Our Legal Heritage Part 112

Queen Anne was authorized by Parliament to build about 50 more churches in London and Westminster and their suburbs, to be paid for by a coal tax on imports into the port of London. Churches in London were to be rebuilt with money paid by funeral rates, rates for tolling the bells, and rates for the use of palls [altar cloths]. Queen Anne also appropriated all her revenues from the first fruits and tenths of ecclesiastical benefices: 16,500 pounds, to the clerical poor in 1704.

There were fewer quarrels among pa.s.sersby on the London streets; men were less likely to wear their swords. But there were fist fights by common men which gathered crowds and occasioned betting. Most crime was petty theft, but mobs and riots were frequent, as there were no police.

Watchmen and constables were often old and physically incapacitated. The watchmen were householders taking their turn. This duty of householders watching the streets had evolved from the ancient obligation of wards to provide men to guard the walls at night. But few wanted these jobs by which they could offend their neighbors. Many citizens paid a rate to be excused from watch and ward duty. Constables were often tavern keepers.

Many riots were started when penal laws against the Catholics were repealed. They began with the cries of "no popery", but then targeted rich men's houses. Mobs sacked and pillaged at will, burned houses, and flung open the prisons to increase their numbers. There were political riots between Tories and Whigs. Working men still used violence to protect their livelihoods, such as destroying the lodgings and public houses of cheap immigrant labor such as the Irish. The stocking-knitters destroyed stocking-knitting frames so that the number of apprentices who could be employed would not reach the limit specified by its guild's regulations. Parish workhouse children also provided a cheap supply of labor which forced down the wages of the stocking knitters. In 1720 a statute banned wearing of calico after mobs tore calico garments off women. In 1765, thousands marched on Parliament and persuaded it to ban foreign silk imports. But when a mob destroyed engine-looms, the army was used against the rioters and two of them were hanged. This was the last major mob action. Around the Tower, there were still demagogues standing on upturned carts haranguing pa.s.sing crowds. The Tower area was a favorite place for demonstrators, and for unemployed and dissatisfied workmen, particularly coal heavers and underpaid seamen protesting their low pay and poor living conditions. There was more crime, especially at night, now with organized bands of men or gangs of children. Bounty hunters made a lot of money catching offenders. In 1736, to deter the frequent robberies, burglaries, and other felonies at night, many gla.s.s lamps were set up in places determined by the mayor. They had to burn from sunset to sunrise. In 1736, a lighting rate was imposed by the City to pay for all night lighting all year by hired lamplighters. Anyone breaking or damaging the lights of London would forfeit 40s. for the first offense, 50s. for the second offense, and 3 pounds for the third offense. The aldermen had to contract to pay for lighting, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, snuffing, cleaning, supplying, maintaining, and repairing them. To pay for this system, citizens paid according to the amount of rent their holdings were worth. If they didn't pay, they could not vote.

Bad areas of thieves and prost.i.tutes and the slums east of the City were gradually being replaced by warehouses and offices. In 1757, London Bridge was widened and the houses were cleared off it. There were lanes for carriages in the middle and for pedestrians on each side. Its arches were also widened to make the pa.s.sage of vessels underneath easier.

Lights were put on it to be lit all night. And watchmen were put on it for protection and safety of pa.s.sengers. This was paid for by tolls of 1/2 d. per horse, 1d. per carriage, and 2d.-1s. for vessels with goods pa.s.sing underneath. About 1762, a body of enterprising citizens secured private acts of Parliament which allowed them to levy a house tax in return for providing paving and lighting, which then greatly improved, as did sanitation. Sidewalks were raised between the street proper and the buildings, replacing the protective posts which had lined the roads.

Flat stones were put in place of the pebbles on the roadway. Signs hanging out from stores, which had blocked the sunlight, were placed flat on the front of the buildings. This also made the streets more airy. The buildings were given numbered addresses and street names were placed on buildings. Loading and unloading could not exceed one hour.

