Let us note the whiteness of the shirts and ruffles: a merchant will change his shirt three times a day; it is a custom of the City thus to present snow-white linen. The clerks, we see, wear wigs like their masters, but they are smaller. The varieties of wigs are endless. Those that decorate the heads of the clerks are not the full-bottomed wig, to assume which would be presumptuous in one in service. Most of the mechanics wear their hair tied behind; the rustics, sailors, stevedores, watermen, and river-side men generally wear it long, loose, and unkempt. There is a great trade in second-hand wigs. In Rosemary Lane there is a wig lottery. You pay sixpence, and you dip in a cask for an old wig. It may turn out quite a presentable thing, and it may be worthless. Here is a company of sailors rolling along armed with clubs. They are bound to Ratcliffe, where, this evening, when the men are all drinking in the taverns, there will be a press. Their hats are three-cornered, they wear blue jackets, blue shirts, and blue petticoats. Their hair hangs about their ears. Beside them marches the lieutenant in the new uniform of blue, faced with white.
Let us consider the private life of the people day by day. For this purpose we must not go to the essayists or the dramas. The novels of the time afford some help; books corresponding to our directories, almanacs, old account-books, are the real guides to a reconstruction of life as it was about the year 1750. From such books as these the following notes are derived.
The most expensive parts of the town were the streets round St. Paul's Church-yard, Cheapside, and the Royal Exchange. Charing Cross, Covent Garden, and St. James's lie outside our limits. Here the rent of a moderate house was from a hundred to a hundred and fifty guineas a year. In less central places the rents were not more than half as much. There were six or seven fire insurance offices. The premium for insurance on houses and goods not called hazardous was generally two shillings per cent. on any sum under £1000, half a crown on all sums between £1000 and £2000, and three and sixpence on all sums over £3000, so that a man insuring his house and furniture for £2500 would pay an annual premium of £4 7s. 6d.
The taxes of a house amounted to about half the rent. There was the land-tax of four shillings in the pound; the house-tax of sixpence to a shilling in the pound; the poor-rate, varying from one shilling to six shillings in the pound; the window-tax, which made you pay first three shillings for your house, and then, with certain exceptions, twopence extra for every window, so that a house of fourteen windows paid four and sixpence. In the year 1784 this tax was increased in order to take the duty off tea. The church-wardens' rate for repairing the church; the paving-rate, of one and sixpence in the pound; the watch; the Easter offerings, which had become optional; the water-rate, varying from twenty-four shillings to thirty shillings a year.
The common practice of bakers and milkmen was to keep a tally on the door-post with chalk. One advantage of this method was that a mark might be added when the maid was not looking. The price of meat was about a third of the present prices; beef being fourpence a pound, mutton fourpence halfpenny, and veal sixpence. Chicken were commonly sold at two and sixpence the pair; eggs were sometimes three and sometimes eight for fourpence, according to the time of year. Coals seem to have cost about forty shillings a ton; but this is uncertain. Candles were eight and fourpence a dozen for "dips," and nine and fourpence a dozen for "moulds;" wax-candles were two and tenpence a pound. For out-door lamps train-oil was used, and for in-doors spermaceti-oil. For the daily dressing of the hair, hair-dressers were engaged at seven shillings to a guinea a month. Servants were hired at register offices, but they were often of very bad character, with forged papers. The wages given were: to women as cooks, £12 a year; lady's-maids, £12 to £20; house-maids from £7 to £9; footmen, £14 and a livery. Servants found their own tea and sugar, if they wanted any. Board wages were ten and sixpence a week to an upper servant; seven shillings to an under servant. Every householder was liable to serve as church-warden, overseer for the poor, constable – but he could serve by deputy – and juryman. Peers, clergymen, lawyers, members of Parliament, physicians, and surgeons were exempted.
The principle of life assurance was already well established, but not yet in general use. There seem to have been no more than four companies for life assurance. The Post-office rates varied with the distance. A letter from London to any place not exceeding one stage cost twopence; under two stages, threepence; under eight miles, fourpence; under 150 miles, fivepence; above 150 miles, to any place in England, sixpence; to Scotland, sevenpence; to Ireland, sixpence; to America and the West Indies, a shilling; to any part of Europe, a shilling to eighteenpence. There was also a penny post, first set up in London by a private person. This had five principal offices. Letters or packets not exceeding four ounces in weight were carried about the City for one penny, and delivered in the suburbs for a penny more. There were no bank-notes of less than £20 before the year 1759; but when the smaller notes were issued, and came into general use, people very soon found out the plan of cutting them in two for safety in transmission by post.
