Footnotes on Friday

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The dangerous years

Once again, I’ve found myself researching a common childhood killer that, in our Western world, has had its fangs drawn by the twin powers of vaccination and antibiotics.

Diptheria, previously known as the Boulogne sore throat, malignant croup, was described by the Greeks 2500 years ago. In the year I’m writing about, 1825, it has just acquired the name by which we know it today, but effective prevention and treatment were still a century or more away. All my characters could do was keep their patient calm and hope that the ghastly false membrane growing from one tonsil to her uvula would not close the throat entirely, and that the child’s heart and kidneys did not become affected by the toxins the bacteria produces.

Sitting with my hero and heroine as they watched and worried, I once again gave thanks for the era and the country in which I raised my children.  Some forty years ago, one of my daughters had scarlet fever as a complication of mumps. When I told our doctor her temperature and that she was rambling in and out of consciousness, he put snow chains on his car and drove up the hill to give her an introvenous shot of antibiotic. Within half an hour, she was sitting up complaining that she wasn’t allowed to play with her brothers and sisters out in the snow. It’s an experience I have never forgotten.

We live in a time and a country of miracles. In Regency England slums, overcrowding and poor nutrition meant that diptheria, scarlet fever, influenza, mumps, small pox, and other epidemic illnesses spread easily and killed frequently, but a wealthy home was no protection. Children died in numbers that we, who expect to raise our children to adulthood, find it hard to comprehend. One third of children born in the early 1800s did not reach their fifth birthday.

On the whole,  I sanitise this world for my readers. My sick child survives, unharmed. I don’t make a habit of marching through my characters’ nurseries with a scythe. I am

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Those pesky titles!

I made a thing, for those of you who wonder about titles. Those of you who already know, tell me if you see any errors!

 

Except for those few rare women who inherited a title in their own right, or those with a courtesy title who married “down”, women took their husband’s title as well as his name.

Please feel free to download and share the images:

Titles for men: https://judeknightauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1-1.png

Titles for women: https://judeknightauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2-1.png

 

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Travel times

 

Once upon a time, in the UK and Europe, villages used to be about three or four miles apart. That meant a villager could walk to the next village in about an hour, see to business or a friendly visit, and walk home again, all in half a day. Market towns tended to be about nine to twelve miles apart. Someone on foot could reach the nearest market town from their village in about an hour and a half, making it possible to set out before dawn to sell produce, and still get home before dark. Or, if shopping was the goal, the round trip could still be done in three hours.

A person with a horse and cart wouldn’t get there any faster, but would take a bit longer.

For the rich, carriages and riding horseback or in horselitters might shorten travel times, but the state of the roads meant that thirty miles a day was an excellent speed, and only possible in flat country. Goods and people were commonly transported by river or sea if they had to go any further than a few miles, but most people didn’t travel more than ten miles from their home in their lifetimes.

The stage coach was introduced to Britain in the 17th Century. Over time, better road technology, a larger road network and better carriages brought about a huge reduction in travel times. By 1750, it was possible to travel from London to York in three to four days. By the 1820s, the same trip would take a little over a day. Ordinary people still didn’t travel all that much, unless they were wealthy or it was part of their job, or they were seeking work. It was expensive, uncomfortable, and time consuming. Until the next technological development.

Then came the railways

The growth of the railway network, after the first successful passenger line in 1826, was remarkable. And all of a sudden, third class rail carriage put a once-in-a-lifetime trip at the seaside into the reach of even working-class people, while those with slightly more means might even take an annual holiday. Take a look at the growth of the network in just twelve years, between 1840 and 1852.

And here’s what it did to travel times, even with slow mid-19th century steam trains.

Cars and planes

With the coming of the automobile, the focus turned back to roads, with travel times shrinking again, and still more with airplanes. Here in the 21st century, it’s hard to put ourselves into the footsteps of our ancestors, for whom a trip to the shops meant a three hour walk.

 

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Not just Bow Street — the other police offices

There’s a bit of a fashion for Bow Street runners in Regency romance. I thought I’d have one myself, come to arrest my hero on a false charge of murder. Except when I looked into it, I found out they weren’t necessarily from Bow Street, and they weren’t called runners.

