Other research

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If we only had time

Daylight saving started in New Zealand in the early hours of Sunday morning, which led to a conversation in the work kitchen this morning about time.

Time is a construct, said the engineer among us, given importance by trains. He then whisked out of the room with his coffee, leaving the rest of us to discuss the concept.

He is, of course, quite correct. Once, everywhere in the known world took its time from the sun (translated into candle time or water time, but the reference point was the sun, as translated through some form of sun dial).

In fact, that’s still true today, since all the timekeeping in the English-speaking world relates back to Greenwich Mean Time, which is calculated from solar time — in fact, average solar midnight at Greenwich. (There’s a whole lot more history, but that’s enough for now.)

The thing is, up until the invention of railways, solar time was good enough. Even though clock technology improved, a clock was only as accurate as its reference point. Every village, every ship at sea, every point East to West across the map, calculated its own solar time. You could travel from the East of Kent to the West of Ireland, and have to put your watch back an hour.

Since the whole trip would take a couple of weeks, what did it matter? A few minutes between overnight stops made very little difference.

Then came the railways.

All of a sudden, exact times mattered. Not only were people travelling at four times the speed — and for longer each day; those controlling the railways needed to know when trains were going to be where, and know it precisely. It was a matter of life or death.

Here’s a fascinating map that shows how far out from solar time various parts of each time zone are. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572317/Are-YOU-living-sync-Amazing-map-reveals-manmade-timezones-countries-false-sense-sun-rises.html

You’ll see that in China, where all clocks are set to Beijing time, solar noon takes place at 3pm in the far west of the country.

On a related point, we think of a moment as a very brief fraction of time. This reflects our business, perhaps, because — for our ancestors — a moment was longer than a minute. How long? It depends. The word comes from a Latin root meaning movement, and the movement in question was that of a shadow on a sundial. A moment was the time it took the shadow to move between the two smallest marks. With 40 marks to an hour, at the equinoxes, a moment was 90 seconds in our time. A moment was longer in the summer, and shorter in the winter — something to tell your kids when you ask them to wait just a moment.

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Recreating the 1814 Frost Fair

Here’s something to watch for — photographs of the 1814 Frost Fair by Julia Fullerton-Batten, taken as part of her Old Father Thames historical reconstruction project.

Here’s what Fullerton-Batten says about the Frost Fair part of the project.

Frost Fairs had taken place several times before on the Thames but the one in 1814  was the last to take place before a new London Bridge was built, improving the flow of the water and stopping the freezing.  In 1814 the Thames froze between the  first London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. Thick ice formed from early February lasting for four days and an impromptu festival took place. Londoners stood on the frozen Thames eating ginger bread and drinking gin. Oxen were roasted over roaring fires. There was entertainment – hoopla, skittles, fire-eaters, wrestling. Temporary pubs did a roaring trade and drink encouraged people to dance. The ice was even thick enough to support printing presses churning out souvenirs and an elephant walking across it.  ‘The 1814 Frost Fair’ will be an epic story and will complete the first phase of my long-term Thames project. It will also be my most ambitious story-telling to-date.

Read more at:

Julia Fullerton-Batten. Old Father Thames


https://phmuseum.com/news/recreating-historical-stories-of-the-river-thames
https://www.hasselblad.com/stories/the-tales-of-old-father-thames-julia-fullerton-batten/

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Where dukes came from

The genre I write in is infested with dukes. They hold the same place in Georgian, Regency, and Victorian romance as billionaires do in contemporary romance. However unlikely our multitudes of young handsome dukes and billionaires might be, they represent a certain type of story — one in which all the power lies with the hero, but still the heroine wins. Because of love. It is a story with a timeless appeal, obviously, but I thought a few facts might be fun.

The title comes from the Latin word dux, meaning a military leader responsible for a sizeable territory, and is found in the countries that were part of the Roman Empire. It was adopted by the barbarians of Germany, and after the Roman Empire fell the dukes kept ruling, either in their own lands or on behalf of a king.

