Joseph Wall of Goree Island

The Royal African Society

Joseph Wall of Goree IslandAuthor(s): David DeanSource: African Affairs, Vol. 57, No. 229 (Oct., 1958), pp. 295-301Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/719248 .

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295

Joseph Wall of Goree Island By DAVID DEAN

HAD IT NOT BEEN for one afternoon in 1782, Joseph Wall would be remembered only as a name in the archives of West African history.

On that afternoon he had a man under his command so severely flogged that he died. Certainly ruthlessness was a useful asset in the administration of a remote garrison manned largely by convicts and deserters from home regiments; but Wall was never to escape the consequences of his fatal brutality, and when in his 65th year he was executed the cycle of savagery was harshly completed by an outburst of public rejoicing.

Wall, who was born into an Irish Catholic family in 1737, showed exceptional promise as a student at Trinity College, Dublin, though he left before graduating in order to join the army. As a young man he killed an intimate friend in one of his frequent duels, and in this incident may lie the seeds of the melancholy and reserve which so marked him in maturity. His habitual coldness may also have been caused in part by a sense of loneliness springing from an awareness of his own superior cultivation ; a man who had shown such unusual mastery of Greek at Trinity could have had little in common intellectually with the sort of men who were to be his colleagues in West Africa.

As a subaltern he attracted some attention for his bravery in the taking of Havana in 1762, and soon afterwards he took service in the East India Company, going for some years to Bombay. On his return, according to a contemporary pamphleteer, he devoted himself to searching for an heiress; but, having found one who seemed suitable, he introduced himself "in so gallant a way, and pressed his suit in a style so coercive " that she brought an action for defamation and assault, and " succeeded in his conviction and penal chastisement".

Whether this account and similar stories of intrigue and gambling in London and the fashionable spas have any truth in them, or whether they are mere scurrilous inventions of the swarm of pamphleteers who settled on Wall at the time of his trial is not clear. What is certain is that by 1773 he had begun his connection with West Africa by becoming Secretary and Clerk to the Council of the Province of Senegambia, and that as a Lieutenant in the 32nd Regiment he purchased a Captaincy in the African Corps in 1775.

In November of that year Colonel O'Hara, the Governor of the Province, returned to England, leaving behind him Wall as senior military officer and Matthias Macnamara, Lieutenant-Governor of James Island in the Gambia River, as his de facto successor as Governor. Macnamara, described by a contemporary as " a man without education, extremely brutal, vulgar and avaricious," had only shortness of temper in common with Wall. His first act was to bring about the dismissal of O'Hara from the service. This done,



296 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

he turned his attention to Wall. As Acting Governor, he had his rival appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Gambia, a post resonant in title which in effect constituted virtual exclusion from the active affairs of the province, as Macnamara well knew, having himself held the post under O'Hara.

Wall retaliated at once in his new appointment by totally ignoring the Acting Governor's letters and instructions. Macnamara promptly brought charges of cruelty to his subordinates against Wall; and, whilst nothing was proved, the allegations may not have been entirely groundless. Then, in 1776, he wrote to Wall commanding him to "give an answer to every sentence "contained in his previous letters and to set out his reasons for his continued disobeying of orders.

This letter produced not an answer but Wall himself, who, powerful, handsome, and six feet four inches tall, came striding unannounced into Macnamara's quarters in St. Louis. When the latter had recovered from his first alarm and demanded an explanation, Wall replied, "Your ill- treatment of me made me quit my post". But he was far from well, and offered no resistance when Macnamara had him put under close arrest. The solitary confinement which followed, for ten months in such a climate and in a room six feet by eight, must have left a deep scar on the mind of the future Governor of Goree.

Since no charge was preferred against him in the absence, Macnamara said later, of sufficient officers to constitute a court-martial, Wall might have remained in the guardroom on James Island indefinitely ; but happily for him Macnamara's administration of the Province had become so high-handed as to cause diplomatic clashes with France ; and he was dismissed and recalled.

In the event he declined to return to London ; and he appeared as a witness, albeit a highly evasive one, at the enquiry into the Wall case which the new Governor, Captain Clarke, set up. The truth, of course, was that both Wall and Macnamara had behaved indefensibly; but Macnamara's conduct in keeping Wall confined without trial for ten months, and Wall's appearance at the enquiry manifestly broken in health, swung the tribunal in the latter's favour, though he was not ordinarily a figure to arouse either popularity or sympathy.

