Daily Life in 16th Century London

Unplanned Housing
Here falling houses thunder on your head, And here a female atheist talks you dead."
- Samuel Johnson (2)

Every visitor to 16th-century London was impressed by the noise and the throngs of people.
pintoresco
But the city itself was neither quaint nor clean. Most residents lived in appalling conditions.
After the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed more than 85 percent of the city, London was
apresurado fortuito
rebuilt in a hasty and haphazard manner. Then rapid surge in population - from 675,000 in
1750 to 900,000 just 50 years later - caused enormous pressure on city planners to get
viviendas
buildings up quickly. Houses and tenements were thrown together in a slapdash manner, with
remendados
little attention to plans or codes. Buildings were patched up, subdivided, and subdivided again
to cram as many people into as little square footage as possible, which left a jumble of narrow,
unlit passageways between residences and shops. Walking through one of these stinking,
airless alleyways - especially after dark - was terribly risky, since the convoluted pattern of
streets provided excellent cover for lurking criminals.
al acecho
According to Richard B. Schwartz's Daily Life in Johnson's
London, "The city had become honeycombed with what
were intended to be temporary dwellings but which grew to
be permanent ones. The scarce available land was
continually subdivided. Courts were built upon. Business
establishments were cut up into tenements. Hovels and
shacks were commonplace. Many of the poor crowded into
deserted houses. A sizeable number of the city's inhabitants
both lived and worked below ground level." (3)

Commercial streets were no less hazardous. Many London buildings were made with such
shoddy materials - crumbling bricks and knotty timber - that it was not unusual for them to
collapse. Heavy, pendulous shop signs projected out from storefronts on large iron bars. The
signs, regularly whipped by the wind, could create such force that the entire façade of a
building would come crashing down. Often this happened on top of passers-by. The din and
danger from these creaking signs led the city to pass many ordinances restricting their use.

Streets and Alleys

London was filled with the smell of wet horses and the waste materials associated with them.
Sanitation was unheard of. Water was unpurified, and raw sewage ran down city streets in
open drains. It was common practice for people to empty their chamber pots out of their
windows, and to leave garbage out in the street to rot. C.P. Moritz wrote in 1782, "Nothing in
London makes a more detestable sight than the butchers' stalls, especially in the
neighborhood of the Tower. The guts and other refuse are all thrown on the street and set up
an unbearable stink." (4)

An amazing variety of filth slopped down London's cobblestone streets. Along with dirt, dust
and animal manure, there was the ever-falling London rain to add to the mess. Cesspools of
human waste collected in puddles everywhere. Dead animals (dogs, cats, rodents, even
horses) were left to decay in the streets. In darker corners of the city, an occasional human
corpse might even be found. To add to all this, horse-drawn carriages with heavy metal wheels
often splashed through puddles, slopping the street's putrid muck all over strolling
pedestrians.

Water & Waste

In 16th-century London, water was delivered to the city's residents through hollowed-out tree
trunks running beneath the streets. Wealthier customers could buy spring water from private
companies, but most residents used the sluggish, murky water of the Thames. Like many
European rivers, the Thames was both the source of the city's drinking water and the
repository of its discharge. It was also crowded with boats and barges, since it served as the
city's main thoroughfare for commercial shipping. No attempt was made to filter the water or
protect it from pollution until the middle of the 19th-century.

In 1771, Tobias Smollet wrote, "If I would drink water, I must quaff the mawkish contents of an
open aqueduct, exposed to all manner of defilement, or swallow that which comes from the
River Thames, impregnated with all the filth of London and Westminster. Human excrement is
the least offensive part of the concrete, which is composed of all the drugs, minerals, and
poisons used in mechanics and manufacture, enriched with the putrefying carcases of beasts
and men, and mixed with the scourings of all the wash-tubs, kennels and common sewers
within the bills of mortality." (5)

In fact, water was so suspect that in the first half of the century, a huge gin craze swept
London. Gin was tasty, intoxicating, unregulated and cheap. The rule of the day was "Drunk for
1d., dead drunk for 2d., straw for nothing." Gin sellers set up on street corners and along
highways, selling to any passer-by who expressed thirst. In London alone, there were 8,000
places where gin was openly sold. Henry Fielding wrote in 1751, "Gin...is the principal
sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in this metropolis.
Many of these Wretches there are, who swallow Pints of this Poison within the Twenty Four
Hours: the Dreadfull Effects of which I have the Misfortune every Day to see, and to smell too."

