A Short History of Social Life in England/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
Circa 1714—1727
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER
"The harvest gathered in the fields of the Past is to be brought home for the use of the Present."—Dr. Arnold.
QUEEN ANNE, dying without heirs, was succeeded by her cousin, Deorge, Elector of Hanover. A short, elderly, pale-faced man, addicted to drink, low in his tastes and conversation, knowing not a word of English and, moreover, disliking English ways and English manners—this was the man "suddenly thrust" upon the English people and proclaimed King of England. The mass accepted him with stolid indifference. It was not likely that he would interfere with existing conditions. The old sentiment of "blind unconditional homage" to the King was fast dying out. Stronger forces were at work. The romance of kingship was at an end. Moreover, the nation was solidly Protestant and unmoved by the pathetic appeals of the Pretender's claims.
So the new King reluctantly took up his abode in his new capital. His court was German; he had to converse with his Ministers in Latin; his divorced wife was pining away her life in a gloomy castle across the waters; his eldest son and heir was with him to learn English, but his heart was in his beloved Hanover. The ways of the English were passing strange to him.
"This is a strange country," he said. "The first morning after my arrival at St. James's, I looked out of the window and saw a park with canals which they told me were mine. The next day, the ranger of my park sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal, and I was told I must give to the servant five guineas for bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park."
There was much, indeed, to astonish him in London. Though the population of his kingdom was but about a fifth of what it is to-day, yet London with its seven hundred thousand inhabitants was considered a vast city, absorbing as it did one-tenth of the whole population of England and Wales. What must he have thought of London's great highway, the Thames, with its variety of shipping, its swift little passenger boats plying incessantly for hire, carrying the smart world from place to place, the heavier craft removing merchandise from wharf to wharf? What of the narrow little lanes and streets leading to the great river, edged with shops and wooden booths? What of the stately red-brick houses built by Queen Anne on the fields which surrounded the Houses of Parliament? All houses at this time were difficult to find: they had no numbers, and could only be described as near the "Black Swan" or the "Red Lion," or some such sign. The paths were very narrow, divided from the road by a row of posts, and there was barely room for two persons to pass one another comfortably. Towards the City these streets were crowded with cumbersome coaches, sedan chairs, wheelbarrows, perhaps full of oysters, porters bearing huge burdens, funeral coaches, wedding processions, all jostling along. The noise and smells must have rivalled our motor-possessed London of to-day. There were the shouts of chair-menders, broom-sellers, old-clothes men, street fighters, hawkers; there was quarrelling, drinking, bell-ringing, and the creaking of many signboards on their rusty hinges as they swayed in the wind. There were no police, and in the watchmen who patrolled the streets the public had no confidence.
"Prepare for death if e'er at night you roam,
And sign your will before you pass from home,"
sang Johnson in a period even later than this.
If, with a wave of philanthropy, hospitals were rising into prominence, coffee-houses, chocolate-houses, taverns, and clubs were increasing almost daily. To them flocked all the wit and fashion of London as before, but a pernicious beverage had recently been added, and the wholesale distribution of gin, that "curse of English life," made the early Hanoverian age one of the most drunken on record.
"As the English," says a contemporary writer, "returning from the wars in the Holy Land brought the foul disease of leprosy, so in our fathers' days the English returning from the service in the Netherlands brought with them the foul vice of drunkenness."
Though our forefathers had drunk heavily of beers and wines in the days of the Restoration, the introduction of coffee had diminished this to some extent Throughout the reign of Anne, the upper classes had indulged freely in drink, and Ministers had thought it no shame to appear drunk in the very presence of the Queen. But it was not till the year 1724 that the passion for gin-drinking affected the populace. It spread with the violence of an epidemic, until it grew into a national vice that the enlightened age of Victoria failed to eradicate. While some two million gallons were distilled in 1714, over five millions were distilled in 1735. Retailers gloried in the announcement that their customers could be made drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and could have straw on which to lie and recover free. One can hardly wonder at the increase of crime, the growth of pauperism, and the appearance of new diseases.
The enormous consumption of port wine by the upper classes, which had steadily increased since about 1700, had also increased the sufferings of our forefathers, who were already predisposed to attacks of gout, but port was an expensive luxury and untouched by the poorer classes.
