DOMESTIC LIFE AND THE TAX-GATHERER--THE DOCTOR AND THE BODY-SNATCHER.
By the fireside, in health and disease, and in the separations and
contingencies of family life, we must look for the drawbacks which our
great-grandfathers had to put up with during that remarkable period
which closed and opened the two centuries, when great changes ever
seemed on the eve of being born, yet ever eluded the grasp of the
reformer. What a sluggish, silent, nerveless world, it must have been
as we now think! On the other side of the cloud, which shut out the
future, were most of the contributories to the noisy current of our
modern life--from express trains and steam hammers to lucifer matches
and tram cars! Steel pens, photographs, postage stamps, and even
envelopes, umbrellas, telegrams, pianofortes, ready-made clothes,
public opinion, gas lamps, vaccination, and a host of other things
which now form a part of our daily life, were all unknown or belonged
to the future. But there were a few other things which found a place
in the home which are not often met with now--the weather-house (man
for foul weather and woman for fine)--bellows, child's pole from
ceiling to floor with swing, candlestick stands, chimney pot-hook,
spinning wheel, bottle of leeches, flint gun, pillow and bobbins for
lace, rush-lights, leather breeches, and a host of other things now
nearly obsolete. In the better class houses there was a grandfather's
clock, and possibly a "windmill" clock, but in many villages if you
could not fix the time by the sun "you might have to run half over the
village to find a clock."
One of the primal fountains of our grandfathers' domestic comforts was
the tinder-box and flint and steel. Without this he could neither have
basked in the warmth of the Yule-log nor satisfied the baby in {74} the
night time. But even this was not sufficient without matches, and, as
Bryant and May had not been heard of, this article was made on the
spot. In Royston, as in other places, matches were made and sold from
door to door by the paupers from the Workhouse, by pedlars driving dog
carts, or by gipsies, and the trade of match-makers obtained the
dignified title of "Carvers and Gilders." At by-ways where a tramp, a
pedlar, or a pauper, did not reach, paterfamilias, or materfamilias,
became "carver and gilder" to the household, and made their own
matches. In one case I find the Royston Parish Authorities setting up
one of the paupers with a supply of wood "to make skewers and matches
to sell."
[Illustration: TINDER-BOX, FLINT, STEEL, AND MATCHES.]
The tinder-box, like other household requisites in all ages, was
sometimes very homely, sometimes of "superior" make. The above
illustration is of one rather out of the common, and the artist has
brought the different parts together rather than showing the process,
for the lid would have to be removed before the tinder beneath could be
fired. The most common form of tinder-box was an oblong wooden box, of
two compartments, one for the tinder and the other for flint and {75}
steel. At Elbrook House, Ashwell, is one, in the possession of Edward
Snow Fordham, Esq., said to be two hundred years old. The process of
getting a light by means of the tinder-box involved a little manual
dexterity and mental philosophy--if the fugitive spark from the
striking of the flint and steel set alight to the tinder, well; you
then had simply to light your clumsy sulphur-tipped skewer-like
"match," and there you were! If the tinder happened to be damp, as it
sometimes was, and the spark wouldn't lay hold, you were not one bit
nearer quieting the baby, or meeting whatever might be the demand for a
light in the night time, than was an ancient Briton ages ago! When the
modern match was first introduced as the "Congreve" the cost was 2s.
6d. for fifty, or about 1/2d. each, and when, a few years later, the
lucifer match was introduced, they were sold at four a penny! Now you
can get more than four well-filled boxes for a penny!
In the first quarter of the century the supply of fuel was very
different from now. By slow and difficult means did coal arrive.
Cambridge was the nearest centre for this district, and thence the coal
used in Royston was obtained. Tedious and troublesome was the process
of dragging it along bad roads, and between Cambridge and Royston this
made a difference of about 7s. per ton in the price. Farm labourers,
when agreeing for their harvest month, generally obtained, either by
bargain or by custom, the right of the use of one of their master's
horses and carts after harvest for a day to fetch coals from Cambridge.
