A LADY OF THE PERIOD.
The vagaries of fashion at the beginning of the century were of almost inconceivable variety and extravagance; not only the ladies, but dandies of the opposite sex wore stays for the improvement of the figure, and curled their hair with curling irons! Though wigs had almost gone out of fashion, hair powder had not. In a former sketch a figure of a lady in the earlier years of the reign of George III. was given. The above is another specimen of head gear at a later period of the same reign.
Trades necessarily followed fashions, and, when snuff-taking was almost universal, the manufacture of gold, silver, and baser metal snuff-boxes, was a thriving trade. A hair dresser's shop up to the end of last century was also different in appearance from one to-day, and was furnished with perukes, or wigs for all sorts of heads. At Upwell, in the Fen, in 1791, a wig caught fire in such a shop and "before the fire could be put out thirty-six wigs were destroyed."
Luxuries were much more limited than now, and many things then regarded as such have since got placed in a different category. At the end of the last century a pianoforte had not figured in any Royston household, but it came at the beginning of this century when Lady Wortham as she was always styled—as the daughter of Sir Thomas Hatton, Bart., and wife of Hale Wortham, Esq.—became the owner of the first piano at their house in Melbourn Street (now Mr. J. E. Phillips').
Newspapers were among the luxuries of the household, and their circulation was of a very limited character. When, for a town of the size of Royston, two or three copies did arrive by a London coach the subscribers were generally the principal innkeepers—the Red Lion, the Crown, and the Bull—and to these inns tradesmen and the leading inhabitants were wont to repair. The only alternative of getting a sight of the paper was that they could, on ordinary occasions, have it away with them at their own homes upon paying a penny an hour for its use. On special occasions when any great foreign event became known—for papers contained but little home news—the competition for the paper was an exciting event, the above arrangement was hardly elastic enough to meet requirements, and crowds gathered about in the inn yards on the arrival of a coach to learn some momentous piece of intelligence with more or less accuracy from post-boys and others, who in their turn had heard it from somebody else whose friend had been able to communicate it with the authority of having actually "seen it in the paper." The essence of the news required was generally victory or defeat in battle, or trials at Assizes, and could soon be told. The supply of papers was limited pretty much to the Times and Morning Chronicle from London, while the Cambridge Chronicle was then the principal local newspaper.
As the Chancellor of the Exchequer derived a revenue from the stamp required for each newspaper (as well as upon advertisements) the lending of a newspaper was looked upon in the light of smuggling, and an Act was passed providing that "any person who lends out a newspaper for hire is subject to a penalty of L10 for every offence." But I fear that with even this terrible inducement to buy your own paper, and the natural zeal for the spread of knowledge of a man like Henry Andrews, the astronomer, as agent for the sale of newspapers in our town, very few copies were actually bought, and that most of the "news" which could not be obtained from the coaches was obtained by the Royston tradesmen in that illicit manner of lending and hiring, though forbidden by law!
Work and wages, closely connected with the condition of home life, did not present a very cheerful picture. The labourer, and all engaged in husbandry, had much longer hours than now. An old writer on husbandry says, "the dairymaid should always be up in the morning between three or four o'clock." The young fellows living "in service" on the farm had never done till it was time to go to bed, and, having but very little if any money to spend and nowhere to go, a short interval for supper by the kitchen fire was about the only recreation they enjoyed to vary their lot.
It was a time when there was little room for squeamishness as to the conditions under which men laboured—when little boys, instead of brooms, were sent up ill-constructed chimneys, with no sense of remorse from their employers, who in their turn had probably commenced business by going up themselves and saw no reason against the practice. At a later date, however, there was a great stir made about this practice, which led to its coming before a Committee of the House of Lords. One of the Payment family—who then, as now, carried on the business of chimney sweeps in Royston and its neighbourhood—was called as a witness to give evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords. I am credibly informed that the member of the Royston firm was at first rather alarmed at the prospect, thinking no doubt that he was about to be called to account as a "climbing boy," but when he found what was the nature of his errand, that his evidence was considered of so much value by the House of Lords, and that it meant a few days' holiday in the great city provided for him free of expense, the incident was one to be remembered with pride. A few courageous spirits set to work raising subscriptions to provide "machines," as now used, instead of "climbing boys," but, incredible as it may seem, met with a good deal of opposition at first, both from householders and master sweeps. Among those who took up the question was Mr. Henry Fordham, then a young man at Hertford.
