If you wanted to hear a choice selection of expletives in Victorian or Edwardian Marlow all you had to do was call out to a passing bargeman "Who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?"
You didn't need to be in Marlow- the phrase was used not only upon the whole stretch of the Thames but on other stretches of water in England, and was known in Ireland too.
The angry response came from the question being a reference to an alleged incident where an unwitting bargee had stolen a pie only to discover after he had eaten it up "under Marlow Bridge" that it was made from the flesh of unwanted, drowned puppies. The pie's owners was said to have been fed up with their pies being stolen so set the pie thief up, breaking the news as to the pie contents only when it was too late and the last crumb eaten.
It is likely some such incident did happen as there are too many references to the tale for it to be otherwise but the circumstances are not consistent across different versions of the story and nor is the time period given for the incident.
The nature of the person whose pie had been stolen varies too. Not all versions even agree that it was Marlow Bridge involved though by far the greater number do.
The earliest print reference to this story which I have found dates from 1846 and says that the awful pie was consumed under Maidenhead Bridge, not Marlow (The Era 14th June, British Newspaper Archives). The Pall Mall Budget newspaper in 1872 also set the scene in Maidenhead as did the Saturday Review in 1867. One later Victorian memory recalled bargees being asked who ate the puppy pie under Waterloo Bridge in London.
The earliest reference to Marlow being the scene of the crime was in a newspaper of 1848 but the author there said the pie question was a "hidden taunt" and he did not personally know any particular story behind this odd question routinely thrown at bargees.
Francis Francis the elder (yes that was his name) in 1854 thought the incident had happened at the "beginning of the 18th century" and gives a version not matched by any later versions. He says that a gentleman of Marlow was the pie owner. This cook used part of an unwanted litter of poodle puppies (only in this version is a specific dog breed mentioned) for the pie filling and left it wrapped in a blue cloth down under the bridge where all the bargemen had left their lunches for later, in the expectation that one of them would surely eat it. This version has more detail than most others with the breed of dog which was victimized given, plus the colour of the cloth, and the detail that it was wrapped at all. It was of course normal for working men to carry their lunches in knotted clothes or handkerchiefs, and the different colours and patterns of these helped the men to tell whose lunch was whose. It is possible that the gentleman pie owner had observed that a particular thief used a blue cloth for his lunch and was thus specifically targeting an individual for vengeance. He might even have swapped out the correct lunch for the sabotaged one, rather than left matters to chance.
In 1856 Bell's Life In London thought that the pies stolen by the bargees were the lunches of the men building Marlow's new suspension bridge (which happened between 1829-32). This building was beset with problems which caused Marlow to become not just a local but nationwide laughing stock. People specifically came to Marlow to ask the locals where their new bridge was as it didn't seem to have been built yet and to witness the embarrassed local reactions. You can easily imagine the passing bargees joining in the teasing and becoming resented as a result. A perceived theft (we can't be sure in any scenario that any bargemen were actually guilty of stealing any pies only that they were believed to be guilty. Itinerant people were pretty much always blamed rather than locals for any unsolved crimes in the past) of some lunch by them might have been the final straw and a plan of revenge hatched. Remember too that the effect of the new suspension bridge on river flow was a cause for concern for commercial river users and this would have lead to increased tensions between them and the bridge builders and townspeople responsible for thst. The works themselves must have created disturbance to the nearby wharves too.
The Preston Pilot newspaper in 1860 also thought the legendary pie owner to be a gentleman. It mentioned that in other parts of the Thames the usual question to annoy bargemen was "Who ate the cats?" with no mention of Marlow Bridge. Was there another historic occurrence of revenge baking this time involving cats????
In the same year the journal Littell's Living Age stated that it was a Marlow publican who had been targeted by light fingered bargemen and that the bargees thought they had stolen a rabbit pie when they picked up his puppy one.
In the magazine Temple Bar of 1865 the aggrieved cook was given as the landlord of the Ferry Inn along the river at Medmenham though the puppy pie was still regarded as having been eaten at Marlow under the bridge.
Various different references to the "who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?" question in the mid Victorian era regarded it as an old or ancient one and the originating story possibly a myth.
In A Drive Through England in 1885 James John Hissey agreed that the pie had been baked by the landlord of an unspecified Medmenham pub. This landlord had heard that some bargees on their way to the village had hatched a plan to raid his larder yet again and placed just the puppy pie in it to teach them a lesson.
Henry Jones in The Way About Buckinghamshire written 13 years later also thought that a landlord was inspired to bake the infamous pie upon hearing that a plan to attack his larder was afoot. But the author thought that the landlord was that of the Compleat Angler in Marlow. I'll deal with that possibility below.
In 1912 the Sunderland Daily Echo attempted to explain the well known Marlow puppy pie question to it's readers. It claimed that the bargees were in the habit of using a Marlow baker's ovens for their own pie baking. When they came to fetch their pies they would falsely claim the biggest pies there as their own, leaving the smaller ones they had in fact baked behind for other customers. It was indeed normal for people to pay to use a bakery's ovens to cook their pies in, as many people had no oven at home, or only a very small one. It is not very believable however that the bargemen could claim other pies as their own as each pie would have had a mark or sign cut into the pastry top in order to distinguish it from others. You also have to wonder if the bargemen really had the capability on their barges to make pastry. It is possible their wives at home had made the pies for their husbands to carry along with them but if so why give them raw uncooked pies which would, unrefrigerated, soon spoil rather than already cooked ones which would last longer?
