Daniel Defoe: How the Author of Robinson Crusoe Turned the Pillory into PR

London, July 29, 1703. The square at Temple Bar is buzzing. In the center stands a wooden pillory - a structure created not so much to fix the body, but to destroy the personality. The crowd has already gathered. Usually in such cases, rotten turnips, dead cats, excrement and heavy cobblestones are used. People come to see blood and knocked-out eyes. The lock clicks, the condemned man's neck and wrists are tightly clamped in the stocks.

The man's name is Daniel Defoe. He is forty-three years old. And today he must be torn to pieces by the crowd.

But something strange happens. Instead of stones, flowers fly at him. Women raise glasses of ale to his health. Someone in the crowd is briskly selling freshly printed leaflets with text - and they are snapped up like hotcakes. Defoe stands in the stocks, looks at the jubilant square and probably smirks. He has just done the impossible. He turned his own public execution into a brilliant advertising campaign.

Seller of bricks and musk cats

We are used to thinking of Defoe as a venerable classic from the school curriculum who gave us "Robinson Crusoe". But literature was more of a side effect for him. By nature, Daniel was a businessman. An adventurer. And, frankly, a rather lousy businessman.

In his youth, he traded in everything. Hosiery. Wine. Tobacco. He even invested in a civet cat farm - their musk was then used in perfumery. Defoe took out huge loans, built grandiose plans and... went bankrupt. In 1692, he declared bankruptcy. The debt amounted to an astronomical 17,000 pounds for that time. To give you an idea of the scale: a good house in London then cost two hundred pounds.

But Defoe didn't know how to give up. He hid from creditors, changed names, and opened a brick factory. The bricks, by the way, were good. They even built Greenwich Hospital from them. Life was getting better until Daniel decided that politics was also a great business.

Satire that went too far

His long tongue and sharp mind led him to the pillory. Religious strife raged in England between the official Anglican Church and the Dissenters (Protestants who did not recognize the authority of bishops). Defoe was a Dissenter. But instead of writing boring apologetic treatises, he released an anonymous pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters."

It was the most vicious irony. Defoe, imitating the rhetoric of religious fanatics, seriously proposed hanging and sending all dissenters to the galleys. The text was written so plausibly that the radicals were delighted: "Finally someone has expressed sound thoughts!". And when they realized that they were simply being mocked, the rage was indescribable.

Defoe was identified. Thrown into the gloomy Newgate Prison. Sentenced to a huge fine and three-time standing in the pillory.

This is where Daniel's true genius manifested itself. Sitting in a damp cell awaiting execution, he wrote "Hymn to the Pillory." A poem in which he ridiculed the judges and declared that standing here was an honor if you were convicted for the truth. He handed the manuscript to friends in the printing house. On the day of the execution, leaflets were sold right on the square. The crowd read, laughed and drank to the health of the prisoner.

Agent 007 in a powdered wig

The triumph on the square did not negate the fact that Defoe was in prison, and his brick business had completely collapsed. And then Robert Harley, the Speaker of the House of Commons, appeared in his cell. He offered a deal: freedom and payment of debts in exchange for... let's say, informant services.

Thus, the creator of "Robinson" became a secret agent of the British crown. Under the name "Claude Guilot" or "Alexander Goldsmith" he traveled around Scotland, infiltrated local communities, collected gossip, bribed the right people and wrote detailed ciphers to London. He played a key role in the signing of the Act of Union in 1707, which united England and Scotland into Great Britain.

At the same time, he published the newspaper "The Review". Alone. He wrote articles, columns, reviews. In fact, Defoe invented modern journalism. He understood the main rule of media: people don't need dry facts, but stories. Preferably with a slight touch of scandal.

The island that changed everything

He was 59 years old. An age when in the 18th century people were already writing wills and preparing to meet the Creator. Defoe was sick, tired of politics and still needed money. And then he heard the story of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who, due to a quarrel with the captain, landed on a desert island and lived there for four years.

Defoe took this story and turned it into a myth. In 1719, "The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" is published. The book was positioned as genuine memoirs - the marketer inside Defoe never slept.

The success was phenomenal. Why? Because it was not just a story of survival. It was an anthem to human labor and common sense. Crusoe did not sit on the beach waiting for a miracle. He built a fence, planted barley, tamed goats. He kept a ledger of his troubles and joys. In Robinson, Defoe embodied his ideal dream: a world where everything depends only on you, where there are no creditors, political intrigues and betrayals.

The last escape

He wrote many more books. "Moll Flanders" is a brilliant novel about a prostitute and thief, written so authentically that London ladies blushed while reading it under the covers. "A Journal of the Plague Year" is a brilliant example of fake news, where Defoe described the epidemic of 1665 with frightening accuracy, although he was only five years old at the time.

But money, that damned money, never stayed in his pockets. At the end of his life, old debts caught up with him. One crazy creditor widow literally declared a hunt for him.

And the old, sick writer, the man whose books were read by the whole world, again went on the run. He left home, hiding in cheap rented rooms under assumed names. Daniel Defoe died in April 1731 in a wretched apartment in the Moorfields district, in complete solitude, hiding from bailiffs.

His life was like a madman's cardiogram. Ups, downs, prisons, palaces, espionage and bankruptcies. He was not a perfect person. He lied, wriggled, betrayed and survived at any cost. But that is why his characters still breathe on the pages of books. Defoe did not invent life - he drank it to the very bitter, muddy bottom.