Master William Hall, a tearaway packed off to the country…

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Jan 112013
 

There is no escaping the fact: Richard’s eldest son William was a bit of a hooligan. As it happened he turned out O.K. in the long run, ending up as Master of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, but, as a youngster, he was by all accounts a feral child!

Poor Richard’s diaries are full of entries about having to pay for mending glass windows in passing carriages, broken by William throwing stones! Time and time again Richard seems to have been forced to take the boy out of one school or another because he was a trouble maker. I bet Richard must have had second thoughts about taking William on as an apprentice when the lad reached fifteen…

Every school holidays the young William had been packed off to the country, where the air was healthier. Usually he stayed with his aunt and uncle at Bourton on the Water but presumably his boisterousness tired his relatives, as evidenced by this elaborately written invitation:

The letter is written from Hempsted, then a small hamlet situated just South West of Gloucester, and barely half a day’s horse-ride from the rest of the family who continued to stay at Bourton. It would appear that young Master William, aged 8 at the time, spent Christmas with the Morgan Jones household. I imagine that they were happy to supplement their income by taking in a lodger to keep ’Master Robarts’ company. I know nothing of Master Robarts but the inviation to send William back to stay with the family at Whitsuntide was presumably taken up, and Richard filed the letter with his other papers.

The writing really is beautifully done. It is only a guess, but I suspect that Morgan Jones may have been a legal clerk in a Solicitor’s Office in Gloucester, because his hand is so reminiscent of contemporary legal documents, especially with the emboldened writing and curlicues around the signature.

I have to think that life in the country must have seemed like heaven to young William – how he must have dreaded returning to London, and to school, which he loathed!

Papier Mâché – a beautiful table cabinet (from The Sign of the Hygra).

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Nov 052012
 

In a previous blog I touched on the topic of japanned ware – be it metal or papier mâché. Some of the illustrations were from a website belonging to an Antique Dealer in London called Antique Boxes at the Sign of the Hygra. They featured a quite superb table cabinet and although it is not to be found in their catalogue anymore it really is so marvellous that I have decided to give the box a blog-spot of its own! My apologies if this repeats some information already given…

Hygra describe it as a “Rare 18th C painted Papier Mâché table cabinet on gilded carved wooden stand. The two door cabinet with hinged top is decorated with chinoiserie themes on the outside and inside with wild flowers and butterflies.

 

The composition is an elegant orchestration of a sweeping path from pavilions to tall oriental figures. The left side counterbalances the heavier decoration on the right with fine depictions of foliage and airy trees.

 

The cabinet is constructed of flat panels which points to an early date when papier mâché was made as a substitute for wood and competing with panels of decorated oriental lacquer which were being imported and used by many of the respected designer makers.

Papier Mâché has qualities which made it superior to wood for the purpose in providing a smoother surface for painted decoration.

 

The methods used in this cabinet date back to an influential treatise from the previous century: Stalker, John. M.A., and (George) Parker of Oxford . A Treatise of Japaning and Varnishing, being a compleat discovery of those arts … with … patterns for Japan-work … engraven on 24 … copper-plates. Oxford: 1688.

Inside there are eight drawers; the fronts have paintings of butterflies and flowers.

Chinoiserie decoration was the height of fashion during the 18th Century and early 19th Century, when the west was gripped by the glimpses of exotic cultures of the East (Cathay) which were introduced by the tales of early travellers and traders of the Silk Road. European artists accompanied formal delegations and brought back a treasure trove of art, which was exhibited, printed and generally disseminated amongst the people of inquisitive mind and eclectic taste.

This is a rare fine example of the genre in that it combines both skill and artistry in its graceful composition: it is both refined and luxurious in the best tradition of the period.

Origin: Circa: 1780 ; Materials: papier mâché, wood.

Size: 37 cm wide by 18 cm by 39 cm: (14.7 inches wide by 7.1 inches by 15 inches).

 

 

 

 

Types of japanning in an effort to reproduce lacquer had already been produced in many parts of Europe . Early forms of japanning on wood necessitated coating the wood before decoration. It was an inevitable step to extend the function of the coating to incorporate the basic material. This could reduce the necessary processes from three to two and give a new substance, which could be marketed as of superior quality and as quite distinct from oriental work.

