From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000166941319210&rtmo=wAnf5ijb&atmo=99999999&pg= /et/00/7/1/tlblood.html }}>Begin ISSUE 1863 Saturday 1 July 2000 Violence in our blood The loutish, drunken behaviour of English football hooligans is nothing new. As Liza Picard shows in these extracts from her new book on 18th-century London, life was far more brutal 200 years ago Drunkenness THE poor lived on bad bread and gin. In 1730 alone, 6,658,788 gallons of "official" gin were drunk, and goodness knows how much from illegal stills. At the start of the craze for this new drink, gin was thought by the nobility and gentry to be a good thing, since it provided an outlet for surplus grain and kept the price of their crops up. But gin gradually deteriorated in quality and increased in quantity. In 1736 there were between 6,000 and 7,000 dramshops in London, for a population of 650,000. Hogarth's print, Gin Lane, recorded the sign: "drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence". A long tradition: England fans clash with Belgians at the Euro 2000 championships By 1750 every fourth house in the parish of St Giles sold gin, as did every eighth house in Westminster and every 15th house in the City. The poor were putting away 11,326,070 gallons of the stuff in a year. It was made and sold - illegally - in prisons, workhouses and hospitals. Weavers sold it in Spitalfields, and parish nurses gave it to the pauper children in their care to keep them quiet, which it did, permanently. In 1751, more than 9,000 children died from drinking it. Life expectancy generally was 37 years; in London it was probably in the mid-20s. Riots The populace was extraordinarily quick to create a general riot. Daily newspapers of the time carry accounts in almost every issue of street brawls and public disorder. The Gentleman's Magazine of July 1749 carried a typical account: "Three sailors were robbed of 30 guineas . . . in a brothel in the Strand. They, obtaining no satisfaction, went out and returned with a great number of armed sailors who entirely demolished the goods, cut the feather beds to pieces, strewed the feathers in the streets, tore the wearing apparel, and turned the women naked into the street; then broke all the windows and considerably damaged a neighbouring house. A guard of soldiers was sent for, but came too late ... "[The next night] the sailors renewed their outrages and committed the same acts of violence on two other houses of ill-fame in the Strand, in the presence of multitudes of people, who huzza'd them." Executions Undoubtedly the best amusements available were public hangings. Eight times a year, the carts left the gates of Newgate and bumped their way slowly along Holborn and Oxford Street to Tyburn, just outside the turnpike gate, between yelling, cheering, booing, catcalling crowds. Children were sure to get a good view. "At all ceremonies which attract a crowd, children are seen to meet with tender treatment. All are eager to make room for them and even lift them up . . . that they may have an opportunity of seeing." But such enjoyment could become tiring. So a permanent gallery was built to enable spectators to sit comfortably. Insanity Private madhouses were the ideal way, short of murder, of disposing of unwanted people, especially wives. The approved treatment sounds quite enough to send anyone mad - "constant but partial discharge of the fluids from the neck and head by perpetual blisters, all sorts of tolerable irritation" and, if none of these worked, "the concussive force of the cold bath". The cases that hit the headlines amounted to imprisonment and became so scandalous that by 1763 legislation to control them was demanded. At a House of Commons inquiry at which two eminent specialists in mental disease gave evidence, one said that a husband had "frankly considered the [mad]house as a kind of bridewell or house of correction" to which he could consign his wife whenever she was troublesome. Nothing seems to have improved after the inquiry. In 1769 "a gentleman near Whitehall, by the assistance of four ruffians, forced his lady into a Hackney coach and ordered the coachman to drive her to a private madhouse and there to be confined". In 1772 a woman was "decoyed to a madhouse in Bethnal Green", and shut into "a little apartment the stench of which was intolerable. She was chained and handcuffed." Law enforcement The lowest ranks of the law-keeping establishment were the Watch, often old and decrepit, armed only with a staff, paid a pittance to patrol far more than they could manage, and fond of meeting their fellow-watchmen in a convenient pub to spend the night tippling. Above them were the parish constables, the lowest rank of voluntary parish officials, who were responsible for apprehending malefactors. If they caught one, they took him to one of the round-houses scattered throughout the district, until he could be charged before a magistrate. These buildings were about the size of a garden summer house. On one hideous occasion in 1742, "a parcel of drunken constables took it into their heads to put the laws