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I Porters: ‘Guardians of the Gates’
PORTERS: ‘GUARDIANS OF THE GATES’
By the Head Porter
Figure 1: Porters Porter with horn
If you were asked what the definition of a porter was, you would probably come up with an answer describing something to the picture at figure 1. However, throughout history, dating back to biblical times, the task of those titled porters has, it seems, been mainly connected with security and keeping premises secure.
The real beginnings of the use of hired guards and security personnel stretch as far back as ancient Egypt. During 13th century BC, Pharaoh Ramses II recruited and relied on a foreign legion of guards known as the Medjai, a generic term for scout or guard.
During the time of the Levites, the office of porter was in some sort military; properly speaking, they were the soldiers of the Lord and the guards of his house, to whose charge the several gates of the courts of the sanctuary were appointed.
Their proper business was to open and shut the gates, and to attend at them by day as a sort of peace officer, in order to prevent any tumult among the people; to keep strangers and the excommunicated and unclean persons from entering into the holy court; and, in short, to prevent whatever might be prejudicial to the safety, peace and purity of the holy place and service.
The military connection continues today with the three current Porters at the Inner Temple all having served previously, a combined total of nearly 70 years, with the armed forces. The Roman Empire is said to also have been quite innovative in its use of hired security personnel and is thought to have laid the foundations for practices that still exist to this day. Wealthy Roman families would often hire gladiators to protect their families and their property. These gladiators would more than likely be soldiers who had hired themselves out in between military campaigns.
The practice of using watchmen to protect and guard local towns and cities continued in England during the Middle Ages. Their place and considerable role in English history is signified by numerous writs and statutes; in 1233, an ordinance was issued that called for the appointment of watchmen and, perhaps more importantly, a statute was declared by King Edward I that sought to establish and formalise security on a more local level. The Statute of Winchester of 1285 applied to all English towns and villages and all English citizens.
The use of watchmen developed and continued into the industrial age, when industrial firms began to create their own unit of guards to counter possible strikes and/or violence. In an unprecedented move, tax revenues were used for the first time in 1737 to pay for the night patrol guards, and in 1748, Henry Fielding, an English novelist and magistrate, called for the founding of a permanent, well-paid, professional security force. Some believe this to have been London’s first police force.
An internet search for the definition of the family name ‘Porter’ states, “Occupational name for the gatekeeper of a walled town or city, or the doorkeeper of a great house, castle, or monastery, from Middle English porter ‘doorkeeper’, ‘gatekeeper’.” The office often came with accommodation, lands and other privileges for the bearer, and in some cases was hereditary, especially in the case of a royal castle.
Privileges were a theme that seem linked to the role of porter, and in 1620, John Bird, who took over the role due to the death of William Knight, inherited the wages usual and the benefit and letting of a number of shops, including two shops near Ram Alley gate, located north of the Inner Temple.
In 1586, a Council order, sent to the Readers of all four Inns of Court, stated that a porter be appointed to shut up the gates of the Inn at half past nine every night, and to keep them shut until the next morning. By 1592, the Inn had four ‘watchmen’ and over the years as the Inn grew, so did the porters’ responsibilities.
In the City, crime evolved into a major social problem in the years between 1580 and 1640, with the most common criminal acts involving trespasses against property. For much of the 17th century, Britain was engaged in making her writ obeyed across the globe, from India to America. But, curiously, kings and queens failed to get their laws obeyed in key parts of London. One of the most notorious of these ‘liberties’, where people could take refuge from legal authority, was Alsatia, which took up much of the land between Fleet Street and the Thames, and hence had implications for The Inner Temple and its porters. Alsatia’s curious name was derived from Alsace, a disputed land both France and Germany laid claim to, which was well known for its lawlessness. Alsatia was the most famous of the dozen or so legal safe havens in London.
Among those who took refuge in Alsatia was Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, who apparently escaped to it in 1692 after being pursued by the authorities for writing seditious material.
