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Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

As I close in on finishing The Next Historical, I’m also researching as much as I can about pugilism. As so often happens, one gets on a tangent … this one was fruitful but a bit macabre. In 1820, a Mr. Thurtell and confederates were involved in the murder of one William Weare. The events were, it would seem, fairly infamous. In 1824 there appeared The Fatal Effects of Gambling Exemplified in the Murder of Wm. Weare which relates, in a frustratingly circuitous manner, the events of that evening, the days leading up it and the aftermath.

Yes, it’s early True Crime. The title of the work should clue you in on any personal biases of the author.

At any rate, I have gained some new-to-me Regency vocabulary and a sense that some people are just … not … good.

Here’s the gist of what happened: A Mr. Thurtell was out with some compatriots (Weare and Hunt. One Probert appears to have at least known them) and in the wee hours of the morning one of them, William Weare, had been shot in the head and his body dumped in Probert’s pond. Probert (only Hunt and Thurtell were tried) objected to the body dumping and so the corpse was moved to a different pond. As an aside, at trial, Thurtell, who represented himself, expressly identified the property owner Mr. Probert as the likely murderer. The suspects were observed after the fact looking for items lost and when asked, claimed to have been in an carriage accident that did not result in the carriage tipping over or any injury to man or horse, but did result in the loss of personal effects. The clothing of Mr. Thurtell was found to be bloodstained.

And now, I’m going to pull out bits of some of the narrative.

Among other anecdotes which he [Thurtell] related of himself, were the two following : He was in the neighbourhood of Cheltenham some time ago with a noted boxer, and some of the visitants and inhabitants made a match between two men, and considerable bets were pending. He, himself, made bets to the amount of £200 on the worst man, and he and his boxing friend by acting, the one as second, and the other as time-keeper contrived to make the worst man win the battle; and so, as he said, the Cheltenham yokels were nick’d, and he carried off the £200.

He [Thurtell] was with the English at the storming of St. Sebastian, and when they entered the town, he saw a Polish officer in the French service, leaning against the wall, “seemingly done up with wounds and hard work. I thought by the look of him,” he continued, “that he was a nob, and must have some blunt about him–so I just stuck my sword in his rib; and settled him; and I found a hundred and forty doubloons in the pocket!–a good booty, wasn’t it, Joe?

Thurtell was known among his flash friends by the nick-name of “Old Flare.” He was always remarkably reserved and thoughtful in company. He would sit for hours and scarcely speak. When he did speak, his conversation was of the most hardened and disgusting kind, and his general conduct was such, that two of his worthy companions made a bet of a dozen of wine, that he would be hanged within three years.

In other research that branched off from here, the attendees of an infamous trial had trouble finding rooms. In the town where the trial was taking place. Two weeks before the trial, the going rate was “5 guineas for 2 bedchambers and a sitting room” and after that there were “… no rooms to be had.”

At the trial, a witness said:

I observed the chaise in which Thurtell was, merely because of its being on the wrong side of the road.

And this answers a point I’ve often wondered about. It seems OBVIOUS that traffic could not been unregulated enough that you could drive any which way. There just had to be formal or at least generally accepted traffic rules. So here, yes, that chaise was on the wrong side of the road.

Another interesting linguistic fact is the reference to distance in “poles” as in the gate was about thirty poles from Probert’s cottage. This measurement is referenced many times in this account. Wikipedia is of some assistance:

The rod or perch or pole is a surveyors tool and unit of length equal to 5½ yards, 16½ feet or 1/320th of a statute mile and one-fourth of a surveyors chain. The rod is useful as a unit of length because whole number multiples of it can equal one acre of square measure. […] Since the adoption of the international yard on 1 July 1959, the rod has been equal to exactly 5.0292 meters.

