John Mytton

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John Mytton (1796-1834) was a notable British eccentric and Regency rake.

John "Jack" Mytton was born on September 30th, 1796 to a family of Shropshire squires. Many of his ancestors had been in the parliament and John Mytton served in the Hussars. From his father he inherited a family seat at Halston Hall near Shrewsbury, £60,000 (£4.3 million today [2006][1]) and annual income of £10,000 (£71,000 today [2006]).

Mytton would go hunting in any kind of weather. His usual winter gear was light jacket, thin shoes, linen trousers and silk stockings - but in the thrill of the chase he could strip down and continue the chase naked. He also had numerous pets in his manor.

Another thrill for him was reckless driving of carriages. He could drive his gig at high speed at an obstacle like a rabbit hole only to see if it would turn over. Once he tested if a horse pulling a carriage could jump over a tollgate. It could not. He managed to survive these self-made accidents without serious injuries.

Contemporary society considered his behaviour scandalous. He once picked a fight with a miner who disturbed his hunt and lasted 20 rounds before the miner gave up. He once arrived at a dinner party riding a bear and when he tried to make it go faster, the beast bit into his calf. His biographer 'Nimrod', Charles James Apperley tells this story: '‘He once rode this bear into his drawing-room, in full hunting costume. The bear carried him very quietly for a time; but on being pricked by the spur he bit his rider through the calf of his leg’'

Mytton was also a drinking man and could drink eight bottles of port wine a day with a helping of brandy. He managed to kill one of his horses, Sportsman, by making it drink a bottle of port.

Mytton was an enthusiastic dog-fighter whose favourite method of quelling his opponents was to put a vice-like bite on their snouts. He was also rumoured to have put his wife’s lapdog on the fire in a jealous rage.

Mytton was spendthrift and cared little about warnings that his money was running out. He could drop bank notes in his estate and gave his servants lots of spending money. Once he lost his racetrack winnings - several thousand - in Doncaster races when the wind blew them off. His workmen and tenants regarded him as a generous man. Over fifteen years he managed to spend his inheritance and then fell into deep debt. In 1830 he fled to France to avoid his creditors.

During his stay in France he tried to cure his hiccups by setting his shirt on fire. It apparently did work but only the intervention of his friends spared him of more serious injuries. Nimrod was present at this event, describing it thus:

‘"D--- this hiccup" said Mytton as he stood undressed on the floor, apparently in the act of getting into bed “but I’ll frighten it away”; so seizing a lighted candle applied it to the tail of his shirt – it being a cotton one – he was instantly enveloped in flames. A fellow guest and Mytton’s servant beat out the flames: "The hiccup is gone, by G--", said he and reeled, naked, into bed'.

Apperley visited Mytton in his room the next morning, to find him ‘not only shirtless, but sheetless, with the skin of his breast, shoulders and knees of the same colour as a newly singed bacon hog’.

After a couple of years he decided to return to England and ended up in the King's Bench debtor's prison. He died there in 1834. The Literary Gazette's review of Nimrod's biography contrasted the youthful Mytton:

“

. . .heir to an immense fortune, gifted by nature with a mind susceptible of noble cultivation, and a body endowed with admirable physical powers with the wretched drunkard who died in a gaol at the age of thirty-eight, a worn-out debauchee and drivelling sot

”

[edit] Contemporary References

• Remarkably, Jack Mytton has served as the inspiration for the Jack Mytton Way. There is much irony in his name linked to a venture dedicated to healthy outdoor living.
• More appropriately there is a public house in Hindford near Whittington[2].

[edit] References

• Charles James Apperley, Memoirs of The Life of The Late John Mytton, Esq. (1835),
• Jean Holdsworth, Mango: The Life and Times of Squire John Mytton of Halston 1796-1834, 1972