Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors

by English Historical Fiction Authors

  Then, as now, the building of more prisons to give convicted criminals more space wasn’t high on the list of societal priorities. In addition, the general English (or general world) attitude toward punishment from the 17th through 19th centuries could more generally be defined as retribution-based rather than rehabilitation-centered. There were such severe issues with prison space that even more disgusting and overcrowded prison ships were used as supplements.

  That being said, it’s hard not to notice the national self-interest served by thousands upon thousands of cheap laborers being available to help develop new colonies. Transportation would linger, as a punishment, officially until 1868, but for several reasons, including socio-economic and geopolitical changes, it had de facto ended years before.

  A Shocking Catalogue of Human Depravity: Patrick Colquhoun and the Cataloging of 18th Century London Crime

  by J.A. Beard

  For the bulk of English history, organized and centralized law enforcement was conspicuously lacking, even in London, a city hardly free from crime. Even as the population of the city in the mid-18th century grew to over a half-million souls, policing was a scatter-shot and limited affair due to various cultural factors, including the English population’s inherent distrust of the concept of centralized and organized police forces.

  In the social, legal, and cultural struggles that led to the rise of these forces, those who wanted more organized police forces first had to persuade the populace, and those in positions of influence, that such groups were even needed. One key player in that task was Patrick Colquhoun.

  Colquhoun was, among other things, a former Lord Provost of Glasgow, a businessman, and a trader. Toward the end of the 18th century, he became particularly interested in the issue of crime and became a magistrate in London. During this time he explored the links between crime and socio-economic factors. One of his chief concerns was the idea of preventative policing. He felt that the mere presence of more professional police, particularly in areas around people associated with crime, would contribute to a reduction in crime. While many, if not all modern police forces, make heavy use of this concept, at the time it was considered a bit radical in England.

  It’s not necessarily that the English didn’t believe in the idea of preventative policing or think it couldn’t work, but more that they were very concerned the cost to personal liberty would not be worth it. The English of the time distrusted the idea of centralized and organized police almost as much as they did large standing armies. The French had such a system, which also included heavy spying on the public, something that did little to raise the esteem of the concept among the English public.

  Colquhoun’s studies led him to write several works on the subject, the most influential of which was his Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis. In this work he strongly argued for the need for centralized police authorities. While that concept was not unique at the time or pioneered by Colquhoun, his book was unusual in that it attempted to bolster his argument by giving detailed statistics on the state of crime of London. Indeed, he referred to the Treatise as a “shocking catalogue of human depravity” and hoped that his data would show that police reform wasn’t just a good idea but a necessity to save a city sliding into moral decay.

  The Treatise didn’t just give simple numbers of criminals. It broke down crimes into specific categories to let the full range of criminality be known. For example:

  1. Professed Thieves, Burglars, Highway Robbers, Pick-Pockets and River Pirates, who are completely corrupted; —many of whom have finished their education in the Hulks, and some at Botany Bay: N.B. There will be an increase of this class on the return of Peace, now estimated at about: 2000.

  Hulks, incidentally, were prison ships. Botany Bay was the name of an Australian penal colony (even though the actual colony ended up being located elsewhere).

  Everything from gambling foreigners to gin-drinkers were included. Some categories are a bit uncomfortable for modern readers in that they may be more reflective of the prejudices of the time than objective presentations of criminality, such as counts of “itinerant Jews…holding out temptations to pilfer and steal.” Of course, the world’s oldest profession was included: “20. Unfortunate Females of all descriptions, who support themselves chiefly or wholly by prostitution: 50,000.”

  In total, he came up with 115,000 people who were “supposed to support themselves in and near the metropolis by pursuits either criminal—illegal—or immoral.” The population of London at that the time was a little over 950,000. He also included detailed information on the estimated losses to the public from theft, fraud, robbery, et cetera. For example, he claimed that Thames-related thefts alone totaled over 500,000 pounds a year, which, depending on what estimate of inflation one uses, would be between 40-400 million in today’s pounds.

  The numbers, both crimes and monetary losses, shocked the public. Many people dismissed them and claimed Colquhoun was exaggerating. It’s hard for us to judge the accuracy of the figures. He was attempting to do a systematic analysis, but various modern tools, such as advanced statistical sampling and population error analysis, weren’t available to him.

  Colquhoun based his numbers mostly on sampling from his time as a magistrate. He even went so far to suggest that his numbers were actually low-ball estimates as he excluded certain classes of “delinquency” that might still account for a significant number of people.

  Whether or not Colquhoun’s numbers were completely accurate, they had a tremendous impact. Many people began to see more of a need for police. That being said, the culture was still very much against centralized policing. A strong and centralized police force, it was feared, would ride rough-shod over the rights and freedoms of the citizens. Although various additional social factors, government bureaucracy, and the war with Napoleon pulled attention and effort away from the idea of strengthening, organizing, and centralizing police by the government, merchants worried about river thefts took notice.