 

 

 

 

 

As the 18th century progressed, it was realized that in order to render the material suitable for the making of superior objects, it had to be refined. Henry Clay is credited with the next big step of the process, but it is more accurate to go one generation back to his one-time employer, John Baskerville. Baskerville was a manufacturer of tin japanned ware at Birmingham . He was also a printer, with a passion for calligraphy. Henry Clay was apprenticed to him from 1740-49. Baskerville was an inquiring and talented man who made his own paper and ink. He already understood the principle of japanning. His printing work was reputed to be of exquisite taste. Everything was in place for the next logical step: that is, combining paper with japanning.

Baskerville and two other craftsmen had already experimented with making panels out of sheets of paper which were pasted together. In 1763, one of the other two men, Stephen Bedford, won the recognition of The Society of Arts for his superior varnish. It is likely that during the time when Clay was a young apprentice, experiments aiming at producing a superior form of papier mâché took place in Baskerville’s workshop.

Different makers did introduce different techniques and variations, but the principle remained as Clay described it. Sheets of paper soaked in paste were pressed together, on a flat plate, or board. Equal numbers were pasted on each side. The paper sheets were then separated from the plate, by planning or cutting the edges. They were then dried in a stove “…sufficiently hot to deprive them of their flexibility and at the same time are rubbed over, or dipped in oil or varnish…” The resulting material was used like wood, joining the parts by dovetailing or mitering. The final object was “…coated with colour and oils…and then japanned and highly varnished and can be brought to the highest polish by friction with the human hand”.

Chinoiserie decoration was the height of fashion during the 18th Century and early 19th Century, when the west was gripped by the glimpses of exotic cultures of the East (Cathay) which were introduced by the tales of early travellers and traders of the Silk Road.”

I think the box is exquisite. You can see more of what the lovely people at Hygra have on their books here. Suffice to say they have some beautiful tea caddies, writing boxes etc and details of a book written by them which I would love to get my hands on called Antique Boxes, Tea Caddies & Society —1700 – 1780. Do go and have a look at a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era!

A sincere thanks to  Joseph O’Kelly and Antigone Clarke at Hygra for letting me use their photographs and text.

Frost pictures, frozen potties and a bed warmer…. it must be winter!

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Nov 022012
 

As a child I remember opening the curtains in the morning and marvelling at the frost pictures - whirls and fern-shapes spreading across the cold glass. Not something we get nowadays with central heating, but a reminder that our ancestors must have  taken extreme cold in their stride much better than we do – because they had no choice!

My favourite diary entry made by Richard Hall when writing about the cold was this one, when he remarks that it was so cold that it froze the water in the chamber pot:

     

Even with bed curtains to keep out drafts, nothing, but nothing could have prepared you for the icy cold sheets of a Georgian bed – unless of course you were fortunate enough to have had your servant warm the bed first with a bed warming pan.

By way of illustration, two etchings by William Heath, both shown courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library site and dating from around 1828.

The first is entitled “A nice place in cold weather”

The second, part of the Man with umbrella series (see icon bottom left), is entitled “Do you please to have your bed warm’d Sir?” (presumably a reference to the bed warming pan she is carrying, but there again, maybe not!).

 

Great, great, great, great grandfather’s bed warmer!

Warming pans started to gain popularity in the 1600′s. The early pans were somewhat heavy, with cast iron handles and deep pans able to hold whole coals. The hinged lids were often pierced to allow oxygen to reach the burning coal (necessary to stop the fire going out – the drawback being a risk of fire starting under the bedclothes, and the certainty of a fume-filled room when you retired to bed). Also it wasn’t just a case of the servant using the tongs to collect a coal from the grate, and putting it in the pan which would have been hanging by the fireplace, and then going up the stairs and planting it between the sheets – the pan needed to be moved regularly to stop the sheets getting scorched (hence the long handle for maneuvering the pan around the bed).By the late Georgian era the pans were less deep, because the fashion was to use embers or charcoal in the pans – or even hot sand – so oxygen was less of a problem in keeping the pan hot. The pans became lighter as the iron handles were replaced with wooden ones, some of them elaborately turned. In general though, the older pans had straight plain handles (the Victorian ones were nearly always  turned like banister rails).The pan itself was either copper or brass, both metals being good for conducting the heat.

