Shadow of the Raven
Page 34
Oxford Journal: The principal newspaper in Oxfordshire was Jackson’s Oxford Journal, published from 1753 to 1928.
Chapter 22
commissioners: There were usually three commissioners appointed to supervise the enclosure.
Chapter 23
blindman’s buff: The children’s game dates back to at least the sixteenth century.
hunt the slipper: The game is described as a primeval pastime in Oliver Goldsmith’s 1776 novel, The Vicar of Wakefield.
Chapter 25
self-murder: Suicide was sometimes referred to as “self-murder” in coroners’ reports. It was relatively common in eighteenth-century England, so much so that the Frenchman Montesquieu once commented, “We do not find in history that the Romans ever killed themselves without a cause; but the English are apt to commit suicide most unaccountably; they destroy themselves even in the bosom of happiness.”
undertaker: By the middle of the eighteenth century, undertaking was an established profession in London. Not only would they take care of the funeral, but undertakers would even sell the deceased’s goods if requested.
Chapter 27
Oxford Jail: In the 1770s the prison reformer John Howard visited the castle jail several times and criticized its size and quality, including the extent to which vermin infested the prison. Partly as a result of this criticism, it was decided by the county authorities to rebuild Oxford Jail.
Chapter 28
that Frenchman Rousseau: Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a French writer and political theorist of the Enlightenment.
social contract: Rousseau’s 1762 Du contrat social, in which he envisaged a civil society united by a general will, inspired the leaders of the French Revolution, as well as many Enlightenment philosophers.
Chapter 30
Rogationtide: The Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday preceding Ascension Day were the traditional days for beating the bounds. The custom fell between the end of April and the beginning of June.
Domesday: The Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the great survey, completed in 1086, on orders from William the Conqueror, of much of England and parts of Wales.
Chapter 31
Milton Common: The village marks the intersection of two turnpike roads that were built in 1770 during a time of rapid expansion in both trade and mobility.
intended to reassure travelers: In 1748 the Hawkhurst gang, a notorious band of smugglers who tortured a man and then buried him alive, were executed, and their corpses were displayed in irons and chains in their own villages as a reminder of the brutality of their dreadful crimes.
fellow Philadelphian: In 1745 Thomas Cadwalader (1708–1779), of Philadelphia, who had been a pupil of the famous English surgeon William Cheselden, drew attention to the similarity of the “dry-gripes” of West India and the disease called the colica Pictonum, most frequently found in Poitiers, France.
still heads and worms: In his famous “Letter on Lead Poisoning” to his friend Benjamin Vaughan, written in Philadelphia in 1786, Benjamin Franklin cites the prohibition of leaden parts in condensers by the legislature of Massachusetts because lead was found to cause various symptoms of poisoning.
Sir George Baker: A physician to King George III and a pioneer in the use of chemical analysis to solve epidemical problems, Baker was the chief investigator into a case of widespread poisoning in Devon known as Devonshire colic. After conducting several tests, he discovered that the cause was lead. The experiments cited are loosely based on those he carried out.
Chapter 32
Hepar sulfuris: Used today as a homeopathic remedy, this is calcium sulfide obtained by burning oyster shells with flowers of sulfur.
West Haddon: In 1756 a football game was announced, but it was in fact a means to assemble a mob. During the subsequent riot, fences were torn down and burned in protest against the enclosure laws.
Chapter 34
makeshift shelter: Charcoal burners lived in the woods for much of the year and ate a diet of roasted hedgehog, snails toasted in hot ashes, and pheasant.
Chapter 35
pugilistic stance: This position, also referred to in forensic pathology as the pugilistic pose, is caused by high temperatures in fire, resulting in muscle stiffening and shortening.
Chapter 36
blacked your faces: Gangs of men, such as this one, who sooted their faces, both as a disguise and so as not to be spotted at night, were known as “the Blacks,” and so the legislation introduced in 1723 was known as the Black Act. Without doubt the most viciously repressive legislation enacted in Britain in the last four hundred years, this act authorized the death penalty for more than fifty offenses connected with poaching.
gangs in Surrey: In 1721 a masked gang paraded through the town of Farnham with eleven deer they had killed in nearby Bishop’s Park.
Chapter 37
don the black cap: Not really a cap, but a black square of fabric that denotes mourning at the passing of a death sentence.
James MacLaine: A notorious highwayman, originally from Scotland, he was known for being courteous to his victims. Before his execution in 1750 he reputedly received nearly three thousand guests during his imprisonment in Newgate Prison, many of whom were high-society ladies.