In Germany, eleven sovereign duchies survived into the twentieth century. In France, four duchies were almost independent of the Crown in the early feudal period, but were later absorbed back into the Crown. The ancien regime also appointed dukes who were part of the French peerage rather than hereditary sovereigns: first royal princes, and later illegitimate sons and royal favourites of all kinds. More than 30 of these titles survived into the late 20th century. In Italy, the title is still widespread, not only as a result of the territorial duchies, six of which lasted into modern times, but Popes, Kings and Emperors could — and did — bestow the title.  In Spain, the territorial duchies disappeared with the Moorish conquest, but when the title was revived, it was, as in France and Italy, awarded to royal princes and royal favourites, even most recently as the 1940s. Portugal suffered the same conquest, and likewise revived the title. Fewer Portugese dukes were created than Spanish ones, though.

Britain, with whom our genre is chiefly concerned, imported the title with the Duke of Normandy, but it was Edward III who created the first English dukes. In the 14th and 15th century, all creations had royal blood, but after that it was increasingly given outside the royal family. The same timeframe and devolvement to the wider peerage applied to Scotland.

There were never many dukes in the United Kingdom. In 1814, there were 25 non-royal dukes holding 28 ducal titles:  17 English, 7 Scots only, 1 Irish. Today, there are 26 holding 31 titles. Plus the various sons and grandsons of monarchs, of course, but such historical figures are not available for us to marry off to our heroines.

Ah well. We can always bring one in from the continent. They had a few spares, it seems.

 

UPDATE: following on from some of the comments, I’ve looked up the dukes alive in 1814. Excluding the Duke of Wellington, who was a new creation in that year,  four-fifths were 40 or over in 1814, and half were 50 or over. All but two were married in 1814. One of those never married, and one (Leinster, who succeeded aged 13 and was 23 in 1814) married a couple of years later. So debutantes of the 1814 season had, on the face of it, two dukes in their twenties looking for brides, one Irish and one not interested, as it turned out.

Most of the dukes around in 1814 had already married while still heirs, and nearly all of them married in their twenties. Eight married after they succeeded to the peerage. Seven of these were children at the time of succession. One was 69 at succession and was 80 when his only son was born. I’ll bet there’s a story there.

 

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What a shambles

Did you know that a shambles was originally a meat slaughterhouse and market? I didn’t. It came to be used for scenes of carnage and disorder, and later lost the sense of guts and gore to become a description of a teenager’s bedroom. Except in England, where it survives as a place name — The Shambles in York, for example.

The word ‘cheap’ is another one associated with markets. It comes through old English from a Latin word meaning a small trader or innkeeper. In old English, it came to mean a market, giving us market towns such as Chipping Campden and Chepstow. In the fifteenth century, a good cheap was a good bargain,  which lead to the modern meaning.

As to my own name, the original Old English was cniht, meaning a boy or a youth. It was a term common to the Germanic languages and came to mean young warrior and then military follower before it settled into its current meaning (a rank in the nobility) in around the mid-sixteenth century. My full surname is Knighton, and a ton was a homestead, piece of land, or group of buildings enclosed in some way. Originally, in the Germanic languages, it meant a fortified place, but some of the other languages derived from Proto-Germanic have settled on a meaning of ‘hedge or fence’. So I’ve always suggested that my surname means the young fellow hiding behind the hedge.

The word evolved by the mid twelfth century to mean an inhabited place larger than a village; our modern spelling is ‘town’.

The measure ‘ton’ comes from a French word meaning ‘cask’. It was a measure of weight — the quantity necessary to fill a cask, hence a ‘ton of bricks’.

