Footnotes on Friday

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Tripped up by things we know

I’m serious about my research. I prefer well researched historical romance myself, and I try to research the details in my own romances to make sure I get them right. The problem is, I often don’t know what I don’t know. If I’m fortunate, I’ll find out before I finish the book, and can edit accordingly. Or rewrite, even, as when I discovered that my receivers of smuggled goods would almost certainly not be arrested if they simply paid the duty, with perhaps a thank you bonus to the customs officials.

I hate it when I don’t notice until I’ve published the book and found a reader who winces. No, my hero could not buy flowers from a shop in the early 1800s in Bath. Flowers at that time were sold from barrows. Actual shops devoted to selling flowers had not yet made an appearance even in Paris, where they apparently started.

I took flower shops for granted and didn’t trouble to look them up.

On the other hand, several times, I’ve had readers with a little knowledge who have lambasted me for getting wrong something I have exactly right. Anglican clerics with parishes did directly receive the tithes paid by their parishioners.  Cleanliness in surgery and in sick rooms was a natural part of Arabic medicine, and also commonly practiced in the British navy and by doctors trained in Scotland. While upper class women were expected not to engage in work for income, the crafter families of England taught their crafts to their daughters, who continued to work alongside their husbands if they married someone in the same craft.

So when I bump into a small fact in other people’s writing that I know to be wrong, such as the Regency lady in a recent novel I read who offered a visitor a choice between Chinese or Indian tea, I note the historical discrepancy and move on.  In this particular case, I’m certain of my facts. The British stole tea from China in the early 1820s. The early experimental plantings didn’t translate into commercial production until the 1850s. But often, I’ve checked a fact that appears wrong to me and discovered that I am the one who is wrong. Lesson learned, and thank you, author.

And even if I’m right, I’m not going to scoff at the author in a review.  How rude! And what an invitation for the powers of balance to strike me next time I include a detail that I didn’t know I didn’t know.

 

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Calculating sea journeys

I was trying to work out the length of a sea journey from the borderlands with Scotland on the east coast to near Bristol in the west, and I came across a modern sailing distance calculator, which was just the thing. It allows you to plot your course, and then tells you the nautical miles. From there, it’s a simple (hah!) matter of working out the likely speed of your craft, taking into account the season (and therefore the weather and the prevailing winds and currents), the likelihood of pirates and storms, and any time in port along the way. And there you have it.

You’re welcome.

https://plainsailing.com/sailing-distance-calculator

See also my other posts on this perennial topic:
Average travelling times in the Regency
Travel times from port to port in the Mediterranean in the Regency

 

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Witch persecutions, Satanist cabals, plagues of dancing and meowing nuns

The case of the meowing nuns is one of the more bizarre cases of mass hysteria recorded in history. In the 14th century, a nun in northern France began meowing like a cat. Within a week, the rest of the nuns had picked up the practice, and they would spend hours together meowing and purring, sometimes for hours. In the sixteenth century, hundreds of people in Strasburg, also in France, were subject to a dancing frenzy so prolonged that some died of heart attacks and strokes. In both cases, the official explanation was possession by the devil, and the sufferers were forced to pray until they were cured.

In the 17th century, over 19 counties in England organised militias to defenced against ‘Wild marauding Irishmen’, who they believed to be on their way, despite a complete lack of evidence (and Irishmen). That’s a pretty impressive misinformation campaign, and completely without the benefit of the Internet.

The persecution of witches in one place after another over a period of around 500 years is another example of how easily people believe something that isn’t true and not only twist the facts to fit but also see, hear, and otherwise sense things that didn’t happen. Likewise the rash of ghost and monster sightings of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, police in a number of countries spent weeks, even months, investigating non-existent crimes because of a whole group of witnesses sincerely believed they had seen them happen, or even been victims.

The Satanist ritual abuse scare of the 1980s and 90s was another widespread phenomenon that has been thoroughly exploded in investigation.

We are creatures of our environment, affected by the beliefs and practices of those near to us. If there is a lesson to learned from this, it is be careful who you listen to.

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The internet, research, and getting my protagonists from Coventry to London by mail coach

Print or electronic for research? When a period, place, event, or individual is crucial to my story, and I want to immerse myself in accurate historical research and accounts contemporary to the time, I prefer print. I can bookmark passages that are particularly relevant, and have several books on my desk so that I can cross-reference between them to check particular details as I write.

When I want a quick fact, I love the internet. Yesterday, I wanted to get my protagonists from Birmingham to London by mail coach. They were in a hurry. They had the money. I needed to know

  • the time of year (fixed by the event they were attending, the assizes)
  • the state of the light
  • the time the coach departed Coventry
  • when and where the coach completed its run in London.

The internet, with a bit of hunting around, mainly in old digitised memoirs and books by early twentieth century coaching enthusiasts, told me.

  • The assizes weren’t held in Birmingham for another thirty years. I had to move the action to Coventry. The Coventry assizes were in March.
  • Time and place calculators abound. I found out the sun and moon times really easily.
  • The mail coach I decided to use left from Chester. That service did the 188 mile distance in a single 24 hour run, leaving Chester at 8am and the Golden Horn in London at the same time.

