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The Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn is the smuggler hero of a series of novels by Russell Thorndike. The first book, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh was published in 1915. The story idea came from legendary coastal smuggling in the 18th century around well-known Romney Marsh, where brandy and tobacco were brought in at night by boat from France to avoid the tax. Minor battles were fought, sometimes at night, between gangs of smugglers, such as the Hawkhurst Gang, and His Majesty's Customs and Excise, supported by the British Army, Royal Navy and local militias in the counties of the South Kent and Sussex.
Christopher Syn set out on a quest for revenge, always managing to reach the eloped pair's destinations ahead of them just in time to terrify them against landing and facing him in a deliberate campaign of terror. While sailing from Spain to the Americas in pursuit, his ship was captured by the pirate ship The Sulphur Pit, commanded by Captain Satan. In a one-on-one fight, Syn defeated and killed Captain Satan to take command of his ship and crew; among them was Mr. Mipps, a former British Royal Navy carpenter with whom Syn had become friends in England after rescuing him from the His Majesty's Customs and Excise men. Mipps swore loyalty to Syn from that time onward.
With Mipps at his side, Syn turned to piracy and became a great success. Later, when his crew refused to let Syn leave, Syn and Mipps slipped away in one of the ship's boats; unknown to Syn, Mipps had arranged a convenient "accident" in the ship's powder magazine with an exploding barrel of gunpowder, eliminating witnesses of Syn's piratical acts.
Mipps then joined Syn in his quest for revenge, pursuing Tappitt and Imogene throughout the thirteen American colonies of British America (supposedly preaching the gospel to the Indians) and around the world (as part of a whaling voyage) afterwards. Mipps was with him in the Caribbean when Dr. Syn turned again to piracy, assuming the name of Captain Clegg (taking the name "Clegg" from a certain vicious biting fly he had encountered in America). "Clegg" hijacked his enemy Tappitt's own ship and crew and sailed off with them (renaming the ship the Imogene) to become the most infamous pirate of the day.
However, a mulatto who escaped the destruction of Syn's previous ship stowed away in Clegg's ship and accused him before the crew; Clegg quelled the potential mutiny by having the mulatto's tongue cut out, marooning him on a coral reef and violently killing Yellow Pete, the ship's Chinese cook, who represented the crew in their wish to rescue the mulatto. Afterwards, realizing that Clegg had become too notorious, Syn decided to abandon his quest and return to England, and Mipps set up a second "accidental" explosion to destroy the Imogene and her crew.
Syn returned to England on the night of a storm (13 November 1775) that wrecked his brig off the English coast in sight of Dymchurch. That night he went to the house of his old friend (and now squire) Anthony Cobtree. When news came that the local vicar had drowned while trying to save victims of the shipwreck, Squire Cobtree offered the post to Christopher Syn. Syn accepted and settled down to a more respectable life as the vicar of Dymchurch and Dean of Peculiars in Romney Marsh, Kent, resuming his original name.
Mipps arrived in Dymchurch with the intent of settling down. Syn made him the village sexton upon condition that Mipps "remember to forget" (that Syn had been Clegg and that they had known each other before), and that Mipps never get involved with the local smugglers.
Syn soon became aware that his parishioners were smuggling goods from France to avoid the excessive customs duties the government charged. Learning from Mipps (who, contrary to Syn's orders, had become a leader of the smugglers) that certain townsfolk had been ambushed and captured during a smuggling run, Syn purchased the great black stallion Gehenna from gypsy horse-traders and raced to their rescue. A suit of clothing borrowed from a scarecrow made an improvised disguise, and Syn and Mipps were able to rescue the townsfolk from the Dragoons.
After this, Syn decided that he could only protect his people by becoming their leader. He created a more elaborate scarecrow costume, with eerie luminous paint. Riding Gehenna at night, the respectable Dr. Syn became "The Scarecrow", the feared head of the smugglers. Together with Mipps, he organized the smugglers into a well-organized band of "Night Riders", also called "The Devil Riders", with macabre disguises and code-names.
