Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (51 page)

Slainte!

Pronunciation: Eighteenth Century Style

by Mike Rendell

I
t is fascinating to conjecture what our ancestors would have sounded like—how they spoke, and whether they had a strong accent. We can read what they wrote down, but we can never be sure what their pronunciation was in the era before tape recorders and gramophones! I recall seeing learned articles suggesting that Shakespeare may have spoken with an American accent. (And why not? The accent must have derived from something, somewhere—why not the English Midlands in the 16th century?)

Of course it is difficult to draw conclusions from one indicator—then, as now, there would have been huge variations based upon origin, background, education, and wealth. But I can comment upon how my ancestor Richard Hall chose to speak, or at least, how he aspired to speak, in the 1700s because he wrote down those words which might otherwise trip him up.

The fact that he wrote them down shows how important it was to “speak proper English”—how vital it was to appear different from all those migrants heading into the capital in the middle of the eighteenth century. London’s deaths exceeded births, yet the population in London still increased every year, thanks to the drift of men and women seeking work, looking for the streets paved with gold. They came from the villages and towns up and down the country and brought with them the regional accents, colloquial expressions, and slang from their own region. If my 4x-great-grandfather was to succeed in business, he needed to sound the same as his wealthier customers, not the same as a yokel from the shires!

To modern ears some of the pronunciation sounds a bit twee and precious, but think for a minute how accents and pronunciation changes. Think of Her Majesty, who in the sixty years she has adorned the British throne, has altered enormously in the way she pronounces the “Queen’s English.” Fashions change.

Where the spelling differed from the pronunciation, Richard Hall jotted down the reminders: so, we get “shaze” for “chaise”, “dimun” for “diamond”, and even “crownor” for “coroner”.

I was also intrigued to see that “gold” was pronounced “gould”, farthing as “fardun” and daughter was “dawtor” and nurse was “nus”. Yes, some of the examples are obvious (“yot” for “yacht”), but on the whole he does come across as a tad affected by modern standards!

Place names and proper nouns were obviously not the same as now: I can just about remember people calling “Cirencester” by the name of “Sissester” and the Somerset village of Congresbury being pronounced “Coomsbury”, but although we still talk of “Brummies”, we don’t call the city “Brummijum” any more. Bartholomew is not, so far as I am aware, pronounced “Bartolomy”. And even in Richard’s time “Brighthelmstone” was being abbreviated to match the way it was pronounced—”Brighton”.

I suppose it boils down to the fact that pronunciation, like spelling, changes over the centuries, as well as from locality to locality. But it does make you think, when a well-educated man like Richard speaks of “hartichokes” rather than “artichokes”, and calls his cucumbers “cowcumbers”. Step back in time and I might have quite a problem being accepted in polite company as I rather think my ancestor would have fallen about laughing at
my
strangled vowels and plummy pronunciation! Wristband was pronounced “risban”, waistcoat was “wescote”, and if you were sitting at the table doing your toilet (i.e. attending to your wig, powdering your nose, applying a little white lead to the forehead, and rouge to the cheeks...) you would of course remember to pronounce it “twaylet” or even “twilight”.

In some ways you can brand Richard a snob—he cultivated the way he presented himself because he was desperate to be accepted.

The story of Richard’s life, how he married an heiress, how he built a shop at One London Bridge, how he fell out with his family and retired to become a gentleman farmer in the Cotswolds, is told in my book,
The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman.

Steal a Book, Seven Years’ Hard Labor Overseas: Transportation as Punishment in the 17th-19th Centuries

by J.A. Beard

E
ngland, like many societies throughout history, has had to struggle with what to do with its criminal population. For a good chunk of English history, punishment was harsh and severe. Executions were common for a number of offenses. The fundamental question of how justice is best served has been explored throughout English history and influenced by shifts in historical, philosophical, and religious beliefs.

