Part 10 (1/2)
Inoculation has already been referred to, but I may here state that the first account I have seen of professional inoculation for the smallpox in Royston is the announcement in the year 1773 of--”George Hatton, surgeon, apothecary and man-mid-wife in Royston, who, with the advice of his friends and the many patients whom he has inoculated, begs leave to acquaint the public that he will wait upon any person or family within 6 or 7 miles from Royston, and inoculate them for half-a-guinea each person, medicines and attendances included, and, that the poor may have the benefit of his practice, a proper allowance will be made them and diligent attendance given.”
Bills of the same period show that the charge for this species of inoculation ”when a quant.i.ty was taken,” as in the parish bills, was 2s. or 2s. 6d. each person. The advantage claimed for spreading the disease of small-pox out of the rates by means of inoculation was that if you had it as the result of inoculation only one person in 300 died, but if you had small-pox by infection, eight out of every hundred died.
It may be of interest to add as a general fact upon health and diseases, that in 1792, out of 20,000 burials the following were the proportions of deaths from the leading diseases:--Consumption 5,255, convulsions {81} 4,646, dropsy 3,018, fevers 2,203, small-pox 1,568, measles 450, ”teeth” 419. The deaths under two years of age were 6,542, or one-third of the whole! The cla.s.sification was not so exact in those days as it would be now, but the race has improved a little in regard to infantile mortality and consumption.
In coupling the doctor and the body-s.n.a.t.c.her, at the head of this chapter, I did not really mean to convey more than the general a.s.sociation of human experience in the periods of sickness and the close of life. If there was a closer a.s.sociation of these two characters in the later Georgian era, it is, at least, a satisfaction to be able to write of such things entirely in the past tense. At a time when even to maintain the decencies and comforts of domestic life was often a struggle with untoward surroundings, it may seem to show a desire to load the past times with more than their share of trials and misfortunes, to suggest that the most painful of all experiences of the times was reserved for the end of life; that the ordeal of the separation from friends by death was embittered, and intensified, beyond anything in more modern experience, yet it is certain that the revolting business of the ”body-s.n.a.t.c.her” did, for some years, between 1815 and 1830, brood over many a village in this district like a cruel night-mare!
The reception of bodies, or ”subjects,” from country or town burying grounds for the dissecting rooms of London and other hospitals, became almost a trade, not altogether beyond the commercial principle of supply and demand. Generally about two guineas was the price, and students would club together their five s.h.i.+llings each for a ”subject.”
In the face of such facts it would be idle to suggest that the tradition of that mysterious cart, moving silently through the darkness of night on m.u.f.fled wheels towards our village churchyards, was merely a creature of the imagination. The tradition of that phantom cart which lingered for years had a substantial origin as certain as the memory of many persons still living can make it! In many of the villages around Royston, as indeed in other districts, the terror of it became such that not a burial took place in the parish graveyards, but the grave had to be watched night after night till the state of the corpse was supposed to make it unlikely that it would then be disturbed! The watch was generally kept by two or three men taking it in turns, generally sitting in the church porch, through the silent hours of the night armed with a gun! The well-to-do were able to secure this protection by paying for it, but many a poor family had to trust to the human sympathy and help of neighbours. Under a stress of this kind probably some brave Antigone watched over the remains of a dead brother, and certainly it was not uncommon for husband and wife to face the ordeal of sitting out the night till the grey light of morning, in some lone church porch, or the vestry of some small meeting-house--watching lest the robbers of {82} the dead should come for a lost son or daughter! Over the grave of some poor widow's son, or of that of a fellow workman, volunteers were generally forthcoming to perform this painful office.
Though the law was seldom invoked, there must have been numberless cases in which bodies were stolen, cases in which the modest mound of earth placed over the dead had mysteriously dropped in, and the outraged parents or relatives, not unnaturally perhaps, turned with bitter revengeful thoughts to the London and other hospitals of that day--whether justly or unjustly G.o.d knows! Around the parish churchyards of Ba.s.singbourn, Melbourn, and especially Therfield and Kelshall, the memory of unpleasant a.s.sociations lingered for many years after the supposed transactions had pa.s.sed away; nor was it merely an experience peculiar to isolated village churchyards. On the contrary it was customary, even in the Royston church-yard, surrounded as it is and was then by houses--with the Vicarage house then actually in the church-yard, in fact--it was customary for relatives to sit in the Church porch at night and watch the graves of departed friends!
Of actual occurrences of robbing the graves there is the story of a woman living in one of the villages on the hills not far from Royston, when on her way home, accepting a ride with a neighbour, only to find to her horror that the driver had a dead body in his cart! As to the allegations that stolen bodies did find their way to hospitals for dissecting purposes, there is a well authenticated story of a case in which a Roystonian was recognised in the dissecting room of a London hospital! A doctor, whose name would, I daresay, be remembered by some if mentioned, and who was in the habit of visiting a family in Royston, and knew many Royston people, upon entering the dissecting room of one of the London hospitals, at once recognised a ”subject” about to be operated upon, as a person he had frequently seen in Royston, a peculiar deformity leaving no possible doubt as to her ident.i.ty!
