Our Legal Heritage Part 111

Lastly were the ma.s.s of the population of London: hordes of laborers who depended on casual employment and could be dismissed at will.

About half the population had no resources but their labor, which was usually unskilled and lowly paid. In good times they had just enough to feed themselves.

The gap between rich and poor became greater. Marriage remained a main way to wealth. Also, one trained in the law could aspire to have a successful career in high political office, which also brought wealth.

But there was less social mobility than in the previous century and many landed families were consolidating their position. Industrialists who had made a fortune for example, in steel, cotton, coal mining, and porcelain, and merchants who wanted to turn themselves into landed gentlemen found it very difficult to buy landed estates. Old dissenter families, Quakers in particular, who were highly esteemed as businessmen, as industrialists, and as model employers were excluded from the Anglican landowning society. Rich tradesmen, artists, actors, and writers found it difficult to buy substantial houses in the small market towns and countryside because of an entrenched hierarchical atmosphere there that didn't exist in London. The only gentlemen who were in household service were librarians, tutors, or chaplains. They ate with the family and did not consider themselves servants. Servants were kept more at a distance. By the 1750s the servant cla.s.s was clearly defined. Their quarters were moved to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the house and they ate together in the kitchen. But some householders still had special occasions when everyone ate together in the dining room, with the servants at one end of the table. Servants had no right to free time or to holidays. In 1767 about one tenth of the population in London had servants. Even bricklayers and milk sellers had a servant. Most families had just one servant. Most wives employed some other woman or child to help in washing and scouring or in the minding of the children.

London had grown beyond the locations of its walls around the City.

London stretched ten miles along the Thames, and was three miles wide in the center. On the east of the City was the port and industry. The west side ended at Hyde Park and Regent's Park and was residential. In 1710 it was still possible to shoot woodc.o.c.k in Regent Street. In 1750, Westminster Bridge was opened. In 1760, the City walls were taken down to ease congestion. The typical London house, usually brick, was on a rectangular plan and had a bas.e.m.e.nt to utilize all the s.p.a.ce possible.

Walls were now more covered with hung damask, brocade, silk, and wallpaper or plain paint rather than by wood paneling. There were pictures on the walls. On the first floor was a front hall or parlor and a back parlor. One of these parlor rooms was the most important room, where the family entertained or spent leisure time. In it were sofas, armchairs, and stools of mahogany or white gilded wood. They were upholstered with damask or needlework. Imported mahogany was replacing the favorite walnut that had replaced oak. Much wood was inlaid with a variety of other types of woods. There was also a carved tripod table, china table, card table, and perhaps bookcases and/or tea-table.