Nuisances like empty carts could be removed. Cranes used in warehouses had to be stored in un.o.btrusive places. One who drove on the foot pavement had to forfeit 10s. for the first offense, 20s. for the second offense, and 40s. for other offenses. Wells were dug and pumps erected for watering the streets. Pavements were to be repaired on complaint.

Dust boxes and dust holes were built and had to be used for refuse awaiting pickup by the raker or else forfeit 10s. In 1762, the system of having every man responsible for cleaning the street in front of his door, which occasioned piles of rubbish in the central troughs of the streets waiting for the next rain to be washed away, was abandoned. But house occupants were required to keep the sidewalk in front of their house clean or else forfeit 2s. If one broke a light, he had to pay damages if it was accidental, and also 20s. if willful. Wards were to choose substantial inhabitants to be collectors for a year at a time to collect the rates, which were not to exceed 1s.6d. per pound of rents.

If one declined to be a collector, he had to forfeit 50 pounds. There were special stands for hackney coaches, which were 12s.6d. for a day of twelve hours. Their regulations were extended to Sundays.

In London, the normal system of building was for builders to buy up leases, put up a new building, and sell it before the lease became due.

The rules for party walls between buildings were made more stringent: 2 1/2 bricks thick in cellar, 2 bricks thick to the garret floor, and 1 1/2 bricks above the roofs or gutters. They had to be made of brick or stone. In 1772, rain water from roofs had to be carried to the streets in lead or other pipes that were affixed against the side of the building. In 1774, iron, copper, or other pipe or funnel for conveying smoke or steam were not to be near any inside timber, or in front of most any building or next to any public street, square, or court.

In the 1720s firefighters had to fill a tank on a wagon by hand with buckets. On top of the tank was a hose that could spray water high.

London parishes were authorized to place upon the water pipes underground stop-blocks of wood with a plug and firec.o.c.ks to go into such pipe at various distances so that there would be no loss in time in digging down to the pipes to get water to fight fires. Parishes were required to keep at known places, ladders and a large engine and a hand engine to throw up water to extinguish fires including one leather hose with socket fitting the plug or firec.o.c.k, so that buckets would not be needed. The Sun Insurance Company was incorporated for fire insurance in 1711. Insurance offices were authorized to employ watermen with poles, hooks, and hatchets to be always ready at a call to extinguish fires.

No more than 12 sacks of meal, 12 quarters of malt, 750 bricks, or 1 chalder of coal per load on wagons or carts with wheels bound with [narrow] iron tire are allowed within ten miles of London or Westminster, or else forfeit one horse. This is to prevent decay of the roads.

For every wagon and cart in London, there must be a person on foot to guide it to prevent the maiming, wounding, and killing of people, especially the old and children, when drivers ride on their wagons and carts. Later, it was required that carts must display the name of the owner and be registered. Still later, there was a penalty of 10s. for not having a person on foot to guide any cart. Later still, in 1757, if a new owner of a cart did not put his name thereon, he had to forfeit 40s., and the cart and horse could be seized and sold to pay the forfeiture. Persons willfully obstructing pa.s.sage on streets with empty carts or barrels or pipes shall forfeit 5-12s. or do hard labor up to one month. The justices of London a.s.sessed rates and made regulations for carriage of goods. Certain houses and buildings were bought and pulled down to widen several streets, lanes, and pa.s.sages.

In 1774, persons driving cattle in London, whose negligence or improper treatment of such cattle cause them to do mischief shall forfeit 5-20s.

or else go to a House of Correction for up to one month or be publicly whipped.

The roads around London were neither very attractive nor very safe.

Along them was land covered with water from drains and refuse and dung heaps. Hogs were kept in large numbers on the outskirts and fed on the garbage of the town. Smoking brick kilns surrounded a great part of London. In the brickyards vagrants lived and slept, cooking their food at the kilns.

