Boddam – the real home of the monkey hangers?

H'angus

The people of Hartlepool appear to be proud of the sobriquet monkey hanger (although I won’t put it to the test by calling the first person from the Pools I meet that name....) to the point that the local football club mascot is called H’angus. This is the former job of the current mayor...

The name stems from the Napoleonic era when a French ship was wrecked off Hartlepool in the Napoleonic Wars. A monkey found in the water was hanged by fishermen fearing it was a spy.

However it would seem that Hartleppool should not have claim to the sobriquet: according to the BBC an Aberdeen University study claims the tale originated in Scotland. Fiona-Jane Brown, a folklorist at Aberdeen University's Elphinstone Institute, suggests the Hartlepool legend stems from a similar incident off the village of Boddam, near Peterhead, in 1772.

A song of the time recalls how a monkey survived a shipwreck off Boddam. The villagers could only claim salvage rights if there were no survivors from the wreck, so they allegedly hanged the monkey. Ms Brown claims the song was adapted over many years as it travelled down the east coast, eventually spawning a Hartlepool version and embedding the monkey myth in Teesside culture.

"On Teesside, the legend has been generally adopted as a positive marker of social identity which survived on the football field. She said "But in Scotland, the Boddamers have refused to accept what they see as a slur against their community, a bad memory of bitter rivalries of the past."

I suppose it’s lucky for the people of Hartlepool that the Boddamers are in no rush to wrest the title of monkey hanger...