Our Legal Heritage Part 115

In 1750, 1761, and 1765, there were strikes which stopped the work of the coal industry and harbor at Newcastle for weeks. In 1763, the keelmen formed a combination to force their employers to use the official measure fixed by statute for the measurement of loads of coals.

The book "Consideration upon the East-India Trade" dating from 1701 advocated free foreign trade. It argued that the import of goods from India not only benefited the consumer but also the nation, because it was a waste of labor to use it in producing goods which could be bought cheap abroad. This labor could be better put to use at easily learned plain work in the new industries. Also the low cost of imported goods would motivate the invention of machines in the nation which would be even more efficient in manufacturing these goods. But English manufacturers were still suspicious of free trade.

Making beer and distilling gin from barley were widespread. The pastimes of gambling and drinking were popular with all cla.s.ses. In the trades, this was promoted by the uncertainties of life and work and a general sense of instability. Many London tradesmen started their day with a breakfast of beer, bread, and cheese, the traditional breakfast of countrymen. Gambling and dissipation reduced some London men with good businesses to dest.i.tution, the work house, or street begging.

Drunken gentlemen played pranks such as imitating a woman in distress or throwing a person in a horse trough. Some innkeepers had "straw houses"

where customers who were so drunk they were unable to walk home could sleep in fresh straw. A person could get drunk for a few pence. Gambling with cards was a popular pastime after dinner. Cricket matches were played by all cla.s.ses instead of just by humbler people; there were county cricket matches. Gentlemen often took their coachmen with them to public events such as cricket matches. Tennis was a sport of the wealthy cla.s.ses. Billiards, chess, and games with cards or dice were played, especially in alehouses. There was horse racing on any open ground to which people brought their horses to race. Jockeys tried to unseat each other. Hunting of rabbits and then foxes replaced deer hunting. Bird and duck hunting was usually with flint lock guns instead of hawks, as the hedges provided cover from hawks. There was fis.h.i.+ng with line, hook, and bait. Watching the hanging of felons, about 35 a year in London, was popular, as was going to Bedlam to watch for a fee the insane being flogged. People went to the Tower to try to get a glance at a famous prisoner looking through a window or taking a walk along the battlements. Besides the grand pleasure gardens for gentry, there were lesser pleasure gardens in London for working families, which offered fresh air, tea, beer, swimming, fis.h.i.+ng, courting, bowling, and cheap entertainment. Running, vaulting, and leaping were still popular in the countryside. Fairs had amus.e.m.e.nts such as fire swallowers, ventriloquists, puppet shows, acrobats, jugglers, animal performances, pantomimes, boxing, dwarfs, and albinos, but less trading. In 1769 was the first circus. Circuses included feats of horsemans.h.i.+p and clowns.

There was also eating and drinking compet.i.tions, foot races, football, archery, some wrestling, and some bowling on greens or alleys. In winter there was ice skating with blades and sliding. The right of public access to St. James Park became entrenched by the 1700s. There was sailing, rowing, swimming, and hopscotch. George III made sea-bathing popular and it was supposed to be good for one's health. There was steeple chasing as of 1752. Horse-racing was given rules. On Sunday, there was no singing, music playing, dancing, or games, but the Bible was read aloud, prayers were said, and hymns were sung. Sabbath-breakers were fined by magistrates. Men often spent Sunday in a tavern.