Another concession made by the farmer to the men was that each man was
allowed after harvest a load of "haulm," or wheat stubble, left in the
field from reaping time. This "haulm" was useful not only for lighting
fires with, but, like the bean stubs, for heating those capacious brick
ovens in the old chimney corners, in which most of the cottagers then
baked their own bread. Sometimes the stage wagoners brought a "mixed"
cargo, and put coals into their wagons to fill up, and undersold the
dealers (at less than 13d. a bushel), and the practice was complained
of at Cambridge, more especially respecting Royston and Buntingford
districts.
It may seem strange now to speak of persons, even at a hospitable
board, having taken too much salt, carefully replacing some of it, upon
economical grounds; but, considering that there was then a duty of a
guinea a bushel upon this necessary article, it is not surprising. Our
grandfathers paid about 6d. a pound for their salt; the commonest
calico was 10d. a yard, and printed calicoes 2s. 2d. per yard. In 1793
the average price of sugar, wholesale, was 66s. 7 1/2d. per cwt.,
exclusive of duty. Between 1810 and the Battle of Waterloo were many
times of scarcity, with wheat varying from 100s. to 126s. a quarter,
and some in Royston market reached 20s. a bushel. As to clothing,
there were very few ready-made clothes, and the village tailor was a
man of importance {76} when leather breeches and smock frocks were in
general demand. A smock frock, washed till it was quite white, was as
common a sight then as was the scarlet cloak worn by our
great-grandmothers, but both these familiar sights have disappeared as
completely as the yellow leather top boots, to be seen on Sundays up
till fifty years ago in the Churchyards of rural England.
[Illustration: A LADY OF THE PERIOD.]
The vagaries of fashion at the beginning of the century were of almost
inconceivable variety and extravagance; not only the ladies, but
dandies of the opposite sex wore stays for the improvement of the
figure, and curled their hair with curling irons! Though wigs had
almost gone out of fashion, hair powder had not. In a former sketch a
figure of a lady in the earlier years of the reign of George III. was
given. The above is another specimen of head gear at a later period of
the same reign.
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Trades necessarily followed fashions, and, when snuff-taking was almost
universal, the manufacture of gold, silver, and baser metal
snuff-boxes, was a thriving trade. A hair dresser's shop up to the end
of last century was also different in appearance from one to-day, and
was furnished with perukes, or wigs for all sorts of heads. At Upwell,
in the Fen, in 1791, a wig caught fire in such a shop and "before the
fire could be put out thirty-six wigs were destroyed."
Luxuries were much more limited than now, and many things then regarded
as such have since got placed in a different category. At the end of
the last century a pianoforte had not figured in any Royston household,
but it came at the beginning of this century when Lady Wortham as she
was always styled--as the daughter of Sir Thomas Hatton, Bart., and
wife of Hale Wortham, Esq.--became the owner of the first piano at
their house in Melbourn Street (now Mr. J. E. Phillips').
Newspapers were among the luxuries of the household, and their
circulation was of a very limited character. When, for a town of the
size of Royston, two or three copies did arrive by a London coach the
subscribers were generally the principal innkeepers--the Red Lion, the
Crown, and the Bull--and to these inns tradesmen and the leading
inhabitants were wont to repair. The only alternative of getting a
sight of the paper was that they could, on ordinary occasions, have it
away with them at their own homes upon paying a penny an hour for its
use. On special occasions when any great foreign event became
known--for papers contained but little home news--the competition for
the paper was an exciting event, the above arrangement was hardly
elastic enough to meet requirements, and crowds gathered about in the
inn yards on the arrival of a coach to learn some momentous piece of
intelligence with more or less accuracy from post-boys and others, who
in their turn had heard it from somebody else whose friend had been
able to communicate it with the authority of having actually "seen it
in the paper." The essence of the news required was generally victory
or defeat in battle, or trials at Assizes, and could soon be told. The
supply of papers was limited pretty much to the _Times_ and _Morning
Chronicle_ from London, while the _Cambridge Chronicle_ was then the
principal local newspaper.