Furniture with original designs made by the cabinet-maker Chippendale was available. His genius was in combining various motifs into one harmonious design. Cabinet makers had to keep abreast of his standards and to imitate them to conform with their customers' orders. Cabriole legs with claw and ball feet came into fashion with Queen Anne about 1712. Between windows were tall mirrors. From 1760, gla.s.s chandeliers hung from the ceiling to reflect candlelight coming from standing candlesticks or glazed hanging lanterns with bra.s.s frames. The fireplace had an elaborate mantel. The fire was kept going all day. It was lit by a tender box, which was unreliable. An iron fireback was behind the fire. The firewood was placed on andirons. Fire grates were used from about 1712. At a corner of the building was added a closet. On the second floor was a dining room, continuation of the closet below, and a drawing room, dressing room, or bedroom, and perhaps a study or music room with harpsichord. The dining room had a fireplace; curtains over the windows looped up at the cornices; one or more mahogany tables; a set of mahogany chairs with leather or hair- cloth seats fixed with bra.s.s nails, perhaps with some sort of metal springing; two mahogany sideboards with marble tops; cupboards or shelves or cabinets with displays of china porcelain; a wine-cooler; a dumb-waiter; and a folding leather screen. The china, which was displayed, was mostly imported, but there was some English china. Later, there was famous Wedgwood stoneware and pottery with bright, unfading glaze, or with dull black and red surfaces, biscuit ware of pale green, blue or purple, upon which white designs stood out like cameos. They came from the pottery factory at Staffordshire founded by potter Josiah Wedgwood in 1769. There were silver and pewter plates and serving pieces, silver candlesticks, silver knives, spoons, and two and three p.r.o.nged forks, gla.s.s saltcellars from 1724, and fingerbowls from which one rinsed one's mouth or cleaned one's fingers after dinner which were made of gla.s.s from about 1760. On the third floor were bedrooms and a nursery. In the bedrooms, there was a high bed with curtains, canopies, piles of blankets and pillows, and steps up to it; wardrobe; chairs; a hand wash stand; chests of drawers; writing bureau; dressing table with a couple drawers and a mirror; swing standing mirror; tin rush candle canister; and night commode. Children and servants slept on low wooden bedsteads. Walls were stucco, a form of cement that could be sculpted, or paneled or hung with silk and printed paper. Servants, such as the page and footmen, slept in the attic and perhaps in the kitchen or cellar. There was a wood staircase for the family and a back staircase for the servants. The floors and stairs were protected with carpeting. The kitchen was in the bas.e.m.e.nt or in a covered shed in the back. It had an open fire and a tin oven. The cold water tap over the stone sink could supply cold water from a cistern in the bas.e.m.e.nt or hand-pumped to a roof cistern through wooden pipes at very low pressure at stated hours for a fee. There was a wash shed in back. Water pumped from the Thames into underground pipes was thus distributed to householders three times a week. Some water came from a well or spring, rain, and street water sellers. Water carriers were still employed at set fees. Water was kept in lead cisterns. The wealthy had bas.e.m.e.nt cisterns filled by a commercial company. The free public conduits of water were out of use by 1750. The front door of the house had two strong bolts on the inside and a heavy chain. The windows could be shuttered and barred. There were sash windows with cords and bra.s.s pulleys. At the back of the house was a garden and perhaps a coach house or stables. Landscaping to reproduce an idealized country scene replaced formal gardens. Foreign trees were imported. The latrine was usually not in the house, but somewhere in the back garden area. Under it was a brick drain leading to a public sewer or to a cesspool. Smelly gases arose from it. Sometimes people gathered such waste up to sell to farmers returning home in an otherwise empty wagon. In 1760, patented inside toilets began to be used. Each stood in its own room. A watchmaker named Alexander c.u.mmings patented in 1775 the water-closet, which had a stink trap u-bend behind which, after flushing, water resided and prevented the backflow of noxious sewer gas. Its pans and overhead cisterns were made of pottery. They were supported by wood structures. There were better cements for building. Chinese porcelain, embroidery, and lacquer work were popular. Furniture and landscaped gardens were often done in a Chinese style.

Many of the well-to-do now lived in districts without as well as within the city limits. Many streets east of the City were named after the governing families whose estates were there. Their mansions had interior columns, archways, marble halls and fireplaces, carving, gilding, rich colors, and high ornamented ceilings. They each had a picture gallery, a library, stables with coachmen, grooms, and stableboys, and a still-room for concocting liquors and cordials such as cherry brandy, sloe gin, and elderberry wine. Medicine and scents were also developed in the still-room. Hands were washed in bowls held up by wooden stands. There were built-in bathtubs, but they usually lacked hot and cold running water, so hot water usually had to carried up to them.

In these mansions, there were many private parties and b.a.l.l.s. The standard for politeness here was high and gentlemen were expected to keep their tempers. This came about because impoliteness could easily lead to a quarrel and then a duel. The pistol was replacing the sword as the weapon of choice for duels. Good manners developed for all occasions, with much less swearing and less rudeness. By gentlemen's agreements, men did favors for each other without a monetary price, but with the expectancy of a favor in return. The love of one man for another was recognized as the highest and n.o.blest of human pa.s.sions.

People of high social standing left their country estates to spend the winter season in their townhouses in London with its many recreations such as receptions, routs ]fashionable gatherings], levies, masquerades, b.a.l.l.s, dinner parties, clubs, pleasure gardens, theaters, shops, shows, taverns, and chocolate and coffee houses. Coffee houses provided Turkish coffee, West Indian sugar and cocoa, Chinese tea, Virginia tobacco, and newspapers. They were frequented by learned scholars and wits, dandies, politicians, and professional newsmongers. Men of fashion often engaged in wagers and gambling at their clubs and coffee houses. There were wagers on such matters as the longevity of friends and prominent people, fertility of female friends, wartime actions, and political matters.

