Graham continues the adventures of three British immigrants to late 18th-century America in this enjoyable follow-up to Voices Beckon . . .

 

Readers are advised to start with the first volume to get a better handle on the characters, but it’s an investment worth making for the author’s vivid historical detail and convincing slice-of-life predicaments. Historical fiction fans should take note.

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The gem pictured (figuratively speaking—you can find one similar on eBay for under $10) is an example of an early American coffeepot, one  unsuitable  for the mega-mug laden tables of today.

Used as a carafe, it holds only eight ounces.  It was manufactured by the Derby Silver Company, a company founded in the late nineteenth century and noted for its extensive assortment of silver plated toilet ware.

In 1898 the Derby Silver Company merged with the International Silver Company, a consortium of New England silversmiths. It began production on a less expensive line of plated hollowware under the trademark “Victor Silver Plate Company.”

Robert Novak Jr. wrote in the Huntington Herald that when the “demand for silver fell during the Depression, the Derby Silver Company began turning out lower cost pewter ware. “The factory manager took the “chief designer to New York museums to copy some of the designs used by Paul Revere.¹”

This piece carries the trademark “Victor S Co,” a mark used after 1922 by the International Silver Company. It is electro-plated nickel silver, which is nickel silver²  electrolytically  coated with a thin layer of pure or sterling silver.

Its parts were silver soldered to withstand commercial use, and the Hotel Lafayette stamp indicates that it was from a line of hotel ware.

It may be cheap, but I think it’s lovely. I can  easily picture Liam Brock and Rhiannon Ross sharing a similar carafe at Mrs. Grayton’s parlor in Voices Whisper.

“Join me for coffee, ma’am?” Liam asked.

“Another time, perhaps. Elisabeth is expecting me.”

He steered her off the step and out the door, closing it behind him. “Not at the moment, she’s not. If ye tread up those stairs, I’ll forfeit my take.” He held up a coin. “Davey gave it to me, so as I’d make myself scarce for the next hour or so enjoying a cup at the Coffee House. Come, I’ll share my good fortune.”

Rhee frowned, yanking her arm from his grasp as she looked up at the townhouse window. He knew immediately when she came to understanding, for a faint flush spread across that lush display of bosom and crept up her slender neck, and a smile replaced the frown, an impish gleam shining in her clear green eyes. “Perhaps I could obtain another coin, and we could enjoy something sweet with our coffee?”

“Now, lass, don’t be greedy. He’s my mate, ken?” He took her elbow and started walking. Though the Coffee House would no longer do, Mrs. Grayton’s parlor certainly would. She stocked it afresh each morning with the best the markets had to offer. While she catered primarily to her lodgers, she never hesitated to welcome him as well once she found he could match her store of rumor tit for tat.

“I’ll buy ye something sweet myself, seeing as how ye’re no longer sniping at me.”

“I never sniped at you, Mr. Brock.”

“Oh, aye, ye did. And often it was, as well.” He gave a brief knock on the door, then held it open for Rhee to follow through. 

¹ Robert Novak Jr., “Remembering the Derby Silver Company,” Huntington Herald, accessed January 9, 2016, http://derbyhistorical.org/derby_silver_company.htm.

² Nickle silver is an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel.

The post Coffee for Two first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

Ballast

Ballast is what’s carried in a ship’s hull so the ship doesn’t topple. Because an empty hull is overly buoyant, stowing weight in the hull adds balance and stability.

Optimally, a salable cargo solves the problem. Past trade imbalances, however, often dictated that a ship adjust its ballast at port. Thus a ship might take on additional ballast in Lisbon and deposit it in Philadelphia. Anything bulky or heavy qualifies as ballast, and stones were commonly used.

Paved Streets Uncommon

It was a struggle for a colonial city to finance a municipal project of any scope, including paying city streets. So in 1727, Philadelphia’s Municipal Corporation tried ordering residents to pave the footpaths in front of their property.¹ Unfortunately, the city had no means to enforce the obligation, so it wasn’t a solution.

