The Early Days of the Nineteenth Century in England, 1800-1820

Prologue

1 DIVISION I. Rise of Population and Manufactures — North East Coast, Scarborough, Cromer, Yarmouth, Southend, Margate, and Ramsgate — South Coast, Hastings, Brighton, Worthing, Bognor, Southampton, and Isle of Wight — West Coast Resorts, Weymouth, Lyme Regis, Dawlish, Teignmouth, llfracombe, Clevedon, and Weston-super-Mare —North West Coast Resort, Blackpool — Inland Watering Places, Harrogate, Buxton, Leamington, Cheltenham, Clifton, Great Malvern, Little Malvern, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells — The Lake District — Rural Life — Roads — Travelling — Highway Robbers — Travelling by Water — Letter Postage 15 DIVISION II. Dress, Civil, Military, and Naval — Female Dress — Municipal London — Conveyances — Lighting — Police Service — Housebreakers and Mur derers — Body-Snatchers — Fashionable London — London Tradesmen — Law and Medicine — Furniture — Table Customs — Dissipation — Fashion able Foppery and Exclusiveness — Coffee Houses — Amusements . .

CONTENTS. DIVISION III. The Drama— The "O.P. Riots"— Actors and Actresses— The Infant Roscius — Theatre Interiors — Theatrical Dresses — Evading Patent Penalties — Suburban Theatres — Dramatic Compositions — Open Air and other Amusements — Concerts and Lectures — "Spouting", Literary, Dining, and other Clubs — General Recreations — Pugilism .... 171 DIVISION IV. Fairs— Lotteries— The "Morocco Men" — Illuminations — Mourning customs— Fine Arts— Literature— Booksellers— Holland House and other Literary Salons — The London Press 209 INDEX TO VOL. I

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. Viewed from a social and domestic standpoint, the early days of the nineteenth century of the Christian era constitute a period of the national history which cannot be surveyed without interest. Separated as that period is from the present by the space of nearly a hundred years, its manners and customs are nevertheless those of an age widely dissimilar from that in which we are living. Recollections of the French Revolution, and of the excesses by which that event had been accompanied, were still fresh in the public mind. Nor had the passions and the prejudices, which the Revolution had evoked throughout the country, subsided to any material extent. The proclamation by the French Government of free and equal rights to all men had resulted only in making Englishmen cling as for their very life to the cause of monarchy and of social order.

Liberty they loved as ardently as ever, but equality they suspected, and fraternity they abhorred. The main results of the vast tide of war which swept across Europe, from Corunna on the West to Moscow i

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on the East, were to diminish any extensive inter course with foreign ports and centres of industry, to exclude English men and women from the Continent, and to pen them up within the narrow confines of their native land. By theo^ means a state of society was preserved in town and country during the last twenty years of the reign of George III. which it is difficult to realize in the light of the vast changes and improvements that have since stolen silently, and almost imperceptibly, over our manners, opinions, morals, refinements, general convenience, and modes of living. Now that the century has nearly completed its last decade, and is fast hastening to its close, a retrospect of its early days cannot fail to be fruitful of either profit or instruction. It is therefore to such a retrospect that the following pages will be devoted.

Although no detailed .analysis of the complicated political fortunes of the country during this critical period lies within the scope of these pages, it may not be inapposite to furnish the briefest outline of their course. William Pitt, who had acceded to the premiership in 1796, remained in power, save for the brief interval which witnessed the short-lived administra tion of Henry Addington, until 1S06. His popularity was such as had been enjoyed by hardly any previous Minister of the Crown. Pitt's uoath in 1806 called Lord Grenville to the head of t s%irs, where he

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3 remained until 1807, when a new ministry was formed by the Duke of Portland, who was sup planted by Spencer Perceval in 1809. After Perceval's assassination in 1812, the Earl of Liver pool becarae the First Minister of the Crown, and remained in office until after the accession of the new king. The struggle for individual liberty at this time was bound up with the fortunes of the Whigs, whose area of influence was, however, circumscribed. Nor were they capable of extending that area of influence, by reason of the unpopularity under which they had lain ever since the outbreak of the French Revolution. In season and out of season they had vindicated and popularized the truth of several doctrines which had haunted the master-minds of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such doctrines, however, assiduously promulgated as they were, fell on unheeding ears.

