The Disgrace of Kitty Grey

by Mary Hooper

  Will’s sister, Kate, and her family returned to the village in the spring. On George showing great contrition, Mr Cox allowed them to move back into their old cottage. Kate – who was feeling very guilty at ever having left her – took Betsy back into their household, but Betsy always spent the summer by the river with Will.

  And as for Kitty and her ferryman, one very fine May morning, when the meadow buttercups were just beginning to reveal their yellow faces to the sun, they made their wedding vows, and Mr and Mrs Villiers stepped over the threshold of their new home.

  Some Historical Notes from the Author

  Pride and Prejudice

  Jane Austen’s novels were published in the Regency period, during which George III was declared insane and his son appointed Prince Regent.

  Pride and Prejudice is now considered a literary masterpiece, and is widely known across the world through numerous television and film adaptations too.

  But it was not always so. Pride and Prejudice began its life in 1796 with the title First Impressions and, turned down by the bookseller to whom it was offered, was renamed, rewritten several times and eventually sold for just £110. In January 1813 it was published in three hardcover volumes by Thomas Egerton of Whitehall, London, priced at 18 shillings. Its author was named merely as ‘A Lady’, and there was much speculation as to who this lady might be.

  It is thought that only 700 copies were printed but, due to several favourable reviews and acclaim from Britain’s reading public (a much smaller, more elite group than today, of course), it sold out and was reprinted in November that same year.

  The author died in 1817 and during the 1820s her work went through a period of obscurity when her books were out of print and she was hardly talked about. In 1833, Pride and Prejudice, along with several other of her novels, came out in a cheaper edition, and this helped to make her more widely known. When the copyright of Pride and Prejudice expired in 1841, however, there was no rush by other publishers to obtain the text.

  Jane Austen’s fame gradually increased, and now Pride and Prejudice consistently reaches the top three in votes for ‘Britain’s favourite book’.

  Newgate Prison

  The first prison on the Newgate site was built in 1188. It burned down several times over the years, including in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Conditions were either bad or terrible, depending on how much money you had to help you pay your way through prison. Women were allowed to take their dependant children into gaol with them, and there were several tragic cases of women being taken to the scaffold with their babies in their arms.

  Public executions were held outside the prison until 1868 and always drew large crowds, especially if the person being hanged was popular with the people. It was usual, with a popular criminal, to exhibit his or her clothes and effects, sometimes with an accompanying coffin, in one of the London taverns.

  A major problem with both Newgate and the other London prisons was overcrowding, but the Royal Navy produced a regular flow of hulks – decommissioned ships too battered and no longer seaworthy enough to be used in combat, but ideal for housing the overflow of prisoners. Sited on the Medway and the Thames, they were often used as holding bays for those prisoners who were awaiting transportation.

  Early in the nineteenth century, the Quaker reformer Elizabeth Fry became very concerned about the conditions in which female prisoners and their children lived. She lobbied Parliament, formed education classes and supplied clothes to women in prison, hoping to increase their self-esteem. Despite her intervention, it wasn’t until 1858 that the interior of Newgate was improved, remodelled and formed into individual cells, thus enabling prisoners a little more privacy.

  The prison was demolished in 1904. The Central Criminal Court, also known as the Old Bailey, now stands on the site.

  All the information about Newgate has been taken from books on the topic (see Bibliography) and research of various records in the Guildhall Library. The crimes committed and spoken of by the girls Kitty met in prison are based on real cases.

  The Law

  During the Regency period the law was harsh, there were no proper provisions for the poor and many offences carried the death penalty.

  The Bow Street Runners, set up in the 1740s and so called because they operated from Bow Street in Covent Garden, were one of the earliest groups of thief-takers, hired by the Bow Street magistrates’ office to apprehend felons. This, the authorities hoped, would make it more likely that criminals would be caught and so deter them from committing crimes in the first place.