Not everyone thought that a warm bed was a good idea. A somewhat cranky and cantankerous Scottish doctor  called James Makittrick Adair opened a practice in fashionable Bath and in 1786 published a handily-entitled series of essays under the heading of  “Those Especially who Resort to Bath : Containing Essays on Fashionable Diseases : Dangerous Effects of Hot and Crowded Rooms : Regimen of Diet, &c. an Enquiry Into the Use of Medicine During a Course of Mineral Waters : an Essay on Quacks, Quack Medicines, and Lady Doctors……”

What the good doctor had to say about quacks and lady doctors is for another time, but about hot rooms he had this to say:

“People in health ought never to have their beds warmed; not only because the fumes of the coals are in some degree noxious, but because warmth thus applied enervates the body. If, however, invalids and sick persons cannot from custom dispense with bed warming, one or two quarts of sand, made red hot in an iron pot, and put into the warming pan, will be void of all offensive smell.”

Clearly there was less of a risk of fire, or scorching, if a hot water bottle was used instead. Made of metal, the user would first have had to slip the bottle into a ‘jacket’ of cloth to prevent burning the skin. These became popular in the Victorian era, made of copper and, later, from china.

Thomas Bowdler – the man who took the naughty bits out of Shakespeare.

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Jul 112012
 

“Bowdler-ise, -ize: expurgate (book etc). Hence bowdlerisation. From T.Bowdler, expurgator of Shakespeare, + ize”

So sayeth the Oxford English Dictionary. I have only ever thought of the word as having a pejorative meaning i.e. to spoil the original by cutting out bits which were best left in, or to act as censor, but clearly when the word was first used, it was meant in a complimentary way.

Thomas Bowdler was perhaps something of a prude by modern standards. Born in 1754 in the village of Box (near Bath) he was one of six children. His father was a wealthy banker. He had qualified as a doctor after going to University in Scotland, and had then spent some time travelling in Europe. In 1781 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, but although he was admitted to the College of Physicians he apparently gave up medicine when he found that it made him feel queasy! It is indeed an unfortunate trait in a doctor…

He devoted his energies to promoting prison reform – and to playing a mean game of chess, at which he was particularly adept. In 1800 he moved to the Isle of Wight and at the age of 52 decided to rush headlong into marriage. And promptly regretted it! The marriage did not last and the couple quickly moved apart.

That left Bowdler with time on his hands; time which he used to reflect on the fact that when he was a boy his father used to recite Shakespeare to all of the children, sitting around the fireside. When he became grown up Thomas realized that his amiable parent had been prone to edit out those passages which were unsuited to the tender ears of the children. Thomas decided that there was a call for a zealously applied red pen to be put to the entire works of Shakespeare so that other, “less circumspect and judicious readers”, could benefit from these necessary reforms.

An advertisement from The Times

The result: in 1807 he brought out The Family Shakespeare, a book which ran to four editions in his lifetime (he died in 1825). Many other editions were published posthumously. The book was a considerable success from the outset: suddenly the works of the Bard were opened up not just to children but to the fairer sex, who might otherwise be offended by the original words. In fairness, Bowdler did not seek, as others had done, to re-write or add new words. He simply struck out anything resembling bad language, and removed anything which might prove alarming or distressing. Hence any suggestion that Ophelia committed suicide was expunged from Hamlet, so that the girl was simply described as having drowned! And where there were particularly immoral characters, well they were removed from the storyline altogether (such as the bawdy Doll Tearsheet in Henry V (Part II).

Mercutio’s “the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon” was changed to “the hand of the dial is now upon the point of noon”. (The wonder really is that there was anything left to fill the four volumes which covered the twenty four plays attributed to Shakespeare!).