Dick Turpin: An account of the famous highwayman’s execution in The York Courant notes his gall even at the end, recording that he “with undaunted courage looked about him, and after speaking a few words to the topsman, he threw himself off the ladder and expired in about five minutes.”
standing mute: Up until 1772, a defendant who refused to plead, unless they were mute “by visitation from God,” was subjected to the ordeal of peine forte et dure, in which they were forced to lie down and have weights placed on them until they either relented or died. The law was subsequently changed so that standing mute was deemed the same as pleading guilty.
Chapter 39
beyond reasonable doubt: William Paley described the situation in 1785, when jurors experienced “a general dread lest the charge of innocent blood should lie at their doors,” and were therefore less likely to convict.
Chapter 44
bump their youngsters’ heads: Boys were often turned upside down and “bumped” on boundary stones, and the day might well degenerate into a drunken brawl.
redcoat: This historical term used to refer to soldiers of the British army because of the red uniforms formerly worn by the majority of regiments.
The Fifty-second (Oxfordshire) Regiment of Foot: This was a light infantry regiment of the British army throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
winter bourne: The permeable nature of Chilterns chalk means that the water table sometimes drops and the head of the stream moves down the valley. As this section flows only after winter rains, it is called a winter bourne, “bourne” meaning “stream” in Anglo-Saxon.
Chapter 45
the same regiment that had fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill: The regiment first saw active service during the American War of Independence.
a canal: In 1769 work began on the Oxford Canal, which was intended to link the industrial Midlands to London via the River Thames. Although work had progressed well, by 1774 the canal company had run into financial difficulties. After more funds were raised, the canal had reached Banbury by 1778, but yet more financial problems meant that work on the final stretch to Oxford did not begin until 1786.
Richard Arkwright’s power mills: A large new mill at Birkacre, Lancashire, was destroyed, however, in the anti-machinery riots in 1779.
long hours: The factory gates at Arkwright’s Birkacre Mill at Chorley were locked at precisely six o’clock every morning. If a worker did not make it in time, regardless of the reason, they lost a day’s wages.
Chapter 46
“Hey Down, Derry Down”: An Elizabethan folk song with a first line that runs “Hey down, ho down, derry derry down, among the leaves so green-o!”
Uffington Horse: The famous white horse, carved o
ut of the chalk during the Bronze Age, lies on a hillside on the Oxfordshire /Berkshire border and can be seen for miles around. It is also the name of an English country dance.
King Arthur: The subject of many myths, King Arthur came to symbolize English freedom. According to local legend, if the king is disturbed, the Uffington Horse will also awake to dance on nearby Dragon Hill.
Chapter 48
seeds of certain diseases: The widely held belief until this time was that disease was caused by “miasmas” (odorless gases). In 1546 Girolamo Fracastoro published a book called On Contagion. He suggested that infectious diseases were caused by “disease seeds,” which were carried by the wind or transmitted by touch. In 1683 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek observed microorganisms but did not realize they caused disease.
the rigors: Now known as lockjaw or tetanus.
wound fever: Now called sepsis.
gunshot wounds: Conventional treatment held that a lead shot or ball be extracted with forceps or a surgeon’s fingers, and the debris cleaned away. It was thought that gunpowder was poisonous.
trepanning: The details for this fictional trepanation are based loosely on a report of the operation performed by Lorenz Heister, an eighteenth-century German anatomist, surgeon, and botanist, who left an account of the procedure he carried out on a merchant, Heinrich Bachmann, in 1753.
Chapter 49
St. Giles Fair: In the 1780s it was a “toy” fair, selling miscellaneous cheap and useful wares.
Eagle and Child inn: This still survives as a pub in Oxford’s St. Giles.
brickbat: A fragment of a hard material, such as a brick, used as a missile.
pease pottage: Also known as pease pudding, this is a traditional savory dish made from boiled vegetables to which ham or bacon is sometimes added.
Chapter 51
racking close: The lines where woolen cloth was hung out to dry on tenterhooks.
Chapter 52
fine foam: White froth exuding from the mouth is a characteristic of drowning and indicates that the victim was alive at the time of entry into the water.
Chapter 56
engage a trustworthy solicitor: According to The Oxford Herald, an Oxford wine merchant who challenged the Otmoor enclosure had his legal expenses paid by more than five thousand supporters.
duel: By about 1770, English duelists had adopted the pistol instead of the sword. The first rule of dueling was that a challenge to duel between two gentlemen could not generally be refused without the loss of face and honor. If a gentleman invited a man to duel and he refused, he might place a notice in the paper denouncing the man as a poltroon for refusing to give satisfaction in the dispute.
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Copyright © 2015 by Tessa Harris
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-9339-8
ISBN-10: 0-7582-9339-9
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-9340-4
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First Kensington Electronic Edition: February 2015