The Georgian ‘ton’ is a different word altogether. It comes from Old French — ‘ton’ was a musical sound or tone. From the fifteenth century, the word ‘tone’ was used in English to mean a manner of speaking, but in the eighteenth century the French word was borrowed again, this time to mean ‘the prevailing mode or style’. The full phrase was ‘le bon ton’ — those of good manners. Members of the ton came from the aristocracy, the gentry, and royalty.

Isn’t language fun?

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The railway revolution

I’m continuing with a travel theme, and taking a look at my favourite mode of transport: trains. Those of us who are old enough to remember life before the internet have some idea what railways meant to how human beings live on the planet.

As they spread across one country after another in the nineteenth century, they opened unprecedented opportunities for trade, allowed investors to make huge fortunes, and gave ordinary people access to places, goods and services that had previously been exclusively for locals or the wealthy.

They also destroyed industries and the communities built around those industries.

Travelling at speed

Before trains, the fastest form of travel was a galloping horse. Set up a succession of horses spaced about ten miles apart, and you could get a message from London to Edinburgh in, perhaps, 48 hours (depending on road conditions). Travelers without such a facility would take four to eight days. In Victorian times, a train would take 16 hours to do the same journey.

Moving in bulk

Before trains, you could move goods in bulk (by barge or ship), or you could move them at speed (relatively speaking), but not both. Same with people. An army on the march could cover 30 to 50 miles a day, or boat down a river at whatever speed the current traveled. Trains reached 60 miles an hour by 1840, carrying people and goods at speeds never before possible.

Unintended consequences

Trains made the suburbs possible. They put a day trip to the seaside within the reach of ordinary city dwellers. They allowed factories to shift their goods across nations and across borders. They also furthered the depopulation of the countryside, replaced local goods — especially foods — with products brought from far away, and changed social habits, employment, and culture.

Massive engineering projects opened up inaccessible places to travelers and settlers, often at the expense of local communities.

Trains upped the head count in a disaster. An accident to a horse might take a single rider. One to a coach might result in several deaths. When a train hit another in a tunnel in 1861, 23 people died and 176 were injured.

In both positive ways and negative, trains changed the world.

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In praise of anaesthetics

 

I had a small medical procedure under local anaesthetic yesterday; around half an hour lying under a sterile cloth with a hole cut in it so the surgeon could work on the bit of flesh she wanted. We were chatting for much of that time about the difference that anaesthesia makes. Much as I love history, I wouldn’t want to live there. My surgeon said she’d had a similar discussion with the previous patient, this time about geography. Yes; there are places I wouldn’t want to live, too.

For most of history, surgery has been a last, and extremely painful, resort. Opium and alcohol were both used from ancient times, but both had unpleasant side effects and neither entirely blocked the pain. Knocking someone out with a blow to the head ensured they didn’t feel the surgery, but timing was a problem, and the blow could cause its own problems. The same applied to pressing on the carotid artery; the person would pass out, but recover quickly, and repeating the process was dangerous.

Surgeons relied on speed and strong helpers. The first to get the procedure over as quickly as possible, the second to hold the patient still.  In the eighteenth century, the record for the fastest amputation at the thigh was nine seconds, start to finish, including sawing through the bone. Are you impressed yet? Even the average, thirty seconds, was pretty damned fast.

Fanny Burney, the English novelist, describes her mastectomy thus:

When the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast … I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittently during the whole time of the incision … so excruciating was the agony … I then felt the Knife [rack]ling against the breast bone – scraping it.

Ether was the first successful general anaesthesia, and it was first used in 1842. Think about that. Just over 170 years, and before that thousands of years of pain when surgery was the only option to save a life (or possibly two, in the case of caesarean section — more about that another time). Chloroform was introduced in 1847, followed closely by the first person to suffer sudden heart failure under anaesthesia. Both ether and chloroform have since been replaced by much safer agents.

And in 1884, came the first use of local anaesthesia — the nerves blocked by cocaine isolated from the coca plant.

We’ve come a long way since.