In general, commodity prices were stable. But when harvests were poor, such as in 1709 when there was famine, and between 1765 and 1775, bread prices rose. The price of wheat in London, which since 1710 had been between 25s. and 45s., rose to 66s. in 1773. Then the poor engaged in food riots. These riots were often accompanied by mob violence, burning, and looting of grain mills, shops, and markets. The English economy was so dependent on foreign trade, which had trebled since the 1710s, that the slightest disturbance in the maritime trade threatened the English with starvation. In many localities the men in need of parochial relief were sent around from one farm to another for employment, part of their wages being paid from the poor rates. The poor often went from parish to parish seeking poor relief. Settled people tended to fear wandering people. Parishes sought to keep down their poor rates by devices such as removing mothers in labor lest the infant be born in the parish. So a statute was pa.s.sed that a child born to a wandering woman could not have the place of birth as his settlement, but takes the same settlement as his mother. Another device to prevent others from establis.h.i.+ng settlement in a parish was for its farmers to hire laborers for only fifty-one weeks. Also, some apprentices were bound by means other than indenture to avoid settlement. Laborers who came to work in industries were refused settlement and sent back to their original parishes whenever they seemed likely to become dependent on the rates. Statutes then provided that a parish must give settlement to apprentices bound for forty days there, not only by indenture, but by deed, writings, or contracts not indented. In 1722, parishes were authorized to purchase houses in which to lodge or employ the poor and to contract with any person for the lodging, keeping, maintaining, and employing of the poor.

These persons could take the benefit of the work, labor, and service of these poor, which was then used for the relief of other poor. The poor refusing such lodging could not then get relief. Many of the poor starved to death. The propertied cla.s.ses turned a blind eye to the predicament of the poor, opining that they were idle or could save more and did not need higher earnings.

Charitable organizations gave to the poor and set up all day Sunday schools to set wayward children on a moral path. The Sunday schools could accommodate children who worked during the week. Punishment of children by parents or others could be by whipping or even sitting in stocks. About half of the people were dependent on poor relief or charities.

Desertion by a man of his family was a common offense. Parishes providing upkeep for the family sent men to find the errant husbands.

The parish would ask unmarried mothers who was the father of their child and then force him to marry her or pay for the upkeep of the child. He often made a bargain with the parish to release him of his obligation for a sum of money paid to the parish. But many young parish children died of neglect, and later, parishes were required to list children under four to aid in accounting for them. Divorces were still few and expensive, but increasing in number; there were more 60 in this period.

It was easier for a man to get a divorce for one act of adultery by his wife, than for a wife to get one for habitual unfaithfulness.

Vagrants and other offenders could be committed to Houses of Correction as well as to county gaols, because of the expense of the latter.

Crime was exacerbated by orgies of liquor drinking by the common people, especially between 1730 and 1750, the sale of which did not have to be licensed as did ale. In 1736, it was required that retailers of brandy, rum, and other distilled spirituous liquors be licensed and to pay 50 pounds a year for their license, because excessive use had been detrimental to health, rendering persons unfit for useful labor and business, debauching their morals, and inciting them to vices. Only persons keeping public victualing houses, inns, coffee houses, alehouses or brandy shops who exercised no other trade were allowed to obtain a license. This excluded employers who had sold liquors to their journeymen, workmen, servants, and laborers at exorbitant prices. Street vendors who sold liquors had to forfeit 10 pounds. A duty of 20s. per gallon was imposed on the retailers. There were riots in London against this statute and its new duties. There had been a tremendous growth in liquor drinking, which did not stop but went underground after this statute. In 1753, a penalty of 10 pounds or hard labor for two months was made for selling spirituous liquors without a license. Also licenses were restricted to people who were certified by four reputable and substantial householders to be of good fame and sober life and conversation. Sellers had to maintain good order in their premises or else forfeit 10 pounds. About 1754 only innkeepers, victualers, and vendors paying rent of at least 200 s.h.i.+llings could sell gin at retail.

The punishment for the second offense was whipping and imprisonment.

That for the third offense was transportation out of the country. In 1751, additional duties were placed on spirituous liquors to discourage immoderate drinking going on by people of the meanest and lowest sort to the detriment of the health and morals of the common people. In 1761, these duties were again raised. In 1768, officers were authorized to seize all horses, cattle, and carriages used to transport foreign spirituous liquors for which duties had been evaded. In 1773, the penalty for selling without a license was raised to 50 pounds, which could not be mitigated below 5 pounds. Half the forfeiture was to go to the suer.

The informer system for enforcing laws had its drawbacks. Informers were not trained and were sometimes retaliated against for informing.