Excepting when the natural dread of it came home to bereaved families, there was no very strong public opinion on the subject; the law, which came down with a fell swoop upon many cla.s.ses of small offenders, was too big an affair for dealing with questions of sentiment, and as there were no little laws of local application readily available, the practice was too often connived at where examples might have been made.
In some things our grandfathers may have had the advantage over this hurrying age, but the reverent regard for the dead, and the outward aspect of their resting place, is a.s.suredly not one of them.
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CHAPTER VIII.
OLD PAINS AND PENALTIES--FROM THE STOCKS TO THE GALLOWS.
All the old punishments, from the Ducking Stool to the Stocks, proceeded upon the appeal to the moral sense of the community, and up to the middle, or probably nearer to the end of last century, the summary punishment of offenders took place, both in village and town, in the most public manner possible. Near the Old Prison House, standing a little eastward of the summit of the Cave, in Melbourn Street, which did duty for both civil parishes of Herts. and Cambs., stood the Royston pillory and also the stocks, but towards the end of the century the pillory disappeared, and stocks had to be set up in each parish. I can find no record of any actual punishments by the Melbourn Street pillory, but one of the last cases of punishment by pillory took place at Hertford, and was witnessed by Mr. Henry Fordham.
Closely connected with, and as a part of the stocks was the whipping post, and this was very freely used until about 1800. In 1804 a prisoner was sentenced at Ely to be publicly whipped, besides imprisonment. In 1786, I find that George Rose was brought from Cambridge to Royston and whipped at the stocks. What his offence was is not stated, but that whipping was no trifle may be inferred from the following laconic entry in the Royston parish books:---
”Relieved William C----, his back being sore after whipping him.”
The offender had his wrists put through the rings on the upright posts of the stocks, which formed the whipping posts, and in this position he was flogged on his naked back ”till his body was b.l.o.o.d.y.” Vagrants had no small share of this kind of punishment. The following entry occurs in the Barkway parish papers:--
Hertfords.h.i.+re to Witt.
To the Keeper of the House of correction at Buntingford.
This is to require you to Whip Elizabeth Matthewson upon her naked Body, and for so doing this shall be your warrant.
G. Jennings.
In 1798 an item in the accounts for the same parish is charged for ”the new iron for the whipping post.”
{84} The stocks for Royston, Cambs., stood in the middle of the broad part of Kneesworth Street, nearly opposite the yard entrance of King James' Palace, and just in front of some dilapidated cottages then occupying the site of Mr. J. R. Farrow's shop. Here they remained as a warning to evil doers till about 1830 or 1840. In Royston, Herts., after the abolition of the central prison-house in Melbourn Street, a cage was erected with stocks attached on the Market Hill, on the east side nearly opposite the Green Man, but they were removed at a later date to the Fish-hill, when an addition was made to the west side of the Parish-room, for the purpose, where the fire engines are now placed. An estimate in the parish books for the erection of a cage and stocks in Royston, Herts., at a cost of L10, in the year 1793, may perhaps fix the date at which each parish provided its own means of punishment of wrong-doers.
Though drunkenness was a vice infinitely more prevalent than it is to-day, it was not because local authorities did not at least show the form of their authority, but simply because they had no very efficient police system to back it up. It was customary for instance for the publican to have a table of penalties against ”tippling” actually posted up in his licensed house, so that both he and his customers might see what might be the consequences, but as they often could not read they were probably not much the wiser, except for a common idea that the Parish Stocks stood outside on the village green, or in the town street. The common penalty for tipplers continuing to drink in an alehouse, was that such persons should forfeit 3s. 4d. for the use of the Poor, and if not paid to be committed to the stocks for the s.p.a.ce of four hours; for being found drunk 5s., or six hours in the stocks.
As to swearing, a labourer was liable to be fined 1s. for every oath, a person under the degree of a gentleman 2s., and for a gentleman 5s.
In times of disturbance, as at village feasts, it was no uncommon thing to see the stocks full of disorderly persons--that is, with two or three at once--and occasionally the constable's zeal in the use of this simple remedy outran his discretion. At the Herts. a.s.sizes in 1779, before Sir Wm. Blackstone, a Baldock shoemaker, named Daniel Dunton, obtained a verdict and L10 damages against the chief and petty constable of Baldock for illegally putting him in the stocks.
There was, of course, an odd and comic side about the stocks as an instrument of punishment, which cannot belong to modern methods. An instance of this was brought home to the writer in the necessary efforts at ransacking old men's memories for the purpose of some parts of these Glimpses of the past. I was, for instance, inquiring of an old resident of one of our villages as to what he remembered, and ventured to ask him, in the presence of one or two other inhabitants, the innocent question--”I suppose you have seen men put in the stocks in your {85} time!” but before the old man could well answer, a younger man present interposed, with a merry twinkle of the eye--”Yes, I'll be bound he has, he's been in hi'self!” I am bound to say that, from the frank manner in which my informant proceeded to speak of persons who had been in the stocks, the younger man's interruption was only a joke, but it taught me to be cautious in framing questions about the past to be addressed to the living, lest I should tread upon some old corns!