For more on the history of anaesthetics, see this timeline: http://www.histansoc.org.uk/timeline.html

 

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The history of mistletoe at Christmas

It’s the season for mistletoe, or at least so it would have been back in England during the 18th and 19th century. The little plant with its golden boughs, yellow-green oval leaves and sticky white berries had an important role to play in Christmas celebrations, forming the crucial part of the Kissing Bough or being hung in bunches in strategic places around the household.

Any woman standing under the tree could be asked for a kiss, and courted bad luck if she refused. In one version of the tradition, every kiss was paid for by plucking a berry from the hanging stems, and when the berries were gone, so were the kisses.

So how did a little parasite come to be a magical harbinger of romance?

There are a few stories; some from Norse tradition, some Greek, some from the druids of ancient Britain, and some with strong Christian traditions.

The plant that killed the favourite

In Norse mythology, one god was the favourite of all the others. Everyone loved Baldur. Everyone, that is, but Loki, the god of mischief. Frigga, Baldur’s mother, protected her beloved boy by travelling all the world, and asking everything that grew on land and under it to promise never to hurt Baldur.

As a result, Baldur became invulnerable to anything thrown or thrust at him, provided it was plant-based. Of course, poking Baldur with plant-based weapons became a favourite game, because boys are like that. But Frigga had forgotten one important fact.

Mistletoe doesn’t grow on land or under it. It grows on the branches of another plant — including, willow, oak, and apple trees. Loki made a dart from mistletoe wood and gave it to the blind god, Hoder, so he could join in the game. And Baldur died.

Everything in heaven and earth wept, and Frigga tried for three days to restore her son. In the end, her tears became the mistletoe berries, and Baldur woke from death. In her joy, Frigga made the mistletoe her sacred plant, and decreed that anyone standing under it would never come to harm, but would only be kissed.

Power over hell

In Greek myth, mistletoe had power even over hell. Two doves bought a golden bough of mistletoe to Aenas to light his way through the forest that blocked the way into Hades. When he showed the bough to the ferryman at the River Styx, he and the bough were instantly transported alive across the river.

The sign of peace

To the druids, mistletoe was very special. They believed it could heal just about anything. They cut it from oak trees with sickles of gold, and gathered it without letting it touch the ground. And they hung it in bunches in houses to keep away sickness and war, protect the household from sickness and ghosts, and bring happiness and fertility.

Anyone passing under mistletoe had to lay down their arms and desist from fighting until the next day, even in a forest. Even more so in a house, where guests would stand under the mistletoe to greet their hosts with a kiss of friendship.

Love conquers death

No wonder, with this history, the mistletoe was adopted by the new Christians of Northern Europe, who easily made the transition to seeing this plant of healing and peace as a symbol of Christ, who lay down his life to bring peace to the world, and who came alive out of death. Mistletoe became particularly associated with the birth of Christ, which was now being celebrated in midwinter, when mistletoe had been a traditional part of pre-Christian ceremonies.

Friendship kisses under the mistletoe translated nicely into the new Christian celebrations.

Kissing for luck

Exactly how kisses of peace became the romantic kisses we think of today, we can only guess. But the idea that mistletoe will bring prosperity and fertility might have something to do with it. Prosperity for a woman meant marriage, and by the sixteenth century, kissing under the mistletoe was wildly popular among the working classes.

By the nineteenth century, the custom had often been adopted above stairs as well as below, though not by all. Some regarded it as licentious and improper. But only the most rigid of moralists would refuse a kissing bough to the servants’ hall, even if his or her own daughters could safely pass through the family’s parlours safe in the knowledge that no errant white berry posed a risk to the sanctity of their fair lips. Poor girls.

A week today, I’m publishing the ebook version of If Mistletoe Could Tell Tales, a collection of my Christmas novellas and novelettes. The print version is already available. At 92,000 words, or 320 print pages, of stories about the magic of romance during the magic of Christmas. At $2.99 for the ebook, it represents a 40% discount over the cost of the individual books. And the print cost of $12.50 makes it a great stocking stuffer. Follow the link in the name above for blurb and buy links.