The actual expurgating was almost certainly a collaborative process involving Thomas and his sister Henrietta (sometimes called Harriet). Presumably, credit for her input was omitted from the published edition because it would show that she had read all the naughty bits in the first place…

Harriet was an evangelical Christian, about whom it was said  by Gilbert Elliot, Earl of Minto: “She is, I believe, a blue-stocking, but what the colour of that part of her dress is must be mere conjecture, as you will easily believe when I tell you that … she said she never looked at [the dancers in operas] but always kept her eyes shut the whole time, and when I asked her why, she said it was so indelicate she could not bear to look.”

The reasons for the ‘censorship’ were explained fully in the preface to The Family Shakespeare, where Bowdler writes of Shakespeare as follows: “The language is not always faultless. Many words and expressions occur which are of so indecent Nature as to render it highly desirable that they should be erased. Of these the greater part were evidently introduced to gratify the bad taste of the age in which he lived, and the rest may perhaps be ascribed to his own unbridled fancy. But neither the vicious taste of the age not the most brilliant effusions of wit can afford an excuse for profaneness or obscenity; and if these can be obliterated the transcendent genius of the poet would undoubtedly shine with more unclouded lustre.”

And while we may scoff at the prudishness of the Bowdler family, the fact remains that they opened up Shakespeare to a far wider audience than ever before. Suddenly Shakespeare was ‘safe’ for a family with Victorian values, and his works soared in popularity. Apparently ‘Bowdlerised’ editions of the works of Shakespeare were used in schools until the 1960´s.

Thomas Bowdler was buried  in the Churchyard at Oystermouth Parish Church near Swansea (where he had been living for  the last ten years of his life). July 11th  was once described as Bowdler Day – in memory of his birthday.

 

Picture courtesy of http://www.findagrave.com/

 

Arthur Guinness (1725 – 1803) – a stout fellow if ever there was one.

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Jul 042012
 

As a young boy at boarding school (yes, thanks for reminding me, I am talking about half a century ago…) I recall the excitement of opening a parcel from Guinness containing a poster designed to go on the side of a London bus. Proudly I stuck it up on two walls of the dorm: there in foot-high letters was the slogan known to everyone -  “GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU”. Fast forward fifty years and no doubt there are laws against encouraging minors to partake of alcohol, just as there are rules in small print urging the consumer to ‘drink sensibly’. And of course, the slogan itself is banned. It is enough that we all know it does us good, but Guinness is not allowed to make the claim because it cannot be proved…

And what of the man, good old Arthur? For years no-one was quite sure of his date of birth, which made it awkward to have a decent bi-centennial celebration to mark the occasion. So, when it came to the 275th anniversary some Dr Spin at Guinness decided that the great day was actually … 24th September 1725. No matter that Arthur’s gravestone at Oughterard states that he was 78-years-old when he died on 23rd January 1803, indicating that he was in fact born sometime in 1724 or early 1725. A specific date is easy to commemorate, and slowly the custom of ‘Arthur’s Day’ is catching on. The first ‘Arthur’s Day’ took place on 24th September 2009, to celebrate 250 years of the Guinness Company – 250 years since Arthur signed the lease on the St. James’s Gate brewery. This year it occurs on 27th September (cue much musical celebration and consumption of dark liquid). Rumour has it that in fact the timing of Arthur’s Day has more to do with the fact that it is roughly six months after St Patrick’s Day – a good and timely marketing ploy! At one minute to six o’clock (that is, at 17.59) there is a toast to commemorate the 1759 founding of the Guinness brewery empire.

Quite a bit is known about Arthur’s family, most of it contradictory! His father was Richard Guinness, and when he was a young man he moved to County Kildare and one story has it that he sold milk from a roadside stall near Celbridge, just down the road from a stall run by local farmer William Read (who sold home-brewed ale). The two became friends, no doubt in part over a drop of home-brew, but also because Read had a daughter called Catherine. Richard and Catherine decided to get married.

One other resident in Celbridge was a certain Dr Price, a man whose religious calling did not preclude him from owning a small malt-house in Celbridge (where a pub called The Mucky Duck now stands). Dr Price was busy moving up his professional ladder, ending up in 1744 as Archbishop of Cashel. His responsibilities meant that he needed a land agent – someone responsible for collecting the episcopal rents throughout the county – and Richard somehow persuaded the good Reverend to give him the job. He lived at the malt-house, the better to perform his duties which included brewing beer for workers on Dr Price’s estate.

