Jane Austen's England

by Roy Adkins,Lesley Adkins

  Prejudice and suspicion towards foreigners were widespread, though people were also wary of anyone from different parts of England. The Irish and the Jews were generally more reviled than enemy nations like France. There was an ever-growing Irish population, who were flocking to places like Manchester to work in the textile industries or migrating to London to work mainly as unskilled labourers. By 1780 there may have been as many as 23,000 Irish in the capital,94 and the main Irish quarter was the parish of St Giles, a desperately overcrowded area known as the Rookery. When being questioned in 1816 about the inhabitants, one Irish teacher, Thomas Augustine Finnegan of the St Giles’s Irish Free School in George Street, was not complimentary about his fellow countrymen. He reckoned that the children were ‘most depraved; they are exposed to every species of vice with which the streets abound; they generally associate with gangs of pickpockets’, and as for the parents, they were ‘very dissolute, generally; on Sundays particularly they take their children with them to public-houses, and the children witness the scenes of riot and sanguinary conflict that happen among the parents in the streets.’95

  Hostility was likewise suffered by the Jews. In 1796 the magistrate Patrick Colquhoun wrote: ‘It is estimated that there are about twenty thousand Jews in the city of London, besides, perhaps, about five or six thousand more in the great provincial and sea-port towns…Educated in idleness, from their earliest infancy, they acquire every debauched and vicious principle which can fit them for the most complicated arts of fraud and deception.’96 According to Francis Place, such prejudice was rife: ‘It was thought good sport to maltreat a Jew, and they were often most barbarously used, even in the principal streets…I have seen many Jews hooted, hunted, cuffed, pulled by the beard, spit up [upon], and so barbarously assaulted in the streets, without any protection from the passers-by or the police, as seems…almost impossible.’97

  Prejudice against gypsies was universal, even though for the middle and upper classes the idea of a gypsy lifestyle often seemed romantic, and gypsy characters figured in popular plays, while gypsy dress was adopted for fancy-dress balls and sometimes influenced high fashion. However, gypsies themselves were regarded as thieves and swindlers. They, and anyone consorting with them, often fell foul of the vagrancy laws, which carried penalties of whipping, imprisonment and transportation.

  Gypsies were also frequently blamed for the abduction of children. In June 1802 the Morning Post and Gazetteer carried a story about a young girl ‘in most wretched attire’, who had been found near Lewisham in Kent. She said that ‘she was the daughter of a Captain Kellen, of the Marines, at Plymouth; that about seven months ago, being sent a small distance out of the town, on some business for her parents, she was met by a gang of gypsies, consisting of five men and six women who seized her, and forcibly carried her away’.98 A band of gypsies was arrested, and the continuing story made good copy, but a week later the same newspaper admitted they were innocent:

  This tale of wonder, at length, proves to be a gross imposition, on the part of the girl, almost in every respect, and that the account given by the gypsey, of meeting her on Kennington Common, is true…Andrew Dew, a serjeant of marines belonging to the Plymouth Division, stated, that he well knew the girl…he remembered her in January last at Stonehouse Barracks near Plymouth, selling apples and nuts for her mother; that he had lately seen her father, who informed him the girl had absconded from them soon after January.99

  The gypsies were released, and the girl ‘was sent to the House of Correction, until her place of legal settlement can be ascertained. She is very little, and plain in person, and cannot be above eleven or twelve years of age, though she says she is seventeen.’100

  Unwanted children, usually of paupers or unmarried mothers, might be abandoned in public places like a market square or church porch, making them the responsibility of the parish, which had to care for infants born or abandoned within their boundary whose relatives were unknown. Some of these foundlings were looked after in the workhouse, while others were boarded out to poor women or widows who were paid, but the mortality rate was exceptionally high. This was one reason why in 1741 Thomas Coram had opened the London Foundling Hospital, England’s first home for abandoned children and, from 1801, for illegitimate children as well.