A rod is the same length as a perch also sometimes called a pole which measure using cordage or wood, slightly antedated the use of both rods and surveyors chains, made of more dimensionally regular materials. The measure also has a relationship to the military pike of about the same size and both measures date from the sixteenth century when that weapon was still utilized in national armies. Wikipedia

It is stated that a plan had been organized by a gang, at the head of which were Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert, by which the lives of all persons, who were either obnoxious to the parties, or whose deaths would lead to the possession of property, were to be sacrificed. Manchester-buildings, Cannon-row, Westminster, was chosen for the scene of those dreadful doings; and considering the vicinity of the river, and the facility thence afforded of floating the bodies of their victims downward to the ocean, the situation was but too well adapted for the purpose. A house in Manchester-buildings was taken under the pretence of Thurtell’s carrying on there his old occupation of a bombasin merchant, but it was wholly without furniture; and whoever considers the situation must be convinced that a wholesale warehouse there was entirely out of the question. It could be taken for no other purposes than those of robbery and murder; and there is little doubt that this more sequestered spot was selected for both. It does not, however, appear that any person has fallen a victim to this diabolical scheme, although a Mr. Woods has had a very narrow escape, as will appear from the following statement:

On the morning of Monday, October 7th, about a quarter before seven o’clock, a man, habited as a journeyman carpenter, about five feet eight or nine inches high, of dark complexion, and with large black whiskers, called at Mr. Woods’ residence, and stated that a lady of the name of Brew, with whom Mr. W. was well acquainted, was desirous of seeing him upon some important business, at a house in a street in Westminster, the name of which he did not know, but it was a street just beyond the Horse-Guards. Mr. Woods was not satisfied with the account, and questioned him as to the cause of Mrs. Brew being in Westminster, as she resided at Kensington. His answer was, that she was stopping at a friend’s house, and wished to see Mr. W. that morning as she was going out of town. Upon this, Mr. Woods accompanied him to Manchester Buildings, where he stopped at No. 10, which Mr. W. immediately saw was an uninhabited house. The door being ajar, his suspicions were awakened that all was not correct, and he desired the man to step in, and tell Mrs. Brew that he (Mr. W ) was there. The man entered, and having proceeded along the hall or passage as Jar as the back-parlour door, Mr. Woods saw John Thurtell spring from the back-parlour and strike the man a heavy blow, which knocked him with great violence against the opposite wall. The man hallooed out something which Mr. Woods did not distinctly understand, but to the effect that Thurtell had mistaken his man. Mr. W. immediately retired, and, on looking back from the end of the street, he saw the messenger at the door of the house gazing after him, but not attempting any pursuit. Upon this Mr. W. waited on the son of Mrs. Brew, and was informed by him that that lady had been for three weeks in the Isle of Man. What follows is very mysterious. On his return home, he found the following letter, which had been left at his residence by a man of shabby appearance, almost immediately on his quitting the house with the messenger.
An unknown friend informs you that there is a writ cut against you for £10. ; keep out of the way till after Friday next.

In the evening of the same day he received the following letter also:—
Sir, Monday Afternoon, Four o’Clock.
I am happy to inform you, that an unknown friend of yours [has?] settled the action, which you were about to be arrested for this morning for £10 and costs; therefore you have no aeration to make yourself uneasy about it. I understand – you are; indebted to a Mr. Cozens for his interference in this ungentlemanly act. I am, Sir, yours,
Clifford’s-Inn. Clarke.

The inference drawn from this statement was that the first note was for the purpose of preventing any inquiry after Mr. Wood, had his intended assassination been carried into effect, until sufficient time had elapsed for his body to have been effectually disposed of.

Some conclusionary Remarks

After spending considerable time relating how awful Thurtell was, the tone switches entirely. Thurtell was sentenced to death, with his body to be given afterwards to surgeons for dissection. And now, he’s a heroic soul meeting his fate as only a gentleman can.

Next week, if it seems fitting, I’ll post about some of the Evils of Gambling and the French. They seem to get blamed a lot.

I have been working hard at what’s turning out to be a total rewrite of the WIP (Work In Progress). I hope to have it out for an outside read soon …. Nevertheless, the pages keep needing to be re-written.

It’s been fun learning about boxing in the Regency.  It’s not been so fun learning about how wagers work. It’s slightly more complicated than I wanted it to be.  Lay down money! Lose money/Win money! But now, I hope, I don’t have an egregiously wrong/hopelessly vague scene(s) involving money and betting and such.

My brain hurts. And no effing wonder some of these guys lost fortunes!

An Iniquitous Past

In a previous job, I ran the office football pool. I had all the games, the spread, the actual points scored by quarter etc. in a database and I used to slice and dice the results. This was long enough ago that Joe Montana was the 49ers new QB and it looked like maybe he was a better player than anyone expected… and here’s what I learned:

1. The 49ers ALWAYS beat the spread, even when they lost. There was no point EVER not taking the 49ers. Long before any of the papers were writing about the 49er defense, I could see from the mid-season numbers that there was no team even close to as good as the 49ers D. They were the #1 defense across all teams — that is, basically, almost no one scored against the 49ers D, and if they did, it usually didn’t happen in the 2nd half.