In  1722 the Archbishop had taken over James Carberry’s  malting house in Celbridge, where Richard and Elizabeth lived in the early years of their marriage. Perhaps the Archbishop was inspired by Richard’s ability to “make a brew of very palatable nature.”

Richard and Catherine had at least 5 children, of whom Arthur was one. Richard not only named the baby Arthur (in honour of the Archbishop) but inveigled him into becoming the lad’s godfather, a shrewd move as it  turned out…

                                    The Courtyard Hotel by the banks of the River Liffey

Dr Price died in 1752 leaving Richard Guinness, and also Arthur Guinness his godson, the sum of one hundred pounds each. Arthur was 27 years old, and suddenly he had money. He also appears to have acquired the skills necessary to brew beer commercially, probably from working at a local brewery. His mother had died in 1742, and his father remarried to Elizabeth Clare whose family owned an inn in Celbridge. This may have been called The Bear & Ragged Staff or possibly the White Hart Inn – who cares, it is now the site of a Londis supermarket, and no, it doesn’t merit a photograph!

Arthur used his inheritance in 1755 to develop a brewery at the Leixlip site, some 17 kilometres from Dublin (the site of the current Courtyard Hotel in Leixlip). The venture prospered, and after a couple of years he handed over the brewery to his younger brother Richard and headed off to the bright lights of the big city. The year was 1759 and history was about to be made.

It wasn’t an easy time in the industry – the English had imposed tax tariffs in an attempt to stop England being flooded with Irish beer. Undaunted, Arthur found a four-acre derelict brewery site in the centre of the city of Dublin, at St James Gate, and signed a 9000 year lease at a rent of £45 pa on 31st December 1759.

That month Arthur entered his signature, as a new brewer, in the Minute Book of the Dublin Brewers and Maltsters Corporation. Within eight years he had risen to become Warden and then Master of the that body. He was also one of the four brewers’ guild representatives on Dublin Corporation.

In the spring of 1761 Arthur married Olivia Whitmore. She was a 19-year-old heiress from Dublin, the daughter of a prosperous merchant family. Arthur and Olivia had 21 children, ten of whom lived to adulthood. From 1764 their country home was at Beaumont House (now Beaumont Convalescent Home). And if having 21 children doesn’t say something about the efficacy of the family product, then I don’t know what does!

The first hint of an export trade occurred around 1769 when there is a reference to six and a half barrels of ‘Dublin Ale’ being shipped to England, notwithstanding the punitive tax. By then Arthur was experimenting with porter, a drink named after the street and river porters in the City of London and who were apparently especially partial to a glass or two after a hard day’s work. Or even, instead of a hard day’s work…

Shrewdly,  Arthur  engaged members of the Purser family who had come over to Dublin from London, where they already had an established track record of brewing porter. Together they forged a partnership which was to dominate the brewery scene.

Coopers making barrels (18th Century).

Surviving excise data shows that by 1778 Arthur was selling porter to England. It wasn’t always plain sailing. The records show that in 1775 Dublin Corporation tried to make him pay for his water supply notwithstanding the fact that his 9000 year lease included water rights. When the Sheriff and a group of men turned up at St James’s Gate to cut off his water source, Arthur seized a pick-axe from one of the men and began to shout ‘with very much improper language that they should not proceed.’ Unwilling to risk further ire, the sheriff and his men beat a hasty if undignified retreat…

A considerable expansion to the brewery was started in 1797 and in 1799 the family took the major step of stopping the brewing of ale, so that it could focus solely on “Guinness’s Extra Strong Porter”

In time this porter developed into ‘stout’ (meaning ‘strong’). It came about after the 1817 invention of patent malt (i.e. malted barley roasted until black). It gave the brew a distinctive burnt flavour and, in 1840, the stout was renamed “Guinness Extra Stout”

By the time Arthur died the brewery was producing some 20,000 barrels a year. Affectionately, both Arthur and his product had become known as ‘Uncle Arthur’ throughout the city. Arthur was buried in his mother’s burial plot at Oughterard, County Kildare in January 1803.