Bow Street Magistrate’s Court was the prototype, of course. Henry Fielding and his brother established the Runners. (They preferred to be called Principal Officers, since they thought ‘runners’ made them sound like servants.)

The model was successful, and in 1792, more than forty years after Fielding started his experiment, the government passed the Middlesex Justices Act. This established seven more police offices. Each had three paid magistrates and up to six paid officers or constables.

So in Westminster, there were Bow Street, Great Marlborough Street, and Queen’s Square. I picked Great Marlborough Street, which was closest to the townhouse where my hero was staying. Police offices in the rest of London were Worship Street in Shorditch, Lambeth Street in Whitchapel, Union Hall in Southwark, and also Shadwell and Hatton Garden. In 1798, the Thames Police Office (the river police) was opened in Wapping. There had been a couple of changes by the time of my story, in 1813, but good to know!

My hero’s powerful friends payed for him to have a private room instead of being in the police cells, where he countered two attempts to murder him. Corruption was a significant issue with some police offices, so a bribe to look the other way was not unlikely. He appeared before the three magistrates in a preliminary hearing a few days after he was arrested, and the case was dismissed when the person he was meant to have murdered stood up in court, alive and well. Other cases heard that day might have received an immediate judgement and penalty for a minor crime, or been bound over to appear at a full court hearing before a judge and possibly a jury.

They were different times, but already shifting in a direction that is more familiar to us today.

Note: when the Great Marlborough police office closed in 1839, as the Metropolitan Police took over all policing duties, the building continued in service as a Magistrate’s Court. A case against John Lennon for exhibiting sexually explicit material was heard in this court in the 1970s. It is now a boutique hotel, and the courtroom itself is an Asian Fusion restaurant.

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Hackneys and Hansom Cabs

It’s amazing what you can find down a rabbit hole! I went looking for public conveyances in 1826 in Paris, and discovered the light two-wheeled carriage, pulled by one horse, called the cabriolet de place. It looked very familiar, so I sent my heroine home in one, and did some more digging.

In the 17th, 18th and early 19th century, the way to get around London (if you had the fare and didn’t have a coach of your own) was a Hackney Coach. These were generally old carriages that had once belonged to private owners. Drawn by a pair of horses, they could carry several passengers. But they were known to be dirty and smelly, since they went everywhere with all sorts of passengers.

The owners of these hackney coaches–there were 300 licences in Central London–had a monopoly on private transport in that area. When a carriage maker called David Davies decided to introduce the French innovation under the shortened name cab, the syndicate of hackney coach owners objected.

However, two gentlemen managed to get nine licenses, and the cabs proved to be very popular. The tarrif was reasonable, and the young and more daring were delighted to give the new, lighter, and more agile form of transportation a go. Apparently the cab drivers delighted in passing their heavier and more cumbersome rivals!

Despite the opposition, 1831 saw 150 licenses for cabbies, and in1832, all restrictions were lifted.

The picture above shows the hansom cab, the first of which was designed in 1834 by Mr Joseph Hansom, with the passengers mounting in front. Later innovators moved the cabbie to the back and added a window in the door, leaving Hansom’s design behind, but his name lingered on.

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History shapes us

We were at Whanganui hospital today for a routine procedure. While I waited, I examined the photos on the wall with some interest, for family lore tells me that a failure by the government to pay for the building work my great grandfather did on one of the buildings led to the bankruptcy that, in turn, led to my grandfather returning to live with his parents and to raise his seven children in the family home. The building pictured above are gone, now. Replaced with a more modern hospital–and a very efficient one, too, we found. But the old family story lingers.

In other news today, Charles III appears to have hinted that he’s open to having the remains of children, buried in the royal vaults after being exhumed from the environs of the Tower of London, tested to see if their DNA supports the oft repeated suspicion that they are the Princes in the Tower, the two sons of Edward IV. Shakespeare tells us they were horribly murdered on the command of their uncle, Richard III, because they stood between him and the throne. The story has flaws, since he already had the throne, having convinced Parliament that their father was secretly married to someone else when he wed their mother.