Sanitation in the 1700s was simply unheard of. Private bathrooms, later known as "water
closets," did not exist until late in the century, and even then, they only appeared in the
wealthiest of homes. Most London residents used chamberpots, dumping them right outside
their windows. The raw sewage would accumulate and stagnate in cesspools until the night
soil men came along to clear it all out.

There is no doubt that the sanitation systems, wells and public water supply systems became
intermingled. A complex network of sewers did exist in London, but they were designed to
carry rainwater rather than sewage. However, records of public complaints suggest that the
drains carried much more than that - including the refuse of pigsties and slaughterhouses.

In addition, the city's underground pipes were poorly constructed, so water mains would
regularly burst, creating sudden springs on city streets. These springs would carry and mix all
of the city's debris together in a sort of running fetid soup that pedestrians would have to slosh
through in order to get to their destination.
Coal, Fog & the Smell of the Grave
Coal was the main source of heat and energy in 16th-century England. In 1727, more than
700,000 pounds of coal were delivered to London alone. Residences and factories, tenements
and shops, all regularly belched thick clouds of black soot into the city's air.

Much of London was built on top of rank and murky ground. Fleet Street actually started as a
marketplace on the covered-over Fleet River, which was known for years by its awful stench. In
addition, London cemeteries contained communal graves, or "poors' holes," which were deep
enough for seven tiers of coffins, holding three or four coffins in each tier. These pits were left
open until they were completely filled with bodies, so the pungent odor of putrefaction wafted
about unchecked. Ministers often had to conduct their burial services from a comfortable
distance. Churches were also sometimes afflicted by the smell of decaying corpses rising up
from their crypts below.

The cinder smoke, mingled with the rank odor of the city's decaying garbage, open sewage,
and decomposing corpses, and the stench emanating from the Thames created such a
powerful stink that with a proper wind, London could be smelled from several miles away.

Untimely Death
"With public executions and public exhibitions of heads and quarters as well as bodies hung in
irons, it is clear that the eighteenth century confronted its mortality in a way that is both
intense and direct."
- Richard B. Schwartz, Daily Life in Johnson's London (6)

With its overpopulation, bad sanitation, and out-of-control housing, London was a breeding
ground for bacteria and disease, and death was common. Epidemics, infections and occasional
food shortages led to an extraordinarily high mortality rate. Medicine was still quite primitive.
In fact, in 1775, more than 800 deaths recorded in the Bills of Mortality were attributed simply
to "Teeth." Lice and dirt were everywhere. Soot and grime covered overcrowded tenements.
In these circumstances, unbridled disease ran rampant, and even the smallest wound could
lead to death by infection.

The connection between personal hygiene and good health was not fully understood. Francis
Place wrote that in the 1780s well-off women "wore petticoats of comblet, lined with dyed
linen, stuffed with wool and horsehair and quilted...day by day till they were rotten."(7) Baths
were extremely rare - in fact, many people considered them harmful. In all six editions of Sir
John Flyer's Inquiry into the Right Use of Hot, Cold, and Temperate Baths in England, he
never once mentions bathing simply for the sake of cleanliness.

There was also a grave fear of fresh air, in part because of airborne diseases like
"consumption," so windows were kept tightly shut. And because entire buildings were taxed
according to the number of windows they contained, many landlords sealed them off, with
disastrous results for their tenants.