Mail-coaches started every night at eight o'clock with a guard. They were timed for seven miles an hour, and the fare for passengers was fourpence a mile. A passenger to Bristol, for example, who now pays twenty shillings first-class fare and does the journey in two hours and a half, then paid thirty-three and fourpence, and took fourteen hours and a quarter. A great many of the mails started from the Swan with Two Necks, a great hostelry and receiving-place in Lad Lane. The place is now swept away with Lad Lane itself. It stood in the part of Gresham Street which runs between Wood Street and Milk Street.
The stage-coaches from different parts of London were innumerable, as were also the stage-wagons and the hoys. The coaches charged the passengers threepence a mile. Hackney-coaches ran for shilling and eighteenpenny fares. There were hackney-chairs. In the City there were regular porters for carrying parcels and letters.
There were nine morning papers, of which the Morning Post still survives. They were all published at threepence. There were eight evening papers, which came out three times a week. And there were three or four weekly papers, intended chiefly for the country.
The stamps which had to be bought with anything were a grievous burden. A pair of gloves worth tenpence – stamp of one penny; worth one and fourpence – stamp of twopence; above one and fourpence – stamp of fourpence. Penalty for selling without a stamp, £5. Hats were taxed in like manner. Inventories and catalogues were stamped; an apprentice's indentures were stamped; every newspaper paid a stamp of three halfpence. In the year 1753 there were seven millions and a half of stamps issued to the journals.
We have seen what it cost a respectable householder to pay his way in the time of Charles the Second. The following shows the cost of living a hundred years later. The house is supposed to consist of husband and wife, four children, and two maids:
Food, coals, candles, small beer (of which 12 gallons are allowed – that is, 48 quarts, or an average of one quart a day per head), soap, starch, and all kinds of odds and ends are reckoned at £3 12s. 5d. a week, or £189 18s. 8d. a year; clothes, including hair-dressing, £64; pocket expenses, £15 12s.; occasional illness, £11; schooling, £8; wages, £14 10s.; rent and taxes, £66; entertainments, wine, etc., £30 19s.: making a total of £400 a year.
If we take the same family with the same scale of living at the present day, we shall arrive at the difference in the cost of things:
A comparison of the figures shows a very considerable raising of the standard as regards comfort and even necessaries. It is true that the modern figures have been taken from the accounts of a family which spends every year from £1200 to £1400.
It may be remarked in these figures that schooling is extremely cheap, viz., £8 per four children, or ten shillings a quarter for each child. Therefore for a school-master to get an income of £250 a year, out of which he would have to maintain assistants, he must have 125 scholars. The "pocket expenses" include letters, and all for six shillings a week, which is indeed moderate. Entertainments, wine, etc., are all lumped together, showing that wine must be considered a very rare indulgence, and that small beer is the daily beverage. Tea is set down at two shillings a week. In the year 1728 tea was thirteen shillings a pound, but by 1760 it had gone down to about six shillings a pound, so that a third of a pound was allowed every week. This shows a careful measurement of the spoonful. Of course there was not as yet any tea allowed to the servants. Coals are estimated at £14 a year – two fires in winter, one in summer. Repairs to furniture, table-linen, sheets, etc., are set down at two shillings a week, or five guineas a year. Happy the household which can now manage this item at six times that amount.
It might be thought that by the middle of the last century the beverage of tea was universally taken in this country. This was by no means the case. The quantity of tea imported about this time amounted to no more than three-quarters of a pound per annum for every person in the three kingdoms, whereas it is now no less than thirty-five pounds for every head. It was, and had been for fifty years, a fashionable drink, and it had now become greatly in use – or, at all events, greatly desired – by women of all kinds. The men drank little of it; men in the country and working-men not at all. Its use was not so far general as to stop the discussion which still continued as to its virtues. In the year 1749 it was ten shillings a pound. In 1758 a pamphlet was written by an anonymous writer on the good and bad effects of drinking tea. We learn from this that the author is alarmed at the spreading of the custom of tea-drinking, especially by "Persons of an inferior rank and mean Abilities." "It may not," he says, "be altogether above the reach of the better Sort of Tradesmen's Wives and Country Dames. But nowadays Persons of the Lowest Class vainly imitate their Betters by striving to be in the fashion, and prevalent Custom hath introduced it into every Cottage, and every Gammer must have her tea twice a day." The latter statement is rank exaggeration, as the imports show.