With the expansion of British colonial holdings in the 17th century, another option arose: transportation. The idea was simple in concept if occasionally more complicated in execution. Transportation at its core was exile. Instead of local imprisonment, execution, or another punishment, an offender was sent to a distant overseas holding. In this way the home country depleted its criminal population and minimized the resource impact of a growing criminal population.

Transportation was not reserved for the most heinous of offenses such as murder. A variety of crimes, both major and relatively minor, could end up with a criminal being sentenced to transportation. For example, in 1723, one man was sentenced to transportation and an accompanying seven years of labor for stealing a book.

Initially, many criminals were transported to colonies in continental North America and the West Indies. The American Revolution complicated things and ended North America as a popular choice for transportation even for non-rebellious areas. By 1787, British transportation was focused instead on Australia and some other smaller colonial holdings.

Transportation may have been exile at its core, but it was also supposed to serve the needs of the home country beyond that. In addition to the restrictions one might expect, such as the death penalty for those returning from transportation, these sentences typically carried with them a hefty labor requirement. The services expected from the convicts might be directed toward what we’d now call public works projects, or the convicts might end up as indentured servants to free citizens in a colony.

As one might expect, sending people thousands of miles away and never allowing them to return home was going to predispose them to even more anti-social behavior than whatever got them in trouble initially. If they had no hope of any sort of normal life, it would only contribute to the kind of instability and revolts one witnessed with completely enslaved populations. One way of combating this, and also serving the general idea of some form of semi-merciful justice, was to limit the main criminal penalty period to a defined number of years. After the prisoners served their sentences, they would not typically regain all of their rights, but, at minimum, would have enough that they could live a semi-normal life.

Related to the exile of general criminals, a variation on transportation was also used to sell people directly into slavery. Though your standard-issue English criminal probably would end up an indentured servant on a plantation or digging a canal or what not, hundreds of thousands of Irish and Scottish political and war prisoners taken during the 17th century ended up being sold into slavery in the West Indies and this, in some cases, continued in some forms even until nearly the end of the 18th century. Please note that in most cases these were, for all intents and purposes, true slaves and not simple indentured servants.

The interbreeding of Irish and African slaves (who were initially considerably more expensive than Irish slaves) in the West Indies became so extensive that by the end of the 17th century, specific laws were passed to prohibit it. Admittedly, the issue with the Irish and Scottish was more an offshoot of war (and rebellion) between England, Scotland, and Ireland, and even many of the laws concerning their handling were distinct from the various transportation acts passed to cover non-political/war-offenses.

Given our modern view of a more rehabilitative justice system, transportation may seem cruel. Indeed, even being a child did not necessarily protect one from a transportation sentence, though age and size (tiny laborers aren’t efficient, after all) were somewhat taken into account. There are, however, documented cases of children as young as seven years old being transported to Australia. It is important to keep in mind, though, that by the standards of the time, transportation was often considered somewhat more lenient than the more common punishments: execution or being sentenced to a disgusting and overcrowded prison on land.

Then, as now, the building of more prisons to give convicted criminals more space wasn’t high on the list of societal priorities. In addition, the general English (or general world) attitude toward punishment from the 17th through 19th centuries could more generally be defined as retribution-based rather than rehabilitation-centered. There were such severe issues with prison space that even more disgusting and overcrowded prison ships were used as supplements.

That being said, it’s hard not to notice the national self-interest served by thousands upon thousands of cheap laborers being available to help develop new colonies. Transportation would linger, as a punishment, officially until 1868, but for several reasons, including socio-economic and geopolitical changes, it had
de facto
ended years before.

A Shocking Catalogue of Human Depravity: Patrick Colquhoun and the Cataloging of 18th Century London Crime

by J.A. Beard

F
or the bulk of English history, organized and centralized law enforcement was conspicuously lacking, even in London, a city hardly free from crime. Even as the population of the city in the mid-18th century grew to over a half-million souls, policing was a scatter-shot and limited affair due to various cultural factors, including the English population’s inherent distrust of the concept of centralized and organized police forces.

