Footnotes on Friday

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Property developers Georgian and Regency style

Most British cities, and particularly London, grew significantly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Not only did agriculture changed forcing rural workers to move to cities to seek work. The population of Britain nearly doubled in the eighteenth century and quadrupeled in the nineteenth.

Wealthy families who owned land in and around large cities, especially London, were the Georgian era’s property developers. Great landowners developed well planned streets and squares on the western side of London, obtaining local acts of Parliament to allow them to levy rates so they could finance paving, lighting, cleaning, and watchmen.

The standard of construction was generally high, and many—from grand aristocratic residences to more modest workers terraced houses—still remain today, giving many cities and towns their character.

Lesser developers built with cheap materials and little planning, and left slums and neglect These dwellings are almost all gone.

Most buildings were designed by owners and builders together—until the middle of the eighteenth century an architect was anyone who cared to call themselves one.

Regency flip or flopper

The regency house flipper who is the hero of Grasp the Thorn is an invention of my own. But why not? In a world where fortunes were being made and lost, renovating houses for the upwardly mobile seems like a good thing to do. If people like Bear didn’t exist, it was necessary to create one. So I did.

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History on WIP Wednesday

One of the first things I do when planning a story is find out what was happening in the world at the time of the story. In 1815, few events could have been more significant to a retired soldier than the Battle of Waterloo. It was obvious to me that my epilogue for Chaos Come Again had to touch on the arrival of the news from Belgium.

By the next day, rumours that battle had been joined were swirling around London. Lion went out in the morning to see what he could find out, but no one knew anything concrete.

“I don’t know how many people I spoke to who are convinced the Corsican monster is even now on his way to England having massacred the largest army the allied forces have ever put into a single field,” he told Dorothea, disgusted. “You will be pleased to know that I punched none of their stupid faces.”

By that evening, the rumour was that there had been a great battle, a retreat, and a defeat. It was now the twentieth of June. The more credible reports suggested the French had crossed the northern border of France some five days ago, and engaged the Prussians, who had fallen back.

“Not a defeat,” Lion scoffed, and the veterans among their friends agreed. “A fighting retreat until they can gather their numbers. If the Prussians were the only troops involved, it wasn’t the main battle.”

As Lion and Dorothea drove back to their townhouse, the streets were thronged with people waiting for official news.

The following morning, several of the London newspapers claimed that a bloody battle had been fought and won. But they provided no detail and ascribed the news to a gentleman who had arrived in London from Brussels. And a couple of them even said there may have been not a victory, but a defeat.

The couple kept themselves busy, but dread and hope mingled as they waited. “Even if the battle is over,” Lion pointed out, “that doesn’t mean the war is won.”

Lady Sutton and her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Winshire, were holding a ball that night. Lion and Dorothea decided to go, rather than sit around their townhouse and fret about the outcome of the battle. “We will dance and talk with our friends, even as we pray for our comrades,” Dorothea said.

It was close to midnight when the Duke of Winshire suddenly halted the orchestra, and called out in a battlefield roar, “Listen! Outside! Do you hear?”

In the silence, the shouts of a crowd carried clearly through the French doors that were open all along one side of the ballroom. As one, the ball-goers surged for those doors, the closest reaching the terrace first and joining the shouting. “Victory! Hurrah!”

The orchestra struck up again, this time to the tune, God Save the King. Lion could feel tears prick his eyes. It was over, then.

 

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Civilians and the army

To our modern minds, it seems strange to think of civilians, including women and children, travelling into combat zones. Yet until the second half of the nineteenth century, civilians were an essential part of how armies worked. Collectively, anyone who followed the army that was not a soldier was called a camp follower. And every army had all kinds of followers.

All non-military supplies came from the commissariat, a civilian service, funded by Treasury. They searched for supplies, found a depot in which to store them, and staffed the depot and those who drove the mule carts that brought supplies in and out. Each local group of soldiers probably had a sutler, either semi-official or unsanctioned.

Sutlers negotiated with locals and sold goods that were not supplied by the commissariat: tobacco, coffee, sugar, and other supplies. A sutler was usually authorised at brigade level, and the role in each brigade often went to the wife of one of the soldiers.

Saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, and farriers might be soldiers (if someone with the right skills could be found) or civilians, but they were all essential to the operation of the army.

