Coronation of King George III, this day 1761. Read all about it!

 

 

Two hundred and fifty years ago today King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte walked in a solemn procession down the aisle of Westminster Abbey, having arrived two hours earlier to get dressed in all their finery. My ancestor thoughtfully bought (and kept) that week's souvenir paper. I particularly like the bit about the King's Herb Woman and her six maids, strewing the royal path with herbs, and earnestly look forward to this part of the coronation being revived when we next get round to crowning a monarch....all for the love (or rather smell) of the common people...

The Daily Advertiser Saturday September 3, 1768

Richard Hall would buy a copy of any newspaper in which he had placed an advertisement, presumably to make sure that it had gone in properly. I find it fascinating, 250 years later, to go through the paper and, quite apart from identifying "the family advert", look through the other entries. This small extract shows a delightful insight into the life and times of Richard and his contemporaries.

 

First we have a standard entry by Messrs Ratnettt and Woolly giving notice that their partnership had been dissolved. I say "standard" because you still see similar advertisements today, for instance in the London Gazette. How else would the public know whether they were dealing with Mr Ratnett alone, or jointly with Mr Woolly? If things went wrong who would they claim against? One of them, or both? This advertisement was intended to clarify that neither partner was responsible for the debts and liabilities of the other, given that the partnership had ended. Sadly there is no clue as to what the partnership was - it would be a rather nice name for a firm of lawyers...

 

The next entry by John Smith is somewhat similar. He and his wife had separated and this was an attempt by John to make sure that the public did not give credit to his wife Mary and then look to John to pay up afterwards. He states that they have parted 'by consent'  but that is not to say that the split was amicable, for why else would he say that 'she is not to be trusted'? Note that the address given is a public house - street numbering for houses had not yet become commonplace and most addresses were given in relation to pubs, coffee houses, or prominent local landmarks.

 

The third and rather tragic entry is for information relating to the apprehension of the person(s) responsible for the rape and murder of poor Martha Timmins - a reminder that before the setting up of a proper police force the best hope for securing information was by the family offering a reward. Sure, each parish would have had its Constable, but his role was not as a detective, and there was no forensic science. Informers were the best hope of securing justice

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Finally, a reminder that joining up in the army was not everyone's cup of tea. Mind you William Forseyth had only been in for four days. He probably ran off to sea again, but the reward of twenty shillings 'over and above the Reward allowed by Act of Parliament' may have been tempting to anyone knowing him.

I think it is a lovely microcosm of everyday life in London.

To the Tower - the whole ... with a Mint in it.

Richard notes that he went to see the Royal Mint in the Tower in 1771. There would not have been much to see as there was hardly any currency being minted due to the high cost of imported silver. The Mint had a real dilemma - they were operating a dual standard (i.e. not just a gold standard but gold and silver combined) - and yet the relative values of the two metals kept fluctuating. Or rather, gold stayed much the same but silver was up and down like a yo-yo. So rather than make a loss on each coin, or have to debase the silver currency, or make the coins even smaller, the Mint took the easy way out - and simply reduced drastically the number and range of coins being minted. In 1771 no silver coins were struck, meaning that those coins already in circulation got older and less distinct.

 
           

As mentioned in my blog of 27th April this left Richard and other traders with a real problem - counterfeiters could simply cut out circular blanks from shiny metal and pass them off as the much-worn silver from earlier reigns. Banknotes were never in general circulation at this time - small wonder as the lowest denomination was for £10.

To aggravate matters shopkeepers could be obliged to accept payment of up to £25 in silver for goods which they sold. The risk to traders was in finding that the true weight of silver in those coins could be as much as 30% below face value.

But the 1771 visit would have meant Richard and his party saw some gold guineas being minted.

 

He would then have had time to see the "Crown Jewels" i.e. the Royal Regalia, as well as to inspect the royal menagerie.

 

                 

I like the idea that a visitor on his or her own paid one shilling and sixpence, but it was only a shilling a head for anyone with company!

The Tower currently has an exhibition about the history of keeping and displaying animals there, and Richard could have seen lions, elephants and zebras. In practice the royal animals remained at the Tower until 1831 when they started to be transferred to the Zoological Society of London at Regent's Park.

Taxes, taxes everywhere! (to say nothing of the contents of the leaking cess pit...)

 
                          
This serves as an example of just how many taxes there were which could be levied against you if you owned a property in London. It is not dated but as it makes no mention of the dreaded Income Tax, it is likely to be shortly before 1799. It refers to Window Lights - presumably the Window Tax introduced in 1696 and which was only finally abolished in 1851. There must have been a lot of windows since the tax was levied in two parts - a flat rate of two shillings per house plus a sliding scale based upon the number of windows. Rather a lot of windows in fact, reflecting the fact that One London Bridge was on a corner site with windows on all sides.
It seems odd that Richard included "Afternoon Preacher" as a tax but perhaps he regarded it as such because he felt he had no choice but to pay it! The same is true of the annual subscription payable to the Haberdashers Guild.

The Trophy Tax was levied every three years  to defray the expense of raising the men to serve in the Militia of the City of London, plus incidental expenses such as accommodation for the militiamen.

As for Orphan Tax, Church Rates and Poors Rate these reflect the burden on each parish of looking after the poor. There is this on the pages of www.parliament.uk  :

"The problem of poverty caused growing public concern during the early 19th century. The existing system for looking after those unable to care for themselves - the old, sick, disabled, orphans and unemployed - was based on a series of Acts of Parliament passed during the later Tudor period. These laws imposed an obligation on every parish to take care of its poor, though this had much less to do with compassion than with the need to preserve order and stability.

