The Insane Baker by Tim J Rhohn-Sayers

Preamble:
"Alan" a blog post commentator (who on one occasion also came in as an Alan Vassar) requested that I write a few short stories and he gave me a selection of titles. The above post title of: The Insane Baker is one of them. It was agreed it would be up to 1,000 words (excluding these 66 words of the preamble), so here goes ...


If today was not 2018, but 352 years ago, in 1666, it would only be a matter of less than 24 hours before one of the greatest and most architecturally changing events that ever affected a major capital city started. For hundreds of years you and I were taught, and in my case, not only was I taught it, but indeed I, myself taught it; that this great event was started by a fire in a little lane known as Pudding Lane, in the heart of old London. (That is, The City of London, which one should explain to anyone reading from overseas who may not know how the area of today's Greater London has separate sub-divisions that also are considered as 'internal cities' - what Londoners call The City is the oldest part of Greater London - the area fortified and utilised by the conquering Romans in the first century A.D., whereas, for example, within Greater London and a little to the west of "The City" is yet another city known as The City of Westminster - or just Westminster (the western Minster - or church - being The Abbey Church of St. Peter at [or on, the old “Thorney Island”] Westminster - what is today known as Westminster Abbey where many of the Kingdom's Kings and Queens are buried, along with just about anyone who is anyone.)

The revelation is that for all those years we all were being given, and telling people, what was almost certainly misinformation! The GREAT FIRE OF LONDON probably did not start in Pudding Lane but slightly along from there in what is today's Monument Street that intersects Pudding Lane and leads to the very obelisk/thin tower that we know as The Monument that indeed is the commemoration of The Great Fire of London and designed by Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren (- who built St. Paul's Cathedral).

I suggest readers look at The Daily Telegraph article that reveals why it is now thought that the fire started in Monument Street.

So, what about The Insane Baker?

Thomas Farriner was a baker – The King’s baker and he was driven to madness by his obsession with his hatred of Royalty. He would muse at night before rising at 3 a.m. to light his fiery ovens on how every one of his customers that called at his premises would pay him a halfpenny for a loaf of bread and both parties were happy. However, The King, indeed all members of high society did not pay upon delivery but often many months later by account and Farriner bitterly resented the expectation that he should finance the Establishment and that his family should be forced into giving credit to people that were far better off than he was.

This resentment grew through his sense of injustice and eventually into his loss of his mind. When he wrote a stern letter to The Royal Household demanding payment of their six month overdue account, he was rebuked, not only by the then Privy Purse but to his annoyance also by his fellow society. The Monarchy made sure that everyone knew that Farriner was a ‘cheapskate’ – a ‘resenter’ of The King and so even his immediate neighbours shunned him as a social outcast. This in turn led to his local customers buying their bread elsewhere and this finally turned his mind – and turned it to arson and destruction.

Today, September 1^st, in 1666, Thomas Farriner sat down with quill in hand and parchment and wax seal, seated on his small table in the scullery adjacent to the ovens and he wrote the following letter in his best hand:

“I address all and sundry and The Monarch himself and I advise forthwith that I shall set a blaze before all that will witness a great act of venomous hatred of all that is England today. I am a man of honour, of fortitude and yet it pleases The Rule of this land that I be made out as a villain, as a scoundrel and yet it is so far from God’s truth that I am unjustly spoken of.

The King will not get his bread, he will not pay his account, the bread will not even be placed for baking in the ovens, but the ovens will be lit by me in such a manner as to cause an explosion of the greatest worth in England that England would not even have witnessed should Mister Fawkes have been successful in his bid sixty-one years ago.

My act of vengeance will bring The King’s House and The King’s city to ruination and it will be known to you, all and sundry, that it is I who is right and trustworthy and good in the eyes and wisdom of God our Lord and Saviour.

Dated this day September first sixteen sixty-six. May God have mercy upon my soul.”

Once written, this letter he placed on a wooden plaque outside his bakery. Why he did this ridiculous thing we will never know except we can judge that it may be in keeping with his mental state at the time – not thinking, maybe not expecting, that anything other than his premises would burn down. In fact, the arson, his suicide arson did not cause as he expected or hoped an explosion, just a fire that he chose not to extinguish and he watched as it spread, in the early hours to the next-door wooden property and he was dead by the time it had spread to 436 acres of the city and destroying 13,200 houses and 87 churches.

This account tells us what Farriner did and why he did it but it says little of how this man felt during his time living in the heart of a merchant’s thriving city at the centre of an Empire that extended to the far reaches of the then known globe. He was like you and I, tortured by his sense of injustice all around him. Nothing has changed.