A Public Works Lottery

But in 1762, after thirty plus years of failed attempts,  the city resorted to a tactic many states use today — a public lottery. Its purpose was to fund the act for “regulating, pitching, paving, and cleansing the streets, lanes, and alleys, etc., within the settled parts of Philadelphia.”² 

Philadelphia financed the project with its share of the lottery proceeds. The city’s next challenge was finding experienced pavers.

“The laborers employed on this work of paving were not very experienced, it seems, for on Purdon, a British soldier, related to John Purdon, store-keeper in Front Street, seeing how clumsily the men worked, offered to show them how to do it. He was a skilled pavior (sic), and his services became so much in demand that the city officials obtained his release from the army by paying a substitute to fill his place.”²

Paving stones for this project would have have been costly. Perhaps the stones used did travel from French, Spanish, and Dutch ports-of-call.

1. Philadelphia: A 300-Year History. Weigley, Russell, editor. Norton & Company, NY 1982, p. 59
2. Scharf, John Thomas and Westcott, Thompson. History of Philadelphia 1609-1884, Vol II. L.H. Everts & Co., Philadelphia 1884, p. 874

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Simple and cheap, broadsides were a common means of communication for close to three hundred years, up through the early 1800s. They were first used to post notices of royal proclamations and later expanded into notices of events, advertisements, ballad sheets, and political commentaries. Illustrations made from woodcuts were common, as pictures added interest.

Liam had forgone the usual depiction of the accused hanging from the gallows. Instead he’d fashioned a woman with her baby at breast. Somehow, he’d managed to convey love, adoration, and devotion with a few deft swipes of his knife . . . Voices Whisper

The broadsheet may have been posted, or it may have been distributed by hand. Competition was fierce among printers, and they often relied on hawkers to distribute their wares and to do so speedily. The first with the news was usually the one who reaped the highest rewards–some things don’t change over time.

An actual broadside is simply a large sheet of paper, and is usually printed on one side only. In the past it was typically priced at a penny or less and was a publication most of the common folk could afford.

An Execution Broadside

In spite of their ephemeral nature, some historical broadsides still exist and are a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in life of days past. Popular events included public executions, and printers counted on people splurging for a broadsheet that gave an account of not only the execution, but of the sensational events that led up to it.

The image at the left shows a broadside from 1718, and it details the last speech of Patrick McNicol (Campbell) before he was executed for the murder of John Graham at Mugdock, near Glasgow, Scotland.  (It also advertises his confession, but as Mr. McNicol denied everything but an escape from prison, I wouldn’t consider it a confession to the murder, but more of a confession to God.)

Once McNicol finished speaking with the clergy, he began his climb up the ladder to the noose. Halfway up he paused and sat, taking advantage of his captive audience to admonish all young men to keep good company and to heed the dictates of their religion. Or so says the writer.

Eight of McNicol’s family were present to place his corpse in a coffin and carry it to his father’s burial place. It’s interesting the broadside specifies several times that the man spoke in the “Highland Tongue.”

The McNicol broadside is somewhat tame compared to others still available. I choose it because the execution took place at Mugdock, a former stronghold of the Grahams in Scotland.

An execution broadside would typically offer a detailed account of the crime and the trial–it might portray the perpetrator as evil incarnate, or it might be written to elicit sympathy. More than one version might be offered at the site of the execution, and more often than not all versions would carry a religious bent, invariably cautioning the reader against following a similar path.

The woodcut was impressive as hell, as were all the man’s carvings. Readers would go wild over the contradiction—a mother’s love up against the charge of infanticide . . . from Voices Whisper

Decline of the Broadside

By the mid-nineteenth century, increased literacy, advances in the printing industry, and reductions in the newspaper tax led readers away from broadsides and towards newspapers. For those whose reading taste still veered toward the salacious, the penny dreadfuls were coming into fashion and were an affordable alternative.

In Voices Whisper, David’s goal was to use his broadsheet to elicit sympathy for Tom’s daughter.  However, he was savvy enough to recognize the opportunity for a profit. He did what he could to have his broadsheet, enhanced by an original illustration courtesy of Liam, ready for a hawker to sell the scheduled day of execution.