There was a seasonal pattern of death. In winter months, when thick, heavy, encrusted clothes
were worn day and night, respiratory tuberculosis, influenza and typhus raged. Dysentery and
diarrhea came around in the summer, when flies transmitted bacteria from filth to food and
water was at its foulest.
Of every 1,000 children born in early 16th-century London, almost half died before the age of
2. Malnutrition, maternal ignorance, bad water, dirty food, poor hygiene and overcrowding all
contributed to this extremely high mortality rate. And if an infant did survive, it then faced the
perils of childhood - namely malnourishment and ongoing abuse. Many poor children were
dispatched to crowded, backbreaking "workhouses" or were apprenticed to tradesmen who
used them as unpaid laborers. A Parliamentary committee reported in 1767 that only seven in
100 workhouse infants survived for three years. Stephen Inwood notes in his book The History
of London that "workhouse 'apprentices' swept London's chimneys, hawked milk and fruit
round its streets, and labored unpaid in the worst branches of tailoring, shoemaking, stocking
making, baking, river work and domestic service. Later in the century industrialization offered
new outlets and London pauper children were packed off to work in the cotton-spinning mills
of Lancashire and Cheshire." (8)

Learned Pigs & Other Diversions

The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from habit do not displease me.
The endless succession of shops where Fancy mis-called Folly is supplied with perpetual gauds
and toys, excite in me no puritanical aversion ... I love the smoke of London, because it has
been the medium most familiar to my vision. I see grand principles of honour at work in the
dirty ring which encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal
justice in the detection of a pick-pocket...Where has spleen her food but in London? Humour,
Interest, Curiosity, suck at her measureless breasts without the possibility of being satiated.
- Charles Lamb, a letter to The Reflector, 1810 (9)

With a population so vast and varied, so hungry for diversion, it is no wonder that London
offered every conceivable entertainment to the paying customer. Freaks and curiosities of
every kind were on commercial display, from hermaphrodites and dwarfs to operatic cats and
acrobatic monkeys. Hand-to-hand combat, puppet shows, conjurers, strange inventions, quack
doctors and cock fighting were all popular amusements. There was even a vogue for "learned"
animals - pigs, mostly - who purportedly could perform arithmetic, play cards and tell fortunes.

When the real thing was not available, waxworks would do almost as well. Mrs. Salmon's Fleet
Street exhibition of historical tableaux and horrific scenes in wax opened in 1711 and
prospered for more than a century, until it was outdone by Madame Tussaud's new display in
Baker Street.

Sex tourists interested in visiting one of London's brothels could even buy a guide book,
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (1773) to help them find a prostitute that would suit their
taste and income.

Bethlehem Royal Hospital (Bedlam), a palatial asylum for lunatics in Finsbury Square, was open
to the public until 1770 as a sort of human zoo. Visitors could pay a few pence to enter and
gawk at the inmates for as long as they liked. Thousands of sightseers came each year,
wandering through the wards and brutally teasing the patients in order to heighten the fun. At
one point, Bedlam's governors felt that the sightseers were behaving so badly, they decreed
"the doors be locked on public holidays against all visitors."
But it was the spectacle surrounding the punishment of
criminals that was perhaps the most anticipated and popular
form of mass entertainment. Whippings, floggings, being
paraded through the streets in chains and enduring the
"pillory" - an open forum for mockery and verbal abuse -
were common punishments for petty crimes. Executions
were an even more elaborate affair and quite often were set
aside as public holidays. Occasionally, engraved invitations
would be sent out. On average, around 35 criminals were
hanged each year at the infamous Tyburn Tree, and later at
Newgate Prison. Monday was the standard execution day so
chaplains could spend Sunday evening preparing the condemned. Large crowds of rowdy,
jeering onlookers - sometimes in numbers of 30,000 or more (80,000 was the record) - would
arrive in the morning to follow the prisoner to the hanging platform. Men, women, children,
gentry and paupers alike, all attended these executions in the hopes of witnessing a
particularly dramatic declaration, a last-minute reprieve or a courageous, applause-worthy
farewell from the doomed "malefactor."