In the minds of most persons a Whig was con founded with a Jacobin, and his creed was asso ciated with everything which tended not merely to the overthrow of established institutions, but to the disintegration of society. The avowed and accredited representatives of the Whig party, of all ranks, in common with the early intelligent Reformers, were not rewarded by the gratitude of those for whose benefit they were content to spend and to be spent. irThe benefits which they sought to confer were^ often blessings in disguise, which

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could be appreciated only in the times that were coming. Nor were they gratified, by beholding the fruits of their benevolent exertions, to deliver their fellow-men from the power of existing circumstances. The harvest did not begin to ripen until all, or nearly all, of them, had been called away, and most of them had been forgotten. It was their lot to be misrepresented, misconstrued, and accused of innovating, by a perverse generation, and only too often to be cursed and thwarted by the very people in whose welfare they had expended all their strength. Nor was it until after the death of George III. that the fortunes of the Whigs revived, that the correctness of their opinions was recognised, and that they found themselves gradually borne to power on the current of the national demand for representative reform, and for every extension of civil and religious liberty, of which representative reform was but the preliminary stage.

The terms of the treaty of Amiens, which was concluded in 1802, were soon violated by the in domitable passion for military glory which animated Napoleon. In 1804 it was rumoured that the heights of Boulogne, visible from the English coast, were crowned with the white tents of a vast army, destined for the invasion of England. The national alarm was aroused to the highest pitch, and was allayed only when Napoleon had withdrawn his forces to Egypt and Nelson had annihilated the

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5 fleets of France and Spain off Trafalgar. Having subjugated Italy, Napoleon next overthrew the united forces of Austria and Russia, and subsequently concluded peace on the field of Austerlitz. The policy of the British Ministry was to continue the struggle. Subsidy after subsidy was lavished on the Powers, expedition after expedition was des patched to the Peninsula. Disaster followed on dis aster. Napoleon defeated the most powerful armies in a fashion hitherto unknown in the history of warfare. Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Eylau, Wagram testified to his prowess on the field of battle. By his victory at Bautzen in 1813 he crowned a progress which had been one of conquest from the Pillars of Hercules to the frontiers of Russia. All his hopes were, however, dashed to the ground by the defeat of his army, one of the most magnificent that had ever taken the field, at Waterloo, in 1815.

By that event England was released from a foreign yoke and the conqueror, to whose martial genius upwards of two millions of lives had been sacrificed, found himself a prisoner on a lonely island in the Atlantic. Meanwhile, home affairs were deranged. At the close of 1S10 George III. had relapsed into a state of insanity which shadowed the last nine years of his reign. In the following year the Prince of Wales had initiated the Regency amidst the gravest distrust and wide-spread national distress, the consequence of bad harvests. Agrarian

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outrages followed one another in rapid succession. The currency fell to its greatest depreciation in 1812, and during the same year the unpopularity of Spencer Perceval, the Chief Minister of the Crown, culminated in his assassination at the hand of a ruined merchant, named Bellingham, in the lobby of the House of Commons. Simultaneously, a conspiracy of the most formidable character spread throughout the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, and generated many nocturnal outrages. Fourteen persons who had been concerned in these riots were hanged at York in January, 1813. and the passing of an Act of Parliament in the same year enabled magistrates to search for arms and to disperse riotous gatherings without waiting for the lapse of one hour, as specified in the Riot Act.

The effect of these arbitrary measures was merely to increase the disaffection of the working classes. A series of disturbances and agrarian outrages, which began with the introduction of the Corn Bill in 1815, lasted, with only a brief interval, until the following year, and were encouraged by the writings of William Cobbett. His trenchant exposure of the abuses of our political institutions, his furious denunciations of speculation and corruption in high places, his daring attacks on public characters, were widely read and widely circulated. Nowhere, perhaps, was their influence more effectual than in the manufacturing districts of South Lancashire. Here the people were not

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slow in perceiving that Cobbett's burning rhetoric was laying bare one secret of their sufferings, mis government, and expounding its only corrective, a thorough reformation of the system of Parliamentary representation. Soon the people of Lancashire gave expression to their opinions, which the Ministry sought to stifle by a relentless policy of coercion. Spies, who had been instructed closely to scrutinize the conduct of all disaffected persons, were sent into Lancashire. The King's messengers visited the chief towns with Government warrants, and haled to prison those wTho were named in them. To crown all, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Such a policy, however, was suicidal. The question of the hour was still keenly debated. In the summer of 1819 the reformers convened two large meetings.