For a daily service in each direction the operators needed:

  • 4 stage-coaches, (at any one time, one coach was travelling south, another travelling north, and a spare coach was kept at each end of the route to allow for maintenance, breakdowns, etc.)
  • 188 horses, (a team of four every eight miles, horses rested every other day, a simple equation that works out at one horse per mile of route.)
  • 8 coachmen (drivers, 50 miles each per day)
  • 4 guards (each did 24 hours on-duty then 24 hours off)
  • Payment of stage-coach tax (a sum per mile)
  • Payment of road tolls (substantial sums)

A full load was 5 passengers on a mail coach, 4 or 6 on a post-coach, and 16 on an ordinary stage-coach. [The Stagecoach Industry: http://www.carlscam.com/coachindustry.htm]

These days, we’re becoming very aware of the negatives of the internet. It can be a time waster and an emotions vampire. Misinformation abounds, and research requires disciplined checking of credibility. But for purposes like mine, it is wonderful. And okay. Maybe nobody who reads the resultant book will know or care that the Coventry Assizes is in the correct month, or that I moved my Coventry action forward two hours to give my protagonists time to catch the coach. But detail matters to me. So there you go.

Oh. And now I want to write a character who is a mailcoach driver or a guard with a family at each end of his run.

(By the way, I do want to write about the Assizes. Some other time.)

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Heavy drinkers in the Regency

Beyond a doubt, many people used to drink a lot of alcohol in the Regency era, often to the point of being falling down drunk. But it turns out that it took a larger number of bottles and glasses than you might think.

We read of a gentleman consuming two bottles of brandy in an evening, or having seven or eight glasses of wine at a meal, and still standing upright at the end of it. When the bride in one book rapidly drank four glasses of wine, and then passed out before the startled eyes of the groom, I didn’t question how strong a head she had for her liquor. I should have.

Both bottles and glasses have grown in size since the Regency. The alcohol content of wine and other drinks might also have increased.

At that time, a bottle was the size of the breath that could be expelled by a single glassblower. Even when produced in large glass blowing manufacturies by skilled craftsmen working with specified quantities, no two bottles were exactly the same, but that would make it between 350 and 500 ml — or perhaps as large as 700 ml, or just under one and a half pints.

Glasses, too, were much smaller. They had started to grow from around 70 ml (under 2 and a half ounces) that had been the standard to the mid-18th century, but not with any speed. The bride in question had consumed a little under two modern standard glasses.

And then there’s the alcohol content. It varied, of course, according to the fermentation time and process. But there’s good evidence that it was less than today, with wine at about 5% (average today, 11%) , fortified wines such as port and sherry at about 15% (average today 18%), and perhaps 25% for brandy (average today, 50%).

So in terms of alcohol, assuming a 500 ml bottle, our gentleman had the modern equivalent of half a 1 litre bottle in an evening. Quite a bit, but spread out over a long evening by an large man who is an accustomed drinker, he’ll be drunk, but probably able to walk home without any difficulty. And the soused bride? She passed out after the equivalent of less than one modern glass of champagne. Someone must have spiked it!

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Bridal encouragement in a bouquet

Who knew? I am writing a wedding at the moment, and I wondered whether brides carried a bridal bouquet in the Regency. They did, but not as we know it. The fashion for carrying only flowers began after the Regency. The original bridal bouquet comprised herbs – especially smelly herbs, or herbs that were considered to have a beneficial impact on the married couple. Garlic, dill, thistles, and ivy, anyone?

Dill was particularly important at a wedding. It was considered to – let us say – heat the humours. Particularly useful on the wedding night; both bride and groom ate the dill from the bouquet at the wedding breakfast.

By the Regency, garden flowers were being poked into the bouquet among the herbs, and in Victorian times, they (mostly) dropped the herbs.

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Here’s my wedding, or, rather, Arial’s and Peter’s.

This was an evening of firsts for Arial. Dressing with the help of her new sisters. Examining her own reflection in the mirror and being pleased with what she saw. Making her appearance at the top of the stairs and seeing awe and admiration in the eyes of Peter and his friend, Captain Forsythe. And a darker emotion on the faces of the Weatherall ladies, but one she’d never expected to attract.

Perhaps it was bad of her, but their jealousy pleased rather than bothered her. If anyone had told her a week ago that she would look good enough to cause a petty-minded Society beauty to regard her with envy, she would not have believed them.

She smiled at them as she walked slowly past them on her way to where Peter stood before the vicar. They had come prepared to bestow pity, of course. How disappointed they must be.

With them behind her, she put them out of her mind. This was her evening, and she would not allow the Weatheralls to spoil it for her.

Her heart warmed and a lump came to her throat as Peter stepped to one side and held his hand out for her. His left hand. Her sighted side. She handed her wedding bouquet—made for her by her new sisters with herbs and flowers from the market—to Angelica, and gave her right hand to Peter.

Another first. Her wedding. She had been damaged too young to have begun to dream of one, and had been too realistic to allow such dreams to take root as she became a woman. And since Mr Richards had proposed his scheme, she had been focused on selecting a candidate and on reaching an agreement that gave her the best chance of a reasonable life. The wedding had not been a consideration.

But here she was. Exchanging smiles with the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and about to join her life to his forever.

“Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” asked the vicar.

“I give myself,” Arial declared, and Peter’s grip firmed as his smile widened.

Miss Weatherall whispered loudly, “Is that even legal?” and Captain Forsythe shushed her.

The vicar looked a little disconcerted for a moment, and then nodded

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British Newspapers Archive online

In among painting door frames and resorting cupboards so we can organise the garage, I’ve been doing a job I’ve had in mind for a while: writing a list of the types of article to be found in Regency newspapers, which I access through British newsletter archive. It’s an initiative between the British Library and Find My Past to digitise the British Library’s vast collection of newspapers, and I can spend hours reading news items, classified advertising, theatre reviews, market reports, Court news, and Society gossip. It’s a time suck, but it is also fascinating.

https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

I’m currently reading newspapers from the week beginning 15 November 1815, when they report the news from Paris: Marshall Ney successfully argued that the Council of War had no status to try him for treason, and his case was referred to the Council of Peers. Also, the fashion leaders of Paris prescribed turbans for evening wear. White or Black, with perhaps a feather.