Given the popularity of Wikipedia these days I’ve decided it makes sense to put some of the 18th century data in it. As a test case I’ve added an entry about Quilt Arnold - one of the henchmen of master criminal Jonathan Wild between the years 1716 to 1725.

Check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quilt_Arnold and let me know if you have any suggestions.

Well, the research trip had its good bits and its not so good bits. I unfortunately wasn’t all that well in London so I managed to do less than I had hoped. Also, a remarkable amount of 18th century London just isn’t there any more. (Not surprising I guess. They had to put 19th and 20th century London somewhere).

I did manage to spend some time around Spitalfields, the district where a lot of Huguenots lived and the site of a thriving cloth industry. Christ Church Spitalfields is one of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s constructions and is pretty impressive (although bits of it got monstered during the 19th century). Spitalfields market is still in the same place but is covered over now and has no sense of history about it.

The same can be said for West Smithfield. This was once the site of a huge meat market and a hangout for thieves and rogues of all descriptions. As at Spitalfields the markets are still there (at least in part) but covered over. I didn’t spot any thieves or rogues either. In fact, it was raining and I barely saw anybody. The smart people were all inside.

Actually, that’s not completely true. I got approached by a homeless man asking for money. Thinking that any other fool out in that rain deserved support I pulled out a few coins and handed them over. It turned out to be three pounds. He was gobsmacked and told me he’d be lucky to get that much in a day normally.

We both agreed that some days you got luckier than others. But it seems to me to be pretty hard yakka when you have to spend the whole day parting people from less than three quid. It seems the streets of London still have their vagabonds and they aren’t doing it all that easy. Not that Sydneysiders have any reason to be proud in that regard but at least the weather is warmer.

We did a trip out to Framlingham Castle in East Anglia. This is an interesting place. Only the curtain walls remain of the medieval castle but inside is a poorhouse built in the late 17th century and expanded considerably in the early 18th. It was quite interesting seeing how they had to live.

It would have been hard work but on the whole a hell of a lot better than trying to stay alive in London. At least you got enough to eat, some clothes (rough but adequate) and a roof over your head. The East Anglian winds would have been chilly but you’d be indoors much of the time. Better than being homeless in London, that’s for sure.

Hopefully the next time I head over I’ll be in better nick.

Off to England in a few days where I plan to spend a couple of weeks pottering around London and researching its 18th century aspects. And maybe taking in a few non-18th century bits as well.

I’ll be mostly off the air for a while but I’ll post any interesting stuff I find when I can.

I’ve added a new page to the 18th century resources section dedicated to the Cost of Living. It includes such things as the prices of food, drink and clothing - everyday stuff affecting people’s lives.

I’ve also updated the Wages page with a couple of items. Did you know that a Ship’s Boy earned £2 10s per year while the First Commissioner to the Admiralty earned £3,000? The gap between rich and poor was pretty big.

I’ve added a couple more categories to the Thieves’ Cant section of the site - one for miscellaneous verbs and the other for places and travel. I’ve also moved some of the other categories around to be a bit more sensible.

Nearly all the cant terms date to the early Georgian period although quite a number are still in use in the later Georgian and Regency periods.

If you have any suggestions as to how it might be better arranged I’d be interested to hear them.

tr.v. axe
To remove ruthlessly or suddenly

The manuscript turns out to be about 25,000 words too long. Massacre time.

There is a sort of bizarre satisfaction in destroying things you have laboured to create. I always used to build sandcastles as close to the water’s edge as possible so that I could watch the tide tear them down.

Garçon, the long-handled axe, s’il vous plaît.

One of the main elements in the Bonenfant memoirs is the way Pascal encounters evil in so many different forms. The nature of evil is a thorny one, tied up with medicine, free will and predestination. I don’t intend to solve that problem here (maybe in another post) but to share a child’s insight.

My son is six years old and is obsessed with Lego Star Wars. I don’t know if you have ever encountered it but it is a computer game based on the Star Wars movies but with all the characters and scenery made out of Lego blocks. It is good for kids because there is no blood - only lego tiles flying in all directions. Dying is just a temporary embarrassment as you regenerate almost immediately.

Robert has a strong narrative sense and he has invented another story-game played completely outside the computer where there is a sort of parallel Star Wars story and all the characters are womp rats. Master Jedi Womp Rat is the main character but there are lots of others including the Emperor Rat and Darth Rat.

The story took a twist when, with Emperor Rat on the verge of defeat, Darth Rat decided to renounce the dark side and turn good. His motive, Robert announced, was not that the Emperor had threatened his son. It was because he realised the Emperor was going to lose and he didn’t want to die with him. Thus he decided to revert to being Aniken Rat.

There is a sort of pure medieval morality about this. Be good and you will go to heaven; be bad and you will go to hell. Regardless of any abstract sense of whether Good is in itself a good thing you should turn good because staying bad will be detrimental.

Master Jedi Womp Rat also managed to subvert the battle droids (which Robert and his friend call ‘Roger-Rogers’) by offering them better working conditions - regular cleaning and polishing, good quality power supplies and so forth. Again the ethical pragmatism. Leaving aside the whole questions of whether droids can in any way be regarded as evil, it makes sense that they should go for the side which gives them the greater rewards.

I find this uncluttered idea of good and evil refreshing. Children have a simple morality. They don’t have any concept of mortal sins versus venal sins except that you get in more trouble for the former. Their world view is simple - good things are rewarded, bad things punished.

The question for adults must be, is this all there is to it? If the thing you were being rewarded for (Darth Rat serving the Emperor) suddenly changes to a thing you will be punished for (Darth Rat doesn’t want to die) then doesn’t it make sense to change also (welcome back Aniken rat)? Is this why we are taught that Satan is the father of Lies? Because if we could believe in his rewards then would they, in fact, be evil?

Perhaps Pascal’s memoirs will tell me more. It’s a fascinating topic.

May the womp be with you!

I shall be at the 32nd WisCon convention in Madison, Wisconsin from May 23-26. I’ll be speaking on a panel about material culture in science fiction and fantasy, drawing on my years of being an archaeologist. And, of course, enjoying all the other stuff going on.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Spent quite a lot of time today getting this website sorted. There’s still a few style aspects I’m trying to pin down and the old 18th century data needs to be tweaked for the new style to work. Fortunately the 18th century data is stitched together with templates (my own bit of Perl programming, he said modestly) so making global changes to it won’t be hard. Mostly a matter of menus.
I’m also putting the final details together in Volume 1 of the Memoirs - re-editing the last chapter, checking a few historical details. Stuff like that.

It seems like a good day to get this site rolling. My personal website has been around for a while now and you are welcome to visit it but this one is for my writing - particularly the work on the Bonenfant Memoirs.

The memoirs, while containing some aspects of the supernatural, are firmly rooted in 18th century London. Insofar as I can determine all known historical events are just as portrayed but are mixed in with apparently fantastical encounters with magical and demonic creatures.

Editing these memoirs has required considerable research into the 18th century and I have created a section to share some of that research. It includes a subject listing of Thieves’ Cant, various bits of information on currency and wages and sundry odds and sods. I will update it with more research as I go along.