Interesting and readable; perhaps a little incomplete. John the Painter was a Scot, real name James Aitken; born in Edinburg in 1752, hanged “from the highest gallows in England” (a 60-foot spare mainmast from the frigate Arethusa) in Portsmouth in 1777. In between he managed to become an orphan, indenture as a house painter, turn to highway robbery and burglary, rape a shepardess, travel to America, return to England, enlist in and desert from the British army three times, travel to Paris, meet with an American envoy, and attempt a series of arsons that he hoped would get him an officer’s commission in the American army. A short but exciting life.


Author Jessica Warner is a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto; her research has focused on addiction. Perhaps she sees Aitken’s career as a study in poor impulse control. At any rate, the biography is engaging enough, if of dubious accuracy in details. This problem arises because most of the information on John the Painter’s life comes from his confessions before execution; it’s “confessions” in the plural since he had promised it to two different people in exchange for a few bottles of wine in jail (one) and the promise that his body would not be gibbeted (the other). As might be expected the two accounts do not agree; John seems to have failed to recall some of his life and exaggerated his exploits – understandable under the circumstances.


Warner ‘s subtitle calls John a “terrorist”, which is possibly stretching things a little. His stated intent was to burn down all the Royal Navy dockyards, which would certainly qualify as military targets; when security tightened after his initial attempt at Portsmouth he decided to burn down Bristol instead (which is less clearly a military target – although the Luftwaffe certainly thought so). Although he caused some damage his efforts were counterproductive as far as the American cause was concerned; attitudes toward American independence hardened all over England.


Surprisingly Warner doesn’t compare John with Islamic terrorists; perhaps too politically incorrect in Canada (the book was published in 2004, after 911 but before the London and Madrid attacks). The Islamic terror attacks perhaps fall into two categories – carefully planned operations by ideologically committed fanatics, like 911 and London; and “copycat” attacks by “free-lance” people who weren’t terribly well organized or even dedicated to the supposed cause they were backing, like the Times Square car bombing attempt and the Boston Marathon attack. The motives in this category seem to be achieving notoriety rather than any real political statement; the perpetrators often are underemployed for their education level and have a sense that they have been handled unjustly.


John the Painter falls into category two. There’s no evidence he had any particular devotion to American independence; in fact he complained of being poorly treated there. (There’s a possibility he never actually went to America at all, although he “confessions” seem to indicate a little familiarity with the colonies they disagree on travel details). As the son of a burgess, he was educated at Heriot’s, then an orphanage (and now a prestigious public school). A few of the top boys from Heriot’s were “sent up” to university, but Aitken did not make the grade and was indentured to a house painter instead. Warner suggests Aitken was unusually literate for the age – he left behind a copy of Voltaire – and speculates his stammer may have caused him to seem dimmer than he actually was. Aitken deliberately “played dumb” when he was researching his attacks, wandering unchallenged around the dockyards by pretending to be a yokel amazed at their scope and complexity. (In an interesting aside, Warner notes that even if he hadn’t found the work beneath him, times were tough for house painters; premixed paint had just come into use and it was possible for a homeowner to paint his own house for half the cost of a professional painter. As his sobriquet indicates, Aitken did work as a painter now and then, in between burglaries and arson.


Supposedly Aitken got his big idea from an overheard conversation; the speakers commented that the Royal Navy was dependent on its dockyards and if they were captured or destroyed it could no longer control the seas. Aitken jumped on this idea and headed off to Paris to see American envoy Silas Deane. Deane was something of a piece of work himself, corrupt and incompetent; he later claimed that he thought Aitken was a madman and didn’t give any credence to his plans. Aitken, on the other hand, seems to have thought he had received a go-ahead from Deane with the promise of money, and headed back to England. He got into the Portsmouth dockyard with no particular problem and decided to attack the rope works. He’d prepared a device consisting of a candle on top of a box of wood shavings but he couldn’t get it to light; he kept having trouble with his matches. He finally did get fires started at three separate places, and fled.


The fires were discovered, contained, and extinguished relatively quickly; although there was about £20000 worth of damage it didn’t spread beyond the rope house (Warner notes that if Aitken had staged his attack at low tide, a couple of warships alongside the works couldn’t have been moved and might have burned). The multiple simultaneous fires alerted the authorities; security was tightened at other dockyards and Aitken couldn’t get into the installation at Plymouth. He then decided if he couldn’t burn a dockyard a town would serve, and attempted Bristol. This time his inflammables were a little more efficient; he abandoned the candle and shavings device and went with wire balls stuffed with paper instead. His first attempt was unsuccessful; although he set his incendiaries on three ships and a warehouse none of the fires spread. His second attack the next night did set a warehouse on fire but the large military contingent in town deployed to put it out.


In one sense all of Aitken’s attacks had some success; even if he didn’t burn things down he did cause some panic. Towns increased their watch patrols and rewards were offered for the apprehension of the arsonists (it was assumed that there were multiple people at work). And there were some copycat attacks, including a sailor who duplicated Aitken’s wire ball device and tried to set his ship on fire.

Aitken’s luck ran out; short of money he burglarized a shop in Calne. He had ostentatiously cased the place the day before and after discovering the theft the owner set out looking for him. Almost simultaneously a small-town jailer recognized him from a published description and set off in pursuit. He was captured in Odiham without resistance.


The trial was more or less a formality; there were no public defenders for Aitken but the Crown had five prosecutors and an informant planted in the prison. The trial had taken place in Winchester but Aitken was taken to the scene of the crime for the execution. There was no drop; a team of riggers from the dockyard hosted him to the top of the mast and he was left there for an hour, which was enough. The last pieces of the tarred body finally disappeared from the gibbet around 1830 or so, meaning John the Painter spent more of his time in society dead than he had alive. According to local legend, one of his finger bones was recovered and used as a tobacco pouch stopper; this last bit was destroyed in a Luftwaffe raid in 1942.


Given the paucity of material, Warner does a good job; there’s enough background on English life in the 1700s to explain Aitken’s environment but not so much that it overwhelms the narrative. It might have been useful to explain how a rope walk worked. Illustrations come from period sources – Hogarth, for example – but are appropriate. There’s maps on the endpapers but they’re too large scale (both sides of the Atlantic with England inset) to be useful. A plan of the Portsmouth dockyards would have been helpful. ( )

An extremely good biography of James Aitken, known as "John the Painter," a young radical who attempted to destroy several British shipyards during the American Revolution. Well researched and sourced, written in a very lively way. Recommended. ( )

A well researched and detailed look at the life of one misguided and ultimately unsuccessful individual. The narrative was well anchored in the historical period of the time (around the American Revolution), and this book captured my interest such that I finished it in one sitting. A brief read, but a good one. ( )