Especially the author finds fault with afternoon tea. "It is very hurtful," he says, "to those who work hard and live low; when taken in company with gossips a dram too often follows; then comes scandal, with falsehoods, perversions, and backbitings: it is an expense which very few can afford; it is a waste of time which ought to be spent in spinning, knitting, making clothes for the children. Oh, I here with confusion stop, and know not how sufficiently to bewail my grief to you, delightful fair! who, by prevalent custom, are led into one of the worst of habits, rendering you lost to yourselves, and unfit for the comforts you were first designed. Be careful; be wise; refuse the bait; fly from a temptation productive of so many ills. You charming guiltless young ones, who innocently at home partake of this genteel regale, avoid the public meetings of low crafty gossips, who will use persuasions for you to drink tea with them and some others of their own stamp."
Another bad consequence of afternoon tea is that it induces the little tradesmen's wives, after selling something, to offer their customer tea, and after that a dram, and so vanish all the profits.
But the writer objects altogether to tea. He cannot find that it possesses any merits. The hot-water, the cream, and the sugar, he says, are responsible for all the good effects of tea-drinking. The tea itself is responsible for all the bad effects. He enumerates the opinions advanced by physicians. The learned Dr. Pauli, physician to the King of Denmark, shows that the virtues ascribed to it are local, and do not cross the seas into Europe. Men over forty, he thinks, should never use it, because it is a desiccative; the herb betony should be taken by them, because it has all the virtues and none of the vices of tea. Schroder and Quincey believed it good for every complaint; the learned Pechlin held that it is good for scorbutic cases, but thought that veronica and Paul's betony are just as good. Dr. Hunt enumerates many diseases for which its occasional use is good. Finally, the writer of the pamphlet concludes that tea will rapidly become cheaper; that it will then go out of fashion; and that it will be replaced by our own sage, which, he says, makes a much more wholesome drink, with hot-water, cream, and sugar.
But a far greater person than this anonymous writer set his face and the whole force of his authority and example against the drinking of tea. This was no other than John Wesley, who, in the year 1748, issued a "Letter to a Friend, concerning Tea." The following extracts give the practical part of the letter, omitting the very strange argument against tea-drinking based upon Scripture:
Twenty-nine years ago, when I had spent a few months at Oxford, having, as I apprehended, an exceeding good Constitution, and being otherwise in Health, I was a little surprised at some Symptoms of a Paralytick Disorder. I could not imagine what should occasion that shaking of my Hand; till I observed it was always worst after Breakfast, and that if I intermitted drinking Tea for two or three Days, it did not shake at all. Upon Inquiry, I found Tea had the same effect upon others also of my Acquaintance; and therefore saw, that this was one of its natural Effects (as several Physicians have often remarked), especially when it is largely and frequently drank; and most of all on Persons of weak Nerves. Upon this I lessened the Quantity, drank it weaker, and added more Milk and Sugar. But still, for above six and twenty Years, I was more or less subject to the same Disorder.
July was two Years, I began to observe, that abundance of the People in London, with whom I conversed, laboured under the same, and many other Paralytick Disorders, and that in a much higher Degree; insomuch that some of their Nerves were quite unstrung; their bodily Strength was quite decay'd, and they could not go through their daily Labour. I inquired, 'Are you not an hard Drinker?' And was answered by one and another, 'No, indeed, Sir, not I! I drink scarce any Thing but a little Tea, Morning and Night.' I immediately remembered my own Case; and after weighing the matter thoroughly, easily gathered from many concurring Circumstances, that it was the same Case with them.