The woodcut was unusual and would indeed fill a good quarter of a broadsheet. Impressive as hell, as were all the man’s carvings.

“Who did the woodcut?” the printer asked. “One from her family?”

“Nay, my mate did,” David answered. “He’s never met her.”

“Hmmph.” The printer looked at him, his eyes gleaming as if he were calculating his share of the profits. “If you decide it’s to be printed, I think we best print a few hundred more than you’d contracted for.”

Liam had forgone the usual depiction of the accused hanging from the gallows. Instead he’d fashioned a woman with her baby at breast. Somehow he’d managed to convey love, adoration, and devotion with a few deft swipes of his knife. David knew what McAllister was thinking. Readers would go wild over the contradiction—a mother’s love up against the charge of infanticide.

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Tweetables to click and share:

• Simple and cheap, broadsides were a common means of communication for close to 300 yrs
• Most common folk could afford to splurge on a detailed account of a public execution
• Broadsides: the trash tabloids of days past
  

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When College of Philadelphia trustees were asked in 1790 to consider including law in the curriculum,  James Wilson, one of America’s associate justices to the Supreme Court,  was on the committee appointed to consider the possibility. It was likely he who submitted a broad proposal to the group—a series of lectures that covered constitutional law, international law, common law, civil law, maritime law, and the law merchant. The plan was approved and Judge Wilson was elected to give the lectures, thus establishing Philadelphia’s first law school.

Wilson believed the study of law was a science founded in principle, not a trade dependent merely on precedent.¹  He began his professorship with an introductory lecture before the public on December 15, 1790. The Pennsylvania Gazette advertised the event for weeks:

LAW LECTURES. College of Philadelphia, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 1790.

The Honorable Judge Wilson’s Introductory Lecture will be delivered this Evening, at 6 o’Clock, in the College Hall; after which there will be a Commencement for conferring Degrees in Medicine. Those Citizens who have received Tickets of Admission from Mr. Wilson are requested to take their Seats in the Gallery, it being necessary to appropriate the lower Part of the HALL to the Accommodation of Congress and other Public Bodies, who are invited. ²

Wilson’s subsequent lectures were scheduled on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday that winter. On Saturdays his students participated in mock courts and mock legislative sessions. In  April, with the approach of the spring circuits, Judge Wilson was forced to give up the lectures in order to resume his judicial duties. The demands of the Supreme Court, as well as the demands of Wilson’s own precarious business ventures, were such that Wilson terminated the lectures in the following term.

Beyond a printed pamphlet of the introductory lecture, Wilson never followed through on his plans to publish the series. That task was left to his son, Bird Wilson. Working from James Wilson’s sixty some notebooks, Bird published the first edition in 1804.

Given James Wilson’s firsthand insights into the founding era, Wilson scholars have had a keen interest in knowing the extent of Bird’s editing changes.  In his biography of James Wilson,  Page Smith mentions reviewing these notebooks and states that they were in the possession of James Alan Montgomery, Jr. of Philadelphia.³

It was almost fifty years before the notebooks surfaced again. In 2001, after a fruitless search on his own, scholar Mark David Hall tracked the missing notebooks to the Free Library of Philadelphia with the aid of an attorney who uncovered Montgomery’s will. ⁴

Interestingly, Mr. Hall found evidence in two sentences of Wilson’s final draft that reveal James Wilson did indeed finish the lectures he’d planned, and that he had not abandoned the project as is frequently supposed. Hall noted that,  “It is the case that Wilson did not deliver them all, and they certainly become sketchy toward the end of the lecture series, but these sentences indicate that Wilson had, in fact, covered the ground that he intended to cover in his lectures.” ⁵

The December 15^th lecture was quite the occasion. It  was attended by the President, Vice-President, members of Congress, members of the state senate and house, and local dignitaries in the community—in short, by everybody who was anybody.