Law & Disorder

"The cream of criminal society are the pickpockets, who are to be found everywhere - even in
the best company - often clean and well-dressed, so that they may be mistaken for people of
some standing. In fact, they may actually be so, for there are men who have fallen into want by
reason of extravagance and are reduced to this way of living. After them in order of rank come
the highwaymen, who ride on horseback, and often, in their desire to relieve the victim of his
purse put him in terror with an unloaded pistol...Then comes the third, the lowest and vilest
class of criminal, the footpads. Tragic examples may be read almost daily in English
newspapers of poor people met on the road who have been brutally murdered for a few
shillings..."
- C. P. Moritz, 1782 (10)

Dark, circuitous alleys coupled with tall, shadowy buildings and the ever-present shroud of fog
made London a criminal's paradise. Outrageous murders, robberies and assaults of all kinds
were commonplace. There was no organized law enforcement to speak of - the idea of a
uniformed policeman patrolling the streets in order to prevent crime was considered too
French (the originator of this scheme) and an affront to the Englishman's liberty. In fact, it was
common practice for victims of a crime to pursue the perpetrator, often capturing and
delivering the offender to authorities all by themselves.

Thief Taker, Constable, Police

For most of the 16th century in England, the word "police" had the general meaning of the
management of a particular territory, usually a town or city. Policing was perceived as a local
government task, and like other areas of local government, it was a volunteer effort. Local men
who took on the position of constable had only a rudimentary understanding of the law. They
served in this position for a limited period, usually in their spare time and frequently without
pay.
Essentially, constables were neither a preventive nor a detective police force. They had a
variety of tasks, the most important of which was the collection of county taxes. Constables
were charged with moving offenders from place to place, such as taking an accused prisoner to
court. In the process, they sometimes had to house the offender temporarily in their homes.

There was a great deal of hostility to constables in the execution of their duties, and it did not
always stop at verbal threats and abuse. And though some could be trusted, many were
corrupt. More often than not, they were merely inept and ineffective.

Constables had an obligation to pursue any felonies reported to them and occasionally
engaged in primitive detective work. Lucky victims might even find a magistrate, or judge, who
was interested in prosecuting the crime committed against them. But this was rare. If a victim
could not follow up in person, the offense was likely to languish unpursued. The only
remaining choice would be to engage a thief taker. Thief takers were private individuals, much
like bounty hunters, who lived off rewards from courts and victims for bringing offenders to
justice. However, thief takers were not always trustworthy. Jonathan Wild was a notorious
thief taker hanged at Newgate Prison for being in league with the very criminals he was
charged with catching.

The first effective police force in England was organized by Henry Fielding (1707 - 54), the
novelist and self-styled "principal Westminster Magistrate," and his brother, Sir John Fielding,
"the Blind Beak." The brothers were disciplined, committed magistrates who were dedicated
to the idea of justice and serving the public interest. They spurned the bribes that gave "the
trading justices" their name and went to great lengths to reform the young offenders and
prostitutes who came before them. They encouraged victims to come forward with
descriptions of criminals and their deeds, they developed a primitive system of record-keeping,
and they shared this information with other magistrates. Their methodical efforts effectively
banded eight Westminster constables together into the pioneering police force that became
known as the Bow Street Runners.

The Bow Street Runners gained the trust of a disillusioned public and soon became widely
revered. Reports of crimes and descriptions of offenders flooded in from all over the country.
The London office became a central clearinghouse for data about serious crimes. Information
was collected and circulated throughout England in the form of a newspaper called The Hue
and the Cry.

Trial
The workings of a criminal court in the 16th century were quite different from what we expect
today. For one thing, the magistrate often acted more as public prosecutor and chief detective
than impartial judge. Between 1750 and 1850 most criminal cases were characterized by face-
to-face confrontation between the prosecutor and the accused. Defense counsel rarely
appeared. The assumption was that the accused had no need of counsel, since the burden of
proof was on the prosecution and the accused was a greater expert on the truth. When
clarification was needed, the trial judge was expected to assist the accused with advice.