As the Chancellor of the Exchequer derived a revenue from the stamp
required for each newspaper (as well as upon advertisements) the
lending of a newspaper was looked upon in the light of smuggling, and
an Act was passed providing that "any person who lends out a newspaper
for hire is subject to a penalty of L10 for every offence." But I fear
that with even this terrible inducement to buy your own paper, and the
natural zeal for the spread of knowledge of a man like Henry Andrews,
the astronomer, as agent for the sale of newspapers in our {78} town,
very few copies were actually bought, and that most of the "news" which
could not be obtained from the coaches was obtained by the Royston
tradesmen in that illicit manner of lending and hiring, though
forbidden by law!
Work and wages, closely connected with the condition of home life, did
not present a very cheerful picture. The labourer, and all engaged in
husbandry, had much longer hours than now. An old writer on husbandry
says, "the dairymaid should always be up in the morning between three
or four o'clock." The young fellows living "in service" on the farm
had never done till it was time to go to bed, and, having but very
little if any money to spend and nowhere to go, a short interval for
supper by the kitchen fire was about the only recreation they enjoyed
to vary their lot.
It was a time when there was little room for squeamishness as to the
conditions under which men laboured--when little boys, instead of
brooms, were sent up ill-constructed chimneys, with no sense of remorse
from their employers, who in their turn had probably commenced business
by going up themselves and saw no reason against the practice. At a
later date, however, there was a great stir made about this practice,
which led to its coming before a Committee of the House of Lords. One
of the Payment family--who then, as now, carried on the business of
chimney sweeps in Royston and its neighbourhood--was called as a
witness to give evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords. I
am credibly informed that the member of the Royston firm was at first
rather alarmed at the prospect, thinking no doubt that he was about to
be called to account as a "climbing boy," but when he found what was
the nature of his errand, that his evidence was considered of so much
value by the House of Lords, and that it meant a few days' holiday in
the great city provided for him free of expense, the incident was one
to be remembered with pride. A few courageous spirits set to work
raising subscriptions to provide "machines," as now used, instead of
"climbing boys," but, incredible as it may seem, met with a good deal
of opposition at first, both from householders and master sweeps.
Among those who took up the question was Mr. Henry Fordham, then a
young man at Hertford.
Let me conclude this reference to sweeps with a story from this
district, vouched for by the old newspapers at the time, viz., that in
one of the villages in the district was a chimney sweep who had sixteen
sons all following the same occupation!
Among outside agencies which broke in upon the old domestic life of the
period none was more potent or omnipresent than the tax-gatherer. You
could not be born, married, or buried, without the consent of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, so to speak; for there was at the end of
the last century a 3d. tax upon births, marriages, and burials, and it
{79} appears that the clergy were allowed a commission of 2s. in the L,
for the collection of the tax. Among the objections to it was that the
poor man could not sometimes pay it without borrowing the money, and
yet was made equal with the rich in regard to the amount. Even
occupiers of cottages had to pay the window tax, unless exempt by the
receipt of parish relief, but, by many thoughtful men of the time, its
application to agricultural labourers was looked upon with disfavour.
About the end of the last century there was hardly anything that a man
could see, taste, handle, or use, that was not taxed--windows, candles,
tobacco pipes, almanacs, soap, newspapers, hats, bricks, domestic
servants, watches, clocks, hair powder, besides nearly every article of
food! All these in turn came under the hands of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, till, as Sydney Smith said, "the school-boy had to whip a
taxed top, the youth drove a taxed horse with taxed bridle along a
taxed road; the old man poured medicine, which had paid 7 per cent.,
into a spoon that had paid 15; fell back upon a chintz bed which had
paid 22 per cent., and expired in the arms of an apothecary who had
paid a licence of L100 for the privilege of putting him to death; and
immediately his property paid 2 to 10 per cent., and his virtues were
handed down to posterity on taxed marble."