Liam Brock, one of the characters in the Voices series, had admired James Wilson from the time he first heard Wilson deliver his rousing speech calling for the ratification of the Constitution in October 1787.

In Voices Whisper, this introductory lecture offered Liam another opportunity to listen to his hero espouse his views on the future of American law.

1.  Hall, Mark David, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol 128, no. 1 (Jan 2004), pp 63-76, 64
2. Pennsylvania Gazette, December 15, 1790.
3. Smith, Charles Page, James Wilson Founding Father, 1742-1798, Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1956, 408
4. David Mark Hall learned that James Montgomery had donated the notebooks in 1968 and 1969. The Free Library of Philadelphia issued a press release in 1969 about the donation, however the notebooks were never included in the National Union Catalog or any other listing.  Hall, Collected Works of James Wilson, Volume I, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2007, 405
5. Hall, “James Wilson’s Law Lectures,” 70   

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Just how expensive were books for the average Philadelphian in the 1780s? I’ve read they were a luxury, however learning an edition of The History of Ancient Greece, from the earliest time until the time it became a Roman province, by William Robertson, Esq. with a map of Greece was priced at over sixteen shillings wasn’t helpful. Was that price comparable to what one would pay for a week’s groceries? Or was it closer to the cost of a season’s worth of firewood?

In 1787, publisher Thomas Dobson placed ads in the Pennsylvania Gazette publicizing  a variety of printed matter for sale. Several poems listed were priced at one shilling (Pennsylvania currency). A number of books were listed at prices from two shillings to twenty shillings or more (a pound was twenty shillings). A book on the elements of English Grammar was also listed, priced at “only one dollar.” A dollar in 1787 translated to approximately 7.5s  (Pennsylvania shillings). I mention this one only because I thought it odd to mix currencies within one advertisement.

Were these prices “expensive”?

Billy Smith, in The Lower Sort, estimates that a fully employed laborer in 1787 Philadelphia might have earned £61.67 over the course of a year.  It would be rare that a laborer was fully employed—that he never got sick, the economy never slowed, and inclement weather never prevented work—but I’m proceeding under the assumption the laborer was fully employed.

Smith also estimates that the minimum annual cost of food, rent, firewood and clothing for a family of four in 1787 was £81.49. This didn’t include incidentals such as candles, soap, medicine, rum, whiskey, furnishings, etc. If the laborer’s wife worked, she typically could earn half of what her full-time laborer husband could earn, and her wages might cover the shortfall and some of the incidentals.

So, yes—books were expensive. At an average weekly cost of living of £1.5, it’s more than likely a family at the lower end of the economic scale would deem a book costing £1 a luxury item. If it were my family, I can safely predict my husband would prefer I patronize a lending library instead.

Old books. Basking Ridge Historical Society

A journeyman such as Robert Store in Voices Beckon might consider buying an occasional book. At a wage of $6.00 a week, Robert was earning approximately £117.00 a year.

Mr. Oliver’s home was cluttered with books, some of which were Liam’s. How could Liam possibly have afforded them?

First, he was very skilled at cards and won much more than he lost. Oft as not, he’d use his winnings on books. Second, he was Mr. Oliver’s ward. Mr. Oliver’s gift of choice was always a book.

Tweetables to click and share:

• I think my spouse would prefer I patronize a library instead
• Just how expensive were books for the average American in the late eighteenth century?
• An Eighteenth-Century Luxury: Books

Billy G. Smith, The “Lower Sort” Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800 (New York, NY  1990)

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Masked balls of the eighteenth century fostered all sorts of illicit amusements.  The events, both commercial and private, were seen by some as an opportunity to freely engage in unseemly behavior while maintaining anonymity. They were enormously popular—in Philadelphia as well as in European cities.

In 1808 a Monsieur Epervil introduced a series of large commercial masquerade balls to Philadelphia. While the advertisements for the entertainments hinted at potential sexual danger, the promoter also promised care would be taken that improper persons would not be admitted. Improper persons likely referred to prostitutes.