So were medical staff. The Army Medical Department employed around one surgeon for every 250 soldiers. Military surgeons were not commissioned into the army, so were technically civilians, but they were on the payroll. They were assisted by soldiers with more or less medical training, gained on the job, and by camp followers, usually wives of soldiers.

Wives and families formed the largest group of camp followers. In England, soldiers’ families lived around the barracks, as military families do today. When the regiment travelled overseas, regulations stated how many wives they’d take with them (one for every six soldiers was common). To be in the ballot, a woman had to be a wife of good reputation. Mostly, women with children were excluded. On long overseas postings, babies arrived anyway, often on the march or even during battles.

Those not selected could seldom afford to follow their menfolk. They stayed in England and survived the best they could, often in a garrison city far from family, lacking work opportunities and not recognised as part of the local parish for poor relief.

Those selected faced hard work and unknown risks, but—though they might not be an official part of the army—they were on the books. Yes, they had to have an officer’s approval to follow the army and they were subject to military discipline, but they received rations (a half ration for a wife and a quarter ration for a child) and they were paid for the work they did.

Wives were not only sutlers and nurses. They were also responsible for many other important jobs that kept the army operating: laundering clothes, cooking food, sewing and mending, watching the baggage, looking after sheep and cattle (food on the hoof), and acting as servants to officers and their families.

And, of course, they provided sexual services to their husbands. The rest of the soldiers in the unit would have to make other arrangements or go without. Wives who followed the army were, as I said before, women of good reputation.

Local women filled the gap, either on a temporary basis, as prostitutes, or longer term as mistresses or even wives. Locally acquired wives and families provided the same wide range of services as those brought overseas with the regiment, but the army didn’t hold itself accountable for paying them or for transporting women and their children to England when the war was over, or when the soldier died, unless the woman could produce proof of a legal marriage, recognised by the Church of England.

As to the marriage of officers, the army discouraged young officers from taking a wife. Not only was it likely to ruin them financially, given the cost of being an officer—commission, uniforms, equipment, subscription, and the officers’ mess. Marriage was thought to disturb the camaraderie of the mess, as it took the officer out of the all-male brotherhood of warriors.

A young officer who married without permission risked ruining his chances of promotion.

That changed as he went up through the ranks. An old rhyme said:

“A Subaltern may not marry,
captains might marry,
majors should marry,
and lieutenant-colonels must marry.”

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Gretna Green weddings

Why did people in our Regency and Victorian stories run away to Gretna Green to get married?

It’s a combination of different legal systems and geography. In the middle of the 18th century, England passed a law to stop clandestine and irregular marriages. From then on, people could not marry without proving that they were who they said they were and that they were over the age of 21 or that they had the permission of their guardians, if under that age. I’ve written about the reason for the act and what it established, if you’re interested.

The law did not apply to Scotland, which had its own laws. In Scotland, you were married if:

  • you were not already married
  • the pair of you said you were husband and wife in front of witnesses
  • you consumated the marriage.

Gretna Green was the first village north of the border on the highway that ran from England to Scotland on the western side of Britain. The highway on the eastern side was far busier, and the chances of being caught by pursuing angry parents higher. Other villages along the border were not as easily accessible, since much of the border country was wild and hilly. So Gretna Green became synonymous with runaway marriages, as anxious couples arrived and demanded to be married right away.

And the Blacksmith’s shop? In fact, anywhere would have done, but the blacksmith had a building at the junction of five coaching roads. Easily found. And Joseph Paisley, the local blacksmith, saw an opportunity for a side business, witnessing and recording marriages for a few coins. He would ask, “are you of age to marry” (14 for boys and 12 for girls in Scotland at the time), and “are you free to marry”. Then he’d strike the anvil and it was done.

The hammering of the anvil soon became a notorious sound; romantically it is said that like the metals he forged, the Blacksmith would join couples together in the heat of the moment but bind them for eternity. [https://www.gretnagreen.com/why-the-blacksmiths-shop-a740]

Paisley performed marriages in the blacksmith’s shop for over 60 years, and his successors to the forge carried on the tradition.

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Romance over the chess board

In my novella The Husband Gamble, Hythe and Rilla get to know one another while playing chess. What could be less romantic? Chess, after all, is a game of war, a game of logic. Yet, both chess and love are filled with passion and excitement. Both chess and love require the players to focus on one another, tensely wondering what the next move might be, and watching for clues.