Gentlemen often had valets. Carriage by sedan-chair was common. In 1776, Buckingham House was bought as a palace for the royal couple.

Physicians and lawyers lived in two-story brick mansions with attics and sash windows that could be lifted up and down with the help of a pulley. They had rectangular wood panes each with a sheet of gla.s.s cut from a circle of blown gla.s.s. The old blown gla.s.s was not regular, but had a wrinkled appearance. The center of each pane of gla.s.s was thicker with a knot in the middle left from the blow pipe. In front of the house were railings which supported two lanterns at the doorway.

People from different parts of London differed in ways of thinking, conversation, customs, manners, and interests. For instance there were sections where sailors lived, and where weavers, watchmakers, and cow keepers each lived and worked. There were many specialized craftsmen who worked with their own tools in their own shops or houses, for some superior who had contact with the market and who supervised the final processes of manufacture. These included the goldsmiths, upholsterers, coach makers, saddlers, and watchmakers, all of whom had many dependents. The watchmakers had specialists making wheels, pinions, springs, hands, dials, chains, keys, caps, and studs in their own houses. The type of industrial organization most common in London was that in which work was given out to be done in the homes of the workers: the putting out system. Some industries, such as watchmaking, silk weaving, and shoemaking were on both a putting out system and a system of an apprenticeship to journeymen working on piece work. Shoes were made to order and ready made. The customer was measured in a shop, the clicker cut out the upper leathers, which were given to the closer to be closed, and then to the maker for the sole and heel to be put on.

Another cla.s.s of shoemaker worked alone or with an apprentice in a garret, cellar, or stall, using pieces of leather cut out for him by the currier or leather cutter. London industries included the making of bread, beer, spirits, and vinegar; sugar refining; tobacco refining and snuffmaking; spinning and/or weaving of woolens, worsteds, silk ribbons, tape, and cloth; and making printed calico, clothes, linens, laces, ta.s.sels, fancy embroidery, stays, stockings, hats, shoes, leather goods such as boots, shoes, hats, gloves, harnesses, and saddles, jewelry, gla.s.s, candles, tapestry, musical instruments, cutlery, furniture, paint, varnish, paper, tools, swords, guns, heavy artillery, ships, sails, rope, carriages, precious and base metalwares such as bra.s.s and pewter ware, and printer's ink and glue; printing; and publishing.

Surgical instruments made included straight and curved knives and probes, lancets, scissors, spatulas, trepans (for cutting bone), and cupping cases. Optical instruments made included eyegla.s.ses, telescopes, and microscopes. In 1727 eyegla.s.ses were held in place by frames that went over the ears, which replaced unreliable cords over the ears and leather straps tied behind one's head. Also made were nautical instruments, quadrants, sundials, sectors, globes, scales, model solar systems, and air pumps.

In London, the old distinction between craftsmen and laborers was blurred by the existence of trades which employed workmen under a skilled foreman instead of journeymen who had served an apprenticeship.

These trades were, on a large scale, new. Among the most important of these trades were the distillers and brewers of liquors, the tobacconists and snuff makers, the sugar refiners and soap boilers, the vinegar makers, and makers of varnish, glue, printers' ink, and colors.

The latest chemical theories and the chemical explanation of dying brought about the invention of new colors and new processes in dying cloth. Workers in these trades were considered as laborers, but their wages were high and their positions relatively secure. They learned their jobs by doing them. The older trades of a similar character, such as tallow melters and chandlers, wax chandlers, fellmongers [removed hair or wool from hides in preparation for leather making], and the tanners, employed journeymen.

The skilled artisan who worked at home and either made goods for a master or sold to the trade verged into the shopkeeping cla.s.s. On the other hand, the lowest type of shopkeeper, the chandler, the dealer in old iron, the tripe shop, the milk retailer, the keeper of a cook shop or a green cellar belonged to the cla.s.s of casual and unskilled labor.