Let me conclude this reference to sweeps with a story from this district, vouched for by the old newspapers at the time, viz., that in one of the villages in the district was a chimney sweep who had sixteen sons all following the same occupation!
Among outside agencies which broke in upon the old domestic life of the period none was more potent or omnipresent than the tax-gatherer. You could not be born, married, or buried, without the consent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so to speak; for there was at the end of the last century a 3d. tax upon births, marriages, and burials, and it appears that the clergy were allowed a commission of 2s. in the L, for the collection of the tax. Among the objections to it was that the poor man could not sometimes pay it without borrowing the money, and yet was made equal with the rich in regard to the amount. Even occupiers of cottages had to pay the window tax, unless exempt by the receipt of parish relief, but, by many thoughtful men of the time, its application to agricultural labourers was looked upon with disfavour.
About the end of the last century there was hardly anything that a man could see, taste, handle, or use, that was not taxed—windows, candles, tobacco pipes, almanacs, soap, newspapers, hats, bricks, domestic servants, watches, clocks, hair powder, besides nearly every article of food! All these in turn came under the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, till, as Sydney Smith said, "the school-boy had to whip a taxed top, the youth drove a taxed horse with taxed bridle along a taxed road; the old man poured medicine, which had paid 7 per cent., into a spoon that had paid 15; fell back upon a chintz bed which had paid 22 per cent., and expired in the arms of an apothecary who had paid a licence of L100 for the privilege of putting him to death; and immediately his property paid 2 to 10 per cent., and his virtues were handed down to posterity on taxed marble."
The extravagant vagaries in the fashions of dressing the hair formed a tempting point for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come down upon, and the tax in the form of "hair-powder certificates," at the rate of a guinea a head, occasioned perhaps more commotion in fashionable circles than any other tax. It was a profitable source of revenue owing to the great use of hair-powder, and at the same time its disuse would mean a gain in the supply of flour, of which it was largely made, for consumption. Short hair, or "crops," soon came into fashion as a means of evading the tax and "dishing" the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a re-action which was responsible for the following parody of Hamlet:—
To crop, or not to crop, that is the question:—
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The plague of powder and loquacious barbers;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by the scissors, end them?
From the old Royston Book Club debates of last century it will be remembered that I quoted the result of a vote upon—which of the three professions, of divinity, law and physic, was most beneficial to mankind, and that the doctors could only get one vote, against a respectable number for law and divinity. I ventured to suggest that the bleeding, blistering and purging at certain seasons was probably responsible for the low estimate of the medical profession, and of this may be given the following example—
In 1799, the parish doctor's bill for the Therfield paupers contained twelve items for "blisters," eight for bleeding (at 6d. each!), and in another, eight for "leeches."
There was a much more detailed account given in the old doctors' bills of a century ago than in the curt missives which are now usually limited to the "professional attendance" with which the old bills began, and the "total" with which they finished; "bleeding, blistering, leeches, vomits, julep, boluses," &c., were all duly accounted for. The following is a bonâ fide doctor's bill of 1788, delivered to and paid by a resident in one of the villages of this district:—
s. d.
Bleeding----Daughter . . . . . . . 1 0
A febrifuge Mixture . . . . . . . 2 4
Bleeding----Self . . . . . . . . . 1 0
A Cordial Mixture . . . . . . . . 2 4
A Diuretic Tincture . . . . . . . 1 6
Two Opening Draughts . . . . . . . 2 0
The Mixture repd . . . . . . . . . 2 4
Bleeding----Daughter . . . . . . . 1 0
Two Opening Draughts . . . . . . . 2 0
--------
L0 15 6
The item "Bleeding——self" is a trifle ambiguous, but probably it was the parent and not the doctor upon whom the operation was performed!
Inoculation has already been referred to, but I may here state that the first account I have seen of professional inoculation for the smallpox in Royston is the announcement in the year 1773 of—"George Hatton, surgeon, apothecary and man-mid-wife in Royston, who, with the advice of his friends and the many patients whom he has inoculated, begs leave to acquaint the public that he will wait upon any person or family within 6 or 7 miles from Royston, and inoculate them for half-a-guinea each person, medicines and attendances included, and, that the poor may have the benefit of his practice, a proper allowance will be made them and diligent attendance given."