I’m a #RichardIIIwasframed person myself, but I’ll watch for the results of the testing with interest. Is a long standing historical injustice about to be addressed? If so, which one?

Speaking of Charles III, quite a number of voices have been raised calling for redress from the new King for colonial oppressions. It seems a bit misplaced to me, given that the Kings and Queens of England have had little real power for several hundred years. But that’s the down side of being a walking talking symbol, I suppose.

Which reminds me that it was only in 2015 that the British government finished paying off the debt incurred to compensate British slave owners for freeing their slaves. That’s right, folks. Nearly two centuries of debt to pay people to stop owning other people. I get that it was a political decision, required to get the necessary support to stop an outrage. But how about compensation for the slaves, and their descendants?

All of which goes to today’s point. History matters. Perhaps, with enough time, past injustices become merely something interesting to study, but when the impacts are still echoing in the lives of people alive today, we ignore such injustices at our peril.

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A storied kingdom

When I began to write Paradise Regained, prequel to my Return of the Mountain King series, I didn’t have much of a clue about the location. The plot required that my hero and heroine live in Central Asia, somewhere along the Silk Roads, but boy, did I need to research.

Half a dozen books, scores of academic research papers, and quite a bit of Sufi medieval poetry later, I’d nailed down the place and the time, and become fascinated with the tumultuous and ever intriguing history of Iran.

1794 in the Western calendar was a tumultuous year in Iran, which we in the West persisted in calling Persia, after the practice of the ancient Greeks. The short-lived Zand dynasty took its last gasp that year, to be superseded by a rival clan, the Qajars.

The rivalry for supremacy in Iran was brutal. The founder of the new dynasty was known as the eunuch monarch. Āghā Moḥammad Qajar was castrated when young to prevent him from becoming a political rival to the then reigning Afsharid dynasty.

Instead, what was then seen as disqualifying someone from supreme leadership seemed to inspire Āghā Moḥammad to greater efforts. He was a political hostage for much of his young adulthood, but escaped when Karīm Khan Zand died, and spent ten years fighting his own relatives to unite his clan.  By 1886, he was the head of the tribe that controlled northern Iran.  He spent the next eight years at war with the last of the Zand kings, finally capturing the ruler and having him killed in 1794.

He was crowned as shāhanshāh (king of kings) in 1796, but was assassinated the following year. The story goes that he grew annoyed when two of his servants argued loudly in his hearing. He ordered them executed, but since it was the evening of the holy day, he commanded them back to their duties until the next day.

You can’t say he lacked confidence, but in this case it lead him astray.

During the night, the servants stabbed their master, and took the crown jewels to a powerful prince who offered them his protection.

Nonetheless, the Shah was succeeded by his nephew, and his dynasty ruled Iran until 1929.

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All of this formed the background to a minor plotline in Paradise Regained. The father of my heroine is a minor Zand khan, that is, ruler of what we would now call a province. In the turmoil that followed the death of the king, he flees to his daughter’s mountain kingdom in the Kopet Dag mountains, through which runs the border between Iran and Turkmenistan. He is closely pursued by Qajar troops, who settle outside the gates.

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The right and the wrong side of the blanket

The British royal family can trace its ancestry back to the kings of Wessex and Kent, at least 1300 years, though it gets a bit murky beyond that.  The family tree on this site links both the English line and the Scottish line through a descendant of Alfred the Great. Often through the female line, and sometimes through collateral lines that have long been separated from the main tree. But still.

The main purpose of the site is to look at Charles II, his mistresses, and his offspring.  Fascinating stuff.

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Constitutional monarchy and the power of a living symbol

State Opening of British Parliament in 2019

Britain has a constitutional monarchy, as do 14 realms like my own who share its monarch. There are others, including Belgium, Cambodia, Jordan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Thailand.