  Some unmarried mothers were so desperate and ashamed that they murdered their children or left them to die. Others tried to abort the foetus, such as by inserting a wire or knife into the uterus or by ingesting some potion that was poisonous to the foetus in order to induce a miscarriage. Midwives were well aware of the best abortifacients, recommending ergot, rue, penny royal, tansy and savin. When living in Upholland, Nelly Weeton wrote of one attempted abortion: ‘Mary Downall is in a poor state of health…I am afraid she took something when pregnant of her little girl intended to fall on the child, and it has light on herself. She has looked a bad colour ever since.’101

  For those women who needed to hide their pregnancy and who could afford to pay, discreet services were available. One London business advertised on the front page of a West Country newspaper in 1803:

  PREGNANT LADIES, whose situation requires a temporary retirement, may be accommodated with an Apartment, in an airy situation, to Lye-in, agreeably to their circumstances, their infants put out to nurse, and taken care of. Tenderness, honour, and secrecy, have been the basis of this concern for many years.—Those regardless of reputation will not be treated with.

  Apply to SYMONS, late Dr. WHITE, No. 4, London-House-yard, St. Paul’s Church-yard.102

  There was no contraception for married women apart from sexual abstinence or breastfeeding, and on average they had six to seven live babies. After Sophia Deedes gave birth to her eighteenth child, Marianne, Jane Austen wrote to her niece Fanny: ‘I wd recommend to her and Mr. D. the simple regimen of separate rooms.’103 In fact, Mrs Deedes would give birth to yet another child. It was deemed morally unacceptable for married women to use artificial contraception, though some undoubtedly tried methods like inserting a natural sponge soaked in lemon juice or vinegar. There was a thriving market for condoms (also called ‘cundums’, ‘armour’ or ‘preservatives’), which were primarily for prophylactic purposes, worn by men using prostitutes to guard against disease or with mistresses to guard against pregnancy. Made from animal intestines, condoms had a hand-sewn seam at one end and were secured by a silk ribbon. They could be washed out and reused. The term ‘armour’ was defined in a contemporary dictionary of slang as ‘to make use of Mrs. Philips’s ware. See C—D–M’, and ‘cundum’ was defined as:

  The dried gut of a sheep, worn by men in the act of coition, to prevent venereal infection…These machines were long prepared and sold by a matron of the name of Philips, at the Green Canister, in Half-moon-street, in the Strand. That good lady having acquired a fortune, retired from business, but learning that the town was not well served by her successors, she, out of a patriotic zeal for the public welfare, returned to her occupation; of which she gave notice by divers hand-bills, in circulation in the year 1776.104

  Mistresses were kept mainly by married and unmarried men of the upper class and gentry, who could afford the costs. Parson Woodforde met one such mistress in mid-May 1777: ‘Mr. Custance [Press Custance, the squire’s brother] called on me this morning to go a fishing. We rode down to the river [Wensum]. Mr. Custances mistress a Miss Sherman and one Sandall an oldish man a broken gentleman and who keeps a mistress also tho’ he has a wife living, went with us on horseback.’105 Despite being a clergyman, he made no comment in his diary about the Christian morality of gentlemen keeping mistresses.

  Two years earlier Woodforde had seen a play at Covent Garden in London and afterwards noted: ‘I met many fine women (common prostitutes) in my return home [to his inn] and very impudent indeed.’106 Men of all classes resorted to prostitutes, of which there was no shortage, particularly in London and in seaports like Portsmouth and Plymouth. A directory to Covent Garden prostitutes, Harris’s List, was published
annually from 1757 until 1795 when the publisher was jailed for a year for indecency. Appearing around Christmastime, it reputedly sold up to eight thousand copies annually in brothels, taverns and even reputable bookstores.107 Its entries gave clues as to why the women were prostitutes – some had escaped from abusive husbands, while others were abandoned mistresses. Their rates ranged from a few shillings to a few guineas, and one of the cheaper prostitutes in Harris’s 1789 directory, charging one guinea, was Miss Pheby Cambell from Norfolk, evidently seeking a better life in the city:

  Miss Pheby C—mb—ll, No. 9, Holland Street, near Wardour Street…About the month of May or June, this young lass arrived in town from Norfolk, unhackneyed in the Cyprian Game [prostitution], she now treads the common path…Her age is now only twenty one, and she is both good tempered and able to sing an excellent song, no one can imagine so many shillings badly spent in her company.108

  Young women flocked to the cities to find work as servants and to seek their fortune, but very often turned to prostitution, especially if they were abused by their employer and then thrown out when pregnant. ‘Mr. Meyrick…is said to have seduced the servant girl of the house where he lives,’ Nelly Weeton wrote from Liverpool in 1809. ‘He is so much disliked in many respects, that whether the report be true or false, people seem determined to believe it.’109 The Newcastle seaman George Watson certainly believed the prostitutes at Portsmouth to be seduced and abandoned women:

  This is always a stirring place, and particularly so in war time, owing to its being such a rendezvous for his Majesty’s ships, and transports, for the same reason it is a place notoriously wicked young women flock here from all corners of our island, and some from Ireland, and live by prostitution, I mean women that are previously seduced, and cast upon the world, abandoned by the villains that caused their ruin: it would be absurd to suppose any truly modest girl, though brought to the greatest extremity of penury and want, would deliberately come hither to join herself to such an unblushing set of wretches as pervade the Point at Portsmouth, where a modest woman would be as hard to find as a Mermaid.110

  Prostitution was not illegal, but when visiting Bath in the summer of 1779, Woodforde was concerned about the plight of two young women: ‘After tea this evening I took a walk in the fields and met in my walk two girls, the eldest about 17, the other about 15, both common prostitutes even at that early age. I gave them some good advice to consider the end of things. I gave them 0.1.0.’111 In London a few years later, he went to a service at the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes: ‘we took coach and went to Magdalen Chapel in St. Georges Fields being Sunday and heard prayers read and a sermon. Very excellent singing at Magdalen Chapel. The women had a thin green curtain before them all the time, one of them played the organ.’112 The Magdalen Hospital had been established in 1758, and its chapel was a fashionable place to be seen on Sundays.

  The preface to the 1789 edition of Harris’s List claimed that prostitution prevented crime: ‘What villainies do they not prevent? What plots, what combinations, do they not dissolve? Clasped in the arms of beauty, the factious malcontent forgets the black workings of his soul.’113 Furthermore, it was stated, their earnings were beneficial to the community: ‘The toyman, the mercer, the millener, the play, and opera, nay even the parish church (sometimes) is gladdened with the chink of their gold.’114 This was special pleading to keep pimps and brothels in business. Life was wretched for women who ended up like those witnessed by Francis Place near his house at Charing Cross in London: ‘Along the front of Privy Gardens [now Whitehall near Downing Street]…there was an old wall…At night there were a set of prostitutes along this wall, so horridly ragged, dirty and disgusting that I doubt much there are now any such in any part of London. These miserable wretches used to take any customer who would pay them twopence, behind the wall.’115

  Too often young prostitutes were servants abandoned by men like Charles Fothergill, a younger son of a successful Yorkshire family involved in farming, the law, medicine and manufacturing. His father manufactured ivory products such as combs and toothbrushes, but Charles had literary ambitions. Having already squandered a legacy and fallen into debt, in 1805 he was in Yorkshire collecting material and subscribers for a proposed natural and antiquarian history of the county that he had decided to undertake. His private diary reveals that during his excursions, he preyed on several young women, with little thought for the consequences. He stayed several times at the White Swan inn at Middleham in the Yorkshire Dales, where that August he was drawn to a servant girl ‘J…’ – probably Jane – whose ‘temperament was very warm and easily worked upon: I succeeded quite as far as I wished this evening’.116

  The next evening he tried his luck once more: ‘It was dark when I got to the inn again: successful with my nymph; partly make her promise to admit me. In the middle of the night I rise and grope my way to her room; find another girl sleeping with her…I stay about two hours and spend the time in great part as I had wished.’117 Fothergill related similar incidents, as in October: ‘From my going to bed ‘till 4 o’clock in the morning I enjoyed my nymph tho’ my pleasure was not a little damped by occasional qualms of conscience on her account.’118 Without reliable contraceptives, what was for Fothergill a bit of fun with an unmarried servant girl may well have ended in pregnancy for her, with its devastating consequences.