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And let there be light

Waking up to a town-wide power cut this morning set me thinking about how recently in history we lit up the night. As a person writing mostly stories set at the very beginning of the revolution in lighting, it’s something I need to keep very much in mind.

Fire, fire burning bright

Fire came first, of course. Humans had brought fire into their campsites (for protection, warmth, and light) long before recorded history. The first portable light would have been a piece of firewood, with experimentation leading to better and better torches for lighting the winter evenings or winter marches. In essence, a torch is a pole (of wood or metal) with something at the end that burns easily: perhaps moss or fibre soaked in fuel plants (oil pressed from nuts or seeds) or from animal fats.

A lamp to drive away darkness

The first lamps comprised moss or something similar soaked in animal fat, and held in a hollow rock or shell. Oil lamps start popping up in dig sites of around 6,500 years. Made from metal, stone or clay, they have a fuel chamber that contains the oil, one or more pouring holes through which to fill the fuel chamber, and a wick hole or nozzle for the wick, which was a twist of some flammable material.

Because only the wick and the oil it it soaks up is aflame, oil lamps give light for longer for the same amount of oil.

Light a penny candle

Candles came along around 3,000 BC. They didn’t spill, like oil lamps, and there was no need to advance the wick by hand. On the other hand, they were tedious to make. Beeswax candles were the best, but very expensive. Smelly tallow candles were the most common until the sperm whale industry of the 18th century introduced candles made of spermaceti. Even after advances in lamp making in the 19th century, candles continued to be improved, with paraffin wax arriving in the 1850s, along with plaited wicks that self-consumed and didn’t need trimming.

Recently in history…

The explosion of technological innovation that began in the late 18th century had, by the end of the 19th century, brought us the central draught fixed oil lamp, the kerosene lamp,  gas lighting, and electric lighting with incandescent bulbs.

The first house was lit by electricity in Northumberland in 1878 (or, at least, the picture gallery was), with the first street (in Newcastle) following a year later.

And 142 years later, the electricity has returned in time for me to write this post.

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The Grand Tour through the Pacific

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, New Zealand was one stop on a circuit for wealthy tourists making a six-month grand tour of the world. The majestic Milford Sound, the grand Whanganui River and, of course, the magical thermal wonderlands of Rotorua made New Zealand a special destination for those able to afford the long journey.

The Pink and White Terraces at Rotomahana were the climax of any visit. They were in the hands of the Tuhourangi people, who provided guides, canoes, meals, accommodation and entertainment. Their loss in the Tarawera eruption of 1886 was a serious economic blow to the tribe, made worse as the Government slowly took over the businesses they attempted to establish in their new homes in Rotorua, employing them as guides and entertainers.

Another important stop for our intrepid European and American travellers was Hawaii, about which E Ellsworth Carey wrote in Thrum’s Annual (1893):

An epitome of the world’s scenery is found in Hawaii. There
cliffs and caves; grand canyons and measureless waterfalls; spouting
caves and singing sands; bottomless and rivers of lava.

Sydney, Australia, was on many steamer ships’ itineraries, part of a circuit from San Franciso through New Zealand, Sydney, and then various Pacific Islands and back to San Francisco. Other ships came from Europe passing through Egypt and the Suez Canal, then making stops at India, Indonesia, and Singapore on their way down under.

Women tourists were common enough that Lillian Campbell Davidson made a great success with her 1889 publication “Hints for Lady Travellers at Home and Abroad” (recently republished and available on Amazon). One contemporary review notes that the preparation for such a trip may make it a burden rather than a pleasure.

The ” Hints ” inform us that the lady who wishes to be well equipped for a journey, must carry with her a bath and bath towels, a bottle of kid-reviver, a dressing-bag, a spirit-lamp for boiling water, with a sufficient quantity of methylated spirits, a flask, and a small filter.