Queen Anne's drinking of tea made it a popular drink, but it was still expensive. This habit improved health because to make tea, the water had to be boiled before drunk. Breakfast included tea and bread and b.u.t.ter, and later toast with melted b.u.t.ter. The rich also had coffee and chocolate. The morning newspaper was often read at breakfast. The chief dinner dishes were roast beef, roast mutton, boiled beef or pork, with puddings and vegetables. Roast meat was still the basic diet of town and country gentlemen. There were also fowls, tripes, rabbits, hares, pigeons, and venison. Many elaborate sauces were made. The national dish was the pudding, a compound of steak, kidney, larks, and oyster. Drinks included ginger beer, lemonade, barley water, coffee, chocolate, tea, and foreign wine. Port from Portugal was introduced about 1703, and rum about 1714. Rum, made from sugar, first became popular as a medicine, well-whisked with b.u.t.ter. Beer was drunk by the poorer and middle cla.s.ses. The poor could afford very little meat now, unlike 200 years ago. Their standard fare was cheese, bread, and tea, the latter of which was usually from used tea leaves bought from rich houses.

Households were smaller; a peer had a household of about 25-50. The proportion of women in a household grew to one-third to one-half. Dinner guests sat and were served in order of rank, with gentlemen on one side of the table and ladies on the other. Later, a fas.h.i.+on came in to sit alternately by s.e.x. Dinner was in several courses and lasted a few hours. Toasts might be made. It was bad manners to put one's elbows on the table, to sniff the food, to eat too slowly or too quickly, to scratch, spit, or blow one's nose at the table, or to pick one's teeth with a toothpick before the dishes were removed. After dinner, the men drank, smoked, and talked at the table. There was a chamber pot under the sideboard for their use. Politics was a popular subject. The women talked together in the drawing room. Later, the men joined the women for tea and coffee. The evening often finished with card games, reading newspapers, verse-making, fortune-telling, walks in the garden, impromptu dancing, perhaps gambling, and supper.

The n.o.bility and gentry became more mobile and now mixed together at parties. At these afternoon parties, there were a variety of simultaneous activities, instead of everyone partic.i.p.ating in the same activities together as a group. Guests could choose to engage in conversation, news, cards, tea-drinking, music, dancing, and even go into supper at different times. Sometimes a man other than her husband escorted a lady to a party. Having lovers outside marriage was socially accepted if discrete.

Single women were discouraged from thinking of their independent status as desirable. Their single status was to be regarded as unfortunate.

Weddings took place in public in church instead of privately. There were banns, or announcements, publicized before the wedding so that anyone who knew of a reason why the marriage should not take place could speak up. Brides wore a white silk or satin dress with a train. Over one third of brides who were capable of having children were already pregnant when they married. In 1753 a marriage statute required licenses to marry, the consent of parents or guardians for minors to marry, the calling of banns, and four weeks residence in the parish where the license was given by bishop or other authority. These requirements addressed the problems of the kidnapping of heiresses, prost.i.tutes trapping unwary youths after getting them drunk, and priests performing marriages clandestinely and not in church, which required banns. Two witnesses to the marriage were required to sign a certificate of marriage, which was then to be registered in the parish books. Manufactured goods relieved ladies from baking of bread, brewing, and spinning. So they often visited with friends, wrote letters, embroidered, and supervised the servants.

Funerals ceremonies started with socializing at the house with refreshments, then going in a procession to the church for burial, and finally returning to the house for more socializing.

It was possible for a woman-covert to be seized of land in fee simple or in tail general or special to her separate use, free from control or intermeddling of her husband.

Houses were warmed in winter by burning coal. Moderate homes had tent-beds in use, with which cloth was hung on all four sides of the bed from a light iron framework above the bed. The beds were warmed with a warming pan heated in a fire before use. There were often bed bugs and fleas. Everyone wore nightcaps to bed. Pewter tableware was used, but the poor used tinware instead. Copper, bra.s.s, and iron pots and pans were increasingly common.