Bills of the same period show that the charge for this species of inoculation "when a quantity was taken," as in the parish bills, was 2s. or 2s. 6d. each person. The advantage claimed for spreading the disease of small-pox out of the rates by means of inoculation was that if you had it as the result of inoculation only one person in 300 died, but if you had small-pox by infection, eight out of every hundred died. It may be of interest to add as a general fact upon health and diseases, that in 1792, out of 20,000 burials the following were the proportions of deaths from the leading diseases:—Consumption 5,255, convulsions 4,646, dropsy 3,018, fevers 2,203, small-pox 1,568, measles 450, "teeth" 419. The deaths under two years of age were 6,542, or one-third of the whole! The classification was not so exact in those days as it would be now, but the race has improved a little in regard to infantile mortality and consumption.
In coupling the doctor and the body-snatcher, at the head of this chapter, I did not really mean to convey more than the general association of human experience in the periods of sickness and the close of life. If there was a closer association of these two characters in the later Georgian era, it is, at least, a satisfaction to be able to write of such things entirely in the past tense. At a time when even to maintain the decencies and comforts of domestic life was often a struggle with untoward surroundings, it may seem to show a desire to load the past times with more than their share of trials and misfortunes, to suggest that the most painful of all experiences of the times was reserved for the end of life; that the ordeal of the separation from friends by death was embittered, and intensified, beyond anything in more modern experience, yet it is certain that the revolting business of the "body-snatcher" did, for some years, between 1815 and 1830, brood over many a village in this district like a cruel night-mare!
The reception of bodies, or "subjects," from country or town burying grounds for the dissecting rooms of London and other hospitals, became almost a trade, not altogether beyond the commercial principle of supply and demand. Generally about two guineas was the price, and students would club together their five shillings each for a "subject." In the face of such facts it would be idle to suggest that the tradition of that mysterious cart, moving silently through the darkness of night on muffled wheels towards our village churchyards, was merely a creature of the imagination. The tradition of that phantom cart which lingered for years had a substantial origin as certain as the memory of many persons still living can make it! In many of the villages around Royston, as indeed in other districts, the terror of it became such that not a burial took place in the parish graveyards, but the grave had to be watched night after night till the state of the corpse was supposed to make it unlikely that it would then be disturbed! The watch was generally kept by two or three men taking it in turns, generally sitting in the church porch, through the silent hours of the night armed with a gun! The well-to-do were able to secure this protection by paying for it, but many a poor family had to trust to the human sympathy and help of neighbours. Under a stress of this kind probably some brave Antigone watched over the remains of a dead brother, and certainly it was not uncommon for husband and wife to face the ordeal of sitting out the night till the grey light of morning, in some lone church porch, or the vestry of some small meeting-house—watching lest the robbers of the dead should come for a lost son or daughter! Over the grave of some poor widow's son, or of that of a fellow workman, volunteers were generally forthcoming to perform this painful office.
Though the law was seldom invoked, there must have been numberless cases in which bodies were stolen, cases in which the modest mound of earth placed over the dead had mysteriously dropped in, and the outraged parents or relatives, not unnaturally perhaps, turned with bitter revengeful thoughts to the London and other hospitals of that day—whether justly or unjustly God knows! Around the parish churchyards of Bassingbourn, Melbourn, and especially Therfield and Kelshall, the memory of unpleasant associations lingered for many years after the supposed transactions had passed away; nor was it merely an experience peculiar to isolated village churchyards. On the contrary it was customary, even in the Royston church-yard, surrounded as it is and was then by houses—with the Vicarage house then actually in the church-yard, in fact—it was customary for relatives to sit in the Church porch at night and watch the graves of departed friends!