The first was held under the presidency of " Orator" Hunt in Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, and ended in a riot, in which a sailor named Cashman was killed. The second was held in Birmingham, and was addressed by Major Cartwright and Sir Charles Wolseley. These move ments encouraged the desire for reform in Lancashire. On the 16th of August, 1819, more than 80,000 orderly spectators assembled on a wide open space known as St. Peter's Field, in Manchester. Here, during a harangue by " Orator" Hunt, the Man chester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, and detach ments of dragoons and the 15th Hussars, charged the crowd at the instigation of the local magistrates, who considered that the meeting had been convoked

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for seditious and treasonable ends. The suddenness of the charge aroused the indignation of the multitude. who, instead of dispersing, as it had been hoped, turned upon the soldiers. A brisk skirmish ensued. Ten persons were killed, and more than two hundred were seriously wounded. Hunt was arrested and lodged in gaol. One of the magistrates hastened to London to acquaint the Ministry with a one-sided version of the occurrence. Coroner's inquests were held on the bodies of those who had lost their lives in consequence of the furious onslaught of the cavalry. In each case the verdict of the jury rendered all judicial proceedings wholly nugatory. Acquainted as he was with only one side of the story, Lord Sidmouth wrote to Sir John Byng expressing the high satisfaction of the Prince Regent, at the way in which he had assisted the Manchester magistrates.

On the 27th of August, 1819, Hunt and his friends, who had been detained in custody, were examined. and committed for trial at the Lancaster assizes. The Cabinet justified the conduct of the Manchester magistrates on the ground that the meeting was illegal. Lord Eldon, one of the most illogical judges who ever occupied the bench, endorsed this view in the House of Lords. "As numbers constitute force, " said he, " force terror, and terror illegality, I cannot doubt the Manchester meeting to have been illegal." The result was that Hunt and his associates were prosecuted, not for treason, but for "a conspiracy to alter the law by force and by

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9 threats. " In less than twelve months after " the Peterloo Massacre, " as it was termed, they were convicted. Hunt was sentenced to two years' im prisonment and to find security for good behaviour when the term had expired, in two sureties of five hundred pounds each. In the meantime, however, many indignation meetings had been held throughout the country. The conduct of the Manchester magistrates and the action of the military had been denounced in the most unmeasured terms. An address of reprobation had been presented by the London Common Council. Earl Fitz- William, as Lord Lieutenant of the County of York, had appended his signature to a requisition which had been addressed to the High Sheriff, calling upon him to convene a county meeting. The ministry became alarmed. " The country, " wrote Lord Eldon, " must make new laws to meet the new state of things, " apparently ignorant of the fact that no Act of Parliament ever became oper ative, or was, at most, anything better than a dead letter, unless it were fully endorsed by public opinion.

" The laws, " said Lord Sidmouth, " are not strong enough for the times, but they must be made so, if it is meant to afford the country a reasonable hope of permanent tranquillity." To this end every nerve was strained by Lords Sidmouth and Castle reagh. A series of shameful, despotic measures, called the "Six Acts", for the better preservation of the public peace, were carried through Parliament.

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These Acts were totally imperative, became a dead letter, and gave rise to the Cato Street conspiracy, a desperate plot of assassination fomented by a profligate named Arthur Thistlewood and his associates, for the overthrow of the chief members of the Ministry. The plot was revealed, the conspi rators were apprehended, a few of the more cowardly turned King's evidence, but five of them were executed in April, 1820. From a desperate under taking of this kind, the more rational of the dis contented among the working classes, who had formed themselves into unions, turned with disgust. The relative positions of governors and governed could be adjusted only by conciliation. The ultimate triumph of the Reformers was foreseen by all who could read the signs of those times. Hunt and his associates on regaining their liberty went to work as vigorously as before in the cause of representative reform.