After sitting for two months the tribunal found Macnamara's charges "frivolous, groundless and vexatious", and Wall was unconditionally released. He at once brought two actions against Macnamara; one for false imprisonment, and the other for trover concerning goods of his that Mac- namara had seized and sold while Wall was confined. Both were successful, and he was awarded substantial damages.

In August 1778 Wall was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Senegambia, and the death of Governor Clarke in the same month left him in effect in sole command. In 1780 he was appointed Captain-Commandant of the African Corps, with his headquarters on the island of Goree, which had been seized in the previous year from the French.

Goree has always had a dark reputation. Barely three-quarters of a mile



JOSEPH WALL OF GOREE ISLAND 297

in length, it lies directly off the coast, and opposite to what is now the great port of Dakar. From its first settlement by the Diitch in 1617 it constantly changed hands between Dutch, British and French, being sought after as naval base, fort and trading post, both for merchandise and for slaves; and until recently was penal settlement, with the seventeenth-century Dutch fort still in use as the main prison building.

Add to this unattractive setting the hardships caused by the climate and the appalling mortality rates on the coast--in 1767 all but 90 of the 300- strong garrison in Senegal died--and it is plain that it was no privilege to serve in Goree.

"As the troops destined to garrison that fortress (a pamphleteer writes) were generally regiments in disgrace for mutiny, deserting their colours, riot, or some such cause, and their ranks usually recruited by desperadoes picked from the convicts in our gaols, or incorrigibles in our military prisons, it is hardly presumable that an officer would be selected for the government of a fortress thus garrisoned, who was very pre-eminently distinguished by the benevolence of his heart. Aimiable weaknesses of this kind formed none of the blemishes in Governor Wall's administration".

On the voyage out to Goree in 1780 Wall was said to have had a man named Paterson flogged to death, despite the pleas of his own brother, on whose mind the event "stamped a melancholy horror " that destroyed his resistance to the fever which he caught on arrival, and which quickly proved fatal. There is something suspect about this story, for it is too striking a coincidence that one of Wall's later victims should also be called Paterson. But the confusion may lie not in the facts but simply in the names; and it is certainly true that in July 1780 Lt. Paget Wall died on Goree.

The events which brought about the Governor's downfall, however, did not take place till 1782. Early in July of that year the news spread through the garrison, some 150 strong, that Wall was returning to England on July 11th, taking with him Ensign Dearing, the garrison paymaster. Now it was the custom when provisions were short to make up the deficiencies with money; and since a good deal was owing on this occasion, the men, knowing, as the Attorney-General later pointed out, that they were unlikely ever to see Dearing again, and that they were in a singularly unhealthy settlement, so that " if they did not press their demand at that period, it was possible they might not be in a situation afterwards to urge their claim with any beneficial effect to themselves," determined to have their money.

A group of them set out for the Paymaster's house, but were stopped on the way by the Governor, who ordered them to return at once to barracks or he would have half of them flogged. An hour and a half later, a second group, among whom were Sergeant Benjamin Armstrong and two private soldiers named Paterson and Upton, set out for the Paymaster's and were again ordered away by Wall.



298 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

That evening the drums beat the long roll and the men were ordered to fall in just as they were, with their jackets or without them. They formed a circle, a gun carriage was brought up, Armstrong and his two fellows were stripped, tied to it and flogged, with a one inch rope by black slaves, instead of the customary * inch "cat " by members of their own regiment. After each had received 800 lashes the parade was dismissed.

Next day Wall and Dearing left for England as arranged; and within five days all three of the flogged men died. On his arrival in England Wall was tried on a number of charges, the exact nature of which is not certain, brought against him by a fellow officer in the African Corps. He was, however, discharged, largely, it is thought, because the principal witnesses had not arrived from Africa and their ship was feared lost.

Unfortunately for Wall, both the news of Armstrong's death and the missing witnesses later arrived. He was at once arrested in his lodgings at Bath, but managed to escape his captors at Reading on his way to London. He fled to France, leaving a letter for the Secretary of State in which he expressed his intention of presenting himself for trial as soon as he had gathered his witnesses. In the event he did not return for seventeen years.

When in 1802 his trial finally took place, he was at some pains to explain this flight of his.

"All the papers were full of false paragraphs respecting cruelties committed by me, that I had fired men from the mouth of cannon, and that I had committed other enormities. This terrified me, and I could not face the charge till I thought the minds of the people were cool, and that a jury would listen to the truth without prejudice".