2. There were several teams that were consistently favored to win by large spreads and they almost never did. By mid-season, the numbers simply did not support ever picking those teams. The same was true of a couple of other teams, who were doing consistently better than the spreads would imply.

3. I issued a mid-season report to the office so that everyone had the same data I did. Despite the overwhelming numerical evidence, some people continued to pick teams based on their personal biases and gut feelings.

4. The people who were setting the spreads could not possibly have been looking at the same numbers I was. If they had been, they would have been setting different spreads.

5. I won the end of season pool that year. (There was a weekly pool, but a percentage went toward the end of season pool).

6. The 49ers won the Superbowl.

Yes, it’s true that on any given day, any team can win or lose, but the fact was that there was data in those numbers that predicted with a high degree of certainty the outcome of future games. There’s no question that Joe Montana was magic on the football field. But the 49er defense was completely underrated for three seasons, and the odds makers took a strangely long time to adjust to the facts/data.

The Bill Walsh era transformed football in ways that I think still aren’t entirely recognized. I could see from watching my data  and from watching the games that the West Coast Offense (led by one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game) and what I will call the West Coast Defense (paid for by a very rich owner, Eddie DeBartelo) was essentially not beatable in the long run — until other teams got faster, bigger players (who were in better shape) and learned how to read offenses and defenses more quickly.

5 superbowls people. The 49ers won three superbowls pretty close together because it took about that long for other teams to understand they needed to play a different game and then acquire and train the coaching and athletic talent necessary to do that. The NFL made some rule changes that affected talent acquisition, so Walsh had to tweak his game, as it were. Boom. Two more superbowls.

Magic happens here.

Now watch me tie this into the Regency:

People gamble with their guts. And they do it in the face of mathematical evidence that their gut is wrong. Anyone who is at all interested in gathering information and looking at it over time will have an advantage, in a sport, in the long run, over someone who goes with their guts. You will take a few losses, but in the long run, you will be ahead of everyone who contaminates their picks with emotion.

The math is more like arithmetic, really. It’s not hard. You just assemble your numbers and let them tell the story. Even in the Regency, there just had to have been people who were geekish enough about some sport — like boxing –to do that sort of thing.

Interesting, no?

I have a cold and so this post is about …. Regency Remedies from my 1815 New Family Receipt Book.

General Rules for The Preservation of Health


1. Avoid, as much as possible, living near Church Yards.

check!

2. Valuable concise Rules for preserving health in Winter.

a. Keep the feet from wet.

check!

b. avoid too plentiful meals.

uh oh…

c. drink moderately warm and generous, but not inflaming liquors.

OK, this confuses me a little but I’m going to assume that my morning coffee overdose fits the bill.

d. Go not abroad without breakfast.

Hmm. I have my cereal when I get to work…

e. Shun the night air as you would the Plague.

I am indoors right now!

f. Let your house be kept from damps by warm fires.

I’m counting the AC. Is a fire ever anything but warm? I guess he means a fire big enough to warm the room.

Preventive of autumnal Rheumatisms

For the sake of bright and polished stoves, do not, when the weather is cold, refrain from making fires. There is not a more useful document for health to the inhabitants of this climate, than “Follow your feelings.”

I was baffled by this for some time. I finally realized this means, don’t avoid making fires because you want to keep your stove bright and polished.

I always follow my feelings, so SCORE!

Does anyone one else think the author worked on this and finally said, What the hell else can I say about not getting antumnal rheumatisms? oh fuck it. Follow your feelings!
 

My feelings right now are, how soon before the cold meds kick in?

As I’m working on finishing up Lucy and Thrale’s story (Sinclair Sisters, Book 2) I’m researching boxing and the like. I came across this interesting article: Hazlitt’s Prizefight Revisted, Pierce Egan and Jon Bee’s Boxiana-Style Perspective by David Snowdon posted at Romantic Textualities. Make a note, because it’s a fascinating article.