The extravagant vagaries in the fashions of dressing the hair formed a
tempting point for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come down upon,
and the tax in the form of "hair-powder certificates," at the rate of a
guinea a head, occasioned perhaps more commotion in fashionable circles
than any other tax. It was a profitable source of revenue owing to the
great use of hair-powder, and at the same time its disuse would mean a
gain in the supply of flour, of which it was largely made, for
consumption. Short hair, or "crops," soon came into fashion as a means
of evading the tax and "dishing" the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a
re-action which was responsible for the following parody of _Hamlet_:--
To crop, or not to crop, that is the question:--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The plague of powder and loquacious barbers;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by the scissors, end them?
From the old Royston Book Club debates of last century it will be
remembered that I quoted the result of a vote upon--which of the three
professions, of divinity, law and physic, was most beneficial to
mankind, and that the doctors could only get one vote, against a
respectable number for law and divinity. I ventured to suggest that
the bleeding, blistering and purging at certain seasons was probably
responsible for {80} the low estimate of the medical profession, and of
this may be given the following example--
In 1799, the parish doctor's bill for the Therfield paupers contained
twelve items for "blisters," eight for bleeding (at 6d. each!), and in
another, eight for "leeches."
There was a much more detailed account given in the old doctors' bills
of a century ago than in the curt missives which are now usually
limited to the "professional attendance" with which the old bills
began, and the "total" with which they finished; "bleeding, blistering,
leeches, vomits, julep, boluses," &c., were all duly accounted for.
The following is a _bonâ fide_ doctor's bill of 1788, delivered to and
paid by a resident in one of the villages of this district:--
s. d.
Bleeding----Daughter . . . . . . . 1 0
A febrifuge Mixture . . . . . . . 2 4
Bleeding----Self . . . . . . . . . 1 0
A Cordial Mixture . . . . . . . . 2 4
A Diuretic Tincture . . . . . . . 1 6
Two Opening Draughts . . . . . . . 2 0
The Mixture repd . . . . . . . . . 2 4
Bleeding----Daughter . . . . . . . 1 0
Two Opening Draughts . . . . . . . 2 0
--------
L0 15 6
The item "Bleeding----self" is a trifle ambiguous, but probably it was
the parent and not the doctor upon whom the operation was performed!
Inoculation has already been referred to, but I may here state that the
first account I have seen of professional inoculation for the smallpox
in Royston is the announcement in the year 1773 of--"George Hatton,
surgeon, apothecary and man-mid-wife in Royston, who, with the advice
of his friends and the many patients whom he has inoculated, begs leave
to acquaint the public that he will wait upon any person or family
within 6 or 7 miles from Royston, and inoculate them for half-a-guinea
each person, medicines and attendances included, and, that the poor may
have the benefit of his practice, a proper allowance will be made them
and diligent attendance given."
Bills of the same period show that the charge for this species of
inoculation "when a quantity was taken," as in the parish bills, was
2s. or 2s. 6d. each person. The advantage claimed for spreading the
disease of small-pox out of the rates by means of inoculation was that
if you had it as the result of inoculation only one person in 300 died,
but if you had small-pox by infection, eight out of every hundred died.
It may be of interest to add as a general fact upon health and
diseases, that in 1792, out of 20,000 burials the following were the
proportions of deaths from the leading diseases:--Consumption 5,255,
convulsions {81} 4,646, dropsy 3,018, fevers 2,203, small-pox 1,568,
measles 450, "teeth" 419. The deaths under two years of age were
6,542, or one-third of the whole! The classification was not so exact
in those days as it would be now, but the race has improved a little in
regard to infantile mortality and consumption.