If such false paragraphs had in truth appeared, the press were probably confusing Wall, in one respect at least, with Captain Kenneth Mackenzie, whose career, at once wretched and brutal, throws some light on the conditions of African service at the time. His life as Commandant of Moree Fort on the Gold Coast was a chapter of desertion, sickness and disaffection. His dispatches tell the tale; for instance, in June 1782, " I feel at present the disagreeable effects of not having any comissioned officer or even non- commissioned officer that I can trust with the value of a soldier's pay." In July, the very month that Wall was dealing so savagely with Armstrong and his fellows, there was an attempted mutiny at Moree. Mackenzie had the ringleader seized. " My very critical situation rendered it necessary for me to make a striking example of him. I immediately compelled his associ- ates to secure him, and blow'd him from a 9 pound gun". For this act Mackenzie was recalled, tried for murder, and sentenced to death; in the following year he was granted a free pardon.

During the latter part of Wall's seventeen years on the Continent, his mind became increasingly uneasy; he seemed incapable of deciding whether or not to give himself up. At last, in 1802, he wrote to the Secretary of State expressing his willingness to stand trial, and in January 1802 the case was




opened at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey, with a formidable team representing the Crown, including the Attorney-General (later Lord Ellenborough), the Solicitor-General (Spencer Perceval, later to be assassinated in the lobby of the House of Conmmnons), Mr. Plumer (afterwards Sir Thomas Plumer, Master of the Rolls), and Mr. William Fielding, son of the novelist. Wall was tried, not at common law, but before a special commission, since the alleged murder took place "out of the land", in this instance "' at Goree, in Africa, in parts beyond the seas, without England".

A substantial number of witnesses had been found to testify, and to be minutely questioned, as to one afternoon's happenings twenty years pre- viously and three thousand miles away. The case hinged on whether Arm- strong-for the trial was in respect of his death only-had been properly tried and sentenced for leading a mutiny of so ugly a kind that the most exceptional measures were justified, or whether, as the prosecution alleged, there was neither trial nor mutiny.

The Crown produced a number of veterans from the African Corps to testify that no mutiny had taken.place. One of them suggested that any unwonted noise or excitement in the garrison that afternoon was the expression of the men's jubilation because Armstrong had come back to barracks with the news that the Governor had told him that he would see every man righted before he left the island. Wall neatly, and plausibly, countered that he had indeed said this, in an effort to play for time, as the men were in a dangerous mood, and he had no resource nearer than England. He further asserted that Armstrong had used highly abusive language to his commanding officer. As regards the " cats", he said, they had not been used for Armstrong's punishment simply because they had been destroyed; and a private soldier came forward for the defence to allege that he had seen Armstrong himself cutting up the " cats".

Among those appearing for Wall was the widow of his second in command, Captain Lacey, but her evidence was not entirely satisfactory, and the prosecution tried to discredit it further by suggesting that she had been Wall's mistress. Another part of the defence misfired when Major Phipps, one of several character witnesses for Wall, was driven by the prosecution to hedge in such a way that his highly qualified support can have done the prisoner no good at all.

The defence rested on three points: that the men, especially Armstrong, were mutinous, that a sort of drum-head court-martial did in fact take place, and that Armstrong's death was largely brought about by his drinking spirits while in hospital. But this left a number of telling points unexplained, as the prosecution was quick to point out. Why, if there was a mutiny, did Wall leave the island the very next day, taking with him two of the six officers under his command ? Why, in his report to Government on his arrival in England, did he detail the merest minutiae of garrison life, and not even mention the alleged mutiny, especially since he could not yet have known that Armstrong was dead, and so have had good reason for keeping quiet ? Why did he flee the country after his arrest, at a time when witnesses



300 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

were alive who, if his defence was just, might have spoken for him, and why, despite his claim that he would surrender as soon as he had collected them. did he take so unconscionable a time in giving himself up ?

The jury quickly expressed itself convinced by these arguments, and on January 20th Wall was sentenced to death. The trial, and the verdict, caused much popular excitement, and a number of pamphlets were soon on sale, the first of which, " Rights and Liberties", by the barrister, Charles Pennington, was a plea for reversal of sentence largely on legal grounds; it must have been written and printed at great speed, for only nine days elapsed between the passing of sentence and its carrying out.