The Marlow bakery involved was said to be a small one near the river. There would be at least two possibilities for such a bakery in early Victorian or late Georgian Marlow if that is the correct era to be looking at.
In the 1914 editing of The Gourmet's Guide To London thought that the keeper of the Compleat Angler at Marlow had baked the puppy pie at the time of the old Marlow Bridge which was sited differently to our modern one. The Bisham side of it ended just by the Compleat Angler before it was condemned in 1829. No time frame is given but the Creswell family had the inn in the early 1800s and were in part barge masters so it may not be particularly credible that they would wish to enrage the bargemen, or that the bargees who wish to enrage a potential employer.
In 1939 in A Few Naval Customs etc Napier Thomason Beckett thought that the pie thefts had occured from an unnamed, but no longer existing, inn by the bridge, so not the Compleat Angler which still existed. This could be the former Waterman's Arms by the river or the Bowl and Pin which was demolished so that the new church could be built in 1833. Read more about the controversial church build in this post.
Also in the 1930s historian Francis Colmer thought that the pies originally stolen were cooling on a bench at Mr Rolls Wharf which was indeed at the foot of the bridge. He guessed that the pies came from the nearby Waterman's Arms but he probably didn't know about the Bowl and Pin. I'm not sure why they would choose a busy wharf as a place to cool their pie though!
A letter written to the Daily Mirror in 1949 by a Mr Walker of Mitcham Surrey placed the original incident "70 or 80 years" ago which was clearly far too late. He said the puppy pie was baked by the cook of the Compleat Angler and that game pies were the ones previously stolen.
That's all clear as mud isn't it? Various of the story versions above have some plausibility as to time and place or situation but many have implausible aspects too and none seems without question the right one.
There is one curious thing about all versions of the story. Namely that the prankster pie maker gets the last laugh. As a group bargeman were protective of each other and quick to take offence on behalf of any of their number whether known to them personally or not. When the boys of the Marlow based Royal Military College 1800s annoyed the bargemen it led to months of running battles between the two groups. Bargees angered by a Marlow man's behaviour in the 1760s (seemingly beating a boy, whose relationship to the bargees if any is unknown) rioted and robbed the town over 3 days. There was clearly a secondary motivation of anger at local corn and wheat prices behind that riot, which also involved the ladies of the town. Farmers, millers and bakers were particularly targeted. The bargees took food and either gave it to the women or sold it to them for the price they thought should have been charged in the first place, were it not for the greed of the producers. I wonder if the beaten boy had been caught stealing food in desperation or had complained about Marlow prices. The bargees also joined in with the rioting women of Marlow who, incensed at unaffordable food prices in the town, pulled down three bakeries in 1800. It doesn't seem very credible that anyone could feed a bargeman a trick puppy pie and there be no reaction from their fellow bargemen. Unless the thief stole their pies too and they were also fed up with him!!
Still, those merely mentioning the pie to a bargeman years later were not uncommonly ducked into the water, given a black eye or bombarded with missiles. The pie baker was taking a huge risk in upsetting the bargemen.
It is interesting to note that the 1760s riot incident involved larders in the town being ransacked. Innkeepers were amongst the many targeted. Did this lead to a lingering association in the town between thefts from larders and bargemen? Does the incident of the puppy pie actually come from some misremembered act of revenge after these larder raids? The town was said to have been almost emptied of food by the angry boatmen and the women who supported them at that time.
The question of "who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?" was previously used as an example of a question to which no possible answer could be given. If someone asked you a question anywhere in England which you felt unable to answer you could shrug and say, "Who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?". It was equivalent to our "How long is a piece of string?" So clearly very early on the identity of the unfortunate pie thief was forgotten or was never known by anyone but the few people present at the eating.
It was, by the way, believed in Victorian England that Chinese people routinely ate puppy pies, and according to some missionaries puppy pie was also a dish in Zanzibar. I'm not sure about the typical kitchen set up in Zanzibar but Chinese people at that time didn't do any baking so that legend is a non-starter.Nevertheless the unsafeness of puppies if any Chinese visitor was nearby was a running joke in England.
People would also use the expression "I could eat a puppy pie" to express the fact that they were so hungry that they could eat anything.
In case you are wondering whether anyone could actually eat a puppy pie and not realize that something wasn't quite right, the flavour of dog is apparently just like game. That information comes from those Zanzibar missionaries, we promise. No animals were harmed in the production of this post.
Honestly, I'm a vegetarian.
Written and researched by Charlotte Day.
Related posts= Creswells of Compleat Angler here and here. Detailed post about the history of Marlow bargemen here, the 1780s built bridge here and of the current Marlow Bridge here
©Marlow Ancestors. You are welcome to use my research with credit to this blog.
Additional sources quoted above=
The Real Salt by Francis Francis the elder, 1854.
The Gourmet's Guide To London by Nathaniel Newnham Davis.
The Living Age vol 67 . Google Books.
The Preston Pilot 28th January 1860, Sunderland Echo 7th June 1912, Daily Mirror 5th January 1949. British Library Archives. Via the British Newspaper Archive.
