Origins of the Legend
The story is set during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. According to the tradition, a French chasse-marée was shipwrecked off the coast of Hartlepool, and the sole survivor was a monkey dressed in a French Army uniform. According to the tale, locals who had never seen a monkey or a Frenchman held an impromptu trial on the beach, decided the animal was a spy, and hanged it.
An alternative version of the tale suggests that the victim was not a monkey at all, but a powder monkey; a small boy who worked below deck on warships. The earliest evidence of the legend comes from a nineteenth-century song titled "The Monkey Song", written by the comic performer Ned Corvan, which is considered the most plausible origin of the myth. Similar monkey-hanging legends have also been recorded in Boddam in Aberdeenshire, Mevagissey in Cornwall, and Greenock in Scotland.
From Song to Civic Symbol
Although some Hartlepool residents once found the term "monkey hanger" insulting, many have since embraced it as a unique characteristic of the town. The 2014 documentary Heart of the Pools examined this cultural shift and the legend's significance to local identity. The transformation from a potentially grim anecdote into a source of civic pride illustrates the enduring power of folklore in shaping how a community sees itself.
Statues, Mascots and Modern Hartlepool
The legend is now embedded in the town's physical landscape and public life. A statue of the monkey stands on the Hartlepool Headland, while another sculpture at Hartlepool Marina collects coins for a local hospice. Hartlepool United Football Club has adopted the story through its mascot, H'Angus the Monkey. In 2002, Stuart Drummond was elected as Hartlepool's first directly elected mayor while wearing the H'Angus costume; he was subsequently forbidden from wearing the suit while in office.
These symbols have turned a nineteenth-century song into a recognisable brand for the town.
A Legacy in Books, Film and Radio
The story has spread far beyond Hartlepool through multiple adaptations. Sean Longley's 2008 novel The Hartlepool Monkey reimagined the tale with a talking monkey named Jacques LeSinge. The French comic book Le Singe de Hartlepool, by Wilfrid Lupano and Jérémie Moreau, was published in 2012.
The legend has also been dramatised on BBC Radio 4, including Jim Burke's Bestiary in 2003 and Ian Martin's The Hartlepool Spy in 2018, which starred Michael Palin and Toby Jones. Musicians have drawn on the tale as well; Northumbrian singer-songwriter Jez Lowe released "The Simian Son", and Boothby Graffoe issued a single titled "Hartlepool". A Spanish-Portuguese short animated film, The Monkey (2021), was loosely based on the story, though it relocated the setting to Ireland during the Anglo-Spanish War.