Which is not what my post is about. My post is about this book by John Bee:

Sportsman’s Slang, a New Dictionary of Terms used in the Affairs of The Turf, The Ring, The Chase, and The Cock-Pit; with Those of the Bon-Ton and The Varieties of Life, Forming the Completest and Authentic Lexicon Balatronicum et Macaronicum, particularly Adapted to the use of The Sporting World for elucidating Words and Phrases that are Necessarily, or Purposely, Rendered cramp, mutative, and unintelligible, outside their respective Spheres. Interspersed with Anecdotes and Whimsies, With Tart Quotations, And Rum-Ones; With Examples, Proofs, And Monitory Precepts Useful and Proper for Novices, Flats, and Yokels. Editio altera.

Let’s call it Sportsman’s Slang for short, eh?

Here’s a definition that answered a long-held question of mine (In the text, this is all one paragraph, but that’s too visually dense so I have added paragraphs for readability:

Bon ton: highflier Cyprians and those who run after them; from Bon–good easy–and ton or tone; the degree of tact and tension to be employed by modish people; frequently called ‘the ton’ only. Persons taking up good portions of their hours in seeking pleasure are of the Bon-ton, as stage actors and frequenters of play houses, visitors at watering-places officers &c. &c. See Haut ton.

In Paris they are both called Le bon genre. The appellation is much oftener applied than assumed. High life, particularly of whoredom: he who does not keep a girl or part of one, cannot be of the Bon ton; when he ceases, let him cut. Bon ton is included in haut-ton, and is French for that part of society who live at their ease, as to income and pursuits, whose manners are tonish, and who, like other divisions of society, employ terms of their own, which rather sparingly they engraft on the best King’s English. Mascul. et Fem.

Terms which denote the ton: ‘The go, the mode, or pink of the mode; bang-up, the prime of life, or all prime; the thing, the dash, and a dasher; quite the Varment–a four-in-hand, a whip, a very jarvy; a swell, a diamond of the first water.’ None can expect to attain perfection in all these unless he could obtain the same assistance that Faustus had, viz. Leviathan; and then he could not begrudge to meet the same end.

OK, so the phrase I have often wondered about is “Diamond of the First Water” as applied to a person. This is the first time I’ve seen the phrase in period literature. Mind you, here it’s used with a definite note of, shall we say ironic contempt? But here, we do not see the term specifically applied to a woman, and if it were, we might be excused for thinking Bee meant to imply a whore.

At any rate, I’ve wondered if the phrase might be a Heyer-ism, but if it is, she had some period authority for it. In fact, as I’ve been scanning through this, there are so many phrases I recognize from Heyer and her successors that I began to think she must have had this book in her library.

Are there phrases you’ve often wondered about?

Edited to Add!

There are dozens of uses of “Diamond of the First Water” with respect to jewelry and many that, in the same breath, mention giving that jewelry to a mistress who expects such a gift, but also many that apply the term to things that are not diamonds– and from there it’s really not hard to imagine applying the phrase to a woman. And, there are some. In the one below, we see a rather racy application of the term from dialog in a play which I include here because it made me laugh.

From Dissipation: A Comedy in Five Acts. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal, by Miles Peter Andrews, 1781.

EPHRAIM: What ish impossible! There ish your friend Lady Rentless that I wash more intimate with than you are Maisher Alderman, for all you are my Lord’s captain.

ALDERMAN: You intimate with my Lady? Why she’s the very pink of the mode, makes fashions for the whole town, gives entertainments to the whole town, sits up all night. Why, drill me, but she’s a diamond of the first water.

EPHRAIM: Aye; I love the diamond of the first water and have got the possession of most of them.

The last few days I’ve run across some totally awesome things and I am going to share them with you.

Awesome thing number 1:

A Linguist Explains What Old School British Accents Sounded Like

As a matter of fact, there are actually very good reasons to think that neither Shakespeare nor Ichabod should be speaking with what we currently think of as a “British” accent at all. What? Yes, really. Let me explain.

The recitation of the sonnet in the first video. Oh. My.

Awesome thing number 2:


The Hidden Wardrobe – a costume collection explored
From The National Trust. Go there. Look around.

Awesome thing number 3:

“Nuns Can’t Paint”: Sexism, Medieval Art, and Dudes on Mopeds

A reminder of just how deeply “isms” are embedded in our culture, in this case, sexism.

It’s one thing to argue that nuns make bad art because they’re not trained artists; because they’re hyper-emotional; because they’re women. It’s another to imply that at the moment they take their vows, the moment these women simultaneously renounced and calcified their femininity, medieval nuns lost all aesthetic taste.

Enjoy your Wednesday!