Only two of Epervil’s planned balls were given. The Pennsylvania Assembly took quick action at the perceived threat to public morals and within two weeks passed an Act declaring the masked balls a public nuisance. The Act carried serious penalties and was aimed at privately held masquerades as well. It provided that:

“every housekeeper within this Commonwealth who shall knowingly permit and suffer a masquerade or masked ball to be given in his or her home, and every person who shall set on foot, promote, or encourage any masquerade or masked ball, and every person who shall knowingly attend or be present at any masquerade or masked ball in mask or otherwise, being thereof legally convicted . . . shall for each and every offense be sentenced to an  imprisonment not exceeding three months, and to pay a fine not exceeding one thousand nor less than fifty dollars, and to give security in such sum as the court may direct to keep the peace and be of good behavior for one year.”

The bill was passed on February 3^rd and signed by the governor on February 15^th, 1808. Disgruntled, Monsieur Epervil halted his preparations to introduce Philadelphians to the Parisian Bals d l’ Opera and left the city.

A Masked Ball at the Academy of Paris (Opera) Harper’s Weekly 1884

The subject of masquerades comes up briefly in Voices Whisper when, much to Liam’s chagrin, Rhiannon learns he attended a masked ball with Victoria. He was never keen to discuss one woman with the next, especially Tory with Rhiannon.

Rhiannon closed her eyes briefly, a pained expression crossing her features. “A masquerade ball, Mr. Brock? Truly?”

He shrugged a should in chagrin, giving her a lopsided grin.

“I’m puzzled why women tolerate you, Mr. Brock. I honestly am.” ~ Voices Whisper

Scharf, John Thomas and Westcott, Thompson.  History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Volume 2, Philadelphia 1884

Lyons, Clare A. Sex among the Rabble, An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830. University of North Carolina Press 2006

The post Masquerades a Public Nuisance? first appeared on Linda Lee Graham.

One of the public libraries was Thomas Bradford’s General Circulating Library. Mr. Bradford opened his library in 1769, operating it first from his home on Second Street. His price structure made books available to those who couldn’t otherwise afford them. For a fee of six pence a week, one could borrow one book at a time. Bradford’s Day Book indicates it was not unusual for a patron to borrow and return several books within a week, thereby maximizing the value of the fee paid.

Clare Lyons, in her book Sex among the Rabble, shares a host of interesting statistics regarding this library. Roughly one hundred users patronized it weekly. Her sample of the Day Book indicates that as many as forty percent of those patrons were new customers, suggesting readers would subscribe periodically, perhaps as their finances permitted.

She also analyzed the tax rolls, matching patrons to taxpayers for clues on the readers’ occupations.  The majority of the male readers didn’t even make the tax list, presumably because they were too young or too poor. Those that did included innkeepers, sea captains, carpenters, clerks, shoemakers, shopkeepers, hatters, joiners, tanners, and bricklayers.

Her sample also revealed that more than forty percent of the patrons were women, and, for what it’s worth, more than half of those were not titled “Mrs.”.

Bradford’s library catered to popular taste, so it is not surprising he kept it stocked with novels.  Many of the books had suggestive titles (Fair Adulteress, Nunnery for Coquets, Masquerade) and/or erotic themes (Pamela, The History of Sally Sable, The Happy Repentant).

Often these novels played a role in a women’s moral and sexual education, as The Power of Sympathy, the book Elisabeth’s father had given her in Voices Beckon, was meant to do.

Tales of sensational adventures were also in demand. It is possible that the pirate book Elisabeth furtively read in Voices Whisper was one of the volumes available in a nearby lending library.

My family and I had the good fortune to vacation in Scotland this summer. On one of my most perfect days in memory we visited Skaill House and its lovely library. The visit was tucked amongst several awesome expeditions that day, and it was one I hadn’t expected. I love meandering through old homes, and this one gave the impression the owners had just stepped out for a walk (maybe they had—I believe it’s still occupied).

I also discovered that Grahams had called it home at least twice in the last four hundred years!

Lyons, Clare A. Sex among the Rabble, An Intimate History of Gender & Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia 1730-1830

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