The story about John ‘Mad Jack’ Mytton, the eccentric 19th century MP who appears in Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, has spread to the most unlikely of places.
Jan’s Uncle Michael from London sent me a recent copy of the upmarket magazine, Country Life, which included an article on the Notebook page edited by Alice Cooke about Shrewsbury’s most outrageous elected representative.
The magazine said: “John ‘Mad Jack’ Mytton’s life has been described as ‘a series of suicide attempts’.
“Born in 1796 at Halston Hall (pictured below), this son of a Shropshire squire liked to drink several bottles of port in the morning ‘to forestall the bad effect of the night air’.
“When none was available he would swig eau de cologne instead.
“Thus fortified he would tear around the countryside in his four-horse gig, aiming for hairpin bends, pot holes, and on one memorable occasion a toll booth.
“He once drove at full speed over a rabbit warren, just to see what would happen.
“Socially things were no better – ‘Mad Jack’ would arrive at dinner parties riding a bear and liked nothing better than pretending to be a highwaymen and holding up his departing guests.
“The apogee of his hell-raising career came, when in a bid to cure a case of hiccups, he set fire to himself.
“He survived, but the trail of devastation he left in his wake proved ruinously expensive, and he ended his days in a Southwark debtors’ prison.”
To find out more about Mad Jack’s life, contact John Butterworth at John@jbutterworth.plus.com to order a signed copy of the book at the special price of £5 plus postage.
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