18th Century Studies

The mysterious death of John Harding, Swift’s printer

John Harding, the printer of the seditious Letters written by Swift under the pseudonym ‘M.B. Drapier’ during the controversy of Wood’s halfpence, died in April 1725, five months after a three-week imprisonment the previous year. It has always been assumed that the cause of his death was jail fever, which is an assumption that consigns Harding’s death to the realm of ‘accident’ and which leaves Swift’s reputation unquestioned. Harding, however, had been due to appear in the Court of King’s Bench where he would have been interrogated as to the true identity of ‘M.B. Drapier’, and if one mention of the words ‘Jonathan Swift’ or ‘Dean of St. Patrick’s’ was forced from him, Swift himself would have been brought before the court to face a charge of sedition or possibly treason. Harding’s court appearance never eventuated. Instead, he emerged from prison in a deteriorated physical condition and died five months later.

The fact that Harding was murdered in order to preclude the possibility of Swift having to come before the court is instinctively apparent and is supported by all of the available evidence. There is even separate evidence indicating that the brutal deed may have been carried out with tacit knowledge on Swift’s part. None of this, however, will be accepted by the scholars of today, not even the first of the two propositions, due to a long-standing tendency to protect Swift’s reputation at all costs. Senior scholars, in their capacity as reviewers for journals, either will not allow the evidence, despite it being so plain, or lack the courage to approve the publication of a paper that would overturn three centuries of settled scholarship.  

The problem with Swift Studies is that it is a House of Worship, which is not remotely a place for objective historical research. Of the truths from Swift’s time that have been overlooked or ignored, none is more significant than the murder of Harding.

Full-length paper: ‘An inquiry into the death of Swift’s printer, John Harding: Part 1: evidence through to August 1725’. Can be freely downloaded as a pdf here.

Presentation on video: ‘The death of Swift’s printer John Harding – new evidence that implicates Swift’, Melbourne Irish Studies Seminar Series Online, 17 November 2020. Video accessible here, with an introduction by Professor Dianne Hall.

Short paper: ‘Evidence that Swift’s Drapier’s Letters were prepared by Sarah Harding, not John Harding, March 2021. Accessible here.

Presentation on video: ‘Elegy on the death of John Harding’ – evidence of Swift’s authorship’, in XVII David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies: ‘Dark Enlightenments’, online event, 13 November – 11 December 2020. Zoom presentation accessible here.

Thesis on Swift and his Dublin printers of the 1720s. Entitled I am no inconsiderable Shop-Keeper in this Town: Swift and his Dublin Printers of the 1720’s: Edward Waters, John Harding and Sarah Harding. Accessible here.