One area of concern to the Inn was Ram Alley, just off Fleet Street, leading down to Mitre Court, notorious for cut-throats and murderers who took advantage of this immunity from the law. In parliament on 20 December 1595, an order was given that the Temple “shall be watched as in former times and the allowance to the porters for their pains to be assessed at the next parliament; and further that Ram Alley door and the door out of Figtree Court into the Middle Temple shall be shut up”.
The rights remained in place until 1697, when they were abolished by an Act of Parliament, although the area maintained its disreputable character for some time.
The duties of the porter were, then, chiefly to keep undesirables out of the Inn and prevent them from harassing those dining in Hall. An order of parliament in 1652 also names the porter as one of the officers appointed to carry corpses, and in 1654, a fuller account is given of the increasingly varied role, which required the incumbent to “industriously keep clean the courts, look to the gate and House, and at least once every night walk about the courts and up every stairs to prevent robberies, which have lately been often committed” and to “keep out of the House all vagrant people who cry ‘milk’ or any other thing, not usual and proper to this Society”.
The porters’ primary role over the centuries was the safety and security of the Inn, but several duties were embraced due to the social conditions of the time. The Inn was adjacent to the parishes of St Dunstan’s in the east and Clement Danes in the west, much of which would now be described as socially deprived, though it would be difficult to discover districts in London that were not deprived to some degree in the 18th century. As a result of these conditions, many children were abandoned callously by parents who were unable or unwilling to care for them. The first reference to a child ‘dropped’ within the Inn and fostered by the Society occurs in the accounts of 1617–18 and the last in 1830.
The Inn of course did its best to discourage such practice, and in 1769, the Bench ordered that suspicious baskets or bundles brought into the Temple be examined to prevent the dropping of any child that may become chargeable to the Society.
The children that had avoided the security net were, up to 1754, looked after by the Inn’s servants. Often the children died within a short time as the mortality rate was as high as 50 per cent in London, and therefore a duty of the Head Porter was to organise the baptism as soon as possible after birth, as well as the burials in the Temple Churchyard of those who died.
From about 1675, the custom also arose of giving the children the collective surname of Temple, the Christian name being chosen by the foster parents.
Since the original order in 1586, the duties, roles and responsibilities of the porters had augmented to the point that official rules and orders were put in place to ensure that security was always maintained and enforced within the Inn.
Some of the official Rules and Orders from June 1822 state: “That the Head and Under Porters attend regularly throughout the day, to keep the Temple free from all Beggars, Criers of Old Clothes, &e, to prevent Nuisances and to preserve Peace and good Order therein, and to enable them to do so, it is Resolved that the Porters shall not (upon any pretence whatsoever) go on Errands or Messages out of the Temple except upon the business of their respective Societies.
“That they attend their respective gates every night, alternately, from 10 o’clock until 6 o’clock in the morning from Lady-day until Michaelmas-day; and until 7 o’clock from Michaelmasday to Lady day: and that each, on the evening preceding the Night of his Attendance, shall place the several Watchmen (who are to attend him for that purpose at Dusk) at their respective stands: and shall visit, twice at least each Night, every Watchbox in order to ascertain the Vigilance of the Watchmen; and to also prevent any person not belonging to the Temple whose business shall not be satisfactorily explained from entering the Temple after 11 o’clock at Night.
“That they take particular care that the several Gates are shut, and also locked, at the appointed periods.”
Though much at the Inn has changed in the previous four centuries, the Temple Porters, along with their ‘watchmen’, have continued in their primary duty of keeping the Inn secure. Without security, the Inn could not have developed, and without the existence of security, future progress is imperilled because of the uncertainty from danger of loss or harm.
Even with the introduction of technology such as CCTV and electronic access control, it is physical barriers and human intervention that offenders most fear. Some say there are potential weaknesses and limitations of advanced technology used in security measures; sometimes the simplest methods are the best, and that is why the instructions laid down in the Council order of 1586 are very much in evidence today, and we continue to be ‘Guardians of the Gates’.
Robert Ellis Head Porter