in execution against disorderly persons, and so took up every woman they met, till they had collected five or six-and-twenty, all of whom they thrust into St Martin's round-house, where they kept them all night, with doors and windows closed. The poor creatures, who could not stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for water. So well did they keep them there, that in the morning four were found stifled to death, two died soon after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way." The next tier of law-enforcers were the Justices of the Peace. In London they were seen as "the scum of the earth; some could hardly write their names". They were so adept at devising occasions for the payment to them of fees for legal procedures that they were known as "trading justices". However, the bailiff was all-powerful. "It has been common for bailiffs when they have arrested a person for debt to drag him to some public house and order liquors for their own accord for which they oblige him to pay," it is recorded. Only when there was no more to be made out of him was the debtor transferred to a debtors' prison, such as the Fleet or the Marshalsea. Trials Trial procedure would startle a modern lawyer. No wonder that many refused to prosecute, since the outcome was so uncertain. The accused might approach them before the trial and offer them money not to proceed with the case. Casanova, who had some experience of legal procedure in Europe, was shocked by "the facility with which false witnesses may be procured . . . I have myself seen the word Evidence written in large characters in a window, as much as to say that false witnesses may be procured within." The Gentleman's Magazine constantly reported trials where a high proportion of prisoners were discharged "for want of prosecution". A startling aspect of Old Bailey trials was their speed. In four days, in February 1769, the Old Bailey judges tried 40 prisoners, sentencing three of them to execution, 22 to be transported, five to be burned in the hand, and 10 to be whipped. They must have been quite glad to discharge another 20 for want of prosecution. Punishment Some features of 18th-century court procedure survived from the Middle Ages. Until 1772 peine fort et dur - when the accused were crushed to death - still confronted an accused person who refused to plead: that is, to say whether he was innocent or guilty. The point of so doing was to avoid a verdict of guilty, since that would mean that all his property went to the Crown. If he refused to plead, peine fort et dur meant that he died a painful death, stretched on the ground naked, with weights on his body, fed on stale bread and stagnant water. Since he had not been found guilty, his family received whatever he left subject, no doubt, to the various "fees" extracted by rapacious court and prison officers. It was also quite within the courts' power to sentence a man to be hung in chains. A French tourist in 1765 records seeing no highwaymen on his way to London except "such as were hanging on gibbets at the roadside: there they dangle, dressed from head to foot, and with wigs upon their heads". These gruesome spectacles might last for years. The bodies were usually coated in tar to delay natural dissolution. It is understandable that the inhabitants of Smallbury Green petitioned against the body of a murderer being hung in chains on their village green, the site of his crime, and got it transferred to Hounslow Heath. Pregnancy could save a woman from a death sentence: it was unlawful for the authorities to kill a child in its mother's womb, so if a woman could satisfy a committee of matrons that she was pregnant, and "plead her belly", she could delay her death until the baby was born. There are records of "every gaol having one or two child-getters who qualify the ladies for that expedient". In 1759 there were 20,000 debtors in a bewildering variety of privately run prisons, reckoned in an impassioned article in The Gentleman's Magazine to be three per cent of the population of the United Kingdom. Jailers were not obliged to feed inmates. Criminals were also liable to be sentenced to branding, whipping or transportation. The press-gangs The captain of a press-gang was paid �1 a day, and �1 was shared between his men for each recruit they caught to serve in the Navy. The gang varied from two to 20 men. They were armed with cutlasses and clubs, which they used freely. When a porter "made some resistance they without ceremony knocked out one of his eyes". They were supposed to take only able-bodied men between 18 and 55 who were not freeholders (house-owners), but their view of "able-bodied" was flexible. They could rely on a local surgeon to perform a cursory health check on their catch. Pressed men were "handcuffed like felons and marched through the street . . . then put into a boat rowed by six of the pressgang and put into the hold of the tender, an old frigate lying off the Tower". Once they became sailors, they soon learned self-preservation. In the "hot London press" of 1740, the year when "Rule Britannia . . . Britons