In long centuries when society frowned on such a close focus between a man and woman, dancing and chess has allowed interested couples to meet. Chess allowed them to spend hours in one another’s company, talking and getting to know one another better.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, chess was used both to facilitate courtship and as an allegory of courtship, as can be seen in paintings, carvings, and tapestries of the time. Likewise with literature of the time, where the language of chess and the language of seduction merge.

The queen was not in the original Persian and Indian game. She replaced the vizier, whose moves were limited. Our modern day queen, with her expansive sweeps, may have arisen in medieval Spain at the time of the powerful Queen Isabella. Certainly, the new movements were first described in a Catalan poem called “Love Chess”, although the vizier lingered on in some places until the early 18th century.

The connection between love and chess continued. In 1801, in her book Belinda, the novelist Maria Edgeworth wrote:

O, you novice at Cupid’s chess-board! Do you not see the next move? Check with your new knight, and the game is your own.

Chess even made it into Victorian valentines:

‘My little love do you remember,
Ere we grew so sadly wise,
When you and I played chess together,
Checkmated by each others eyes?’

 

 

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News and journalism in Regency England

Researching for one of my works in progress, I came across an article by journalist, author, and academic Brian Cathcart about the arrival of the official despatches from Waterloo.

He points out that no one in London on 18th June 1815 knew that the great battle had taken place, let alone who had won. The news was slow to arrive, too. The battle was on a Sunday, and it wasn’t until late on Wednesday that Wellington’s messenger, Major Henry Percy, arrived in London, with a French eagle sticking out of each window of his yellow post chaise. Escorted by a delirious crowd, he brought the report to Cabinet, who were dining in Grosvenor Square. After they’d read it and made an announcement to the crowd, Percy continued on, with an even larger crowd and followed by most of the Cabinet, to the house of the banking family where the Prince Regent was dining that night. In the words of the hostess, Mrs Boehm:

The first quadrille was in the act cf forming and the Prince was walking up to the dais on which his seat was placed, when I saw every one without the slightest sense of decorum rushing to the windows, which had been left wide open because of the excessive sultriness of the weather. The music ceased and the dance was stopped; for we heard nothing but the vociferous shouts of an enormous mob, who had just entered the Square and were running by the side of a post-chaise and four, out of whose windows were hanging three nasty French eagles. In a second the door of the carriage was flung open and, without waiting for the steps to be let down, out sprang Henry Percy – such a dusty figure! – with a flag in each hand, pushing aside everyone who happened to be in his way, darting up stairs, into the ball-room, stepping hastily up to the Regent, dropping on one knee, laying the flags at his feet, and pronouncing the words ‘Victory, Sir! Victory!’

In another article, Cathcart makes the point that not a single war correspondent was in Brussels to cover the battle, and explains why. Journalism as we know it had not yet been born, though London had many many papers. Indeed, the news they printed came from reports from ordinary civilians who happened to know something, official reports printed verbatim, or articles lifted from other papers.

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Waterloo, with Christopher Plummer as Wellington

This is great! A few historical inaccuracies, but superb for seeing the lay of the land. We watched the full movie, also available on YouTube (Link below). I was particularly struck by the scene in which the imperial guard attack the British squares. I’ve read about it, and seen diagrams, but watching it play out in front of me was a much more visceral thing. And the two leads were amazing.

 

 

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Tattoos in Regency England

I’ve just received Snowy and the Seven Doves back from the developmental editors. One of the questions she asks is about my hero’s tattoo. Wasn’t it only sailors and criminals who had them back in the Regency era? And weren’t they very crude before modern equipment.

It’s true that this is a common perception. Indeed, when I researched body art, I found little specifically about the Regency era, and it is, of course, too early for photos.

However, artistic and complex tattoos have been part of the European story for thousands of years. The Romans, who thought used tattoos to mark criminals and who therefore saw them as a sign of shame, were amazed by the men and women of England, who had themselves covered in images. As with many cultures, a tattoo was a sign of honour, showing that a person had courage and fortitude. People marked significant events by marking them permanently on their bodies.

Vikings, too, had a tattoo tradition, and some researchers think the Germanic tribes did, also.

In the Middle Ages, those going to the Holy Land would have crosses and other symbols tattooed to show their piety. And probably for the practical reason of body identification if something happened to them along the way.

Essentially designs were carved into wooded blocks, and then printed onto the skin by dipping the block into ink. Then tattooists would use a single needle and puncture by hand with blank ink into the skin.