Syn's cunning was so great that the smugglers outwitted the government forces for many years. A hidden stable watched over by Mother Handaway, the local "witch" (who believed the Scarecrow to be The Devil in living form), was the hiding place for the horses of the Scarecrow and his lieutenants, Mipps and the local highwayman Jimmie Bone (who, being as good a horseman as Syn and of similar build, was sometimes called upon to impersonate the Scarecrow when Syn either had to be elsewhere or seen in the same place).
Shortly after the first appearances of the Scarecrow, Nicholas Tappitt (using the name "Colonel Delacourt") and the ailing Imogene returned to England, ending up in Dymchurch. Recognizing Syn as Clegg, Tappitt realized that Syn and the Scarecrow were one and the same person, and helped the authorities set a trap for him, hoping to both rid himself of his enemy and claim the reward for his capture. The trap was sprung, but Squire Cobtree's daughter Charlotte, who had fallen in love with Syn and also learned his secret identities as both Clegg and the Scarecrow, was the tragic victim when she dressed in the Scarecrow's disguise and was fatally wounded as a result. Tappitt was then suspected of being the Scarecrow, and a Customs officer and three constables came to arrest him. In the ensuing fight, Tappitt killed the Customs man and the constables subdued and arrested Tappitt for murdering the Customs officer.
After Imogene's death in Syn's arms (during which she revealed to him that he had a son by her who was missing somewhere in North America), Syn fought a final duel with Tappitt in his jail cell, defeating him. Syn then struck a bargain with Tappitt: if Tappitt confessed to being the notorious pirate Clegg, then Syn would look after and care for Tappitt and Imogene's new-born infant daughter (also named Imogene). Tappitt agreed, and "Captain Clegg" was hanged and later "buried without benefit of clergy at a cross-roads hard by the Kent Ditch".
Many years later, Captain Collyer, a Royal Navy officer assigned to smash the local smuggling ring, uncovered the deception and Dr. Syn's true identity, thanks in part to the tongueless mulatto (who had been rescued by Collyer years before and who had been serving Collyer as a "ferret" seeking out hidden contraband) who recognized Syn as Clegg. Syn evaded capture while at the same time making sure that Imogene and Squire Cobtree's son Denis (who had fallen in love with Imogene) would have a happy life together (they were eventually married), but was murdered in revenge by the mulatto, who then mysteriously managed to escape, leaving Syn harpooned through the neck. As a last mark of respect, Collyer ordered that Syn be buried at sea, rather than have his body hung in chains.
Mipps escaped in the confusion of Syn's death and disappeared from England, but it is said that a little man very much like him is living out his days in a Buddhist Monastery somewhere in the Malay Peninsula, delighting the monks with recounting the adventures of Doctor Syn and the eerie stories of the Romney Marsh and the mysterious Scarecrow and his Night Riders.
Note: the "first" book, Doctor Syn, is actually the final story chronologically; the others proceed in published sequence.
An expanded version of Doctor Syn Returns titled The Scarecrow Rides was published for the U.S. market by The Dial Press in 1935; years later in 2013 it was re-printed in paperback by Black Curtain Press. ().
In 1960, American author William Buchanan reworked Thorndike's Further Adventures of Doctor Syn under the title Christopher Syn (New York, Abelard Schuman), giving Thorndike co-authorship credit; this version provides a different conclusion and some conflation, renaming and even removal of the supporting characters. Christopher Syn became the basis for the 1962 Disney production; there was also a novelization of the Disney theatrical version titled Doctor Syn, Alias the Scarecrow written by Vic Crume.
The local Church of England parish of St Clement's Church in Old Romney, Kent doubled as Dr Syn's fictional Dymchurch parish church in the production, and the Disney studio funded the repair of the building to use it as a filming location.
Part One dealt with the arrival of General Pugh (Geoffrey Keen), who had been ordered by the War Office in London to smash the smuggling ring along that part of the coast of Kent and Sussex, and to use a Dymchurch man captured by a Royal Navy press gang as bait to trap the infamous Scarecrow. Part Two of the series depicted the Scarecrow dealing with the traitorous Joe Ransley (Patrick Wymark). Part Three showed how the Scarecrow rescued Harry Banks (David Buck) and American colonist Simon Bates (Tony Britton) from General Pugh's clutches in Dover Castle.
