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 woodcock
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
basement to utilize all the space possible. There were pictures on
the walls which were now more covered with damask, brocade, silk,
and wallpaper hung and plain paint than by wood wainscoting. 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 as a favorite the walnut that was usually used instead
of oak. Much wood was inlaid with a variety 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. There were pictures on the walls. From
1760, glass chandeliers hung from the ceiling to reflect
candlelight coming from standing candlesticks or glazed hanging
lanterns with brass 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 fire-back 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 brass 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, and silver knives, spoons, and two and three
pronged forks, glass salt-cellars from 1724, and fingerbowls from
which one rinsed one's mouth or cleaned one's fingers after dinner
which were made of glass 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 stairs;
wardrobe; chairs; a wash hand 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 staircases were protected with
carpeting. Servants had no right to free time or to holidays. The
kitchen was in the basement 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 basement 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 basement 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 brass pulleys. At
the back of the house was a garden and perhaps a coach house or
stables. 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. A watch-maker named Alexander
Cummings patented in 1775 the water-closet, which had a stink trap
u-bend behind which, after flushing, water resided and prevented
the back-flow of noxious sewer gas. Its pans and overhead cisterns
were made in pottery. They were supported by wood structures.
There were better cements for building. Chinese porcelain,
embroidery, and lacquer-work were popular. Landscaping to
reproduce an idealized country scene replaced formal gardens.
Furniture and landscaped gardens were often done in a Chinese
style. Foreign trees were imported.
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. Washing was in done wash bowls held by wooden stands
wood and in a built-in bathtub. Hot water usually had to carried
up to it, but bathtubs with hot and cold running water were known.
In these mansions, there were many private parties and balls. 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 noblest of human passions. 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, levies, masquerades, balls, 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. Carriage by sedan-chair
was common. Gentlemen often had valets. In 1776, Buckingham House
was bought as a palace for the royal couple.
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 class 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 bread, beer,
spirits, and vinegar; sugar refining; tobacco refining; snuff;
spinning and weaving of woolens and worsteds, silk ribbons, tape,
and cloth; printed calico, linens, clothes, laces, tassels, fancy
embroidery, stays, stocking weaving, hats, shoes, leather goods
(boots, shoes hats, gloves, harnesses, saddles), jewelry, glass,
candles, tapestry, musical instruments, cutlery, furniture, paint,
varnish, tools, paper, printer's ink and glue, printing,
publishing, swords, guns, heavy artillery, ships, sails, rope,
carriages, and precious and base metalwares such as brass and
pewter ware. Surgical instruments made included straight and
curved knives and probes, lancets, scissors, spatulas, trepans
(for cutting bone), and cupping cases. Optical instruments made
included eyeglasses, telescopes, and microscopes. In 1727
eyeglasses 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, orrerys [a model
solar system], 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, of
glue, of printers' ink, and of 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, and
the tanners, employed journeymen.
There were buildings for boiling and distilling turpentine, for
casting brass or iron, and for making glass for chemical works for
sale.
The skilled artisan who works at home and either makes goods for a
master or sells to the trade verges into the shop keeping class.
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 belong to the class of
unskilled and casual labor. The lowly chimney sweeper, 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 class 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 class of
beggars.
Working women in London in 1750 were employed in domestic service:
25%, nursing and midwifery: 12%, cleaning and laundry: 10%,
vitualling: 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-class 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 glass which partly obscured the
view of the goods, there were magnificent shops with large windows
displaying fine goods, bookshops, and print shops with prints of
political satire with caricatures. The shops were generally open
six days a week from 7 am to 8 pm, and over the years later to 10
pm. In 1675 Josiah Wedgwood opened a showroom in London for his
high quality pottery from Staffordshire. Consumption was on a mass
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 classes and groups,
such as the whigs, the tories, classical 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' business
transactions, matrimonial agencies, masonic lodges, auction rooms,
and gambling dens. Some retained a supply of prostitutes. 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, balls, 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 association
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;
Whore 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 Whore 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 across 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 here. 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,
muffin men, fruit sellers, nut sellers, pudding sellers, milk
maids selling milk from buckets, milk sold directly from the cow,
vendors of asses' 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 class 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 asses and
horses. Homeless children slept on the streets. All classes 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 prostitutes. 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 sturdy 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
house-keeper or steered into prostitution as soon as they entered
the city. Ambitious young men would seek a job as an apprentice,
work hard, flatter his master, and try to marry the 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.
Queen Anne was authorized 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 passersby 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 came to came to target 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. Another instance was
destroying stocking-knitting frames so not too many apprentices
could be employed contrary to the regulations of the stocking
knitters guild. The use of parish workhouse children also was 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 passing 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 glass 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, trimming, 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.