We are told that "thieves and robbers are now become more desperate and savage than they had ever appeared since mankind was civilised." Certainly smuggling was the fashion of the day, and armed men could load up their wagons on the open shore in defiance of the Customs officers, and encounter no opposition. Tea, coffee, tobacco, rum, and brandy were freely smuggled into the country, and men of note had no conscience against stowing away such goods in their cellars. The plunder of shipwrecked sailors lured on to the rocks by false lights was not uncommon, and only shows the imperfect civilisation of this time. The punishments for stealing were still very severe. Death was the penalty to be paid for stealing a sheep or a horse in the eighteenth century, or 40s. from a dwelling-house, 5s. from a shop, or I2½d. from a pocket, while a man might attempt murder or take the life of another, burn a house, commit a highway robbery, and his crime be classed under "misdemeanours." The London of this age has been called the "City of the Gallows." Indeed, all over England they were terribly common, and to witness the death of a condemned criminal was among the rude amusements of the eighteenth century. Such enormous crowds pressed to see the famous highwayman, Jack Shepherd, in gaol, before he paid the extreme penalty, that the keeper was estimated to have made £200 for showing him, while Dr. Dodd, a clergyman executed for forgery, was exhibited at 2s. a head, for two hours, before being taken to the gallows. Criminals were always dressed in their best clothes, with white gloves, and they often carried nosegays of flowers given by friends and relations. It was the fashion to die merrily, as merrily as they had lived, and too often, to ensure the appropriate mirth, they drowned themselves in drink. When the day of execution came, the condemned men, thus brightly attired, were put into a cart, to be loudly cheered by the huge crowds awaiting them.
"As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling,
Rode stately through Holborn to die at his calling,
His waistcoat and stockings and breeches were white,
His cap had a new cherry ribbon to tie't.
The maids to the doors and the balconies ran,
And said, 'Lack-a-day, he's a proper young man!'
And as from the windows the ladies he spied,
Like a beau in a box, he bowed low on each side."
On his arrival at Tyburn, then a mere suburb of London, with open fields, "the executioner stops the cart under one of the cross beams of the gibbet and fastens to that ill-favoured beam one end of the rope, while the other is round the wretch's neck. This done, he gives the horse a lash with his whip, away goes the cart, and there swings my gentleman kicking in the air. The hangman does not give himself the trouble to put them out of their pain; but some of their friends or relations do it for them."
But if such accounts as these are gruesome, more gruesome still are those which describe the terrible prisons in which many eighteenth-century debtors languished till they died.
"A prison is the grave of the living, where they are shut up from the world, and the worms that gnaw upon them, their own thoughts, the gaoler and their creditors." Horrible, indeed, were the dungeons into which our forefathers were thrown for debt; heavily laden with chains, with no regular allowance of food, their beds of straw only, with bad smells and dirt indescribable, they lingered in agony, till death relieved their sufferings.
Of lesser punishments there were divers sorts all over the country. By the side of many a duck pond on the village green stood the stocks, wherein vagrants, drunkards and others were securely fastened by the heels until they had repented of their sins. Near by was the ducking-stool, wherein bakers who served underweight bread, witches, or scolding women were seated and ducked three times into the muddy water, to cool "their choler and heat."
"Down in the deep the stool descends,
But here at first we miss our ends;
She mounts again and rages more
Than ever vixen did before. …
If so, my friends, pray let her take,
A second turn into the lake. …
No brawling wives, no furious wenches,
No fire so hot, but water quenches."
Added to these were the pillory, the branks or scold's bridle, the drunkard's cloak, the pruning knife for the excision of a culprit's ears, scissors for slitting his nostrils, thumbscrews and other extreme penalties. Every village had its whipping-post, for men and women were alike whipped at the "cart's tail" all over the country. Taken from prison, they were tied to the back of a cart, which was driven slowly through the streets, followed by a noisy crowd, while the miserable culprit was whipped till the skin was broken. And this was but i6o years ago.
Notwithstanding all these most degrading punishments, pauperism continued to grow apace. It was not due to want of employment: there was work for all in the Georgian days.
