Monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey.

Hartlepool, which is a seaside town in the north east of England has two claims to fame. The first is having the oldest living women in the UK. Charlotte Hughes was a supercentenarian, living to 115 years and 228 days, she was born while the wild west was still wild and four years after her birth she could have read about the gunfight at the OK Corral (if she could read at four). She outlived five monarchs, flew on Concorde and would have been able to watch the theatrical release of Jurassic Park.

But even she wasn’t born before the most infamous page in the Town’s history, although she didn’t miss it by much! this incident involved a monkey and was maybe worse even than those Halfords adverts where they dressed them up in tracksuits!

In the early 19th century Napoleon was on the warpath with his first French empire and he was constantly at war from 1803-1815 with any one that pissed him off. His army was mighty, at one point it contained 2.5 million professional soldiers in it’s ranks, and in his defence he beat nearly every European army that was put in front of him but when the UK pissed him off by letting their papers publish unflattering cartoons of him (the audacity) he met his match.

The fact that the UK was the biggest economy in Europe at the time properly had nothing to do with it, but Napoleon tried to stifle the British export industry by blockading their ports and harbours. The British Army led by Nelson, gave the Frenchie’s a damn good licking in 1805 at Trafalgar, the licking was so bad that Napoleon never tried a Navel assault for the remainder of his rampage.

But it was during the early years of Napoleon’s war that the people of Hartlepool people would commit a war crime akin to that of the afore mentioned monkey adverts, but war crimes didn’t exist so they just served justice as they saw fit. One of the French ships that was blockading the British ports was seen floundering of the coast of Hartlepool and after it eventually sank the good people of the town ran down to beach to stop any of them invading Frenchie’s. While sifting through the detritus that had washed ashore they came across a survivor, a monkey, which was conveniently dressed in a miniature military-style uniform.

Just going to point out at this point that no one, I’ll repeat that, that… jokes. NO ONE in Hartlepool up to this point in time, 12,000 of human continued existence in Britain, had ever seen a Monkey OR A FRICKING FRENCHMAN, so they could be the same.

Although the people of Hartlepool were quick to judge that this abomination was a French solider and would try and assimilate into their ranks and spy on them, despite the fact that it had a prehensile tail and loved bananas, they put it on trial to keep everything above board. At the trial the monkey was unable to answer any question that was put to it, whether this was due to the fact that it wasn’t provided a French translator or a defence lawyer is undocumented, but it was found guilty and hanged in the town square.

Whether this is true a story or an apocryphal tale (French and British navy used young boys to prime the canons with gunpowder and were known as ‘powder-monkeys’ and due to the gunpowder residue on the face of the child that couldn’t speak English) is lost to time and as Tony Wilson once said (taken from the film “the man that shot Liberty Valance) “When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, choose the legend.”
Hartlepudlians have leaned into this legend though with their football team having a mascot named “H’Angus the Monkey” and residents are known by the affectionate term the Monkey Hangers and Chimp chokers by most people that know the story, but mainly their north east rivals Darlington. The North East is rough! (I can say that cos I know Atreya!)