In coupling the doctor and the body-snatcher, at the head of this
chapter, I did not really mean to convey more than the general
association of human experience in the periods of sickness and the
close of life. If there was a closer association of these two
characters in the later Georgian era, it is, at least, a satisfaction
to be able to write of such things entirely in the past tense. At a
time when even to maintain the decencies and comforts of domestic life
was often a struggle with untoward surroundings, it may seem to show a
desire to load the past times with more than their share of trials and
misfortunes, to suggest that the most painful of all experiences of the
times was reserved for the end of life; that the ordeal of the
separation from friends by death was embittered, and intensified,
beyond anything in more modern experience, yet it is certain that the
revolting business of the "body-snatcher" did, for some years, between
1815 and 1830, brood over many a village in this district like a cruel
night-mare!
The reception of bodies, or "subjects," from country or town burying
grounds for the dissecting rooms of London and other hospitals, became
almost a trade, not altogether beyond the commercial principle of
supply and demand. Generally about two guineas was the price, and
students would club together their five shillings each for a "subject."
In the face of such facts it would be idle to suggest that the
tradition of that mysterious cart, moving silently through the darkness
of night on muffled wheels towards our village churchyards, was merely
a creature of the imagination. The tradition of that phantom cart
which lingered for years had a substantial origin as certain as the
memory of many persons still living can make it! In many of the
villages around Royston, as indeed in other districts, the terror of it
became such that not a burial took place in the parish graveyards, but
the grave had to be watched night after night till the state of the
corpse was supposed to make it unlikely that it would then be
disturbed! The watch was generally kept by two or three men taking it
in turns, generally sitting in the church porch, through the silent
hours of the night armed with a gun! The well-to-do were able to
secure this protection by paying for it, but many a poor family had to
trust to the human sympathy and help of neighbours. Under a stress of
this kind probably some brave Antigone watched over the remains of a
dead brother, and certainly it was not uncommon for husband and wife to
face the ordeal of sitting out the night till the grey light of
morning, in some lone church porch, or the vestry of some small
meeting-house--watching lest the robbers of {82} the dead should come
for a lost son or daughter! Over the grave of some poor widow's son,
or of that of a fellow workman, volunteers were generally forthcoming
to perform this painful office.
Though the law was seldom invoked, there must have been numberless
cases in which bodies were stolen, cases in which the modest mound of
earth placed over the dead had mysteriously dropped in, and the
outraged parents or relatives, not unnaturally perhaps, turned with
bitter revengeful thoughts to the London and other hospitals of that
day--whether justly or unjustly God knows! Around the parish
churchyards of Bassingbourn, Melbourn, and especially Therfield and
Kelshall, the memory of unpleasant associations lingered for many years
after the supposed transactions had passed away; nor was it merely an
experience peculiar to isolated village churchyards. On the contrary
it was customary, even in the Royston church-yard, surrounded as it is
and was then by houses--with the Vicarage house then actually in the
church-yard, in fact--it was customary for relatives to sit in the
Church porch at night and watch the graves of departed friends!
Of actual occurrences of robbing the graves there is the story of a
woman living in one of the villages on the hills not far from Royston,
when on her way home, accepting a ride with a neighbour, only to find
to her horror that the driver had a dead body in his cart! As to the
allegations that stolen bodies did find their way to hospitals for
dissecting purposes, there is a well authenticated story of a case in
which a Roystonian was recognised in the dissecting room of a London
hospital! A doctor, whose name would, I daresay, be remembered by some
if mentioned, and who was in the habit of visiting a family in Royston,
and knew many Royston people, upon entering the dissecting room of one
of the London hospitals, at once recognised a "subject" about to be
operated upon, as a person he had frequently seen in Royston, a
peculiar deformity leaving no possible doubt as to her identity!
Excepting when the natural dread of it came home to bereaved families,
there was no very strong public opinion on the subject; the law, which
came down with a fell swoop upon many classes of small offenders, was
too big an affair for dealing with questions of sentiment, and as there
were no little laws of local application readily available, the
practice was too often connived at where examples might have been made.
In some things our grandfathers may have had the advantage over this
hurrying age, but the reverent regard for the dead, and the outward
aspect of their resting place, is assuredly not one of them.
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