John the Painter
THE Pennsylvania Magazine OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY VOLUME LXIII JANUARY, 1939 NUMBER ONE John the Painter HIS is the tale of an aberrated Scotsman who stepped momen- tarily into the spotlight of history during the American Revo- Tlution, and, for a brief, fantastic space, sent shivers rippling along the spines of Lord North's cabinet, and spread consternation throughout the length and breadth of merry England. He was born plain James Aitken, an unprepossessing infant in the brood of an indigent Edinburgh blacksmith. Dangling from a gibbet in Ports- mouth town, he departed this life, in 1777, famous or infamous, as John the Painter. Twice James Aitken's crimes flared red on the British horizon—an incendiary whose distorted mind interpreted the torch of liberty as literal rather than allegoric -y who set himself, single-handed, to destroy the might of the king's navy. Boasting him- self an agent of the American Congress, this insignificant little Scottish zealot, ere his destructive path ended, had burned to the ground his majesty's rope house in the Portsmouth navy yard, and had started two alarming, if not serious, fires in busy Bristol. Harken, then, to the tale of James Aitken, alias James Hill, other- wise James Hinde, commonly called, as the old court record set forth, John the Painter. Silas Deane's French servant probably eyed with repugnance the shabby little man, who, for the third time, was insisting upon an 2 WILLIAM BELL CLARK January audience with his employer. Twice before the devoted servant, who regarded any Englishman as inimical to his patron's welfare, had dismissed him summarily.
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