Certainly, in the Georgian and Regency era, soldiers and sailors—both rank and file—marked their bodies to help their comrades recover them if they were killed in a way that rendered them unrecognisable.

Since the technology existed to make those tattoos both meaningful and beautiful, it is not too much of a jump to suggest that wealthy young men would hire an artist at his or her craft to create a personal mark that was a work of art. In my imagined back story, my hero and his friends very likely submitted to the needle of such an artist as a bit of teenage bravado—and my hero chose the phoenix because of his scorched earth beginnings.

Certainly, tattooing was very sophisticated in the 1860s, when several members of the British Royal family are known to have been tattooed, starting a fashion trend that lasted for a hundred years.

Here’s the passage with my hero’s tattoo for your reading delight.

“We can stop at any time,” he said. “If I do anything you do not like, or if you decide you have had enough, just tell me.”

She nodded, and then her mouth went dry as he removed the banyan he was wearing, for he wore nothing underneath. He was naked. And magnificent. He knelt on the side of the bed, looking down at her splayed on her pillows.

“You have a tattoo!” she exclaimed. It was a bird. A magnificent fantasy of a bird in red, orange, and yellow, its wings outspread across his chest, its talons outstretched toward his left nipple, its long tail sweeping down the center of his torso and across to the right, reaching almost to his waist.  

“A phoenix,” she decided, touching the crown. He shuddered but stood still. She traced it, feeling him quiver as her finger glided over his skin. “It is beautiful, Hal.” She smiled into his eyes. “You are beautiful.”

“May I…” his voice was hoarse. He coughed, and started again, in a low growl that she felt to her bones. “May I remove your night rail?”

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The farrier–an underrated role in history

I am a bit obsessed with  how different travel was before the railways. However, one need hasn’t changed, though the job that arises from it is now completely different.

Imagine, if you will, a world in which all motor mechanics and all their knowledge vanish overnight. How long would it be before we had major problems getting to where we needed to be, growing the crops we needed,  and buying the goods we wanted? Even maintaining the roads would soon be beyond us as the motor-driven bulldozers and ditchdiggers ground to a halt.

Once, most of those needs were met by horse power. In Regency times, when the railway engine was just a local device, still unproven for more than moving materials from mine to barge, and cars and tractors had not been imagined, the invention of mechanical engines to provide power for travel, travel on the roads depended on horses, maintenance of the roads depended on horses, planting and harvesting depended on horses. (By the 18th century, horses had almost entirely replaced oxen in English agriculture.)

In the past, the importance and education of farriers has been seen through the lens of the vetinary specialists who replaced them in treating animal injuries and illnesses. I’ve been reading a thesis that revisits that story, and suggests that farriers were much more important and better educated than previously thought.

The good health of horses, particularly foot health, depended on farriers. When you think that a typical large inn on the Great North Road might own 2,000 horses for hire and that estimates of horse number in England at the turn of the century in 1800 sit somewhere around 1.5 million, you begin to get an idea of how much the farrier’s skill mattered. England would have ground to a halt if they were as useless as has sometimes been suggested. Farriers “cared for the most important animal in English society, attending to its shoeing and caring for its fractures, illnesses and lesions.” [McKay, 2009]

The following excerpt gives some insight into the work of country farriers, such as the one in my new novella for the next Bluestocking Belles collection. McKay looks at the records for an estate regarding the bills paid by the Earl of Egremont to a farrier by the name of Peter Hay, and also at Hay’s accounts to work out what Hay actually did in Egremont’s extensive stables between the 1740s and the 1780s. Over that 40 year period, he visited the Egremont stables on average, 80 times a year.

First, Hay would simply shoe Egremont’s horses, which involved removing and then nailing the shoes onto the horse’s feet. Second, after shoeing the horses, he would obtain and apply ointments and waxes to the horse’s legs and hoofs. Third, he gave basic medical care to the horses. Aside from one visit, in which Hay sharpened a pitchfork, his visits fell into these three categories. [McKay, 2009]

An important part of Hay’s practice was making the medicines, ointments, and waxes he used in treating the horses.

The thesis also mentioned another farrier, Edward Snape, who was farrier to the King and also to the Horse Guard. He was known as Dr Snape, did his best (twice) to establish a college of equine medicine, and wrote a textbook called A Practical Treatise on Farriery. Not an uneducated man.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the role of the farrier had been reduced to shoeing horses, and the vetinary surgeon did everything else.