  By the end of the eighteenth century, London had seven police centres and a substantial body of watchmen employed to prevent and detect crime. In 1829 the Metropolitan Police was formed – a centralised force of some 3,000 men under the control of the home secretary.

  Most of the information on the law and criminal trials was taken from the records at www.oldbaileyonline.org.

  Transportation

  English gaols – and especially London gaols – were always fearfully overcrowded, and to be exiled to another country was a common punishment for both major and minor crimes from the early 1600s until 1868. British criminals were deported to the United States until the 1770s, but following the American War of Independence, the authorities began to send them to Australia. It was seen as a useful and humane alternative to execution, which probably would have been the sentence of many if transportation had not been introduced.

  A sentence could be for life or for a minimum of seven years, and convicts would typically be expected to work in the colonies by farming, mining or building roads. When they had served their sentence – or most of their sentence – they would be granted certain freedoms: to marry and raise a family, and to work and live where they pleased. In the unlikely event that they could raise the fare, they were free to return to England.

  Throughout the eighteenth century, women and their children were often amongst the prisoners deported to Australia, but were in the minority, until 1789, when approximately 230 women and children were sent to Botany Bay aboard a ship called the Lady Julian. Some of these women were prostitutes, while others had been convicted of quite minor crimes, but their main reason for being transported was to enable them to marry male prisoners already living in Australia and thereby increase the population. If the women were over childbearing age they were made to do the tedious sorts of jobs usually done by those in workhouses.

  First, though, was the year-long journey to Australia, during which the women were encouraged to ‘become friendly’ with the sailors. In The Floating Brothel, a fascinating account of the Lady Julian’s voyage, Sian Rees tells how each shipmate was encouraged to choose a woman for the duration of the voyage and sets of baby clothes were part of the ship’s provisions. How the women felt about this, and whether they had any choice in the shipmates’ selection, is not recorded.

  May Revels

  Until very recently – and, who knows, maybe it still goes on – the innocent tradition of washing one’s face in the dew of a May morning was thought to be excellent for the skin and to bring beauty and good health. The diarist Samuel Pepys, writing 350 years ago (and 150 years before The Disgrace of Kitty Grey is set), records that he was woken at three o’clock in the morning by his wife going out in a coach with her maids to gather May dew.

  There are many other traditions connected with the month of May. The chief of these, perhaps, is maypole dancing, which was stopped by the Puritans during the Civil War because it was believed to encourage free and easy behaviour amongst the young. Nowadays a much more sedate version can be seen on our village greens and playgrounds, when schoolchildren dance around a pole with ribbons.

  In Helston, Cornwall, the traditional Furry Dance, the Flora, still goes on. On a particular day in May, the streets are decorated with bunting and greenery, and men and women in their best Sunday outfits dance through the streets, going in and out of the houses and shops.

  Morris men have long been a popular form
of entertainment for May Day and summer. Usually these dances are performed by men, the dancers wearing traditional costume enlivened by colourful flowers, ribbons, sashes and bells. Two teams dance together and around each other, each side consisting of six dancers, a fool and sometimes a hobby horse.

  Other parts of the country put on pageants and plays in May, or have decorated horses and carts going around the streets with floats depicting various aspects of country life. The final cart in these processions usually features the May Queen: a young local girl dressed in white, crowned with blossom and attended by flower girls. In some areas of the country she might be joined by a boy playing the part of Jack o’ the Green. Tableaux vivants were also popular forms of entertainment, sometimes presented on a theatre stage, on a cart pulled by a shire horse or in an aristocratic drawing room.

  Town and Country Dairies

  In times gone by, many families in the country would have kept a cow of their own to ensure that they were supplied with milk, butter and cheese throughout the year. When, from the eighteenth century onwards, the common grazing land began to be enclosed and taken over by the big landowners, families were forced to get rid of their cows. Consequently they had to buy their milk and butter from their local estate owner, who usually grew very rich.

