Haynau with stones, brooms and horseshit, shouting “Down with the Austrian butcher!” One report says that women workers “tore the fellow’s grisly mustachios until he roared again and again with pain and fury,” another that he was actually dragged along the road by his facial hair. His fine clothes were ripped from his back and the boots of working men were employed to teach him some manners. At one point, apparently, he hid in a dustbin, though whether this was the fabled “dustbin of history” is not specified.
Eventually he managed to reach the sanctuary of a nearby pub with stout doors, from where the police were finally able to escort him to safety. Haynau had not been seriously injured – but he had been seriously humiliated.
The popular view, expressed in ballads and even to some extent in the press, was that the butcher had got what he deserved and that the “manifestation of British feeling, so honest, so popular, and so spontaneous, as well as so energetic,” had demonstrated to the world a liberal nation’s firm attachment to free speech and fair play. Haynau’s government demanded an apology which, at first, the foreign secretary, Palmerston, refused to provide. It was only the direct intervention of Queen Victoria (never a great fan of democracy, or of mobs) which persuaded her government to send a half-hearted sorry. It was received in the spirit in which it had been offered, and relations between the two empires were frosty for years – so much so that when Britain’s own military hero, the Duke of Wellington, died two years later, Austria declined to be represented at his funeral.
Fourteen years later, the brewery’s great moment had still not been forgotten. In 1864, Garibaldi – the unifier of Italy, and a popular figure throughout Europe – visited London and insisted on a tour of the place where “the men flogged Haynau.” While there he gained even more admirers in London by drinking a toast to the brewery workers of Southwark.
Sources:
Perish the privileged orders by Mark O’Brien (New Clarion Press, 2009)
http://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Story_of_General_Haynau
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Jacob-Freiherr-von-Haynau
https://home.barclays/news/2017/08/from-the-archives-barclay-perkins-brewery/