Encouragement came from every quarter, the torpor of the eighteenth century was broken, and the entire movement was crowned by the passing in 1832 of the First Reform Bill, the Second Bill of Rights, the Greater Charter of English political freedom. At the termination of the protracted struggle with Napoleon, England presented a most distressing aspect. Discontent had reached its height. Widows were weeping for the loss of their husbands. Children, v horn the war had rendered fatherless, were lifting

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up their voices for the bread which often never came. Disbanded soldiers, homeless and penniless, infested the country in all directions. Hunger ground the faces of the poor. Trades and manufactures were in a depressed and languishing condition. The in dustrial section of the population teemed with disgust and dissatisfaction, and regarded the Ministry with undisguised hatred and contempt. Vast arrears of the eighteenth century, demanding urgent redress, confronted the social reformer. The energies of the people were cramped by restraints. Nor was it possible to set them free without the introduction of such fundamental changes as would necessarily unhinge the framework of society. The freedom of the press was hampered. Restrictions were still imposed upon the liberty of thought and speech.

Jews, Roman Catholics, and Dissenters groaned beneath disabilities and odious imposts. The Establish ment had forsaken the worship of God for the worship of Mammon. The criminal code was a mass of barbarities, severities, and atrocities, which con verted one of the fairest regions of the Universe into a vile and nauseating Aceldama. It is not, however, by generalizations, but rather by detailed examination of the particular changes which have crept into our social system, and a comparison of their aggregate result, in the present, with the past, that we can form even a faint idea of the vast revolution which has taken place around us and has made us what we are.

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The older Biblical commentators were accustomed to account for the extraordinary length of life to which patriarchs attained in the early ages of the world, by saying that it was specially ordained in order that the memory of men and events might be transmitted to posterity by oral tradition, in ages when as yet neither scholars nor records were known. The rising generation, it was urged, could hold converse with its predecessors, and in harvest fields and in solitary wastes the sons of men were brought face to face with those who were the living witnesses of events which had occurred in the days before they were born, and in numbers which removed their testimony beyond the possibility of cavil. If such was the case, it is not surprising that the social life of mankind in the days when the earth was young should have been made clearer and more familiar to those who inhabited it, 969 years afterwards, than that of barely a century ago can ever be to us, with all the assistance that is to be derived from the pencil, the pen, and the press.

The proceedings of parliaments, the factions of party, the intrigues of statesmen, fill many folios, quartos, and duodecimos, but it is not from these that men may know how the world went in general, how England in particular looked, and what men and women did, their former appearance. customs, manners, and habits of thought. If there now lived amongst us some who accurately remem- TR0L0GUE bered the early decades of the century, and were able intelligently to describe the life and manners of that period, we should possess a far more thorough acquaintance with our ancestors, and derive interest and instruction from beholding their times from the vantage ground of our own. This, however, cannot be. The age is one that even elderly persons who still survive can only indistinctly recall. Hence any illustrations of the social condition of England during the infancy of the nineteenth century can be found only among materials of the most hete rogeneous character.

It is mainly in the by-ways of literature, from pamphlets, ballads, satires, memoirs, budgets of family correspondence, that such assistance can be derived. The details of common every day life have seldom been deemed worthy of being chronicled in voluminous collections of state papers or in grave and serious narratives, by reason of their seemingly trivial character. Yet their value for succeeding generations is immense, and may be compared to that of the diamond in the mine, which is precious only to him who possesses the skill and the industry which are needed to discover it, and to draw it forth from the obscurity in which it has so long been buried. The men and women of that age have vanished into the tomb of oblivion. Another world has arisen on the buried past. It is only from fragmentary records, preserved to us by chance, that we can attempt to reconstruct the fabric of the social life of England during the