  I imagined that a particular landowner, Lord Baysmith, had not only a thriving dairy business of his own, but a ‘model dairy’ to supply dairy products to his household. Gentleman farmers and estate owners often showed a great enthusiasm for dairying, building spotlessly clean dairies, usually on the north wall of a house and under the shade of trees so it would stay as cool as possible.

  In London it was slightly different! Sometimes cows were kept in tiny cowsheds, often below ground and in appalling conditions, with no access to fresh air nor pasture nor space for the thorough cleaning of the animals. Milk could also be purchased straight from the cows in the various London parks, so you might have been better off taking along your own jug to be filled there rather than relying on the milkman. Not all dairies were as bad as Mr Holloway’s, and at one time there really was a beautifully tiled dairy on the Strand called Nell Gwyn’s Dairy.

  The proliferation of cows and other animals (pigs, sheep, chickens) in this ‘backyard agriculture’ added to the piles of filth left in stalls and carried away by the night-soil men or, more usually, deposited in kennels in the street, then washed down by rain and swept into the Thames. And it was the Thames which supplied most of London’s drinking water, of course.

  An Old-fashioned Method for Making Butter

  The milk to be used for making the butter should not be cooled but poured into a setting dish and left overnight.

  The next morning the cream, which will have risen to the top, should be skimmed off, covered with muslin and left for 48 hours to ripen.

  The next stage is the churning. The inside of the churn is washed out with salt water before being filled with the cream. The churning is normally done by means of a plunger, which is moved up and down at high speed until, eventually, the butter is formed. A dairymaid could also use something called a ‘rocker churn’, which is pushed backwards and forwards like a baby’s cradle, or a ‘box churn’ with a handle, which revolves paddles to turn the cream. Sometimes glass butter-jars are used for making small amounts of butter.

  Constant inspection is necessary to ensure that the butter is not over-churned, as this will impair the separation of the whey. Only when the butter has come together and looks perfectly sound should the watery mixture, called whey, be drained off. This can be used in cooking later or given to the pigs.

  The butter should then be washed in cold water and transferred to a butter-worker (a device for removing excess moisture). After this, it should be spread in a trough and a roller device moved up and down over it, thus squeezing out any extra whey.

  The butter should then be removed with big wooden butter-pats to a hard surface and quickly worked into the desired shape: an oblong or a cylinder. The finished shapes can be decorated with stamps bearing a floral design, or perhaps impressed with the coat of arms of the estate owner.

  Bibliography

  Ackroyd, Peter, London – The Biography, Vintage, 2000

  Day, Malcolm, Voices from the World of Jane Austen, David & Charles, 2006

  Downing, Sarah Jane, Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen, Shire Publications, 2010

  Grovier, Kelly, The Gaol – The Story of Newgate, London’s Most Notorious Prison, John Murray, 2008

  Gulvin, K.R., The Medway Prison Hulks, L13 Light Industrial Workshop, 2010

  Halliday, Stephen, Newgate – London’s Prototype of Hell, The History Press, 2009

  Harman, Claire, Jane’s Fame – How Jane Austen Conquered the World, Canongate Books, 2009

  Rees, Sian, The Floating Brothel, Hodder, 2001

  White, Jerry, London in the Nineteenth Century, Vintage, 2007

  Also by Mary Hooper

  Historical fiction

  At the Sign of the Sugared Plum

  Petals in the Ashes

  The Fever and the Flame

  (a special omnibus edition of the two books above)

  The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose

  At the House of the Magician

  By Royal Command

  The Betrayal

  Fallen Grace

  Velvet

  Contemporary fiction

  Megan

  Megan 2

  Megan 3

  Holly

  Amy

  Chelsea and Astra: Two Sides of the Story

  Zara

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

  First published in Great Britain in May 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  This electronic edition published in May 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Text copyright © Mary Hooper 2013

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  eISBN 978 1 4088 2981 3

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