Thereafter the business expanded rapidly throughout Europe and the rest of the world, aided and abetted by distinctive advertising campaigns which are nothing if not memorable. Which is where I came in at the start with my poster at boarding school. Here are just a few of the splendid posters from the post-War years (oh, and one which came out very much earlier, possibly in 1794). I will leave it to the readers to work out which is which, promoting what James Joyce formerly (nay, famously) feted as “The Free,  the Flow, the Frothy Freshener”

                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For much of the history I am indebted to the Guinness site at http://www.guinness.com/en-gb/ and in particular to Eibhlin Roche, Guinness Archivist.

 

Post script: one of the reasons for this post is that my ancestor Richard Hall had a brother-in-law called William Snooke. His diary contains an intriguing entry for July 1774, suggesting that he made a purchase of “Light Guinness”. This was just a few years after the first recorded imports of ‘Dublin Ale’. Was ‘Dublin Ale’ known as ‘Light Guinness’? If so it suggests an early familiarity with the brand name.  More research is needed – and I am heading off to the Guinness Storehouse in  Dublin this summer to find the answers!

1794 obits:

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Jul 012012
 

O.K., I admit it may be a little obsessive, but I enjoy reading obituaries. Old ones. So a chance to meander through the list of “obituaries of remarkable Persons, with Biographical Anecdotes” in the 1794 Edition of the Gentleman’s Magazine was not to be missed. Fortunately the records have been digitised and can be found here

I would challenge anyone to deny that they would have wanted to be at the funeral of “Mr Courtenay, the celebrated performer of the bagpipes. He died of dropsy which he is supposed to have contracted by hard drinking and was buried in Pancras church-yard. The funeral procession was extremely numerous and extended from the Hampshire Hog, in Broad Street St Giles, a considerable way into Tottenham-court Road. The number of those in mourning could not be less than 30 or 40 couples, who were preceded by two Irish pipers one of whom played on the union pipes used formerly  with such wonderful effect by the deceased.. The body was waked at the Hampshire Hog….Courtenay was a wet soul, and everything about the body to its interment, was entirely correspondent. During the continuance of the wake the greatest profusion of liquors was distributed. At the church-yard the same liberality in the distribution of liquors to everyone who chose to drink was observed, and the company happily departed without fighting”

The description “union pipes” was an anglicised version of the word Uilleann, from the Irish word uille, meaning ‘elbow’, emphasizing the use of the elbow when these pipes were being played. I just love the idea of “waking” the  dead – and of the deceased being a ‘wet soul’.

The Racquet Grounds at Fleet Prison

January 1794 saw the early demise of the 26 year old Charles Lewis Esq at his house at Park Lane Knightsbridge “a gentleman well known, and what is more rare, well respected at Newmarket and other such fashionable places.The eventful history of Mr Lewis’ life to a common observer has much the air of a tale of other times. He was the only son of Mr Lewis, a tradesman in London, who from encumbered circumstances was in the Fleet Prison, attended by his Wife, when his son was born, and where he continued some years.” Curiously, the debtors prison had a racquet court, which perhaps explains the paragraph in the obituary which states that the late Mr Lewis had “an unalterable regard for Tom Clark, his playmate and a fellow sufferer with himself, but not quite so happy, being left an orphan at a very early stage of his life, and reared only by the bounty of the prisoners. Clarke was a lad of parts…. and by making the balls and stringing racquets … has since supported his wife and family.”