  Colquhoun, with the aid of influential utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham and John Harriot, a Justice of the Peace and mariner, secured funding in 1797 to form a professional Thames River Police force to help curtail the rampant cargo theft afflicting the Thames and merchants.

  While it might seem odd on first brush that a philosopher was involved in the formation of the police force, it’s important to note that utilitarian ideas concerning cost-benefit analysis of moral and ethical issues, along with its emphasis on careful analysis, were very influential on Colquhoun’s approach to criminology. Bentham himself was considerably interested in social reform, and the reform of crime and punishment was part of that.

  The River Police were based heavily on the ideas of preventative policing. Although this police force met with extreme resistance and even violence on occasion, they were successful enough that the government would eventually take control of them and make them into a public policing entity by 1800. The influence of the Treatise itself would be cited in later decades as more generalized, centralized, organized public police forces were formed.

  Britain’s Cross-dressing Women

  by Linda Collison

  Women pretending to be men crop up regularly in English and Irish literature and contemporary dramatic productions. A recent film starring American actress Glenn Close as Albert Nobbs is based on a short story by 19th century Irish writer George Moore.

  Albert Nobbs is the story of a nineteenth century British woman of illegitimate birth who portrays herself as a man in order to get work. The movie has been Glenn Close’s passion project for fifteen years and was released in January 2012. You can watch trailers of it on the Internet.

  Women passing as men are tantalizing archetypes as old as the Cheviot Hills. Most real women who dressed as men did so primarily for economic opportunities. I believe it may have been more common than we know, back in a time when a woman depended upon a
man for her livelihood and her legal status.

  Most of us have heard of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, infamous British pirates of the early 18th century. These two didn’t actually pretend to be men but dressed in trousers and lived the rough life of pirates alongside their partners and lovers, the most ruthless of men. (Although, Mary Read was raised as a boy, so she may have had some gender issues....)

  Less well known is Christian Cavanagh, an Irish-born mother who disguised herself as a man and operated under several aliases including Welch, Welsh, Jones, Davies, and Mother Ross. Daniel Defoe, an author with empathy for women as evidenced by his 18th century novels Moll Flanders and Roxanna, the Fortunate Mistress, chronicled her life in Mother Ross: The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, commonly called Mother Ross on Campaign with the Duke of Marlborough. No pirate, she!

  After the disappearance of her husband, Christian left her children in the care of her mother and a nurse and pursued him into the army. Dressed as a man, she first volunteered as a foot soldier and fought at the Battle of Laden during the Nine Years’ War, where she was wounded, captured, and exchanged without being discovered as female. She later re-joined another campaign as a trooper of the 4th Dragoons where she served from 1701 to 1706 when she was wounded in action again—and this time discovered.

  Hannah Snell was a young Englishwoman who also went in search of her man who had run off. She ended up serving as a soldier and as a marine for a many years until she too, was wounded and found out. Hannah was honorably discharged and granted a pension in 1750 (increased in 1785), a rare thing in those days. A good account of Hannah Snell and two other women who served in the British Navy can be found in Lady Tars (a Fireship Press reprint). There may have been many more such women who never were detected because they were never wounded.

  Patricia, natural daughter of an 18th century Barbadian cane planter, poses as Patrick in the fictional Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series. Inspired by Star-Crossed, originally published by Knopf/Random House and republished by Fireship Press, the idea for the character came to me in the middle of the Pacific Ocean aboard the HM Bark Endeavour, a replica of Captain James Cook’s famous vessel, on which I served as a voyage crew member in 1999.

  While climbing the rigging to make and furl sail, heaving on hempen lines as thick as my wrist in unison with my mates, and taking my turn at the helm, I discovered a woman really could perform the same work as a man aboard a ship during the age of sail. But why would she, I wondered? And how might she pull it off? Answering these questions has led to many years of research about the Royal Navy during the 18th century and other aspects of colonialism.

  Romance and adventure aside, in a man’s world some women chose to become men rather than turn to the poorhouse or prostitution. It must’ve been a tough choice but not without its rewards.

  The Wig Business Was Big Business in 18th Century France

  by Lucinda Brant

  It is often assumed that the wig of the 17th and 18th centuries was the preserve of the aristocracy, “an aristocratic ornament of Old Regime Europe”, a marker of high birth and status worn by the privileged few. Indeed, at the French Courts of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, wigs were very much part of the display of power and status.

  (Wig here refers to the wigs worn by men. Women’s hair is not discussed in this post.)

  The full-bottom wigs worn by Louis XIV of France required ten heads of long human hair to achieve one luxuriant wig with an over-abundance of flowing locks. Cost consideration aside, how to wear such an article in everyday life made it prohibitive to all but the most aristocratic, fashion-conscious courtier.

  Yet, by the end of Louis XIV’s reign in 1715, the wearing of wigs had spread throughout France. Surprisingly, wigs were not the exclusive preserve of noble courtiers but had “tumbled down the social hierarchy”, so far down, in fact, that by the mid 1700s wigs were upon the heads of tutors, bakers, messengers, servants, cooks, and shopkeepers. All wore a wig, and often owned two—one for every day and one for Sunday best.