As the wretched ex-Governor, now 64 years old, mounted the scaffold in Newgate, the mob expressed their exultation in a fashion so barbarous that even the pamphleteers were horrified. The appetite of the populace was the keener in that Wall had not only been a garrison commander, but also, by marrying the Earl of Seaforth's niece, had allied himself with a noble family. Moreover, during the years between his departure from Goree and his yielding himself for trial, the reverberations of the French Revolution had been heard from across the Channel. More respectable citizens, observing that the same month saw both Wall's trial and that of the Bantry Bay mutineers, were able to draw a comfortable moral about the impartiality of British justice. In fact, it may well have been the inexpediency of sparing Wall whilst executing the mutineers that denied him any chance of a reprieve.

There is no question of his guilt. Whether in determining the sentence enough weight was given to the effect on a cold and ruthless man, already embittered by his own previous imprisonment, of commanding a regiment which consisted largely of brutalised ex-gaolbirds on a barren, remote and unhealthy island is less certain. At all events, his death was a melancholy close to the career of a man who, however flawed in his character, was plainly gifted above the average.

There was a macabre epilogue to the trial. Attracted by the popular excitement in the case, a tall and handsome officer, Major Foster of the 1st

Wiest India Regiment, went along to the Old Bailey to watch. There he was startled to find that he and the prisoner bore an astounding resemblance to each other. The day after the execution a gruesome idea occurred to him; he dressed himself exactly as Wall had been dressed on the scaffold, and took a walk through Newgate. His sombre bearing and great height as he strode silently through the crowds was, seemingly, unmistakable, and he terrified all who saw him. Wall, they knew, was a devil; could it be that the figure whom they had howled at on the previous day had not, despite the evidence of their own eyes, really died at all ? So it was widely questioned ; and as the story spread, another, and perhaps more plausible, interpretation gained currency. Cunning to the last, the Governor had managed to effect a sub- stitution on the scaffold, and after the success of his scheme had, out of pride or curiosity, been unable to resist revisiting the scene.

A postscript to his story appears in Mark Boyd's " Reminiscences of Fifty




Years " (1871). In the year 1825 Boyd and his father were having a few weeks' holiday in the North of France, and, confined by bad weather one evening to their hotel in Boulogne, they gave themselves up to a long evening of talk with a number of fellow tourists. The conversation turned to the Wall case, and Boyd's father strongly asserted that the Governor should have been reprieved, developing his arguments at some length.

Then he told the company a curious tale. On one occasion Mrs. Wall had come with her only son, then a baby, to stay with an aunt of Mrs. Boyd's; and during the visit the party paid a call on a neighbour, who was distinguished equally for her position and for her religious and charitable work. As they entered the drawing ioom, the old aunt said, " Lady Anne, I have brought Mrs. Wall's sweet little boy for you to see". " Take it away I'" came the reply. "I will never look upon the child of a murderer !" and nothing would move her. Boyd's father, he added, had never been able to tolerate her name afterwards.

By this time candles had been brought, and the party slipped away to bed, one by one, until at last Boyd and his father were left alone with one stranger, an officer in a Highland regiment, who had shown a keen interest in the conversation from the start. The moment the three were alone, he started to his feet, and with extreme emotion made himself known. He was himself " the child of the murderer"

List of References PENNINGTON, C. A. S. Rights and liberties : the trial of Joseph Wall, Esq. 1802. (Anon). An authentic narrative of the life of Joseph Wall, Esq., by a military gentleman

(1802). The trial of Lieut. Col. Joseph Wall . . . taken in shorthand by Messrs. Ramsay and

B!anchard. 1802. (Anon.) The trial of Governor Wall, executed at the Old Bailey, Jan. 28, 1802, for the

murder of Benjamin Armstrong. Farrah. 1867. CROOKS, J. J. Historical records of the Royal African Corps. Dublin: Brown & Nolan,

1925. CRooxs, J. J. Records relation to the Gold Coast settlements from 1750 to 1784. DuI)nbtin :

Brown & Noland, 1923. CROOKs, J. J. A statement of events in Senegal and Goree, 1758 to 1784. (United Services

Mag., Vol. 52, pp. 316-19, 411-20, 530-40, 1915-16). DuKe, G. The life of Major General Worge . . . London : Parker, Furnival & Parker

1844. GRAY, J. M. A history of the Gambia. Cambridge : Univ. Press, 1940. BoYD, M. Reminiscences of fifty years. Longmans, Green. 1871.

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