“While Mr Lewis’ father was in the Fleet prison his wife lived housekeeper with a gentleman of fortune, who left him (Mr Lewis), in groundrents in and about Piccadilly, a fortune of 500 pounds a year.”
Mr Lewis appears to have been engaged to be married, to an heiress called Miss Edwards ”who had also a considerable fortune in her own power, and was said to be a relation of the gentleman who was his benefactor. Miss Edwards was of a consumptive habit, and though very ill, the day of their union was fixed, when from weakness a slight delirium seized her. Whether from accident or otherwise we know not, she fell from a two-pair of stairs window, and lived only a few days, leaving all her fortune to Mr Lewis.”
“His friend Tom Clark is sole executor to all his fortune, which is considerable, as well as the debts of honour due to him on the turf, Tennis Court etc which are of a considerable amount, and some of them from gentlemen of the first rank.
Mr Clarke, we are informed, has sold his interest as maker of tennis balls and stringer of racquets for the court in James Street to a pupil of his, Mr John Cater, for 75 pounds. Mr Cater is a genius of some note, and of a very respectable family in the west of England, in which he is said to be the heir to a fortune  of 100 pounds a year.”
I find this a fascinating insight into a world where chance tossed some people down and propelled others upwards: to go from the debtors prison to a world of considerable fortune, mixing with the great and the good, gambling at the Races, playing tennis for money, and so on. It leaves unsaid whether Mr Lewis proposed marriage to Miss Edwards because of her fortune, and where he was standing when she decided to take flight from a second storey window! There is also no mention of the illness from which he himself died. But what is clear is that the real winner was good old Tom Clark – an orphan raised in the Fleet who made good through hard work and enterprise and who went on to inherit Mr Lewis’ entire fortune.
Not so fortunate was  the fate which befell John Edwards, labourer “at Swerford, under all the agonies of that dreadful malady hydrophobia” (i.e. rabies). Apparently he had been bitten by a mad dog “about three quarters of a year ago, but did not apply to the surgeon until the fifth day after the accident, when the part affected was cauterized and such medicines were administered as are deemed to be most efficacious….Neither the  poor man nor his wife in the least suspecting the cause of his complaint, the convulsions increased to a violent degree and further medical assistance was called in, but all to no purpose. He was perfectly sensible during the whole of his illness, knew everyone who spoke to him and took an affectionate leave of his wife. He shewed the greatest abhorrence to all liquids till some hours previous to his dissolution, when he was so desirous of drinking that he could not be satisfied.”
 My ancestor had this useful remedy for rabies, writing in his notebook: “The following receipt for the Bite of a Mad Dog was taken out of Calthorp Church in Lincolnshire; the whole Town being bitten by a Mad Dog, all that took this Medicine did well, & the Rest died Mad. And it has since been found effectual in every instance, not only in human-kind but to Dogs, cattle, and other animals.” Basically he recommended a concoction of rue, garlic and treacle along with some scrapings of pewter boiled over a slow fire in two quarts of strong ale. A suitable dose was nine spoonfuls of the gollop “to be administered at seven in the morning to a Man or Woman…six to a dog”
And if that did not work immediately, then “rub some of the Ingredients from which the liquor was strained to the bitten Place.”  Simples!

Interest rates through the ages

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May 022012
 

Given that interest rates are in the news again, I thought it might be helpful to see what Richard Hall had to say about the changes in interest rates in the period from the reign if Henry VIII through to George III:

I am sorry that I cannot get the diary extract any clearer (the sermon on the other side of the paper keeps coming through!) but basically what Richard recorded is that on 31st January 1545 the Legal Rate of Interest was fixed at 10%, that this was repealed by Edward VI four years later, and then re-introduced by Queen Elizabeth on June 15th, 1571. It was reduced to 8% by James Ist. Charles II reduced it still further to 6% in 1660 (right at the start of the Restoration of the monarchy) and Queen Anne reduced it yet again on September 29th 1714 ‘to its present standard of 5 per cent’

Both Richard Hall and his brother in law William Snooke lent money to friends and colleagues, as well as to members of the aristocracy, at a rate of four and a half per cent. Hence at the date of his death Richard’s estate included a debt of one thousand pounds due to him from Lady Skipworth. Loans of up to a hundred pounds were dealt with by a simple I.O.U (i.e. a promissory note); from £100 to £1000 was covered by a bond i.e. under seal; and anything above that was protected by a mortgage.

 

A visit to the waxworks, America’s first sculptor and a spy….

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Mar 122012
 

wax works visitA visit to Mrs Wright’s Waxworks in Pall Mall.

Mrs Wright was an interesting character, and one who played a part in the American War of Independence. She was born into a particularly strict Quaker sect as Patience Lovell, in around 1725, probably on Long Island, New York. She was the fifth of nine daughters born to a farming family, and as a child she and her sisters apparently made model figurines out of clay and dough, which they then coloured and dressed in clothing.