Sometimes this meant being tortured to death. Sometimes there were schemes in which a leader of thieves, would take a profit in the stolen goods by posing as a good citizen who tracked down and returned them to the owners for a fee. Also he might inform on his companions to get the reward for informing or to punish a troublesome one. Sometimes the owner of goods was involved in a fake robbery. An effort in 1749 to turn the whole haphazard system of informers, into a specialized organization for the detection and apprehension of criminals had caused a mob to form and make threats. Englishmen a.s.sociated a police force with French tyranny.

Nevertheless, about 1750, Sir John Fielding, a Bow Street magistrate, and his half-brother picked men to police the street under the direct control of the Bow Street magistrates. This first police district made an impact on the increasing violence of the times. In 1753, a proposal before Parliament to have a national census was also defeated by public fear of liberty being curtailed by having to make account of the number and circ.u.mstances of one's family and giving out information that could be used by enemies both in the realm and abroad.

In 1714, the mercury thermometer was invented by Gabriel Fahrenheit of Germany; this was much more accurate than the alcohol and water thermometers. Sweden's Anders Celcius invented the Celsius scale. The hydrometer, which measures air humidity, was also invented. These made possible weather forecasting. In 1718, the French chemist Etienne Geoffroy published a table of affinities among chemical substances, a precursor to the periodic table of elements. Carolus Linneaus, a Swedish naturalist and botanist, established the scientific method of naming plants and animals by genus and species. When he showed that there was a s.e.xual system in plants, church authorities were so shocked that they suppressed this knowledge as they did other scientific knowledge. Rev.

Stephen Hales made ventilators for s.h.i.+ps, prisons, and granaries, using the method of injecting air with bellows. This saved many lives in the prisons. In 1727, he discovered that water that plants lost by evaporation was restored by the roots up the stems. He found that gas could be obtained from plants by dry distillation and invented a way to collect gases by heating certain substances.

Hans Sloane, the son of a receiver-general of taxes, who became a physician, had collected hundreds of species of plants in Jamacia while physician to its governor. He became physician to George II and was a benefactor to many hospitals and devised a botanic garden in London for the Society of Apothecaries.

Italian Luigi Marsigli started the science of oceanography with a treatise discussing topography, circulation, ocean plants and animals, along with many measurements. Frenchman Jean-Etienne Guettard prepared the first true geological maps, showing rocks and minerals. He identified heat as the causative factor of change in the earth's landforms. John Mitch.e.l.l studied earthquakes.

In 1735, George Hadley, a London lawyer and philosopher, determined that the cause of the prevailing westerly winds was the rotation of the earth to the east. Benjamin Franklin in 1743 observed that a particularly violent storm occurred in Boston a day after a particularly violent occurred in Philadelphia, and realized that they were the same storm, even though the storm's surface winds were from the northeast. He determined that Atlantic coastal storms traveled from the southwest to the northeast. In 1770, he prepared the first scientific chart of the Gulf Stream.

Daniel Bernoulli, a Swiss university lecturer in physics, mechanics, medicine, and anatomy, proved his theorem that any degree of statistical accuracy can be obtained by sufficiently increasing the observations, thereby also representing the first application of calculus to probability theory. In 1738, he showed that as the velocity of horizontal fluid flow increases, its pressure decreases. This followed from his theorem that the total mechanical energy of a flowing liquid, comprising the energy a.s.sociated with fluid pressure, the gravitational potential energy of elevation, and kinetic energy of fluid motion remains constant; that is, the mechanical energy is conserved. This was the first mathematical study of fluid flow. He demonstrated that the impact of molecules on a surface would explain pressure, and that a.s.suming the constant random motion of molecules, pressure and motion will increase with temperature. He explained the behavior of gases with changing pressure and temperature, establis.h.i.+ng the kinetic theory of gases. Jean Nollet from France discovered osmosis, the pa.s.sage of a solution through a semi-permeable membrane separating two solutions with different concentrations.