"I affirm," says Defoe, "of my own knowledge, that when I have wanted a man for labouring work and offer 9s, a week to strolling fellows at my door, they have frequently told me to my face that they could get more a-begging"—a sentence which might have been written to-day, with the substitution of a higher wage. His explanation rings only too true. "Where an Englishman earns his 20s. a week and but just lives, as we call it, a Dutchman grows rich and leaves his children in very good condition. We are the most lazy, indigent nation in the world. There is nothing more frequent than for an Englishman to work till he has got his pockets full of money and then go and be idle, or perhaps drunk, till it is all gone and perhaps himself in debt, and … he'll tell you honestly he will drink as long as it lasts and then go and work for more." Above a thousand families, he further asserts, known to himself, go systematically in rags, their children wanting for bread, whose fathers can earn 15s. to 20s. a week, but will not work. The first workhouses in England were practically houses of correction, founded for the purpose of employing the unemployed; but in this capacity they signally failed, and we are still searching for a solution of this vexed problem to-day. To get money without working for it was the fashion. The passion for gambling reached its climax in this age. A desire to build up a rapid fortune and contempt for the slower results of patient industry seized all classes of society. Company after company was formed, "scheme after scheme of the most fantastic description rose and glittered and burst." There was a company "for making salt water fresh," another for "importing jackasses from Spain." One projector invited subscriptions of two guineas for an undertaking which should in time be revealed: in one day he received two hundred guineas, with which he decamped! Born of this gambling spirit was the famous South Sea Bubble, the bursting of which reduced thousands of families to absolute beggary.
The women of this period were notorious for gambling. Whole estates, jewels and valuable possessions were staked, lost, and won, night after night, through the Georgian period. We hear of certain ladies sitting down daily to the card-table, where the lowest stake was two hundred guineas. It was not regarded as a vice; it was a resource for getting money without working for it. The game of whist, hitherto chiefly played by the clergy, was coming into fashion, and was played by quite young boys and girls, who received lessons in whist at a guinea each from masters in the art.
The universal habit of gambling led to duels. By an unwritten code of the times, men held that all shortcomings should be atoned for at the point of the sword or the mouth of the pistol. Thus brawls and squabbles of the coffee-house, disputed love-affairs, political strife or irritation produced by gaming or racing losses—all were settled by this "reigning curse," as it has been called. Duels took place in the open street, in the ballroom, the pit of the theatre, on Wimbledon Common, the Ring at Hyde Park, or the empty room of a coffee-house. If a man was not actually killed he bore the scars of his wounds till he died, testifying to the fact that he was a man of honour.
These wounds were very indifferently treated by the surgeons and physicians of the day, for medical knowledge was still at a low ebb in the early eighteenth century and quackery was yet rampant.
"I tell you," says a contemporary, "'tis an easie thing for a Man of Parts to be a Surgeon; do but buy a Lancet, Forceps, Saw; talk a little of Contusions, Fractures, Compress and Bandage; you'll presently by most people be thought an excellent Surgeon."
In such an age of blind superstition and ignorance, it was not uncommon for a sharp-witted cobbler or bricklayer to pick up a collection of old recipes, where he learnt that Venice soap would cure cancer, the juice of wild cucumber would help dropsy, or snails beaten up and laid to the feet would soothe the ague, to hang out a sign describing himself as a physician, and to practise his art with more or less success. The local newspapers of the time are full of quack advertisements whereby women as well as men often made large fortunes. It is hardly credible to think that a sum of £5,000 was voted by the Treasury to a woman for the secret of her three remedies for disease. They consisted of a powder, a decoction, and a pill. The powder was made of calcined egg-shells and snails; the decoction was made by boiling herbs, soap and swine's cresse burnt to blackness and honey in water; the pills, of calcined snails, wild carrot seeds, hips and haws, ashen keys, &c., burnt to blackness and mixed with soap and honey.
Nevertheless it is interesting to note that it was reserved for a woman to introduce into England the system of inoculation for small-pox. This disease was still rampant, some 3,000 persons dying of it in London alone in the year 1719. Inoculation, which consisted in procuring a slight attack of small-pox by means of incision, was practised at Constantinople, where Lady Lady Mary Wortley Montague had her five-year-old boy inoculated in 1717. The child at once had a slight attack of small-pox, from which he easily recovered. The King's daughter-in-law took up the subject; experiments were made on condemned criminals and charity children, and the results being satisfactory, the two little Princesses of nine and eleven, granddaughters of George I., were inoculated with marked success. But the idea grew slowly, and it was not till 1740 that inoculation came into general use.
Thus, while under George I. great ideas were slowly developing among the more enlightened and educated members of the English community, the common people persisted in their old-world remedies. They tried to cure asthma by drinking a wine-glass of wine in which wood lice were steeped, cramp by wearing garters made of rosemary leaves sewn up in fine linen, loss of memory by rubbing the temples with castor oil and swallowing small pieces of a swallow's heart every morning for a month, sore eyes by blowing powdered hen's dung into the affected part at bed-time, till one wonders whether these odious and inadequate remedies did not kill more of our poor ancestors than they cured.