  Although prostitutes and mistresses were tolerated by much of society, homosexuality and bestiality were feared, abhorred and illegal. In the summer of 1810, William Holland was utterly shocked to learn that his manservant George had committed bestiality, which was a capital crime. He spoke to George, telling him that he had to leave: ‘he cried most bitterly and it indeed affected me very much. I then told him that I hoped what had passed would sink deep into his heart and that he would fall down on his knees and pray to his God (whom he had most grievously offended) that he might repent of his great wickedness…I paid him his wages and he left me overwhelmed with tears.’119 A few days later, Holland met his friend the Reverend John Mathew of nearby Kilve and apologised for cancelling an invitation. The reason, he explained, was having to dismiss his servant. When he told him the details, Mathew was sympathetic:

  He approved of all I had done yet was in doubt (he said) on account of the effect it might have on society, whether I should have him go off without prosecuting him. I answer’d that as soon as I came to the knowledge of the business I discharged him, but (wretch as he was) and horrid as the deed was, I felt a disinclination to hang him. Well (he returned), you have got rid of him. Perhaps it is as well.120

  THREE

  TODDLER TO TEENAGER

  …she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house. Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen appearances were mending…Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery.

  Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

  Walking was one early challenge for a toddler, but the initial steps may well have been a bruising experience without the protection of fitted carpets that are commonplace in today’s homes. Various devices to help young children walk included harnesses for support and trolleys they could grasp, the ancestors of modern babywalkers, but by the early nineteenth century medical opinion was turning against such aids. ‘Before infants attempt to walk alone,’ one writer recommended,

  they should first learn to crawl: by feeling the want of their legs, they will gradually try to use them. With this intention they might be placed on a large carpet, and surrounded by toys: here they will busily employ themselves, move and extend their limbs, or roll about to reach their playthings…While in the nursery, they may be taught to rise from the floor, by laying hold of chairs; and, if occasionally supported under the arms, they will easily learn to stand erect; but they should never be raised up by one arm only.1

  This was good advice for families who could afford carpets, nurseries and toy
s, but irrelevant to those poorer families who, through lack of resources, allowed their children to fend for themselves.

  Babies who had wet-nurses learned their first words with these women and were influenced by their way of speech. Likewise, live-in servants contributed to a melting-pot of language, with people of contrasting levels of education and manners of speech in the same household for toddlers to copy. Regional accents and dialect were very distinctive two centuries ago, and even dialects of adjoining counties were noticeably different. When Elizabeth Ham’s family was living in Weymouth, Dorset, where her father ran a brewery, one brother stayed with relatives in neighbouring Somerset, causing her to comment: ‘My brother William…spoke broad Somerset.’2

  Accents from other regions were not encountered every day. When men from all parts of the country were brought together on board naval or merchant ships, the diversity of dialect was striking. Going to sea for the first time, the young seaman Robert Hay was amazed by ‘all the provincial dialects which prevail between Landsend and John O’Groats’.3 During his travels through England each summer, John Byng was irritated rather than charmed by the different ways of speaking. ‘I enquired if the river was navigable to this place,’ he noted at Ringwood, Hampshire, in 1782, ‘but could not explain myself, till a man told me I certainly meant navigal and that it was not.’4 He was impatient not just with regional accents, but with the manner of speaking, as in the Midlands (near Castle Donington) seven years later: ‘The slowness of answer in this county is very irritable; when I stop to ask the plainest question, as the name of our road to, any village, they being [begin] with “Why as to that” “Let me consider” “You seem to be out of your way” “And so I was saying”. Here I ride off; for life were not long enough to hear them out.’5