BOOK OF THE WEEK
THE GEORGIANS: THE DEEDS AND MISDEEDS OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN
by Penelope J. Corfield (Yale £25, 488pp)
I’d have fitted proper in as an 18th-century gent. I like the structure — these elegant terraces and crescents, nonetheless to be present in Tub, Dublin and Tunbridge Wells.
Georgian homes, constructed from kiln-fired bricks with roofs of Welsh slate, included sash home windows, fanlights above huge doorways and wrought-iron bannisters. These sturdy dwellings ‘had been higher warmed’ than the draughty wood buildings of earlier eras, factors out Penelope J. Corfield in her magisterial examine. Fireplaces used coal. There was ornamental wallpaper as a substitute of tapestries.
Penelope J. Corfield recounts key moments in 18th-century Britain in a brand new historical past e-book. Pictured: The Dentist, by John Collier (1708–1786)
It was a century of excellent style, with parks, spas, resorts and gardens — the weeping willow got here from China, rhododendrons had been launched in 1763 and wisteria in 1816.
The ‘quintessential mark of civic standing’ was for a city to have assembly-rooms and theatres. Libraries had been constructed. ‘These book-temples had been amongst essentially the most spectacular creations by Georgian architects,’ says Corfield. George III had a group of 65,000 volumes, however then he was mad. I’ve solely 20,000.
The Georgians went in for heroic deeds. Nelson noticed off the forces of Napoleon with 120,000 sailors; the customized of giving them a day by day tot of rum was solely withdrawn in 1970. The Civil Service expanded with the creation of the House and International Workplace, Admiralty and Conflict Workplace. Medical doctors and legal professionals fashioned discovered societies, requiring skilled {qualifications}.
Have been I to be carried from my bow-fronted home in a sedan-chair, I’d go to one of many espresso homes, which ‘turned modish assembly locations’, the place chaps mentioned the contents of periodicals such because the Tatler and Spectator. Lloyd’s Espresso Home (1688) advanced into the insurance coverage enterprise, Lloyd’s of London. It was throughout the Georgian interval that the handshake turned a way of sealing a deal.
The Georgians had been the primary to make precision devices, the clocks and navigation aids, which allowed our navy to roam the planet, buying an empire. Different improvements listed by Corfield embrace the razor-strop, ear-trumpets, oil-filled lamps and fine-ground lenses, bettering spectacles.
Nonetheless, there was a darkish facet. Although individuals washed extra, owing to improved cleaning soap, and wore linen moderately than smelly wool, smallpox and typhus had been rife — no less than till Edward Jenner devised vaccination in 1796.
Additionally, everybody had horrible tooth, owing to low cost cane sugar. They had been drunk on a regular basis due to gin. The staple food plan of bread and cheese was unvaried, stunting progress. Few males had been taller than 5ft 5in.
Georgian forecasters believed the increase in inhabitants would lead to eventual demographic catastrophe. Pictured: The drawing room in St James’s Palace, London in 1809
It was not an excellent interval to be criminally minded; it was nonetheless a capital offence to wreck Westminster Bridge, impersonate a Chelsea Pensioner, steal from a shipwreck or pickpocket items value greater than a shilling (5 pence). Between 1788 and 1868, 162,400 convicts had been transported to Australia.
Homosexuals had been nonetheless being hanged in 1835 and public executions weren’t discontinued till 1868. Husbands had been allowed to ‘chastise’ wives bodily, ‘throughout the restrict of reasonableness’. Youngsters had been put to work in factories or up a chimney on the age of ten. Workhouses had been constructed for the destitute.
The age of consent for boys was 14, and ten for ladies, who might be married at 12. There was plenty of illegitimacy, particularly with masters preying on serving wenches. Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, aged 70, no less than had the decency, in 1825, to marry his dairymaid, if ‘to a lot social ridicule’.
THE GEORGIANS: THE DEEDS AND MISDEEDS OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN by Penelope J. Corfield (Yale £25, 488pp)
There was a tragic hyperlink, nevertheless, between single servant women and infanticide — Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital, opened in 1741, was quickly overwhelmed.
As has change into obligatory in historical past books, the previous must be smacked throughout the wrist for not sharing fashionable enlightened views. These cosy coal fires, as an example, ‘launched a course of of worldwide warming which is now producing whole environmental disaster’.
By 1750 there have been simply 7.4 million individuals in Britain — and 11 million sheep. Enhancements in hygiene and drugs, nevertheless, led to a inhabitants increase which, if left unchecked, or so mentioned Georgian forecasters, may solely lead to ‘impoverishment, illness, famine and eventual demographic catastrophe’. All true, because the Victorians found.
One of many solutions — John Stuart Mill went to jail for saying this — was contraception. Georgian condoms had been ‘constructed from sheep’s intestine and secured in place by a ribbon’. Consider me, anachronistic 18th-century chap I could also be, but when I got here in sporting that type of attire, Girl Lewis would die laughing.