Of actual occurrences of robbing the graves there is the story of a woman living in one of the villages on the hills not far from Royston, when on her way home, accepting a ride with a neighbour, only to find to her horror that the driver had a dead body in his cart! As to the allegations that stolen bodies did find their way to hospitals for dissecting purposes, there is a well authenticated story of a case in which a Roystonian was recognised in the dissecting room of a London hospital! A doctor, whose name would, I daresay, be remembered by some if mentioned, and who was in the habit of visiting a family in Royston, and knew many Royston people, upon entering the dissecting room of one of the London hospitals, at once recognised a "subject" about to be operated upon, as a person he had frequently seen in Royston, a peculiar deformity leaving no possible doubt as to her identity!
Excepting when the natural dread of it came home to bereaved families, there was no very strong public opinion on the subject; the law, which came down with a fell swoop upon many classes of small offenders, was too big an affair for dealing with questions of sentiment, and as there were no little laws of local application readily available, the practice was too often connived at where examples might have been made. In some things our grandfathers may have had the advantage over this hurrying age, but the reverent regard for the dead, and the outward aspect of their resting place, is assuredly not one of them.
CHAPTER VIII.
OLD PAINS AND PENALTIES—FROM THE STOCKS
TO THE GALLOWS.
All the old punishments, from the Ducking Stool to the Stocks, proceeded upon the appeal to the moral sense of the community, and up to the middle, or probably nearer to the end of last century, the summary punishment of offenders took place, both in village and town, in the most public manner possible. Near the Old Prison House, standing a little eastward of the summit of the Cave, in Melbourn Street, which did duty for both civil parishes of Herts. and Cambs., stood the Royston pillory and also the stocks, but towards the end of the century the pillory disappeared, and stocks had to be set up in each parish. I can find no record of any actual punishments by the Melbourn Street pillory, but one of the last cases of punishment by pillory took place at Hertford, and was witnessed by Mr. Henry Fordham. Closely connected with, and as a part of the stocks was the whipping post, and this was very freely used until about 1800. In 1804 a prisoner was sentenced at Ely to be publicly whipped, besides imprisonment. In 1786, I find that George Rose was brought from Cambridge to Royston and whipped at the stocks. What his offence was is not stated, but that whipping was no trifle may be inferred from the following laconic entry in the Royston parish books:—-
"Relieved William C——, his back being sore after whipping him."
The offender had his wrists put through the rings on the upright posts of the stocks, which formed the whipping posts, and in this position he was flogged on his naked back "till his body was bloody." Vagrants had no small share of this kind of punishment. The following entry occurs in the Barkway parish papers:—
Hertfordshire to Witt.
To the Keeper of the House of correction at Buntingford.
This is to require you to Whip Elizabeth Matthewson upon her
naked Body, and for so doing this shall be your warrant.
G. Jennings.
In 1798 an item in the accounts for the same parish is charged for "the new iron for the whipping post."
The stocks for Royston, Cambs., stood in the middle of the broad part of Kneesworth Street, nearly opposite the yard entrance of King James' Palace, and just in front of some dilapidated cottages then occupying the site of Mr. J. R. Farrow's shop. Here they remained as a warning to evil doers till about 1830 or 1840. In Royston, Herts., after the abolition of the central prison-house in Melbourn Street, a cage was erected with stocks attached on the Market Hill, on the east side nearly opposite the Green Man, but they were removed at a later date to the Fish-hill, when an addition was made to the west side of the Parish-room, for the purpose, where the fire engines are now placed. An estimate in the parish books for the erection of a cage and stocks in Royston, Herts., at a cost of L10, in the year 1793, may perhaps fix the date at which each parish provided its own means of punishment of wrong-doers.
Though drunkenness was a vice infinitely more prevalent than it is to-day, it was not because local authorities did not at least show the form of their authority, but simply because they had no very efficient police system to back it up. It was customary for instance for the publican to have a table of penalties against "tippling" actually posted up in his licensed house, so that both he and his customers might see what might be the consequences, but as they often could not read they were probably not much the wiser, except for a common idea that the Parish Stocks stood outside on the village green, or in the town street. The common penalty for tipplers continuing to drink in an alehouse, was that such persons should forfeit 3s. 4d. for the use of the Poor, and if not paid to be committed to the stocks for the space of four hours; for being found drunk 5s., or six hours in the stocks. As to swearing, a labourer was liable to be fined 1s. for every oath, a person under the degree of a gentleman 2s., and for a gentleman 5s.