By the end of the 1790s there were clear signs that the system was under severe strain. Increasing numbers of parish poor were seeking assistance and the cost to ratepayers of maintaining the system was rising alarmingly, especially as payments were linked to the rising costs of bread and the size of families.

A parliamentary inquiry in 1777 noted that there were 1,916 workhouses in England which housed some 90,000 paupers."

Thames Water at One pound two shillings a year presumably covered the cost of drawing water from the Thames alongside One London Bridge (just imagine the pollution!) and Sewer Rate at £0/14/4 was paid even though in practice the premises were served by a cess pit constructed underneath the cellars. They leaked -  often, judging by Richard's accounts! The tax would therefore have been over and above what he had to pay for "repairs to the Privy". In 1793 these amounted to over sixteen pounds ("jobb at the Privy, paid to Mr Poynder, plumber, for Grate at the Privy, Carpenter...ditto, case to lead pipe").

The year before Richard had paid out one guinea in support of "a petition to the Commissioners" asking for the sewers to be taken over at public expense but until that happened Richard would presumably have needed to avail himself of the services of a nightman - someone to come at night, when the shop was closed to customers and all good people were a-bed, in order to empty the overflowing cess pit by hand, using barrels. The procedure is set out on the handbill of one Richard Harper (courtesy of the British Museum).

                     

The poor son - he would have been the unfortunate blighter who had to be lowered into the pit to fill the barrels.....the contents were then taken away to the market gardens of Peckham and beyond, and scattered on the land as "night soil", in other words, as a fertilizer.

Anyone like to have some more local-grown salad - it's organic, don't you know!

Now showing at the Talbot Inn, a crocodile and a rhino....

In May 1752 Richard Hall may, or may not, have said to his Missus "Hi Babe, my little Darlin', d'ya fancy a hair of the dog - a half of gin and a play with the rhino down at the Talbot?" or words to that effect. Because, as the handbill reproduced above shows, the Talbot yard in Southwark was being used to exhibit a sort of travelling zoo.

It is interesting that the exhibits were for sale as well as for viewing, although whether there would have been many takers for the "first crocodile to be shown alive in the Kingdom" is unclear. There is a nice explanation of crocodile tears and a slightly curious suggestion that jackals hunt prey so that lions can eat - whereas I was under the impression that the lion did the killing and the jackals the scavenging!

The handbill confirms Richard's insatiable appetite for the weird and wonderful. Quite how these beasts were kept alive and healthy enough to be paraded around is unclear - let's face it, an eighty hundred weight rhinoceros would take some feeding.

The annotation with the date ( 'May 1752') is in Richard's handwriting and the handbill was  glued into his scrap book of ephemera.In practice the Talbot Inn was demolished in 1873 - one of the many coaching inns to meet that fate when the railways made them obsolete (see my earlier blog regarding The George).

 

SPARE A THOUGHT FOR TOM - RUNAWAY SLAVE

Spare a moment´s thought for the plight of young Tom: he runs away wearing only the clothes on his back, and they are of full yellow livery, with lace. Hardly inconspicuous! Where on earth would he have been able to melt into the background of London streets? How would he have made an honest living?

 

Just imagine the horror of young Tom's life - seized from his home in Sierra Leone ( or wherever) as a young boy, separated from his family and perhaps considered too young to be of use on the plantations in the West Indies and brought back to wet cold dreary London, dressed up like a stuffed canary and paraded around Town. Unable to read or write ( since it is unlikely that his Master would have seen any advantage to him  from Tom's personal development) and with no training except as a household dogsbody. His duties would have included being shown off as an adornment to his Master's grandeur ("look how important I am - I have a flunky in livery to open the door for me").

Just suppose he is found and brought back to his Master, who is not likely to be too pleased at having to lay out two guineas in reward money, plus the cost of the advert. It doesn't bear thinking about. Young Tom must have been desperate - and terrified.

 

The reward of two guineas - equivalent to perhaps £150 - would surely have been enough to tempt collaborators.

 

The advertisement is on one of the pages of a newspaper which Richard had bought because he had inserted his own advertisement offering goods for sale from his shop at One London Bridge.

 

There is no record with Richard´s papers to show whether "application was ever made to the Carolina Coffee House in Birchin Lane" or whether Tom kept on running....

BURGLARY AT PECKHAM

Viper Drops - Viagra meets penicillin and cures EVERYTHING!

I have no way of knowing whether Richard actually fell for the charms of this advert for Viper Drops but he cut it out of the paper. Maybe that was “just in case” he became affected by Weakness...Inability... Sterility (let alone immoderate fluxes, Fluor Albus or general wounds, bruises, aches, pains, burns etc.).

Sounds like a good idea to have a few drops with you in your medicine cabinet even if you are not one of the "weakest and nicest persons". I think I'll have two bottles please - they don't appear to have a "best before" date on them so I assume that they last forever...

The State Lottery 1775

                     

Must be time to go out and buy my lottery ticket….Richard Hall tended to combine forces with his brother in law William Snooke and buy a ticket for twenty five pounds. Sometimes they won a small prize (interesting that their Baptist beliefs did not mean that they scorned gambling, presumably because it was for a "good cause”). The final line of the handbill shows that you could actually “insure” against a number not being drawn - by handing over a few more pounds to one of the “Morocco Men” i.e. spivs with Moroccan (that is to say, red leather) pocket books who would loiter outside the Lottery Office.

Lotteries were popular throughout the century - you want to raise money for a new bridge across the Thames? Flog a hundred thousand tickets at a tenner each and you can get rid of that old horse ferry.... We keep the name (Horseferry Road) but we also  get Westminster Bridge.