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early days of the century ; that we can learn how men lived, dressed, ate, and drank ; how they spoke, laughed, cried, and swore ; and, when every source has been exhausted and every detail analysed, it will be found that much is still needed to complete the structure. DIVISION I. Rise of Population and Manufactures — North East Coast, Scar borough, Cromer, Yarmouth, Southend, Margate, and Ramsgate — South Coast, Hastings, Brighton, Worthing, Bognor, Southampton, and Isle of Wight— West Coast Resorts, Weymouth, Lyme Regis. Dawlish, Teignmouth, Ilfracombe, Clevedon, and Weston-super-Marc —North West Coast Resort. Blackpool — Inland Watering Places, Harmgate, Buxton, Leamington, Cheltenham, Clifton, Great Malvern, Little Malvern, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells— The Lake District — Rural Life— Roads— Travelling — Highway Robbers— Travelling by Water — Letter Postage.

RISE OP POPULATION AND MANUFACTURES. Following the precedents that had been established by the United States of America in 1790, and by France in 1791, the English Government undertook an official census of the population of Great Britain in the year 1801. From the data furnished in the report of that census it appeared that England and Wales contained a population c nsiderably in excess of eight millions, thus happily disappointing a general expectation that the returns would show an alarming decrease, rumour having been busy with reports of wholesale emigration and deserted vil lages. By 1811 the population might have in creased by two millions. After the Peace of it was estimated at eleven millions. The densest centres of the population were to be found beyond the Trent, in the thriving hives of manufacturing, mining, and trading pursuits.

An examination of the county maps and plans published during this period reveals the comparative insignificance of certain localities which have since been overrun with population. Places which have since become populous towns and cities, and have acquired wonderful im portance by reason of the development of industry, were then tiny hamlets or secluded villages. A glance at any contemporary map of Lancashire, for example, will supply abundant confirmation of the truth of these remarks. The two cities of Liverpool and Manchester with their smoky streets ; their long rows of warehouses ; their ample evidences of wealth and luxury side by side with poverty and hunger ; their huge grimy mills, leviathans of ugly architecture, and their smoke-pouring shafts; their vistas of uniform brick houses, hideous in their very monotony ; their streams of busy pedestrians of every class which business creates, bustling from the counting-house to the bank and from the bank to the counting-house ; their swarms of pale faced factory operatives and citizens, of sallow - visaged men and pale-faced women — present a marked contrast to the aspect which they bore in the first twenty years of the century.

In the time of George III. neither of these two great centres of industry had been elevated to the rank of a city. Neither was connected with the other, nor with any other important town in the kingdrm, by a rail-road. So late as 1816 Liverpool, which was then about half its present size, contained a population of about 120,000 souls. No steamer was seen on the Mersey until 1819, and at that date the northern side sufficed amply to accommodate the entire trade of the port. The site of Birken head was occupied by four houses. Manchester, the prosperity of which just at this period outshone that of Liverpool, contained in 1818 a population of 140,000 souls, and its boundaries were still circumscribed. Middlesborough on the East Coast, and Barrow on the West Coast, were insignificant villages.

The population of each of the towns of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, and Huddersfield was under 80,000 in 1815. The population of Bristol, the metropolis of the western counties, exceeded that of Harwich, the metropolis of the eastern counties, which remained stationary during the first ten years of the century, by 40,000. Plymouth and Portsmouth each numbered under 50,000 resident inhabitants. But the contrast between the size and position of various places in that age and this is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the case of the health resorts, most of which are of a comparatively modern origin. NORTH-EAST COAST — SCARBOROUGH, CROMER, YARMOUTH, SOUTHEND, MARGATE, AND RAMSGATE. The four principal watering-places on the North East Coast of England at this period were Coatham, Redcar, Whitby and Scarborough.

Coatham so late as 1810 presented the appearance of half a street, was built on only one side, and consisted of about seventy houses. Redcar in 1811 was still a village which possessed only two inns. Whitby was a mere fishing village. Scarborough was among the spots to which the English upper classes resorted in search of that vigour which is produced by change of air and scene. Legislators who had patriotically injured their own constitutions while engaged in the task of reforming that of their country ; aldermen with jaded appetites and tumid livers ; judges, weary of plaintiffs, defendants, and juries ; bishops tired of pastoral charges and diocesan visitations; aspiring youths, of enlarged views and high pretensions, bent on seeing the world ; pallid beauties satiated with the card-table and the assembly ; faded belies and shattered beaux of certain and uncertain ages; these and others whose associations and pursuits were known only to themselves, " an undistinguished crew o'er whom her darkest wing Oblivion drew, " resorted to Scarborough to be made whole.