While originally conceived and edited for American television (and announced in an advertisement by the NBC network in the Tuesday, 9 July 1963, issue of the noted entertainment industry newspaper The Hollywood Reporter, published in Los Angeles, California), The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was re-edited for a 1963 British theatrical release several months before the American prime-time television debut. Retitled as Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, the British theatrical version was released on a double bill with the animated The Sword in the Stone during the December 1963 Christmas season (advertised in the January 1964 issue of Photoplay magazine). This version was shown in continental Europe and later on Latin American television in 1966.
In the 1970s, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh production was re-edited again for its first American theatrical release by the Disney studios, on double bills with both the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Treasure Island (1950). Shortly after the theatrical run in the United States, it was re-edited once more for a two-part presentation and rebroadcast on Disney's television series a decade later in the 1970s, simply omitting the middle episode. It was broadcast again in the late 1980s Wonderful World of Disney syndication package, and again in the 1990s on the Disney Channel.
The VHS release of the 1980s was expanded to include material from all three episodes of the original NBC broadcast while retaining the feature film structure and credits; it was available for a relatively short amount of time. On 11 November 2008 The Walt Disney Company released a limited pressing of 39,500 copies of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh in DVD format for the first time in a collector's metal case. This was a part of the collection and was retitled Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. This release sold out in only three weeks. The DVD was made available again for the members of the Disney Movie Club on 17 February 2009. This two-disc set includes the American television version and the original British theatrical release version Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow in a widescreen format. It also includes the original televised introductions by Walt Disney, as was traditional for the Sunday night program in 1963–1964 (in which he erroneously states that Dr. Syn was an actual historical figure) and also contains a documentary feature on Disney's interest in filming the story.
In October 2019, the Disney Movie Club released it in Blu-ray format, this time entitling it The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. The single disc contains all three episodes as originally broadcast in 1964. It also includes Walt Disney's filmed introductions, but none of the supplemental features that appeared with the 2009 release.
British composer Adam Pounds has written an opera, Syn, based on the character of Doctor Syn, excerpts of which were performed at the Mumford Theatre in Cambridge, in 2021. Academy of Great St Mary's Orchestral Concert, University of Cambridge, 25 September, 2021
A much abridged revision of the adventures of Dr. Syn appeared as a short comic serialized in the monthly publication Disney Adventures. The new story features the heroic Doctor and his young sidekick protecting innocent villagers from corrupt government officials and soldiers. Disney Adventures would also produce a crossover story with the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, where coincidentally the meek, mild intellectual country priest / vicar "Dr. Syn" (secretly infamous English smuggler gang leader and rebel in the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh), meets up with Captain Jack Sparrow.
Doctor Syn appears in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series as a member of the league gathered by Lemuel Gulliver. His alter ego, Captain Clegg, also makes appearances, where he is mentioned to have had a brief romantic liaison with future teammate Fanny Hill. In the 2003 film adaptation of League, Dr. Syn can be spotted in one of the portraits hanging on the wall in M's library.
In 2009, discussions took place to build a 100 ft high statue of "The Scarecrow" on a site in the centre of Romney Marsh. "Scarecrow of the South", 4 June 2009 This had not been done by 2016.
Doctor Syn is also the name given to one of the locomotives on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.
Doctor Syn also inspired novelist George Chittenden, who captured smuggling on the Kent coast in his debut novel The Boy Who Led Them, which follows the rise and fall of a smuggling gang leader further down the coast in the town of Deal.
In 2009, an playfully erotic Afrikaans-language novel, Dagtaak, was published pseudonymously by D R Syn. The author's name and some of the traits of the main character in this novel, allude to the Dr Syn series. Initial advances to produce an arthouse circuit movie from the novel did not come to fruition.
Two rooms in the Mermaid Inn, Rye (Dr. Syn's Bed Chamber and Dr. Syn's Lounge) are named after the character.
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