The lowly chimney sweep, paid 6d. a day, served an apprenticeship as a boy, and then was his own master.

The watermen and lightermen, by virtue of their fellowship and their apprenticeship and often the ownership of a boat, belonged to the cla.s.s of skilled laborers. Craftsmen in the building trades and paviours had their laborers as smiths had their hammermen to do the heavy work at laborers' pay. The street ragpickers, the ballad sellers, and the match sellers belonged to the cla.s.s of beggars.

There were buildings for boiling and distilling turpentine, for casting bra.s.s or iron, and for making gla.s.s for chemical works for sale.

Working women in London in 1750 were employed in domestic service: 25%, nursing and midwifery: 12%, cleaning and laundry: 10%, vitiating: 9%, shopkeeping: 8%, hawking: 6%, and textiles: 5%. Those employed in domestic service were mostly young women who later married. Some women were schoolteachers, innkeepers, or manufacturers, which were middle-cla.s.s employments. Many women in the realm engaged in a variety of occupations from fanmaking and hairdressing to catering, and, as widows, often carried on their husband's trade, including bookselling, hatmaking, building or ironmongery.

Although shops still had small frontages of about 15 feet and the windows had small panes of bottle gla.s.s which partly obscured the view of the goods, there were magnificent shops with large windows displaying fine goods. There were bookshops, and print shops with prints of political satire with caricatures. The shops were generally open six days a week from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and years later to 10 p.m. In 1675 Josiah Wedgwood opened a showroom in London for his high quality pottery from Staffordshire. Consumption was on a ma.s.s scale, many people buying what they wanted instead of just what they needed. There were circulating libraries, public concert halls, and professional boxing matches. At coffee houses, chocolate houses, and taverns, people played at dice and cards, gambled, talked politics and read daily newspapers, in which there was advertising, reports of marriages and deaths, grain prices, and book reviews. Different professions and cla.s.ses and groups, such as the whigs, the tories, cla.s.sical scholars, scientists, clergymen, intellectuals, actors, writers, and journeymen of particular crafts, had their favorite meeting places. Coffee houses reflected the character of their neighborhoods. They acted as postal centers, lost property offices, business addresses, physicians' consulting rooms, lawyers' and merchants' businesses, matrimonial agencies, masonic lodges, auction rooms, and gambling dens. Some retained a supply of prost.i.tutes. Many taverns had a rentable private room for the better-off to drink wine, have meals, meet friends, gamble, do business, and hold meetings of societies and clubs, especially political clubs. From this beginning sprang private clubs such as the Blue Stocking Club in 1750 and the Literary Club in 1764, Lloyd's for sale and insurance of ships in 1771, and the stock exchange in 1773. The Blue stocking Club was established by women who organized conversational parties with guests of intellect and wit. There was opera, playhouses, concerts usually with Georg Handel's oratorios such as The Messiah or the foreigners Bach and Haydn, tea-gardens, fire works, b.a.l.l.s, masquerades, wax works, beer shops, and bawdy houses, except on Sunday. There were straight plays, comic operas, and melodramas. Three-dimensional sets replaced the two- dimensional backdrop. Plays containing thinly veiled satires on politicians were becoming popular. Some plays had crude and licentious material. Theaters still shared a close a.s.sociation with brothels.

Unlicensed theaters were closed down by a statute of 1737, but most came to acquire patronage to get a license. This shaped the development of drama in London for a century.

The Beggar's Opera depicting an immoral society unable to master its bandits was written by John Gay as a powerful attack on a government which most of London hated. With its many ballads it became very popular. One such ballad goes:

"Through all the employments of life Each neighbor abuses his brother; Wh.o.r.e and Rogue they call Husband and Wife; All professions be-rogue one another. The Priest calls the Lawyer a cheat, The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine; And the Statesman, because he's so great, Thinks his trade as honest as mine."

Another is:

"A Fox may steal your hens, sir, A Wh.o.r.e your health and pence, sir, Your daughter rob your chest, sir, Your wife may steal your rest, sir, A thief your goods and plate. But this is all but picking, With rest, pence, chest and chicken, It ever was decreed, sir, If Lawyer's hand is fee'd, sir, He steals your whole estate."

