Hawthorn
Joseph Bacon. Aged 24. 5 feet 5 ins. Dark hair. hazel Eyes. dark complex[ion]. Labourer. Born in Derbyshire.
Trial of Joseph Bacon & Richard Briggs The Old Bailey, 1790
The first night you lay down your head in London
there is hawthorn between your sheets.
You can’t sleep for the noise of the road
outside, fellows like you arriving, fellows leaving,
six of you to a room; but when you doze,
dazed after days of riding, the hawthorne hedges
of the hills that raised you rise taller and taller
and there is a city behind them getting further
and further away and its roar getting louder
so you can’t shout over it, the cries of the street
outside becoming the cries of the city in your dream
and you wake thirsty and hungry but not tired
with another man from the road asleep beside you.
Ian Harker is a poet and editor from Leeds, a founder of Strix magazine, Honorary Fellow at Leeds Trinity University, and a director of Leeds Lit Fest. In 2024, he was shortlisted for the inaugural Tempest Prize judged by Andrew McMillan and Patience Agbabi.
Note: This poem is from an ongoing project writing poems responding to the historical record of the LGBT+ community in London in the 18th Century.