I considered, 'What an Advantage would it be, to these poor enfeebled People, if they would leave off what so manifestly impairs their Health, and thereby hurts their Business also? – Is there Nothing equally cheap which they could use? Yes, surely: And cheaper too. If they used English Herbs in its stead (which would cost either Nothing, or what is next to Nothing), with the same Bread, Butter, and Milk, they would save just the Price of the Tea. And hereby they might not only lessen their Pain, but in some Degree their Poverty too…'
Immediately it struck into my Mind, 'But Example must go before Precept. Therefore I must not plead an Exemption for myself, from a daily Practice of twenty-seven Years. I must begin.' I did so. I left it off myself in August, 1746. And I have now had sufficient Time to try the Effects, which have fully answered my Expectation: My Paralytick Complaints are all gone: My Hand is as steady as it was at Fifteen: Although I must expect that, or other Weaknesses, soon: as I decline into the Vale of Years. And so considerable a Difference do I find in my Expence, that I can make it appear, from the Accounts now in being, in only those four Families at London, Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle, I save upwards of fifty Pounds a Year.
The first to whom I explained these Things at large, and whom I advised to set the same Example to their Brethren, were, a few of those, who rejoice to assist my Brother and me, as our Sons in the Gospel. A Week after I proposed it to about forty of those, whom I believed to be strong in Faith: And to the next Morning to about sixty more, intreating them all, to speak their Minds freely. They did so: and in the End, saw the Good which might insue; yielded to the Force of Scripture and Reason: And resolved all (but two or three) by the Grace of God, to make the Trial without Delay.
If you are sincere in this Plea; if you do not talk of your Health, while the real Objection is your Inclination, make a fair Trial thus, 1. Take half a Pint of Milk every Morning, with a little Bread, not boiled, but warmed only; (a Man in tolerable Health might double the Quantity.) 2. If this is too heavy, add as much Water, and boil it together with a Spoonful of Oatmeal. 3. If this agrees not, try half a Pint, or a little more, of Water-gruel, neither thick nor thin; not sweetened (for that may be apt to make you sick) but with a very little Butter, Salt, and Bread. 4. If this disagrees, try Sage, green Balm, Mint, or Pennyroyal Tea, infusing only so much of the Herb as just to change the Colour of the Water. 5. Try two or three of these mixed, in various Proportions. 6. Try ten or twelve other English Herbs. 7. Try Foltron, a Mixture of Herbs to be had at many Grocers, far healthier as well as cheaper than Tea. 8. Try Coco. If after having tried each of these, for a Week or ten Days, you find none of them well agree with your Constitution, then use (weak Green) Tea again: But at the same Time know, That your having used it so long has brought you near the Chambers of Death.
The still-room was of the greatest importance to the housewife. She no longer distilled strong waters for cordials, but she made her preserves and her pickles. She made rose-water, and lavender-water, and hysterical-water; Plague-water, angelica-water, and all kinds of wonderful waters, whose names and virtues are now quite forgotten. The horror of the Plague, which survived to a hundred years ago, is shown by the extraordinary complications of the Plague-mixture. We are to take a pound each of twenty roots, sixteen flowers, nineteen seeds; we are to take also an ounce each of nutmeg, cloves, and mace; we are to shred the flowers, bruise the berries, and pound the roots and spices; to these we must add a peck of green walnuts; after mixing all together they must be steeped in wine lees; after a week they must be distilled.
She also made cherry-brandy, currant-gin, damson-brandy, and certain medicinal wines or confections, of which the following is a specimen. It is called Gascony wine. It comforts the vital parts, cures dropsy, and keeps the old alive. Yet we have neglected so sovereign a medicine!
"Take ginger, galingale, cinnamon, nutmeg, grains of paradise, cloves bruised, fennel seed, caraway seeds, origanum, one ounce each. Next, take sage, wild marjorum, pennyroyal, mint, red roses, thyme, pellitory, rosemary, wild thyme, camomile, lavender, one handful of each. Beat the spices small, bruise the herbs, put all into a limbeck with wine for twelve hours; then distil."
The great thing was to have as many ingredients as possible. Thus the Plague-water took fifty-nine ingredients; the famous water called "Mithridate" took forty-six; and the Venice treacle, sixty-two. When they were once made, they were warranted to "rectify and maintain the body, clarify the blood, surfle the cheek, perfume the skin, tinct the hair, and lengthen the appetite."