Most towns had a regular market once or twice a week. In them, street cleaning was still a responsibility of individual householders. Water was still obtained from wells and pumps. There was no munic.i.p.al government as such. Public works were done by special commissions set up for particular purposes, such as lighting, cleaning and paving the streets, night watchmen, traffic regulation, removing nuisances, and improving local amenities. Large towns had hospitals for the poor. In the larger manufacturing towns, there were literary and philosophical societies for debates and discussions. These put together libraries for use of their members. Also in these large towns, there were booksellers'

shops, printing houses, weekly newspapers, playhouses, concerts, and horseracing courses, the latter of which was mostly patronized by gentlemen. Some private citizens of various towns followed the example of London and obtained from Parliament the right to levy a house rate for paving and lighting.

Towns tended to be known for certain specialties, such as seaside holiday resorts, spas like Bath, cathedral towns, fas.h.i.+onable shopping for gentry, and towns with certain industries like gla.s.s and china manufacture, pinmaking, pottery, tanning, manufacture of linen, silk, cotton, and the knitting trade. Certain towns were famous for certain varieties of wool cloth. Before 1750, a town with more than 5,000 inhabitants was considered a large town. Shopkeeping was supplanting fairs and markets. Certain industries were done on a large scale and required workers to be at the same site, e.g. brewing and distilling; building s.h.i.+ps; printing fustians; making paper, soap from animal fat or candles; coal mining, iron production, mining and smelting of tin and copper, refining of salt, and digging of clay. Certain other industries also required some kind of power or team work for their production, e.g.

refining sugar; finis.h.i.+ng cloth; making bricks; gla.s.smaking; manufacture of ropes and sails, and processing of copper and bra.s.s into rods and sheets. Often the manufacturer's house was surrounded by the many cottages of his workers. There the wife and children usually were busy carding and spinning. Putting out work and subcontracting were widespread and created many small-scale capitalists. Workers' hours were typically 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Though grammar schools were endowed for the education of local poor boys, they sought fee-paying sons of gentlemen. They taught arithmetic as well as reading and writing. Translation and reading of Latin was still important, e.g. Aesop's Fables, Virgil, Cicero's Letters, Caesar's Commentaries, Horace, Pliny, Juvenal, Ovid, Livy, and Plautus. The "Eton Grammar" book replaced the "Royal Grammar" as the standard for Latin and English grammar. The boys lived in boarding houses superintended by "dames" or older boys. There were usually two boys to a bed. There was bullying and initiation ceremonies such as tossing small boys up from a held blanket or having younger boys run naked in the snow. There were occasional rebellions by the boys and fights with the townspeople.

Flogging with a birch or caning with a rod until blood was drawn from the bare b.u.t.tocks was the usual punishment. There were some national boys' boarding schools such as Eton, Winchester, and Westminster. In these schools, boys could mix with sons of rich and powerful people, thus establis.h.i.+ng important connections for their adult life. But there was more bullying of small boys by large boys at these schools and the smaller boys became menial servants of their seniors. Occasionally there were student riots. However, most grammar schools were not residential.

Because the grammar schools were limited to boys, many boarding schools for girls were established. Tradesmen's daughters were often sent to these to learn to act like ladies. Most upper cla.s.s girls were taught, at home or at school, English, writing, arithmetic, drawing, courtly dancing, needlework, music, and French. Dissenting academies were established for those who did not pa.s.s the religious tests of the grammar schools. Pencils were now in use.

Sons of gentlemen usually took "The Grand Tour" of the continent before going to university. These tours lasted for months or years, and always included Paris and a Protestant French university. The students went in groups with tutors. The chief purpose was now cultural, instead of practical. On these tours there was often misbehavior such as drinking and fighting. In 1720, Travelers Checks were developed for those on the Grand Tour.

The universities began to teach science. The new professors.h.i.+ps at Cambridge University were: chemistry, astronomy, experimental philosophy, anatomy, botany, geology, geometry, and Arabic. Ideas in geology challenged the Bible's description of the creation of the world and there was a controversy over the origin and nature of fossils. In 1715, a large pointed weapon of black flint was found in contact with the bones of an elephant in a gravel bed in London. Oral and written examinations began to replace disputations. Few professors lectured.