Peter the Wild Boy

by Emma Healey

How Peter the Wild Boy travelled 100 miles by himself from Hertfordshire to Norwich in 1751 remains a mystery. A favourite of King George I, he was found imprisoned in The Bridewell, ‘wild’ and unable to speak, yet he has left his legacy in the City of Stories. Here, author Emma Healey imagines his journey back home.

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PETER THE WILD BOY
1713 – 1786

Here are some words he can say: how, do, pray, King George, Peter.

Here is a word he can’t say: Roving.

It’s a good word though, and often applied to him; when he wanders away from the farm, when he lets his eyes roll in his head, when his hands search through another person’s pockets.

“You can’t have that,” the older man says, taking back his coin. “Here’s a walnut if you want it.”

Peter wants it. Better than a coin, which you can’t eat. But not as good as a watch, which you can hear ticking, ticking, like a beetle in a tree stump.

“Into the waggon with you, then.”

Inside, there’s straw and hessian-wrapped bales of cloth, and hardly enough room to sit down. The smell of singed wool is strong.

“He’s bating his breath again,” the second man says, ducking under the waggon’s canvas. This one is young but has deep pox scars, and is blind in one eye. They sent two men to take him home from Norwich. Back to Hertfordshire. ‘Peter’s strong when he’s in a passion,’ the housekeeper often says, and perhaps she thought he’d be in a passion now. But he’s glad to be out of the workhouse, out out under the sky, with the city’s flint buildings already bumping past.

The walnut’s cracked and finished quick enough, and Peter throws the empty shell from the cart. The sight of it bouncing along the road makes him laugh. He’s been told it’s a strange laugh, and the men don’t like him holding his breath, but they like it less when he lets the air saw in and out through his throat.

The poxed man turns on him fast. “Can’t you breathe stilly? No wonder you got clapped by the night watch.”

But it wasn’t his lungs which got him taken up and locked in a bridewell. His crime was just being in the street with no money and nowhere to go. Also, they thought he was someone else. Someone Spanish. That’s a new word to describe him. Spanish.

“Peter,” he’d said when the beadle asked him who he was, and “King George,” when the magistrate asked his business, because his tutor at Court spent a deal of time teaching him those syllables and he rarely gets to use them. But speaking of the king made them think he was a spy, so perhaps he should have said “pray” instead.

Roving and Spanish and a spy. He is making a new idea of himself.

“True adventurer you are,” the older man says, bunching straw under a stiff leg. “How did you get to Norfolk, eh, Peter? It’s a hundred miles or more. You’re lucky you didn’t famish.”

Peter waves that away. His legs aren’t stiff, and he can feed himself, that’s no trouble, especially in the harvest months when there are berries and seeds and mushrooms in the wood. It’s the cold that’s bad.

When he was a boy and first alone in the forest, when they first left him alone, it was the lack of heat that hit before hunger. Now he knows what it is to be too hot – forced into starched clothes that make him sweat – but he still craves the clean burn of flames.

Several times in his youth (and since), a hunter’s fire has lured him, but he’s always been shooed or shouted away, and at the farm the housekeeper panics if she sees him too near the hearth. In Norwich though, he almost touched the long flames which ripped through the buildings, reaching towards him. He was just putting out a hand to greet them when someone interrupted the introduction by dragging him into the street.

Back into that street he’d thought was forbidden.

“Maybe we should show him, on the way,” the younger one says. “As a curiosity. I paid sixpence to see that giant in Thetford.”

The older one jerks his arm. “You’re a bigger fool than Peter then, using your last eye for that, and a giant of a fool if you think it’d be worth our while.”

“Why? Apeman of Berkhamsted we could call him. People would come, I’m telling you.”

“And what would the gawpers see? He’s not a giant, he’s not hairy like that, like an ape, and his face is too sweet to be direful. They’d want a refund.”

The scarred man settles with a sigh. “Sweet-faced, is he? What a fortunate fellow.”

Peter sighs too. His days of being looked at are over. He is no longer a boy, and all the Royal family he knew are dead. He was sketched when he was famous, and painted, and his image is still kept in the palace, but real life is labour. In the fields, in the woods. In the house of correction where he beat hemp and was in turn beaten with a strap very like the one his tutor once used to teach him the two sounds that make his own name.

The waggon tracks through fields. A windmill turns its sails. He can smell frost – it’s November already. He set out in July.

“The master won’t lose you again,” the older man says, patting Peter. “Don’t you worry. They’ve a collar made and waiting, with your name on it.”

Peter lets out a sound, but he was never taught the word ‘no’. “Do,” is what he says instead.

“Leather-lined,” the man reassures him. “Fine work.”

“Very fine work,” the younger man says. “If you can get it.” He talks then about what they’ll eat when they stop for the night, the cider at a particular coaching inn. This journey to fetch Peter home is a boon to the men. And when they get to the farm there’ll be more rewards.

No one will go hungry, and it’ll be warm enough. But can there be any roving in a collar? And more urgently: how will wearing it remake his idea of himself? How many versions of Peter can there be?

“How?” he says, wanting to voice at least part of the question. “How how?”

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Spot Peter the Wild Boy’s legacy in Norwich, including at The Wild Man pub. Credit: VisitNorwich

Peter the Wild Boy’s story is one that still puzzles and intrigues visitors to Norwich.

As one of the many Lanes pavements and posts, you’ll spot a carving of Peter on a decorative red post on Bridewell Alley, outside the Museum of Norwich.

Inside the Museum of Norwich, formerly the Bridewell Prison where Peter was imprisoned in 1751, you can follow the tale of this atmospheric building, including who was imprisoned here. Highlighting select individuals, get to know Peter the Wildman’s (as he’s known here) story- from his origins in Germany to his life with King George I, why he ended up in Norwich’s Bridewell and what happened next.

Then, it’s only right to pop around the corner to Bedford Street for a drink at The Wild Man pub- so named after Peter. Here, you can see a blue plaque honouring him.

(In London, you can see the only known portrait of Peter in Kensington Palace!)

Author bio: Emma Healey grew up in London and completed her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked in libraries, bookshops, art galleries, and universities, before studying for the MA in Creative Writing at UEA. She is the author of Sweat (2025), Whistle in the Dark (2018), and Elizabeth is Missing (2014) which sold over a million copies worldwide, won the Costa First Novel Award, and was made into a BBC film starring Glenda Jackson. She lives in Norwich with her husband, daughter and cat.

Peter the Wild Boy