The London citizen of the lower class never called in a physician unless he was in immediate danger; the herbalist physicked him, and the wise woman. Very often his own wife was an abyss of learning as to herbs and their properties; the bone-setter belonged to a distinct branch of the medical profession. There were apothecaries who prescribed as well as sold drugs. For instance, early in the century, one Dalmahoy kept a shop on Ludgate Hill, where he sold, among other things, drugs, potions, electuaries, powders, sweetmeats, washes for the complexion, scented hair-oil pomades, dentifrices, love charms, Italian masks to sleep in, spermaceti salt, and scammony squills. And the doctor who wished to attract the confidence of citizens found a little stage management useful. He wore black, of course, with a huge wig; he carried a gold-headed cane, with a pomander box on the top; he kept his hands always in a muff, so that they might be soft, warm to the touch, and delicate; he hung his consulting-room with looking-glasses, and he littered it with vials; he had on the mantel-shelf a skull, and hanging to the wall the skeleton of a monkey; on his table stood a folio in Greek; and he preserved a Castilian gravity of countenance. Besides the physician, the apothecary, the herbalist, and the wise woman, there was the barber-surgeon. His pole was twined with colors three – white, red, and blue. But I know not how long into the century the alliance of surgeon and barber continued.
One must not overlook the quack, who plays such a conspicuous part in the last century. There was certainly one quack – and sometimes half a dozen – at every fair. Some of them went about with a simple caravan, pulling teeth and selling potions and pills and powders warranted to cure every disorder. Some of them, more ambitious, drove round the country in coaches. They dressed in great wigs and black velvet; they had a stage in front of their consulting-rooms, on which a mountebank tumbled, a girl danced on the tight-rope, and a band of music played. And the people believed in them, just as they believe nowadays in the fellow who advertises his pills or his powders, certain to cure everybody. It is only changing the coach, the caravan, and the stage for the advertisement columns, with no more expense for travelling, horses, mountebank, or music. It is just the same whether we sell "angelic snuff" that will cure most things, or "royal snuff" that will cure the rest, or electuaries, or distilled and medicated water that will even make an old wig new.
One who has looked at Mrs. Glasse's wonderful book on cookery, and reflects upon the variety and wealth of dishes which then graced the board, would not lightly approach the subject of food. Yet there are a few plats, favorites with the people, which may be noticed. Sage tea, for instance, with bread-and-butter, is no longer taken for breakfast; and some of the following dishes have disappeared: Hasty pudding, made of flour and water boiled together, to which dabs of butter and spoonfuls of brown sugar were added when it was poured out of the pot – no one now ever sees sugar quite so brown as that which the West Indies used to send over a hundred and fifty years ago. Onion pottage has assumed the more complex form of soup. A bean tansy was once universally beloved; there were two forms of it; in the first, after bruising your beans, you put them in a dish with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, the yolks of six eggs, a quarter of a pound of butter, and some slices of bacon. This you baked. The other form was when you mixed beans, biscuits, sugar, sack, cream, and baked all in a dish with garnish of candied orange-peel. There were drinks in endless variety, such as purl, Old Pharaoh, knock-down, humtie-dumtie, stipple shouldrée – names in this degenerate age, and nothing more. We can hardly understand, either, the various possets, punch in its hundred and fifty branches, raw shrub – which still stands in old-fashioned bars – and the various cups, porter cup, cider cup, port-wine cup, egg flip, rum-booze, and the rest.