To these comforts the lady-traveller must add provisions, including extract of meat, “one’s own tea and coffee;” waistbelts for money, a holdall for rugs and umbrellas, a hot-water bag, a lamp for reading at night, some light literature (it must be light in two senses, for “books add enormously to the weight of one’s luggage “) ; a small medicine-chest, which, among other articles, should contain pills and ointment, and a roll of fine old linen.

Matches and a candle, too, should always be carried ; a door-wedge is a great convenience ; “a tin of insect-powder should never be omitted ;” with a railway-key “one is quite independent;” and “a compass is a most useful accompaniment to the traveller who has to be her own guide.”

It is necessary also to carry an eyestone, “the use of which is a common custom in America.” If there is dust in the eye, this tiny stone, or rather fishbone, is inserted within the lower eyelid. “Almost immediately it begins to work its way slowly round the eyeball, and never stops till it has made the complete circuit of the eye, when it drops out, bringing with it whatever object of an alien nature it has encountered on its journey.”

Then if ladies curl their hair, capital little cases may be had, containing a pair of tongs and a minute spirit-lamp ;” a good toilet-water also is often desired by ladies in travelling, and sulpholine lotion may be carried for sun- burning and freckles.

Full particulars, too, are given with regard to clothing ; each dress must have a tray to itself, for “gowns are the terrible part of packing,” and, finally, “it is as well, for every reason, to travel with as little luggage as circumstances admit.”

It is to be feared that if a lady who proposes to travel studies these ” Hints ” previously—and we have mentioned only a few of them —she will be tempted to wish that the new conditions of life had not arisen, which make “a thousand conveniences and comforts” necessary to the traveller. (Review in The Spectator, 16 November 1889, p44, my paragraphing)

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The Virgin Wife

I’ve read a couple of stories recently that bought into the myth that non-consummation was grounds for an annulment. Even today, the law is not quite that simple, although many jurisdictions allow non-consummation as grounds for divorce. But back in Georgian and Regency England, the fact that the marriage had not been consummated, if it could be proven, was not grounds for either divorce nor annulment.

First, a definition of terms. Annulment is a legal declaration that a marriage never existed. Divorce is a legal declaration that a marriage is at an end, and the husband and wife no longer have marital obligations one to the other.

Annulments were not quick, they were not painless, and they required one or more of three circumstances. These circumstances were fraud; inability to contract a marriage; and impotence. Even taking the case could make both the husband and the wife social outcasts. If the annulment went through, the woman was reduced to the status of a concubine, and her children became illegitimate. The man had no further obligations to support her or the children.

Fraud could include using a false name with the intention of fooling your intended spouse or their family, or making promises in the marriage settlement you had no ability to carry out. For example, if you settled a non-existent estate on your daughter’s new husband, he could claim this as grounds for annulment. He would not necessarily win — it would be up to the church court to decide the extent to which any of these fraudulent behaviours were intentional, and how much they influenced the decision to marry.

Inability to contract a marriage meant that at the time of the marriage you already had a living spouse, you were related by blood to your intended spouse (closely enough for marriage to be forbidden — there was a list), you were sufficiently insane not to know what you were doing, or you did not have the consent of your guardian if you were under 21.

Proving that the man was impotent or the woman was incapable of sexual intercourse was even more difficult. Even if the man was prepared to admit to such a thing, the judges would not take his word. First came a medical examination. Was there a visible physical abnormality? Did the man show the ability to become aroused? Had the man shared his bed with his wife exclusively for years without the woman losing her virginity? (So no lovers on the side for either of them.)

If he could have an erection with anyone, he was clearly not impotent, and in earlier periods two accomplished courtesans might be hired by the court to test the impotency.  By the 19th century, doctors were used, and one does not wish to enquire too closely into their methodologies.

Rats. There go some useful plot lines. But on the other hand, what fun to work your way around them.