In 1754, Scotsman physician Joseph Black identified carbon dioxide, the first gas recognized as distinct from everyday breathing air. He did this by using a balance to weigh alkalies before and after exposure to heat. They lost weight by losing carbon dioxide. His development of the concept of latent heat, the quant.i.ty of heat absorbed or released when a substance changes its physical phase at constant temperature, was the first application of quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysis to chemical reactions. He ascertained the effects of carbon dioxide on animals and its production by respiration, fermentation, and burning of charcoal. At this time, all flammable materials were thought to contain "phlogiston", which was given off as they burned and was a.s.sociated with the transfer of heat.

Plants were thought to remove phlogiston from the air and therefore burned when they were dry.

In 1773, Joseph Priestly, a nonconformist minister, schoolmaster, and tutor, discovered oxygen by heating red oxide of mercury. He became interested in the study of gases by watching the process of fermentation in a brewery next to his house. His gas collection techniques enabled him to work with gases soluble in water. He showed that the processes of combustion, respiration, and putrefaction caused one-fifth of air exposed over water to disappear, and that plants restored air vitiated by these processes. When he isolated oxygen, he noted that it was better than air in supporting respiration and combustion produced by heating certain metallic nitrates. It was called "respirable air".

Hydrogen (inflammable air) and nitrogen were discovered. The differences between acids, bases, and salts and their relations.h.i.+p to one another became understood. There was some theoretical as well as empirical knowledge about metals, e.g. in boiling points, intermetallic compounds, and changes in properties.

In 1742, Benjamin Frankin invented the Franklin stove, which greatly improved heating efficiency. As a freestanding cast-iron fireplace, it supplied heat in all directions instead of only from the one direction of the usual wall fireplace. Also, the heat absorbed by its cast-iron sides provided warmth even after the fire went out.

Static electricity was being discerned. It had been noticed that shaking a mercury barometer produced a strange glow in its "vacuum".

Experiments showed that a gla.s.s rubbed in vacuo would s.h.i.+ne brightly and that an exhausted gla.s.s globe rapidly whirled on a spindle and rubbing against the hand produced a brilliant glow. And further, as Newton wrote: "if at the same time a piece of white paper or white cloth, or the end of ones finger be held at the distance of about a quarter of an inch or half an inch from that part of the gla.s.s where it is most in motion, the electric vapor which is excited by the friction of the gla.s.s against the hand, will by das.h.i.+ng against the white paper, cloth, or finger, be put into such an agitation as to emit light, and make the white paper, cloth, or finger, appear lucid like a glowworm". In the study of electricity, conductors and insulators were recognized. There were demonstrations of electrical phenomena such as seeing the ignition of brandy by a spark shooting from a man's finger and the feeling the transfer of an electrical impulse created from a rubbed gla.s.s globe among a circle of people by their holding hands. In 1733, Frenchman Charles DuFay discovered that there are two types of static electric charges, and that like charges repel each other while unlike charges attract, linking electricity to magnetism.

In 1750, Benjamin Franklin "caught" lightning with a sharp pointed wire attached to the top of a kite which led down to a key at the other end.

When a thunder cloud electrified the kite, a charge was seen coming from the key to an approaching finger. This charge was then stored in an early type of capacitosr, a1745 Leyden jar, and then reproduced to create the same feeling of transfer of electrical impulse among a circle of hand-holders, thereby ill.u.s.trating that it was the same phenomenon as electricity. This countered the theological belief that thunder and lightning were signs of divine displeasure or the work of the devil.

Franklin invented the lightening rod, which was then used to protect buildings. About ten years later, the first lightening rod on an English church was erected, which showed the church's acceptance of his theory.

Franklin theorized that there were electric charges everywhere and designated them as positive or negative. He observed that opposite charges attracted each other, but that like charges repelled each other.

In 1766, Joseph Priestly did an experiment suggested by Franklin and showed that electrical force follows the same law as gravitational force; that is, that the attraction or repulsion between two electrical charges varies inversely in proportion to the square of the distance between them.