The drinking of the last century went far beyond anything ever recorded; all classes alike drank; they began to drink hard somewhere about the year 1730, and they kept it up for a hundred years with great spirit and admirable results, which we, their grandchildren, are now illustrating. The clergy, grave and sober merchants, lawyers, judges, the most responsible people, drank freely; men about town, officers, Templars, tradesmen drank more than freely; the lowest classes spent all their money in drink, especially in gin, upon which they could get drunk for twopence. In the year 1736 there were 7044 gin-shops in London – one house in six – and 3200 ale-houses where gin was secretly sold. The people all went mad after gin. The dinner-hour was at two for the better sort. Mrs. Glasse plainly shows that the living was extremely good, and that expense among people in easy circumstances was not much regarded where the table was concerned. Certain dishes, as in Tudor days, belonged to certain days, as veal and a gammon of bacon and a tansy pudding on Easter Day, or a roast goose at Michaelmas; red herrings and salt-fish, with leeks, parsnips, and pease in Lent; at Martinmas, salt-beef; at Midsummer, roast beef with butter and beans; at All Saints, pork and souse, "spats and spurling." They were great at puddings – one may find many an excellent receipt, long since forgotten, in Mrs. Glasse. For dessert they had sweetmeats, fruits, liqueurs, such as ros solis, rich wines, such as Lisbon and Madeira, or, where there were men in company, port. In the morning they drank tea and chocolate. It is pretty clear that the real business of the day was done before dinner. That, in fact, was the custom up to twenty years ago in certain Yorkshire towns, where everybody dined at two o'clock. The clerks were practically left to take care of the offices in the afternoon, and the masters sat over their wine. It must, one reflects, be a large business indeed where the masters cannot get through their share by two o'clock.
In the evening every man had his club or coffee-house. We know that Dr. Johnson was unhappy unless he had a club for the evening. There were clubs for every class: they met at taverns, they gradually superseded the coffee-houses for evening purposes. The City coffee-houses, however, became places where a great deal of business was carried on. Thus, at the Baltic was a subscription-room for merchants and brokers engaged in the Russia trade; the Chapter, of Paternoster Row, was the resort of booksellers; the Jamaica was a house of West Indian trade; Garraway's, Robins's, Jonathan's, the Jerusalem, Lloyd's, were all City coffee-houses turned into rendezvous for merchants. The clubs of the last century deserve a separate paper for themselves. The London citizen went to his club every evening. He there solemnly discussed the news of the day, smoked his pipe of tobacco, drank his punch, and went home by ten o'clock. The club was the social life of the City. For the ladies there was their own social life. Women lived much more with other women; they had their visits and society among each other in the daytime. While the men worked at their shops and offices, the women gadded about; in the evening they sat at home while the men went out. In one family of my acquaintance there is a tradition belonging to the end of the last century, that when the then head of the house came home at ten the girls all hurried off to bed, the reason being that the good man's temper at the late hour, what with the fatigues of the day and the punch of the evening, was by no means uncertain.
A manuscript diary of a middle-class family belonging to the time of George the First shows anything but a stay-at-home life. The ladies were always going about. But they stayed at home in the evenings. There was a very good reason why the women should stay at home. The streets were infested with prowling thieves and with dangerous bullies: no woman could go out after dark in the City without an armed escort of her father's apprentices or his men-servants. In 1744 the Lord Mayor complains that "confederacies of evil-disposed persons, armed with bludgeons, pistols, and cutlasses, infest lanes and private passages," and issue forth to rob and wound peaceful people. Further, that these gangs have defeated, wounded, and killed the officers of justice sent against them. As yet they had not arrived at the simple expedient of strengthening the police.
As for the dangers of venturing out after dark, they are summed up by Jonson:
"Prepare for death if here at night you roam,
And sign your will before you step from home.
Some fiery fop, with new commission vain,
Who sleeps in brambles till he kills his man —
Some frolic drunkard reeling from a feast,
Provokes a broil and stabs you for a jest.
Yet even these heroes mischievously gay,
Lords of the street and terrors of the way,
Flushed as they are with folly, youth, and wine,
Their prudent insults to the poor confine:
Afar they mark the flambeau's bright approach,
And shun the shining train and golden coach."
The occupations of a young lady – not a lady of the highest fashion – of this time are given by a contemporary writer. He says that she makes tippets, works handkerchiefs in catgut, collects shells, makes grottoes, copies music, paints, cuts out figures and landscapes, and makes screens. She dances a minuet or cotillion, and she can play ombre, lansquenet, quadrille, and Pope Joan. These are frivolous accomplishments, but the writer says nothing of the morning's work – the distilling of creams, the confecting of cakes and puddings and sauces, the needle-work, and all the useful things. When these were done, why should not the poor girl show her accomplishments and taste in the cutting out of landscapes with a pair of scissors?
They certainly did not always stay at home. In the summer they sometimes went to Vauxhall, where the girls enjoyed the sight of the wicked world as much as they liked, the singing and the supper and the punch that followed.