In the social, legal, and cultural struggles that led to the rise of these forces, those who wanted more organized police forces first had to persuade the populace, and those in positions of influence, that such groups were even needed. One key player in that task was Patrick Colquhoun.

Colquhoun was, among other things, a former Lord Provost of Glasgow, a businessman, and a trader. Toward the end of the 18th century, he became particularly interested in the issue of crime and became a magistrate in London. During this time he explored the links between crime and socio-economic factors. One of his chief concerns was the idea of preventative policing. He felt that the mere presence of more professional police, particularly in areas around people associated with crime, would contribute to a reduction in crime. While many, if not all modern police forces, make heavy use of this concept, at the time it was considered a bit radical in England.

It’s not necessarily that the English didn’t believe in the idea of preventative policing or think it couldn’t work, but more that they were very concerned the cost to personal liberty would not be worth it. The English of the time distrusted the idea of centralized and organized police almost as much as they did large standing armies. The French had such a system, which also included heavy spying on the public, something that did little to raise the esteem of the concept among the English public.

Colquhoun’s studies led him to write several works on the subject, the most influential of which was his
Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis
. In this work he strongly argued for the need for centralized police authorities. While that concept was not unique at the time or pioneered by Colquhoun, his book was unusual in that it attempted to bolster his argument by giving detailed statistics on the state of crime of London. Indeed, he referred to the
Treatise
as a
“shocking catalogue of human depravity”
and hoped that his data would show that police reform wasn’t just a good idea but a necessity to save a city sliding into moral decay.

The
Treatise
didn’t just give simple numbers of criminals. It broke down crimes into specific categories to let the full range of criminality be known. For example:

1. Professed Thieves, Burglars, Highway Robbers, Pick-Pockets and River Pirates, who are completely corrupted; —many of whom have finished their education in the Hulks, and some at Botany Bay: N.B. There will be an increase of this class on the return of Peace, now estimated at about: 2000.

Hulks, incidentally, were prison ships. Botany Bay was the name of an Australian penal colony (even though the actual colony ended up being located elsewhere).

Everything from gambling foreigners to gin-drinkers were included. Some categories are a bit uncomfortable for modern readers in that they may be more reflective of the prejudices of the time than objective presentations of criminality, such as counts of
“itinerant Jews…holding out temptations to pilfer and steal.”
Of course, the world’s oldest profession was included:
“20. Unfortunate Females of all descriptions, who support themselves chiefly or wholly by prostitution: 50,000.”

In total, he came up with 115,000 people who were
“supposed to support themselves in and near the metropolis by pursuits either criminal—illegal—or immoral.”
The population of London at that the time was a little over 950,000. He also included detailed information on the estimated losses to the public from theft, fraud, robbery, et cetera. For example, he claimed that Thames-related thefts alone totaled over 500,000 pounds a year, which, depending on what estimate of inflation one uses, would be between 40-400 million in today’s pounds.

The numbers, both crimes and monetary losses, shocked the public. Many people dismissed them and claimed Colquhoun was exaggerating. It’s hard for us to judge the accuracy of the figures. He was attempting to do a systematic analysis, but various modern tools, such as advanced statistical sampling and population error analysis, weren’t available to him.

Colquhoun based his numbers mostly on sampling from his time as a magistrate. He even went so far to suggest that his numbers were actually low-ball estimates as he excluded certain classes of “delinquency” that might still account for a significant number of people.

Whether or not Colquhoun’s numbers were completely accurate, they had a tremendous impact. Many people began to see more of a need for police. That being said, the culture was still very much against centralized policing. A strong and centralized police force, it was feared, would ride rough-shod over the rights and freedoms of the citizens. Although various additional social factors, government bureaucracy, and the war with Napoleon pulled attention and effort away from the idea of strengthening, organizing, and centralizing police by the government, merchants worried about river thefts took notice.

Colquhoun, with the aid of influential utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham and John Harriot, a Justice of the Peace and mariner, secured funding in 1797 to form a professional Thames River Police force to help curtail the rampant cargo theft afflicting the Thames and merchants.