Yet this town, as late as 1816, was no better than a fishing town. Its present gay esplanade, its stately mansions, its miles of sea frontage, had no existence. No bridge connected the old town with the new, for the building of a new town had not as yet been con templated. But the primitive character of Scar borough during the early days of the century exercised no deterring effects on the hordes of health-seekers who overran England during the summer. "Scar borough, " wrote a visitor to the spot in August, 1806, "is crowded with Spawers ; upwards of sixty dine at the Bell, and private lodgings are scarce. For the last three years people have had the fear of invasion by Bonaparte before their eyes, and dared not face the sea from whence it must arrive ; they are now making themselves amends, and I am glad to have a quiet nest to retire to.

Though the company is more numerous, I think it is upon the whole less desirable ; the additions being chiefly clothmakers and merchants from the West Riding ; a set of honest, hearty fellows, who undermine the best constitution in the world and die by eating and drinking. " The chief resort of the middle-class families and the yeomanry of Lincolnshire and the adjoining counties was a spot known as Freeston Shore, near Boston. A South Leicestershire farmer named Richard Fowke, of Elmesthorpe, who visited the locality in June, 1805, has left on record some illustrations, in a curious journal, of its manners and customs. There was only one inn, called the Coach and Horses. "There were only two men," says Richard Fowke, "at the Coach and Horses the first night I got there. The other lodging-houses had very few people, owing to the cold and backward season.

A great number of people attend this watering place in June, July, August, and September, to drink and bathe. They are mostly of the middle class of people, such as farmers, tradesmen, etc. ; sometimes one important country squire, who has just transformed himself by a little gold from a village peasant, and now and then a lordly inn-keeper, who has sprung up from a post boy, ostler, waiter, or even boots, who carries his high self above other people, learns to talk Dutch, etc. Two or three small fishermen's houses lodge some poor people that cannot afford to pay much a week for lodging, etc. Board at the Coach and Horses, 4s. per day. Our drinking besides the 4s. made it about 6s. 6d. per day at a moderate rate. Many of the wine-bibbers spent 10s. 6d., but what is that to a wine-bibber? Sea-bathing on these shores is very good for all scorbutic complaints, sore legs, sore eyes, surfeits, hard drinking, nervous habits, hydrophobia, and a poor appetite.

All these complaints are much benefited by its saline waters. Yet I thought a great many of the company came to see and be seen more than for sea-bathing. Young ladies to see for husbands, and young fortune hunters for wives. These are the humours of Free stone Shore. We had tea and breakfast at half-past eight o'clock, and a very nice dinner of all the varieties in season at two, and tea at half-past five„ and a hot supper of dainties and nick-nacks, at half past eight. We had also a luncheon at ten if we had at mind to eat, daily ate twice a day of sole, and shrimps by the thousand." Intending visitors to the little Norfolk bathing station of Cromer in 1810 were informed in a contemporary guide-book that it contained "several dwellings which were capable of receiving families of some condition, and many lodging-houses com manding delightful views of the sea, where tolerable accommodation could be had from one to three guineas a week during the summer and autumn."

But as late as 1815 neither a ballroom nor a card assembly had been established at Cromer, and the greatest inconvenience of the spot was the lack of a well-conducted inn. Yarmouth, as a sea-bathing place, was much frequented, lodgings were numerous and were to be obtained at comparatively reasonable rates; pro visions were not only plentiful, but cheap. Neither Lowestoft, Southwold, Aldborough, Felixstowe, Har wich, nor Clacton had attained the dignity of water ing-places. As late as 1820, they were all mere villages which enjoyed little intercourse with the world that lay outside them. It is refreshing to learn that even in 1812 "the lower orders of the community had not as yet obtruded themselves" at the commodious bathing station of Southend, which, in consequence, received many "visitors from among the superior ranks of society."