  The Marquis of Mirabeau lamented,

  Everyone [in Paris] has become a Monsieur. On Sunday, a man came up to me wearing black silk clothes and a well-powdered wig, and as I fell over myself offering him compliments, he introduced himself as the oldest son of my blacksmith or saddler; will such a seigneur deign to dance in the streets?

  The male wig became big business in the 18th century. It was no longer an aristocratic affectation or worn only by certain non-aristocratic professional groups such as judges, lawyers, and clergymen. The wig was not confined to men in the city but spread to towns and villages. As well as every town having a wigmaker or three, estimates put the number of journeymen who trudged the roads of rural France selling wigs at 10,000.

  The account books of French wigmakers attest to a customer base that included not only the wealthy merchant citizens of the town but also priests, petty clerks, and shopkeepers, and in the death inventories of middle class citizens, wigs figured as prominent possessions. The wig was such a universal object of consumption by mid-century that it became synonymous not with luxury but with convenience.

  Wig advertisements stressed comfort and appeal as most important when considering the purchase of a wig. Wigmakers were keen to emphasize the free movement of the head of the 18th century wig. Unlike its predecessor, the full bottom wig, which restricted its wearer’s movements and peripheral vision, an 18th century wig permitted the wearer to carry out his daily life as if he was wearing his own head of hair, not someone else’s.

  The Parisian wigmaker Neuhaus asserted that wearing a wig was far more convenient than looking after natural hair. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He’s in the business of selling wigs! But he went to great lengths to ensure his customers felt comfortable in their wigs. He announced the invention of a new “elastic skin that grips the wig” without any irritating loops or garters, and “this skin has the softness of velvet, and does not at all inconvenience the head.”

  In some respects, Neauhaus’s assertion regarding the convenience of the wig over a natural head of hair was true, given the prevalence of head lice, the lack of shampoo and intermittent bathing practices. It was far easier for a man to have his head shaved and wear a wig than to groom his own hair, particularly when, for a small fee, he could have his barber maintain his shaven head and have his wig serviced by his local wigmaker.

  With wigs being the universal male consumer product of the 1700s, and everyone from shopkeeper to king wearing one, men were spoiled for choice. While a shop boy might only be able to afford one wig, and thus had to choose wisely and for durability, those of the one percent of the population, the nobleman and the wealthy merchant, could afford to own dozens of wigs. If they considered themselves to be a leader of fashion, were eccentric, or merely had the money to indulge a whim, they could purchase wigs that others could only dream of owning (or not, as the case may be!).

  It has often been assumed that every man wore a powdered wig, but this was not so. For everyday wear and for most occasions, men wore their wigs in their natural state, which was unpowdered natural hair. Only on the most formal of occasions, when the nobility attended court or a formal function, were wigs powdered.

  Another misconception is that because wigs looked like wigs (you could tell it was a wig!) then the wig must have been made from horsehair. Not so. All the evidence—portraits, surviving wigs, engravings, documents, letters—suggest that less than half of all wigs consisted of hair from horses, and from such animals as goats and cows. Most wigs were made from human hair. For the shop boy, however, the “horse-hair tie wig” was probably his only option.

  There were a small number of wigmakers who were prepared to experiment with other materials, and often because of this found themselves ostracized by their fellow wigmakers. Yet, the experimental wig attracted the eccentric, the dandy, and the jaded gentlemen. Looking
for something different to make them stand out in the crowd or as a mark of their wealth, these gentlemen were not afraid to parade about society and garner the stares of amazement, incredulity, and puzzlement of others about the hairpiece atop their heads.

  Horace Walpole, that great 18th century letter writer and gossip, who collected fascinating tidbits about Society, wrote in a letter dated 1751, about Edward Wortley Montagu’s odd manner of dressing, commenting “that the most curious part of his dress, which he has brought from Paris, is an iron wig; you literally would not know it from hair....”

  Naturally, I just had to give one of my characters an iron wig and so the eccentric poet Hilary Wraxton in Salt Bride gets to wear one at a recital, causing hilarity and disruption to an afternoon’s entertainments.

  Made from iron wire turned into spiral curls, such a wig could also be made of copper. While Edward Wortley Montagu may have thought he cut quite a figure in English society parading about in his iron wig, one wigmaker advertised an iron wig as being economical because it can “withstand rain, wind and hail, and all without causing discomfort to the wearer.” (I wonder about that final claim.)

  Feathers were also used in the making of wigs, particularly sporting wigs. Wigs made from the tails of mallards or drakes were said to be not only durable but could also fight off the wet. Some parsons’ wigs employed feathers at the front and were known as “feather tops”. One can imagine the congregation doing its best to keep a straight face with a parson at the pulpit in a fine feather top wig delivering the Sunday sermon.