never, never, never shall be slaves" was first sung, the riverside slums and the river itself were scoured by the press-gangs. Twenty-four hours after they had gone with their victims, 16,000 sailors emerged from hiding. The press-gangs could be cunning as well as violent. In 1738 two large birds perched on top of St Paul's Cathedral were attracting a crowd of sightseers. Noting this, "the press gangs placed a live turkey on the top of the Monument which, in a short time, drawing together a great number of idle people", netted almost enough onlookers to man the entire Navy. Children Working life began young. Babes-in-arms were good theatrical props for beggars. The parish nurses could hire their charges out at 4d a day for each baby. In any event, a baby in the care of a parish was unlikely to survive for long. St Luke's parish poorhouse received 53 children between 1750 and 1755. By 1755 all of them had died. In 13 parishes, 2,239 children had been born in or admitted to workhouses between those dates, of whom 1,074 had been discharged normally. That left 1,165 children to be accounted for. By 1755 only 168 of them were still alive. "Orphans who are in a vagabond state, or the illegitimate children of the poorest kind of people, are said to be sold . . . for 20 or 30 shillings, being a smaller price than the value of a terrier." Their buyers were chimney sweeps, who sought to get chimneys clean by the labour of their climbing boys. Girls were used too, being admirably puny. Master chimney sweeps took as many as four children at a time to do the dirty work, since none of them lasted very long, soot being carcinogenic. In 1785, it was estimated that there were about 550 climbing children in London. They were sometimes sent up even when the chimney was on fire. Extinguishing burning chimneys was the most profitable part of their master's business. They worked in soot and slept on soot, and had no way of cleaning themselves. There were various career opportunities open to children on the streets. Girls - and no doubt boys too, for there were plenty of homosexual brothels - could always turn to prostitution. Children learned pickpocketing early. There were advantages in training them young. Not only could they go where adults could not but, until they were seven years old, they could not be found guilty of a crime punishable by death, so the risk of their teacher losing the benefit of his training was less. Between the ages of seven and 14, children could be executed only where there was "strong evidence of malice". Everywhere that crowds gathered, to watch an execution or a procession, the pickpockets moved in. The approaches to St James's Park and other places where people came to enjoy a quiet walk were good pitches in the daytime, and by midnight "the public streets began to swarm with whores and pickpockets". Brothels Casanova was impressed by the London sex scene."I visited the bagnios where a rich man can sup, bathe and sleep with a fashionable courtesan, of which there are many in London. It makes a magnificent debauch and only costs six guineas." Brothels proliferated on the north side of the Strand, in the streets behind it, and in and around Covent Garden. A well-organised man-about-town would solve the problem of where to go for his pleasure by consulting a copy of Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies or Man of Pleasure's Kalendar for "an exact description of the most celebrated Ladies of Pleasure who frequent Covent Garden and other parts of this Metropolis. Sold in all the booksellers in London: 2s 6d." There were also "black bawdy-houses" and "molly houses" - homosexual meeting places. The Bridewell jail at Clerkenwell sounds hellish for women. Since the inmates' allowance was only a pennyworth of bread and some water every 24 hours, women prisoners had the choice of dying of hunger or prostituting themselves. The prison staff "consider all the women their seraglio". In two wards known as the bawdy houses, a male prisoner or visitor could have a woman prisoner, willing or unwilling, the whole night, for a shilling tip to the keeper. Things could only get better. Dr Johnson's London by Liza Picard (Weidenfeld & Nicolson �20) is available from our retail partner, Amazon. Click here to order a copy online. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0297842188/telegraph-foot/026-6698961- 0858831 20 June 2000: [International] England hooligans face a lifetime soccer ban 18 June 2000: [International] Thugs mar England's night of triumph End<{{ >>And some forget what all the ruckus was about back in them Colonies, what with their dreams of independence. What's interesting about the article is the recognition of certain elements of genetic disposition of the Britlandic character. One would suppose that the need was obvious for divorcing the Colonies from the Kingdom (unlike today's Queendom). And, IF there hasn't been much progress along the bloodlines, *WHY* do we allow our leaders to persist in their currying favour and courting those from whom we separated? 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