A constitutional monarch is a system of government in which power is shared according to the country’s constitution. The monarch may be the head of state, have purely a ceremonial role, or have certain limited powers allocated by the constitution. All other powers of government belong to the legislature and judiciary.

Britain has a democratically elected legislature that holds all the political power, an independently appointed judiciary that has the power to decide whether the legislature is breaking the law, and a monarch whose power is almost entirely symbolic.

The path to a politically powerless but socially effective monarch was a long one. Some suggest it started when the barons forced King John to accept the Magna Carta. There were other steps along the way, as Parliament tried to rein in the monarch, including 1649, when a monarch who thought he should have absolute power was tried by Parliament and executed (for treason). Then came the so-called Glorious Revolution, which led to a compact in 1689 between Parliament and the monarch. The monarchy was maintained and the herditary succession continued, but only on Parliament’s terms.

1708 is the last time that a British monarch denied royal assent to a bill (that is, refused to allow a piece of legislation passed by Parliament). From the time of George 1, kings stopped selecting Cabinet Ministers and getting involved in discussions at Parliament. William IV, in 1831, dissolved Parliament at the request of the prime minister but against the will of the majority of Parliament. Again. Last time.

Monarchs still give assent, approve Cabinet Ministers and the Prime Minister, open and dissolve Parliament. But now, they only do so when asked by Parliament.

Since the Georgian kings, the monarchs of Britain have had three rights and only three:

  • the right to be consulted
  • the right to encourage
  • the right to warn.

The monarch is not so much a ruler as a parent of adult children, acting in an advisory capacity only, and making sure he or she does not embarrass or challenge the government of the day by stating opinions in public. They have no policies, no platform, no axe to grind or wheel to grind it on. To blame them for the decisions of the governments of the past 250 years is to completely misunderstand history.

The monarch also, of course, gives the British a centrepiece for the pomp and pageantry they do so well.

Personally, I hope my own country keeps its link to the monarchy. I don’t want a head of state with political power. I especially don’t want a head of state with political policies and affiliations. They cannot possibly promote unity or represent it, which seems to me to be the vital function of the monarch. I could stand having an elected head of state who was non-political. France and Ireland do that. But why pay the cost of elections when we already have a head of state who is stuck with the job, poor sod, because he was the first born male in the wrong family? (Take a look at the relative costs in various countries of heads of state. It’s enlightening. The British have it cheap.)

Long live the King.

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The horror of Georgian-era asylums

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, asylums for those afflicted with mental illness existed to keep the inmates in custody. Some of them were huge affairs, run by charitable foundations, such as Bethlem Hospital in London, popularly known as Bedlam. Others, such as the one I invented for my story Lady Beast’s Bridegroom, were private establishments run for profit, often by someone who  had set himself up as a doctor with few, if any, qualifications.

Few of them were nice places, and none of them offered any effective treatments. The keepers were guards—untrained in anything except confining those who did not want to be there. Patients were often restrained. Treatments were barbaric: being bled, purged, blistered, beaten.

The system was ripe for abuse, and it was abused. Those with mental illness were undoubtedly not helped by being in such surroundings, but asylums also held those who were not insane. Even into the 20th century, deaf people and people with severe physical disabilities were committed to asylums because they could not talk.

Children and women were admitted to asylums on the word of the male head of their family—husband, father, brother, or even, in some cases, a male friend of a woman or of a child’s mother.

Epilepsy was reason enough to be committed until the 1950s.  Depression after the loss of a loved one. Abusive language. Being over religious. Even being overtired! Or, for that matter, for no reason at all except that a person’s continued freedom was inconvenient to someone.

In one case, a man confined his wife after she objected to her niece, with whom her husband was having an affair, being named as mistress of the household. Her incarceration came to an end when she managed to persuade a boy working in the garden of the house next door to take a message—and her shoe (to identify her)—to friends who rescued her and hired a lawyer to defend her.

In Snowy and the Seven Blossoms, another book in the same series, I envisage a private asylum that was truly a place of security and sanctuary, thanks to the physician in charge. Perhaps such places existed. If so, they were certainly greatly outnumbered by barbaric institutions that hurt rather than healed.