The Thames was crowded with sailing boats and with a line of boats waiting to unload. Foreign and native ships lined the river banks in rows. Theft of cargo from docked ships was still a problem and pirates were still executed at low tide on gallows. Londoners went to the bridges crossing the Thames to breathe fresh air. London air was so smoky and polluted by coal-burning in kitchens and factories that it gave a cough to newcomers. The river was so polluted by the sewers by 1760 that all the swans and most of the fish had disappeared. A Mansion House was built for the Mayor in 1753. The king's zoo had ten lions, one panther, two tigers, and four leopards. Deer hunting in Hyde Park was now confined to its northwest corner, which was enclosed for the king, who occasionally hunted there. Elsewhere in the park were laid out walks and fountains. Gardens were now natural instead of formal. The streets were usually crowded with people and traffic. Many people traveled by sedan chair. On the streets were barrows with goods such as lace, threads, fruits, and chickens; beggars, ballad singers, musicians, bands, street dancers, apple women, piemen, m.u.f.fin men, fruit sellers, nut sellers, pudding sellers, milk maids selling milk from buckets, milk sold directly from the cow, vendors of a.s.ses' milk, hawkers, newspaper boys, scavengers with carts, postal collectors, lamplighters on their ladders, wenches, chimney sweeps, rat catchers, pick pockets, swaggering bravados, strolling strumpets, brawling watermen, card sharps, overdressed beaux, dancing dogs, and acrobatic monkeys. Each trade had it own call. Billingsgate open-air market was now exclusively for the sale of fish. Small tradesmen such as dairymen, butchers, bakers, fishmongers, and chandlers delivered to regular customers food bought from distributing centers. Workers by necessity lived near their place of work because there was no cheap transport and walking through the streets after dark was unpleasant and dangerous. Hours of work for most craftsmen was from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., six days a week.

It was common for working cla.s.s families in London to live in a single room of their house and rent the rest, furnished, to people of different degrees of prosperity and even of different social grades. Servants and apprentices slept in the kitchen, the shop, or the garret. The very poor, such as casual laborers and street sellers, silk winders, charwomen, usually lived in damp cellars subject to floods from excessive rain, or in cold and windy garrets. Tenancy was usually on a weekly basis because of the general uncertainty of life and trade.

Conditions were so cramped that cabinet makers made beds which masqueraded in the day time as tables, bureaus, cupboards, or bookcases.

The very poor slept in common lodging houses, sleeping uncovered on the floor, twenty to a room. Some poor families slept in small hovels made of mud and straw with their pigs, domestic fowl, dogs, and even a.s.ses and horses. Homeless children slept on the streets. All cla.s.ses lived so much at coffee houses, alehouses or clubs, which they often used as their addresses, that house room was a secondary consideration. There was an alehouse on almost every street in London to provide cheap food and beer, lodging, employment information, credit, newspapers, tobacco, and meeting places for tradesmen. Some alehouses were recognized employment agencies for certain trades, such as the hatters, smiths, carpenters, weavers, boot and shoe makers, metal workers, bakers, tailors, plumbers, painter and glaziers, and bookbinders. They were often run by one of the trade, retired or otherwise. Some alehouses catered to criminals and prost.i.tutes. For cheap and simple eating there were chophouses, cookshops, and beef steak houses.

There were about 10,000 English immigrants a year to London in the 1700s. They were mostly young people. London needed many immigrants because of its high death rate. Over twenty London people a week died from starvation alone; they were mostly women. Only about one-fourth of London's population had been born in London. Especially welcome were st.u.r.dy country people for heavy manual labor, the better educated boys from the north for shops and offices, and the honest country people, as contrasted with London's poor, for domestic service. Girls mostly looked for domestic service, but were sometimes made the mistress of the housekeeper or steered into prost.i.tution as soon as they entered the city. An ambitious young man would seek an apprentice job, work hard, flatter his master, and try to marry his master's daughter. It was easier to find a place to live in London than in the villages, though there was much overcrowding. Many shopkeepers and workshop owners in London were involved in leasing, purchases, and contracts.