Prisoners were not allowed to see the evidence against them before trial, and, once in the
courtroom, were not allowed to testify (since they could not be trusted to uphold an oath).
They were also not entitled to sum up their defense for the jury, though the prosecution was
given the opportunity to make a final statement. Before trial, the prisoner was expected to
submit a written defense that was to be read aloud in court. This was a grave disadvantage for
the poor and the ignorant, who frequently could neither read nor write.

Some prisoners "stood mute," refusing to answer "guilty" or "not

guilty" to the charges against them. In such cases, they would be
stretched out on the ground and pressed with crushing lead
weights until they spoke. Sometimes they died in the process.

Defense counsel, according to evidence of the Old Bailey Sessions

Papers, began to make very rare appearances in criminal trials
during the 1730s, but for the 16th century and the early part of
the 19th century their role was not strictly defined. It was not
until the late 19th century that cross-examination was
consistently practiced, with objections to leading questions - but
there was still a willingness to allow so-called expert witnesses to
give decisive opinions on the whole question of guilt.

Up until 1774, prisoners who were discharged or found not guilty through trial usually had to
pay back the expenses related to their imprisonment - these were known as "jailor's fees."
Because many could not afford to pay, they found themselves re-imprisoned, this time as
debtors. It was a vicious circle.

Punishment
In an age virtually without police, the machinery of law was uncompromising and brutal. In
total, 240 offenses were punishable by death, and hanging was prescribed for accessories as
well. Punishments ranged from standing in the pillory to branding and whipping to burning (for
particularly shameful crimes, like treason). A number of 16th century theorists believed
hanging was not punishment enough for felons and proposed "breaking on the wheel" instead.
In 1752, a law was passed that required "some further Terror and peculiar mark of Infamy be
added to the Punishment of Death" for murder. The convicted murderer was to be kept on
bread and water in a special cell, and after execution, his body was to hang in chains before
the public, then go to the surgeons for dissection.

"Dr. Samuel Johnson was one who saw that capital punishment satisfied a sinister human
craving for power over others' lives, but did not really deter crime. Undiscriminating severity
simply made criminals more cunning and more desperate, and confused small crimes with
great ones." -Clive Elmsley, Crime and Society in Society in England 1750-1900 (11)

Juries were generally loath to convict people for property crimes, since the penalty of death
seemed disturbingly harsh. In fact, many victims declined to pursue matters through the legal
system out of a sheer unwillingness to see the perpetrators hanged for their offense. However,
imprisonment was not considered a reasonable alternative to capital punishment, since it
placed young criminals into contact with older, hard-bitten ones, encouraging partnerships.
The ingenious idea of transportation became an alternative punishment beginning around
1718. Criminals were deported to the remote colonies of Maryland and Virginia on the
American shore and, later in the century, were sent off to settle New South Wales, Australia.
A little bit of language Daily life in the 16th century
1. Unplanned housing: Find words in the text that describe the following

People

City

Streets

Life

Houses

Water
(of the
Thames)
Gin

Sanitation

2. Streets and alleys 3. Water and waste Match Adjectives and Nouns

Creaking quaint slapdash stinking Manner signs alleyways city

Unpurified open waste raw Water materials sewage drains

Rotting unbearable animal cobblestone Stink streets garbage manure

Horse-drawn human putrid strolling Muck pedestrians corpse carriages

Spring private open human Companies aqueduct excrement water

Putrefying common principal dreadful Sustenance effects sewers carcases

…………….. ………………… ……………. …………… ……………… …………….. ……………. ………………

 4. Coal, fog, and graves. Account for the following:
Air pollution in England:

Awful stench of Fleet Street:

5. List common reasons of death:

6. Explain these popular amusements:

Hermaphrodites: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Dwarfs: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Operatic cats: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Acrobatic monkeys: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Hand-to-hand combat: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Quack doctors: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
“Learned animals”: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Waxworks: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Bethlehem Royal Hospital: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Criminal punishment: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

7 & 8. State the difference between:

Pickpockets Highwaymen Footpads

Constables Thief Takers Bow Street Runners

9. what did they do?

The magistrate: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The accused: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Defense counsels: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

10. mention seven ways of punishment: