What should a respectable widow wear?

By the late 19th century, mourning behaviour in England had developed into a complex set of rules, particularly among the upper classes. For women, the customs involved wearing heavy, concealing, black clothing, and the use of heavy veils of black crêpe. The entire ensemble was colloquially known as "widow's weeds" (from the Old English waed, meaning "garment").

The growing wealth of the eighteenth century aristocracy set the trend for the flamboyant expression of loss and grief with masses of black bombazine silk, ostrich feathers and bows.

But older and poorer women choose a much simpler, more practical styles and with the growth of the urban middle class, particularly in Britain the demand for dull, black, mourning wools, black and white silk crepe increased as incomes and social expectations rose.

Black however was not the only acceptable colour for grief. In the portrait below we see a woman holding a portrait of her dead husband wearing white with a black lace collar and bonnet. Mauve was also an acceptable colour. 

The wearing of mourning clothes was more of a social necessity for women than men. Whilst men might wear a special suit of sombre clothing for the actual funeral they were rarely expected to wear special clothes or colours unlike women who were expected to show the world their change in status for at least a year and a day.

Of course many women wanted show respect to their dead husbands and continued to wear sombre colours for the rest of their lives. Indeed Charlotte Leadam the heroine of my first novel Sinclair is a young widow and faces this very problem.  As she waits for her husband's creditors to present their accounts, she is, "wearing her new mourning clothes; a respectable but uncomplicated widow's cap and a full length black cloak both in black bombazine silk. The silk was not shiny like taffeta but had a sombre, matte finish that seemed to drain the colour from her face making her look even more wan and tired than she actually was."

"Wearing black crepe was the only acceptable thing to do for a woman in her position and she would have to wear it in public for a minimum period of one year and one day. After that she could choose wear subdued colours such as browns and greys, purples, lilacs, lavenders, and even white."

"But today was the first time that she had appeared in her widow's clothes in public and by this act she was acknowledging that her life had changed forever. It was a sign to the world that she was respecting her husband’s memory but it also told anyone who was interested that she was irreparably damaged, that she was half spent or half dead inside and that she was lonely and vulnerable. To wear anything else would indicate that she was a heartless harlot but she hated the loathsome colour; it reminded her of her loss and it told the world that she was alone.”

In a world where a woman became her husband’s property on marriage and where a middle class widow could not enter the professions to support herself signalling this change in marital status could have its advantages showing men that they were available for marriage again.

Julia Herdman’s debut novel Sinclair will be available later this year.

Julia Herdman’s debut novel Sinclair will be available later this year.

Some thoughts on May Day

When I think of May Day I think either of Maypoles, Morris Dancing and the Jack in the Green or the old Soviet military processions in Red Square.

 

Of course the origins of May Day stretch back into the mists of time. In the late Middle Ages people in England started to dance around a Maypole (a pole with no ribbons) as a celebration of Spring and to encourage fertility in the soil and people. This was banned by the Puritans but came back with the Restoration in 1660 and has remained with ever since – the Victorians added the ribbons. 

But by the seventeenth century England was on the long march to modernity and urban living and London was well on the way to being the first great modern city in the world so May Day in London had nothing to do with May Poles or flowers.

May Day was one of a number of days of the year; Shrove Tuesday, Ascension Day, Midsummer and St Bartholomew’s Day; when disorder reigned.  Between 1603 and 1642 Shrove Tuesday riots involved apprentice boys attacking brothels, bawdy houses and playhouses to reduce temptation during Lent! In the same period there were eight May Day riots. The attacks on bawdy houses seem to peter out after the Restoration and the nature of May Day and other celebration days changes again.

In the late seventeenth century there is evidence of what are called ‘ridings’ in London and other towns. In a ‘riding’ those who are viewed to have transgressed the sexual morality of the day were harangued in the street by the mod beating their pots and pans and shouting at the tops of their voices in what was called ‘rough music.’ In June 1664 a woman appeared before a magistrate in Middlesex accused of following a woman down the street shouting, ‘whore, whore’ and clapping her hands. She was joined by others and soon there was a near riot. Those deemed to have offended their community were spat on, had dirt and stones thrown at them as well as the contents of chamber pots. In London haranguing husbands who had beaten or cheated on their wives was particularly popular as was terrorising brothel keepers and the mothers of illegitimate children.

Historian Charles Pythian-Adams has argued that during the eighteenth century May Day celebrations in London were transformed becoming socially segregated with the rich withdrawing from popular or plebeian activities, but this notion leaves out the growing urban middle class and the effects of growing religious non-conformity. As the eighteenth century progressed so did social separation (both class and gender) but it was not exclusively the elites separating themselves from the poor, the middle class were able to buy their way into urban elite culture, they may not have had a box at the theatre but they could have a seat in the stalls; and as for the poor they separated into those who chose the strictures of religious non-conformity (no pagan rituals) over the perceived laxity of the established church(pagan rituals accepted). This new urban culture was not conducive to what we think of as May Day traditions and its celebration or marking lapsed until it was re-invented and sanitised by the Victorians who gave us children holding ribbons and dancing round the May Pole in the Board School yard.

Source: The Eighteenth-Century Town: A Reader in English Urban History 1688-1820, By Peter Borsay, Routledge 2013

The Unfortunate Captain Peirce: When is a Hero not a Hero?

The wreck of the 'Halsewell', Indiaman, 1786, Thomas Stothard

Two and twenty years ago the merchant marine got its first hero; Captain Richard Peirce of the ill-fated East Indiaman the Halsewell. The ship which left Gravesend docks on the first day of January 1786 with a manifest of 240 people and was wrecked six days later of the Dorset coast with the loss of over 170 lives. The tragedy rocked the nation to its core and the ship’s captain became a national hero with stories and eulogies[1] appearing the London press and magazines like The Gentleman and The European praising his self-sacrifice for the sake of his family. The ship was not the first to go down and it certainly was not the last but this wreck captured the nation’s imagination for some reason.

Built by Wells of Blackwall in 1778 the 758 ton ship was on route to Madras armed with 12 cannon and carrying a cargo of 53 chests of small arms, 25 tons of copper plate, 500 tons of lead for shot, and general merchandise including pitch, grindstones, tar, chains and bellows but the main consignment was the men of the 2^nd Battalion and the 42^nd Regiment of the East India Company’s army who were being sent to replace men lost in Company’s war with the last mogul emperor with any clout, Hydra Ali, three years earlier.

 In addition to these soldiers the Haleswell has civilian passengers, including the two daughters Eliza and Mary-Ann; and two nieces of the captain Amy and Mary Paul, a Miss Elizabeth Blackburn,a  Miss Mary Haggard, a Miss Ann Mansell and a Mr John Shultz. The first mate, Thomas Burston, was a member of the Peirce family and was also lost in the incident. None of the women were able to escape and were among about 170 who died in the ship, which disintegrated within two hours of striking the rocky promontory. 

The Loss of the Haleswell, J.M.W Turner.

Accounts[2] given by two surviving officers Meriton and Rogers said that Peirce heroically remained with them and is shown on the right of the painting above, seated between and comforting his daughters. Meriton and Rogers stand on the left, on the point of departure, as calm observers of the group.

During the eighteenth century a number of men achieved the status of national hero, the most famous of them being the legendary Captain James Cook (1728-1779), the man who spent his life exploring and mapping; Newfoundland, Australia, the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand for the British Crown.

During the Seven Years' War, Cook served in North America as master of Pembroke (1757) In 1758 he took part in the major amphibious assault that captured the Fortress of Louisbourg from the French, after which he participated in the siege of Quebec City and then the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. He showed a talent for surveying and cartography, and was responsible for mapping much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege, thus allowing General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham.

In 1766, Admiralty engaged Cook to command a scientific voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The purpose of the voyage was to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun for the benefit of Royal Society inquiry into a means of determining longitude. Once the observations were completed, Cook opened his sealed orders and started the second part of his voyage: to search the south Pacific for signs of the postulated rich southern continent of Terra Australis. He sailed around New Zealand and landed on Australian soil on 19 April 1770, and in doing so his expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered its eastern coastline. 

Two years later as the commander of HMS Resolution with his companion ship HMS Adventure he circumnavigated the globe at an extreme southern latitude, becoming one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on 17 January 1773.

On his last great voyage Cook was charged with looking for a north-west passage around the American continent. He sailed via Cape Horne and into the Pacific Ocean stopping off at Hawaii and the Sandwich Islands. Cook sailed as far north as Vancouver Island than turned back and was killed in an altercation with the local Hawaiian chief on 14 February 1779.

The Death of Captain James Cook,  Johann Zoffany, circa 1795.

So, how was it that Captain Peirce of the East India Company could be compared with the heroic Cook? 

In the latter part of the eighteenth century as tariffs were lowered on tea, brandy and other luxury goods the amount of smuggling along the coast was at last beginning to fall. Wrecks too were becoming less attractive to looters. The rescuers of the survivors were hailed by the King and the Company provided a reward of 50 guineas for their efforts. The survivors who were mainly crew had to walk all the way back to London through snow and rain, there was no reward for them. In fact the crew were lambasted[3] in some sections of the London press for failing to do their duty and for disobeying their captain and it became a commonly held view that the reason for the disaster was the lax attitude of the crew and their failure to follow their captain’s orders.

Thompson[4] argues that placing Peirce in the company of a man like Cook elevated him to an example of the national character, the embodiment of British courage and virtue in war. But Pierce was not at war and neither was he a servant of the state like Cook and other heroes such as Wolfe and Andre he was engaged in trade and a lucrative one at that. On a successful voyage a captain like Pierce could expect to make £10,000, and extra-ordinary amount of money compared to his pay which would have been something in the order of £300 a year and he was hoping to marry his daughters and nieces to rich officers or merchants along the way. But for a nation hungry for commercial success and wealth Pierce was their man, a jewel in their social crown and an example of familial loyalty and enterprise in the area of the world they were most interested in, India. “In death, Peirce becomes implicitly iconic not only for British courage and manly virtue but also the East India Company’s paternalism and its mission to form stronger bonds of affection and sociability both within British society and between Britain and its colonial dominions.

However, the legal implications of the commonly held view that the crew was the chief cause of the disaster were to have lasting significance for seamen who found themselves under the control of brutal officers, as both commercial owners and the British Crown were able to cite the example of the Halsewell as a reason for the maintenance of strict order, by force if necessary by officers on the lower orders.

The story of the Haleswell (renamed the Sherwell) inspired the beginning of my up- coming novel, Sinclair which will be available later this year.

[]] Monody, On the death of Captain Peirce, 1786.

[2] A circumstantial narrative of the loss of the Halsewell, East-Indiaman .Henry Meriton (second mate of the Halsewell.), John Rogers (third mate of the alsewell.)http://www.responsites.co.uk/halsewell/

[3]The London Recorder, January 15^th, 1786.

[4] Ship Wreck in Art and Literature, Carl Thompson, Routledge, 2013