In times of disturbance, as at village feasts, it was no uncommon thing to see the stocks full of disorderly persons—that is, with two or three at once—and occasionally the constable's zeal in the use of this simple remedy outran his discretion. At the Herts. Assizes in 1779, before Sir Wm. Blackstone, a Baldock shoemaker, named Daniel Dunton, obtained a verdict and L10 damages against the chief and petty constable of Baldock for illegally putting him in the stocks.
There was, of course, an odd and comic side about the stocks as an instrument of punishment, which cannot belong to modern methods. An instance of this was brought home to the writer in the necessary efforts at ransacking old men's memories for the purpose of some parts of these Glimpses of the past. I was, for instance, inquiring of an old resident of one of our villages as to what he remembered, and ventured to ask him, in the presence of one or two other inhabitants, the innocent question—"I suppose you have seen men put in the stocks in your time!" but before the old man could well answer, a younger man present interposed, with a merry twinkle of the eye—"Yes, I'll be bound he has, he's been in hi'self!" I am bound to say that, from the frank manner in which my informant proceeded to speak of persons who had been in the stocks, the younger man's interruption was only a joke, but it taught me to be cautious in framing questions about the past to be addressed to the living, lest I should tread upon some old corns!
There was this virtue about the Parish Stocks, that it was a wholesome correction always ready. It was not necessary to caution a man as to what he might say, before clapping him in the stocks. Nor was much formality needed—he was drunk, quarrelling, fighting, or brawling, it was enough; and the man who could not stand was provided with a seat at the expense of the parish. Indeed, I am told that in one parish, near Royston, a farmer, who was himself generally in the same condition, finding one of his men drunk, would remark that one drunken man was enough on a farm, and would bundle the other drunkard off to the stocks without the least respect for, or care about, informing a magistrate thereof!
The Parish Stocks were, as may be supposed, sometimes tampered with, and became the medium of practical jokes, of which, perhaps, the best story on record is that of a Chief Justice in the stocks. The story is as follows:—
Lord Camden, when Chief Justice, was on a visit to Lord Dacre, his brother-in-law, at Alely in Essex, and had walked out with a gentleman to the hill where, on the summit by the roadside, were the Parish Stocks. He sat down upon them, and asked his companion to open them, as he had an inclination to know what the punishment was. This being done the gentleman took a book from his pocket and sauntered on until he forgot the Judge and his situation, and returned to Lord Dacre. The learned Judge was soon tired of his situation, but found himself unequal to open the stocks! He asked a countryman passing by to assist him in obtaining his liberty, who said "No, old gentleman, you were not placed there for nothing"—and left him until he was released by some of the servants who were accidentally going that way! Not long after he presided at a trial in which a charge was brought against a magistrate for false imprisonment and setting the plaintiff in the stocks. The counsel for the defendant made light of the charge and particularly of setting in the stocks, which, he said, everybody knew, was no punishment at all! The Lord Chief Justice rose, and, leaning over the Bench, said, in a half whisper—"Brother, were you ever in the stocks?" The Barrister replied, "Really, my Lord, never."—"Then, I have been," rejoined his Lordship, "and I do assure you, brother, it is not such a trifle as you represent!"
One cannot refrain from expressing a lingering sense of regret over the last of its kind, whether of the last of the Mohicans, or the last minstrel. The parish of Meldreth, I relieve, stands alone in the Cambridgeshire side of the Royston district as still possessing the visible framework of its old Parish Stocks, thanks to the commendable interest taken in the preservation of old time memorials by Mr. George Sandys, of Royston, by whom the Meldreth Stocks were some time ago "restored," or, rather, the original pieces were brought more securely together into one visible whole. The parish of Meldreth, too, affords, I believe, one of the latest, if not the latest, instances of placing a person in the stocks, when, some forty or fifty years ago, a man was "stocked" for brawling in Church or some such misbehaviour. These stocks, when they were renovated by Mr. Sandys, had lost the upper part which completed the process of fastening an offender in them, but such as they then were will be seen in the illustration on the opposite page, which is reproduced from an excellent photograph taken by Mr. F. R. Hinkins, of Royston. The original upper part has since been found and placed in position by Mr. A. Jarman, of Meldreth.