In her twenties she ran away to Philadelphia and married Joseph Wright in 1748. She said of her husband that he had “nothing but age and money to recommend himself to her” but she bore him five children, one of them born after Joseph died. She then discovered that Joseph had left her (and the fifth child of whom he had no knowledge) virtually nothing in his will. She turned to her sister Rachel Lovell Wells for assistance. This sister had continued her childhood hobby of modelling and showed Patricia how to make life-sized sculptures in wax. These they exhibited in a travelling show, earning commissions to sculpt likenesses along the way. Eventually Patricia had her own permanent exhibition in New York, but a fire in 1771 destroyed most of the exhibits. With the help of her sister she re-stocked and opened in Boston, where she met Jane Mecom, who was the sister of Benjamin Franklin. Jane gave Patricia a letter of introduction to her brother, and Patricia came to England intending to use the connection as an entree into London society so that she could meet and sculpt prominent figures of the Age.

Portrait courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

London society flocked to have their likenesses made, including the King and Queen whom she addressed as ‘George’ and ‘Charlotte’ in true egalitarian fashion appropriate to a colonial! Well, she did until the King  withdrew his support for her when she became too strident in her support for the Americans in the War of Independence. But by then she was famous and crowds clamoured to see her models, often full size, because of their uncanny likeness and life-like qualities. Apparently her party piece was to install one of her models in a reception room and then wait for people to realize that they were talking to a dummy!  Walpole welcomed her into his circle of friends, calling her ‘the artistress’

By all accounts she was no great oil painting, with sallow complexion and masculine features, but she soon became famous for her quick wit and coarse language. Not everyone liked her – the outspoken Abigail Adams, who later became the First Lady when her husband John became the second President of the United States (and a woman well known for a choice ‘bon mot’) succinctly  called her “the Queen of sluts.”

A London newspaper of the day reported that “the ingenious Mrs. Wright, whose Skill in taking Likeness, expressing the Passions, and many curious Devices in Wax Work, has deservedly recommended her to public Notice.” Another described her as ‘Promethean’ and another as ‘the American Sybil’ because of her almost magical ability in seeming to catch the soul of the sitter. She made models of royalty, the nobility, scientists and politicians – and on her own admission would secrete plans and overheard gossip about British plans for America and its preparations for war, and put them inside the wax models before shipping them Stateside to her sister.

In 1780 her daughter Phoebe married the English painter John Hoppner, and in the same year her son Joseph Wright (not to be confused with his namesake who chose to be known by the epithet  ‘Joseph Wright of Derby’) had his first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy. It showed his mother, apparently making a wax effigy of the head of Charles 1st immediately prior to his execution, while casting a meaningful glance at portraits of King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte in the background. That didn’t go down too well, and Mrs Wright hurried off to Paris to escape the fuss engendered by the portrait, taking her son in tow. Both made likenesses of Benjamin Franklin and after the war was over Joseph headed back to America to paint the portraits of the new leaders. His mother longed to follow but first of all returned to London in 1782. To her dismay she was no longer in demand, and people dismissed her as mad or bad, or possibly both. She made enquiries to see if her help as an informant i.e. in passing on British plans might be rewarded with a gift of a small piece of land back in her homeland. She also wrote to George Washington and gained his approval for the idea of her making a model of him. But alas for poor Patience it was not to be: she had a bad fall after visiting the American Embassy, and died in London on February 25th 1786.

Very few of her wax models survived her, but there is one of William Pitt the Elder, full-sized, still on display in Westminster Abbey, and this likeness of Admiral Howe is attributed to her and was made in about 1770. It is shown courtesy of The Newark Museum.

 Admiral Richard Howe, 1726 – 1799

We may never know the truth about her espionage activities, but she was certainly well-connected as a result of her link to Benjamin Franklin: who is to say what indiscretions passed the lips of politicians and military men as they sat before her, while she moulded and scraped the warm wax which she kept covered by her apron?           

 

The wall plaque in Patience Wright’s home town of Bordentown, New Jersey

 

 

 

NB this post first appeared as an article written by me for London Historians in December. I do recommend you look at their site at http://www.londonhistorians.org/