Summary: The realities of life in preindustrial England reveal a world teeming with physical discomforts, social cruelty, and environmental hazards unimaginable to modern sensibilities. England from 1600 to 1770 was plagued by disease, primitive hygiene, adulterated food, and oppressive punishments. Far from the romanticized notions of simpler times, living in this early modern time and place often meant enduring relentless hardship and indignity.

British historian Emily Cockayne’s Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England, 1600–1770 provides a window into the lives of ordinary people in the preindustrial and early industrial era. A “social history,” the book conveys how the world sounded, smelled, felt, and tasted—a horror show beyond the comprehension of most modern people. The chapters bear titles such as “Itchy,” “Mouldy,” “Grotty,” “Dirty,” and “Gloomy.”

A preindustrial person transported to the present day would be amazed by the current prevalence of relatively smooth, clear skin enabled by better general health in addition to the widespread use of sunscreen, moisturizers, and all manner of modern beauty treatments. In the past, frequent illnesses left victims permanently marked. To be “Pock-broken” or “pock-freckled” was a common descriptor. Skin was often directly disfigured by diseases and further damaged by how fleas and then-common medical conditions caused compulsive scratching. “Fleas would have been a common feature of institutions and inns, as well as domestic settings,” proliferating in crammed households, cities, and seaports. A Dutch traveler named William Schellinks (1623–1678) found the fleas in one English inn so “aggressive” that he opted to sleep on a hard bench rather than the provided bed. But fleas were far from the sole culprit. “Many conditions would have caused itching, including eczema, impetigo, ‘psorophthalmy’ (eyebrow dandruff), scabies, chilblains, chapped and rough skin, tetters’ (spots and sores), ‘black morphew’ (leprous or scurvy skin) and ringworm. Few citizens [of Britain] enjoyed smooth unblemished skin.”

If you could visit the past, you would be shocked at the commonness not just of pockmarks but also of oozing open sores. “Venereal disease was the secret epidemic that blighted the entire period,” resulting in such outward signs as “weeping sores on the lips” and “pocky” countenances. Many other diseases also produced wounds that festered and exuded foul discharges on the faces of everyday people. “In this pre-antibiotic era, skin eruptions in the forms of bulging pustules, lesions, acne and gout-induced ulcers could all have become infected, causing chronic wounds.” Such skin problems affected all social classes. “In 1761, as an Oxford undergraduate, the parson-in-waiting James Woodforde . . . was plagued by a ‘bad Boyle on my Eye-brow’. This boil reappeared the following year, to be joined by a stye among his lower right eyelashes.”

With so many faces covered in scars, as well as boils and sores emitting blood and infected pus, it is an understatement to say the people of the past were in desperate need of skincare. Sadly, their primitive skincare and makeup regimens made matters even worse. “Caustic and toxic ingredients lurked in many ready-made and home-mixed cosmetics and toiletries. Eliza Smith’s cure for pimples included brimstone (sulphur). Johann Jacob Wecker suggested the use of arsenic and ‘Dogs-turd’ as ingredients for ointments to ‘make the nails fall’. The Duchess of Newcastle warned that the mercury in some cosmetics could cause consumption and oedema. Indeed, some preparations were so toxic that they could ‘take away both the Life and Youth of a Face, which is the greatest Beauty.’ The Countess of Coventry was said to have died from toxic properties in her cosmetics.” That countess, Maria Coventry née Gunning (1732–1760), died at age 27, likely of lead poisoning, as lead was a common ingredient in skin-whitening makeup at the time, despite lead’s propensity to make its wearers ill (or, in Maria’s case, deceased).

Even nonlethal makeup was of far poorer quality than today’s cosmetics, frequently dissolving and dripping. Women “shunned hot places for fear of melting visages.” Even royalty, with access to the best cosmetics of the era, fell victim to this tendency of makeup to drip. One observer remarked in his diary after seeing the queen of England at a banquet in 1662 that “her make-up was running down her sweaty face.”

The state of clothing for the masses contributed to skin and health problems. The truly poor bought used garments. “Poorer citizens rarely bought new items of clothing, but made do with second-, third- and fourth-hand clothes. . . . By the time they reached the poorest members of society, garments would be smutted, food-stained, sweat-ridden, pissburnt and might shine with grease. . . . Clothes in such a state would be hard, unyielding and smelly.”

“The second-hand market was a thriving one” in early modern London. “Some specialised in old shoes, or even old boots. [The Dutch-born artist] Marcellus Laroon included an image of a trader who exchanged brooms for casto-off shoes . . . in his Cryes of London (1688). . . . A high demand for second-hand clothing meant that garments constituted a considerable proportion of property that was stolen. Thomas Sevan was apprehended . . . wearing three stolen shirts in 1724. He had left his old ragged shirt behind at the scene of the crime. Elizabeth Pepys’s new farandine waistcoat was snatched from her lap as she sat in traffic in Cheapside. On Easter Monday 1732 John Elliott became the victim of highway robbers who relieved him of his hat, wig, waistcoat and shoes. . . . No item of clothing was immune from theft—even odd shoes and bundles of dirty washing were lifted.”

“Clothes could be taken to a botcher, or a botching tailor, for patching and repair. . . . Old shoes were rejuvenated or modified by cobblers, or ‘translators.’ The subsequent wearers of shoes would have worked their feet into spaces stretched to fit a foreign shape, which might have caused blisters, bunions and corns. . . . Partial unstitching and ‘turning’—the inner parts becoming the new exterior—could prolong the life of coats and other garments. Even the rich eked out the life of their favourite garments by turning, dyeing and scouring. . . . However, clothes could only be refashioned a limited number of times before they became napless, threadbare and tattered. If enough good fabric remained, this could be reused to make a smaller item of clothing, a garment for a child, or a cloth cap. . . . Tired garments were passed down to apprentices or servants.”

The condition of teeth was also disturbingly poor. “Queen Elizabeth sported black teeth. Emetics were popular cure-alls, and these would have hastened tooth decay through the acidic erosion of the enamel. Archaeological surveys suggest that the majority of early modern adults suffered tooth decay.” While they did not meet with much success, the people of the past certainly attempted to keep their teeth from rotting. “There was an array of dentifrice powders and cures on the market. Although most would have had little or no effect on cavities or diseased gums, some of these powders and recipes would have carried away some dirt and plaque from teeth. Powders were concocted from cuttlefish, cream of tartar and sal amoniack (ammonium chloride). These abrasive substances could be rubbed on” teeth, and some recommended “hard rubbing with a dry cloth or sage leaf” to cleanse teeth. The writer Thomas Tryon (1634–1703) recommended swishing river water as a mouthwash. Needless to say, such routines were insufficient. “A lack of adequate tooth cleansing and an inappropriate diet led to bad breath and also caused tooth decay.” Missing teeth were common. “A character in an eighteenth-century play bemoaned the poor dental state of London’s women” by claiming that “not one in ten has a Tooth left.” When those suffering from toothaches sought dental care, what passed for dentistry at the time could make matters even worse. Consider the unfortunate case of the English lawyer and politician Dudley Ryder (1691–1756). “After spending a month in 1715 chewing on just one side of his mouth to avoid the pain of a severely decayed tooth, Dudley Ryder finally summoned up the courage to have it drawn. In the process, a little of his jaw was broken off, but he rallied, claiming it didn’t hurt. Much. By the mid-eighteenth century wealthier citizens would have the option of trying out a transplant, using teeth from a paid donor.”

Tooth and skin problems were visible, but internal ailments that were less apparent also plagued our ancestors. One of the many negative health effects of animals crowding the cities was that parasites from the creatures often spread to humans. “The abundance of dogs and pigs on the city streets provided the perfect breeding ground for a variety of intestinal parasites, many of which wormed their way into humans. Eliza Smith asserted that ‘vast numbers’ were infested. Many bottoms would have itched with discomfort thanks to the presence of thread and tape worms in the digestive system. According to the numerous contemporary adverts, worms created a myriad of physical discomforts, including ‘pinching Pain in the Belly, when hungry, a stinking Breath’, vomiting, nightmares, pallidness, fever and teeth gnashing.” The animals caused other problems as well. “Neighbours near to houses in which beasts were kept or slaughtered would have endured stench and noise.” For example, “those living near Lewis Smart’s huge piggery on London’s Tottenham Court Road described how servants fell sick and resigned on account of the smell, which ‘Drive thro’ the walls of the houses.’ Visitors to the house opposite were forced to hold their noses, and one neighbour explained how the fumes dirtied newly laundered linen and tarnished plate.”

The people of the past often went hungry. “Recording a high rate of corn spoilage in 1693, due to a wet summer season, [the English antiquary] Anthony Wood noted that scarcity pushed prices out of the pockets of the poor, who were forced to ‘eat turnips instead of bread’. During this dearth [the writer] Thomas Tryon outlined a diet for a person on a budget of twopence per day. The recipes are uniformly bland: flour, water, milk and peas, all boiled to differing consistencies.”

Food often spoiled during transport to the market. “Eggs that came to London from Scotland or Ireland were often rotten by the time they arrived.” Food was often adulterated, and some degree of adulteration was considered unavoidable. Malt was only deemed unacceptable if it contained “half a peck of dust or more” per quarter. “Butchers would disguise stale slaughtered birds. [A contemporary account] warns of one such operator who greased the skin and dredged on a fine powder to make the bird strike ‘a fine Colour.’” Butter was frequently adulterated with “tallow and pig’s lard.” “Some fishmongers coated gills with fresh blood, as red gills indicated a recent netting,” to misrepresent stale fish to the unwary buyer. Fish were often wormy and if not cooked thoroughly remained so at the time of serving. The English statesman Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) once noted his disgust at the sight of a sturgeon dish upon which he observed “very many little worms creeping.”

Bread, the mainstay of most diets, was not immune to contamination. “Some loaves were deliberately adulterated with stones and other items to bulk them up.” In 1642, an unscrupulous Liverpool woman named Alice Gallaway “tried to sell a white loaf that contained a stone, to make up its weight. This sort of practice would have been widespread—the baker could claim that the stone had not been removed in milling, and blamed the miller. Stone, grit and other unwelcome contaminants would have posed dangers to the teeth of the unwary.” Millers also engaged in such unethical behavior as adding “beanmeal, chalk, animal bones and slaked lime” to disguise musty flour. Perhaps it should be no surprise then that London bread was described in 1771 as “a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum and bone ashes, insipid to the taste and destructive to the constitution.”

There are even accounts of human remains being added to food for sale, resulting in unknowing cannibalism on the part of the buyer. The author of the 1757 public health treatise Poison Detected claimed, “The charnel houses of the dead are raked to add filthiness to the food of the living.” The squalid state of the marketplace further exposed food to pollution or contamination. “The market stalls, and the streets on which they stood, were frequently described as being filthy and strewn with rotting debris.” Flies and other insects swarmed each market. “Hanging meats were vulnerable to attack by hopper-fly, and if they got too warm they would rust and spoil.” The smoke of London’s chimneys was said to fill the air and “so Mummife, drye up, wast and burn [hanging meat in the marketplace], that it suddainly crumbles away, consumes and comes to nothing.”

The population was so accustomed to foul-smelling meat that “in 1736 a bundle of rags that concealed a suffocated newborn baby was mistaken for a joint of meat by its stinking smell.” Between the bugs, the smoke, and the dirt, few groceries reached customers unscathed. One 18th-century writer complained of “pallid contaminated mash, which they call strawberries; soiled and tossed by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with dirt.” The state of the marketplace even inspired deprecating lyrics, such as these from 1715, “As thick as Butchers Stalls with Fly-blows [where] every blue-ars’d Insect rambles.” “As the market day progressed, perishables . . . were more likely to be fly-blown or decayed.” Those undesirable leftovers unsold at the end of the market day were often later hawked by street vendors. A letter in The Spectator in 1712 complained that everything sold by such vendors was “perished or putrified.” Recipes took into account the poor quality of available ingredients. “Imparting some dubious tips for restoring rotting larder supplies, [cookbook author] Hannah Glasse’s strategy ‘to save Potted Birds, that begin to be bad’ (indeed, those which ‘smell so bad, that no body [can] . . . bear the Smell for the Rankness of the Butter’) involved dunking the birds in boiling water for thirty seconds, and then merely retopping with new butter.”

Yet those shopping at the marketplace with all its terrors were relatively fortunate compared to others. Broken victuals, the remnants and scrapings from the more affluent plates, were a perk of service for some servants, and the saviour of many paupers.” One account from 1709 tells of a woman reduced to living off “a Mouldy Cryst [crust] and a Cucumber” while breastfeeding, an activity that greatly increases caloric needs. Desperation sometimes resulted in swallowing nonfood objects, such as wax, to ease hunger pangs. “Witnesses reported that a young London servant girl was so hungry in 1766 that she ate cabbage leaves and candles.” She was far from the first person to use candle wax as a condiment. “The underfed spread butter thickly on bread (this was necessary to facilitate swallowing dark or stale bread). Cheap butter was poor grade, akin to grease . . . a ‘tallowy rancid mass’ made of candle ends and kitchen grease was the worst type” of concoction to pass under the name of butter. Another account of hunger from 1756 relates how a starving woman felt “obliged to eat the cabbage stalks off the dunghill.”

The people of the past also had good reason to wonder whether their homes would collapse around them. “A proverb warned that ‘old buildings may fall in a moment’. So familiar was the sound of collapsing masonry that in 1688 Randle Holme included ‘a crash, a noise proceeding from a breach of a house or wall’ in a list of only nine descriptive sentences to illustrate the ‘Sense of Hearing’. Portmeadow House in Oxford collapsed in the early seventeenth century. Among the casualties recorded in the Bills of Mortality for 1664 was one hapless soul killed by a falling house in St Mary’s Whitechapel . . . Dr Johnson described London of the 1730s as a place where ‘falling Houses thunder on your Head.’ . . . In the 1740s, ‘Props to Houses’ appeared among a list of common items hindering free passage along the pavement in London. A German visitor wondered if he should go into the street in 1775 during a violent storm, ‘lest the house should fall in, which is no rare occurrence in London.’” “Thomas Atwood, a Bath plumber and property developer, died in 1775 when the floor of an old house gave way.” Regulations sometimes made matters worse, preventing the tearing down of homes on the verge of collapse. One account notes that homes in disrepair became “the rendezvous of thieves; and at last . . . fall of themselves, to the great distress of whole neighborhoods, and sometimes to bury passengers in their ruins.” Windy days could knock down homes. “Gales swept [London] in 1690, leaving ‘very many houses shattered, chimneys blowne down.’”

Inside, homes were often filled with smoke from fireplaces. “With open fires providing most of the heating, filthy discharges of soot and smut clung to interiors.” Even with regular chimney sweepings, clogged chimney pots and soot deluges could and did occur. One writer railed against the “pernicious smoke . . . superinducing a sooty Crust or furr upon all that it lights, spoyling the moveables, tarnishing the Plate, Gildings and Furniture, and Corroding the very Iron-bars and hardest stone with those piercing and acrimonious Spirits which accompany its Sulphur.” Interior smoke disturbed the air of the humblest homes and the grandest palaces alike. The German consul Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (1683–1734) complained that the Painted Chamber of London’s Westminster Hall could “scarce be seen for the smoke” that filled the interior; in the Upper Chamber he similarly noted that the tapestries were “so wretched and tarnished with smoke that neither gold nor silver, colours or figures can be recognized.”

“Householders struggled to contain infestations of vermin.” This was a problem even in well-off homes. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary his multiyear struggle with mice, which “scampered across his desk” with abandon despite his purchase of a cat and deployment of mousetraps. “In 1756 Harrop’s Manchester Mercury ran an advert for a book detailing how to rid houses of all manner of vermin,” including adders, ants, badgers, birds, caterpillars, earwigs, flies, fish, fleas, foxes, frogs, gnats, lice, mice, moles, otters, polecats, rabbits, rats, snakes, scorpions (an invasive species of which had entered England via Italian masonry shipments), snails, spiders, toads, wasps, weasels, and worms.

As if that wasn’t enough to keep people up at night, nighttime was loud. Crying babies and the moaning of the hungry, ill, and dying echoed in the night, as well as the pained wails of women suffering through domestic violence. In London, in 1595, a law was passed to prevent men from beating their wives after 9 p.m. The legislation was not prompted by concern for the wives (after all, wife-beating was generally accepted as normal and morally unproblematic) but by consideration for neighbors trying to sleep through the noise. The law read in part: “No man shall after the houre of nine at the Night, keepe any rule whereby any such suddaine out-cry be made in the still of the Night, as making any affray, or beating hys Wife, or servant.” A similar law forbade smiths from using their hammers “after the houre of nyne in the night, nore afore the houre of four in the Morninge.”

The book gives insight into a far crueler and more violent society. Legal punishments could be grotesque and sadistic. For example, in 1611, a woman who had conducted “lewd acts . . . was punished by the Westminster burgesses by being stripped naked from the waist upwards, fastened to a cart, and whipped through the streets on a cold December day.” Women deemed “scolds” were often publicly humiliated in ritual fashion. “Ducking stools or cuckstools were equipment for punishing scolds and were items of town furniture [and] were still used as a deterrent in the eighteenth century. Ducking was a rite of humiliation intended to put the woman in her place and to teach her a lesson.” Many towns took pride in the maintenance of their ducking stools, and sometimes a device with a similar rationale called a “scold’s bridle,” an iron muzzle that enclosed the head and compressed the tongue to silence the unfortunate wearer.

“Across the country [of England] the civic authorities ensured that their cuckstools were functioning. In 1603 the Southampton authorities complained that ‘the Cuckinge stoole on the Towne ditches is all broken’ and expressed their desire for a new one, to ‘punish the manifold number of scoldinge woemen that be in this Towne’. The following year they wondered whether a stool-on-wheels might be invented. This could be carried from dore to dore as the scolde shall inhabit’. This mobile stool would, it was explained, be ‘a great ease to mr mayor . . . whoe is daylie troubled w[i]th suche brawles’. The Oxford Council erected a cuck stool at the Castle Mills in 1647. The Manchester stool was set up in 1602 ‘for the punyshement of Lewde Wemen and Scoldes . . . six scolds were immersed in 1627. A decade later the town added a scold’s bridle to their armoury of reform. A new ducking chair was erected in ‘the usual place’ in 1738. Even as late as 1770 a knot and bridle hung from the door of the stationers, near the Dark Entry in the Market Place ‘as a terror to the scolding huxter-women.’”

Outhouses doubled as dumping grounds for victims of infanticide with shocking frequency. “Much of what we know about London’s privies and houses of ease comes from unpleasant witness statements concerning gruesome discoveries of infants’ corpses found among the filth. In the trial of Mercy Hornby for killing her newborn daughter we find details of the privy into which the child was cast. Newly constructed in the 1730s, it was six foot deep, with just over three feet of soil at the time of the incident.”

And that is only a small slice of the manifold horrors detailed in Cockayne’s book, where practically every page provides fresh fodder for nightmares.

“Six months ago, 18-year-old Raveena Mehto spent all her free time helping her mother with chores and cooking in their mud house in Bihar’s Thakurganj village. Today, she’s shifted from curries to coding and dreams of moving to Bengaluru to work for a big tech company.

She’s one of 67 young women who left their homes in May to study coding at the newly opened School of Programming, Kishanganj, Bihar…

The School of Programming has started a quiet revolution in Kishanganj. NavGurukul has eight other such centres including in Raipur, Dantewada and Dharmshala. Daughters of labourers and farmers are becoming software engineers, moving to big cities, and earning Rs 20,000-25,000 per month, far surpassing the average family income of Rs 10,000. Women from Bihar who are now working in Bengaluru and Kolkata have become role models—voices of change, code and careers.

‘Skill development courses are important not only because they raise women’s earning potential but also because they help break social norms and patriarchal culture,’ said Vidya Mahabare, Professor of Economics, Great Lakes Institute of Management. It also raises women’s confidence level and raises their ambition and aspiration levels…

Data shows that more and more women from rural areas [in India] are joining the workforce. The female labour force participation rate has been rising for six years– from 23.3 per cent in 2017-18 to 37 per cent in 2022-23, driven mainly by the rising participation of rural women.”

From ThePrint.

Summary: Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, women’s rights and freedom of expression in China have faced severe repression, with censorship stifling discourse on gender and punishing outspoken female writers. Periods of greater political liberty saw flourishing women’s literature that challenged traditional roles and highlighted women’s ambition. Despite the current crackdown, the resilience of female writers persists through underground literary communities.

For women’s rights activists in China, the 2020s seem to be the worst time ever. Under Xi’s presidency, censorship of public opinions has peaked, including that of writings about gender equality. Journalist Huang Xueqin, who published investigations on #MeToo cases, for example, was incarcerated for “subversion.”

Literature also has suffered a bigger setback.  Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) outlawed any negative commentary on its legitimacy, writers have had to sacrifice their artistry for safety. Those who hold on to their commitment to the arts are banished from the publication world. Yan Geling, one of the most famous Chinese female writers of the 21st century, was banned from all press for critiquing Xi’s treatment of women.

However, the environment for female writers in China has not always been oppressive. Rather, the extent of women’s cultural contributions has always been negatively correlated with the governmental control of individual liberty.

The first surge of women’s writing in modern China was during the 1920–30s, when the nation was under the governance of the Nationalist Party of China (NPC). Despite the wartime turmoil and the infamously corrupt NPC government, society at the time was highly liberal. At the turn of the century, the traditional academic community was replaced by a new generation of intellectuals, most of whom had received Western education. In 1915, these young scholars started the New Cultural Movement. The movement fought against feudalism and advocated for democracy, liberalism, individual freedom, and equality for women. By the 1920s, Chinese society had incubated a myriad of liberal writers, artists, and academics, including some of the most important female literati in modern China, such as Zhang Eileen, Ding Ling, and Xiao Hong. Be it Zhang’s Love in a Fallen City, Ding’s Diary of Miss Sophie, or Xiao’s The Field of Life and Death, their works thematized the experiences of “new women.” Though clenched between the lingering feudalist customs and the transitioning new era, they continued to pursue independence and freedom.

The liberal environment did not survive, as what followed was the establishment of Communist China and, subsequently, the 10-year Cultural Revolution—a time when the government, rather than the people, defined how an individual should think and feel.

Donned the “Stinky Ninth Class,” the literati were considered “spiritually unclean.” During the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art, Mao Zedong announced that all works of art and literature must extol the Communist regime and serve only the interests of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Literature, once the epitome of free speech, became a vessel for CCP propaganda.

The female writers, who had thrived in early 20th-century China, were deprived of their voices. Many were tortured to death by the Red Guards; those who survived had to relocate abroad. Ding, for example, was banished to the northern deserts, and Zhang immigrated to the United States. Slogans popularized by the government such as “whatever men can do, women can do too” ostensibly supported gender equality but, in truth, constituted an attempt to masculinize women. This propaganda masked the government’s rejection of women as an independent gender that had its unique history and needs.

The turning point occurred when Deng Xiaoping took over the presidency and introduced the “Reform and Opening Up” policies in the 1980s. He reinstated a significant degree of economic and political liberty by allowing foreign investment. Meanwhile, he ended Mao’s state surveillance and class struggle propaganda and, until the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, supported free speech.

The transformed political environment revived literature. The public’s suppressed yearning to express themselves in the previous 10 years burst forth in the form of a literary mania. Writers and poets, who used to be despised by all, were idolized. Thousands of people swarmed into auditoriums to attend poetry readings, and when they ended, rushed to the stage in tears and hugged the poets; some even kneeled and kissed the poets’ shoes. As a result, the female writers were able to rebuild their community and eventually channeled the “Golden Age” of women’s writing. Poets such as Shu Ting and Zhai Yongming and writers like Wang Anyi and Zong Pu, through avant-garde writing styles, told stories of modern women’s tenacity amid the political turmoil and the trials they underwent trying to obtain equality in a new time. They presented to society an image of women being strong-willed and ambitious, overturning the traditional perception of them as weak and dependent.

Though the current illiberalism in China is restricting women’s freedom to express themselves, the resilience that persisted through a history of constant changes and frequent catastrophes has grown stronger. An “underground” literary community came into being. Women organized off-the-books writing groups, book clubs, and literature societies, where they admired women’s writings over the past century. Women’s literary culture might be declining in China, a good reminder that progress is not irreversible, but as long as the predecessor’ legacy is still cherished, it will persevere.

Summary: Kirstin Olsen’s book Daily Life in 18th-Century England captures a period of tremendous change, highlighting the stark differences in living conditions between 1700 and 1800. The 18th century saw advancements like the development of effective steam engines and profound new scientific knowledge, which led to improved comfort even for the poor by 1800. Olsen elucidates the immense hardships commonplace in English society prior to industrialization, from the evolution of marriage and childbirth to the grim realities of public entertainment, criminal justice, and healthcare.

Kirstin Olsen’s book Daily Life in 18th-Century England paints a vivid portrait of a time of immense change. “There were no really effective steam engines in 1700, no awareness that ‘air’ and ‘water’ were divisible into separate elements, no understanding of why things burned, and no knowledge of positive and negative electrical charges. The words ‘mammal’ and ‘Homo sapiens’ did not exist. No one had ever flown, and no one, since prehistory, had discovered a new planet in the sky. Weaving and spinning were still done entirely by hand. By 1800, all this would change.” Living conditions transformed so that even “the poor were much more comfortable in 1800 than in 1700.” This book provides a thorough look into everyday life just prior to the dawn of industrialization as well as during that momentous transition, which began around 1760 in Britain.

In the 18th century, people seldom traveled and lived in hyperlocal worlds. “Weights and measures still varied from one region to another. . . . Cornish was still spoken in parts of the far southwest until about 1780, and Welsh and Gaelic were still in common use in areas outside England. Most residents of the Isle of Man spoke their own language, Manx, as well.”

Given the highly limited pool of marriage partner choices that resulted from this extreme isolation, perhaps it is unsurprising that “much of the satirical literature of the 18th century . . . lampooned marriage as a hell or prison sentence for one or both partners. The most typical attitude toward marriage evinced in 18th-century literature and visual art is a sly, collegial misery.” The poem “Wedlock” by the English poet Mehetabel “Hetty” Wright (1697–1750), herself pressured into a loveless marriage with a plumber (who trekked home grime that may have been responsible for their losing many children to premature death), paints a typical picture:

Thou source of discord, pain and care,
Thou sure forerunner of despair,
Thou scorpion with a double face,
Thou lawful plague of human race,
Thou bane of freedom, ease and mirth, [. . .]
Who hopes for happiness from thee,
May search successfully as well
For truth in whores and ease in hell.

Legally “the groom could be as young as 14 and the bride as young as 12.” Many marriages turned abusive. “Domestic violence was tolerated by the courts so long as it was limited to ‘moderate physical correction,’ and a man could even commit his wife to an insane asylum against her will.” An abused woman’s best hope was often not legal recourse but the possibility that a male relative, neighbor, or sympathetic passerby might notice her plight and take action on her behalf. “Neighbors [sometimes] intervened when men beat their wives, shaming the abusers with public processions and chants, or simply stopping beating, as a saddler did in 1703, telling the abusive husband, ‘You shall not beat your wife.’” Remaining single in the 18th century brought its own challenges: “The life of a spinster could be a difficult one, with extended family using unattached female relatives as temporary live-in housekeepers when a wife died.”

Those who imagine that the people of the past unfailingly adhered to stricter standards of chastity might be alarmed at the frequency of shotgun marriages: “One-third of all brides were pregnant at their weddings.” About 20 percent of first births occurred outside marriage in 1790 in England. Such children were often subject to neglect and even infanticide. In England: “A 1624 statute criminalized concealing the death of a bastard child unless the mother (who in this was presumed guilty) could prove that it had been stillborn.”

“It was common for one parent to die before all the children had grown up.” The 18th-century “Birmingham businessman William Hutton received a straightforward appraisal of his chances when, as a child, he lost both his parents. ‘Don’t cry,’ his nanny told him. ‘You will soon go yourself.’” (He defied this prophecy: After a long life that included beginning work in a mill at age 7, he died at the ripe old age of 91).

“Childhood ailments claimed a large number of children before their fifth birthdays (60 percent in London in 1764), and those illnesses that failed to kill often scarred or attracted treatments that were even worse. A child might have to survive teething problems, tapeworms, chicken pox, whooping smallpox, lead poisoning, thrush, measles, and mumps, being bled, swaddled, and dosed with belladonna, syrup of poppies (opium), quinine, rum, gin, brandy. Laxatives, and patent medicines. Children wore amulets of such ingredients as mistletoe and elk’s horn, had hare’s brains smeared on their gums while teething, and were given enemas for worms. A particularly drastic worm remedy involved inserting a piece of pork on a string into the rectum and drawing it out slowly to lure the worms. Some diseases could be cured, it was thought, by a sudden fright, such as riding on a bear, having a gun fired nearby, or ‘giving the patient a part of some disgraceful animal, as a mouse, etc., to eat, and afterwards informing him of it; and so forth.’”

“Imagine that you are sick in the 18th century. You are running a high fever, feeling light-headed, and beginning to develop blotches on your skin. Your mother has dosed you with some cheap patent medicines. She has tried poultices and some sort of nasty-smelling broth. Time passes, and a man with a cane and a sword feeds you more bad-tasting medicines. You think you hear him say that one is made of spiders. You are dimly aware of warm water and a pain in your arm, and you turn your head to witness the sight of your blood running from a vein in your elbow into a bowl. Ah, good, you think, being an 18th-century person. Everything that can be done is being done.”

In those days, sometimes avoiding doctors altogether was better than receiving what passed for medical treatment. “Needing to do something dramatic, or for lack of anything better to do, or because they really believed it would work, doctors resorted to visible but useless or even harmful measures-bleeding, dosing with dangerous drugs, raising blisters on the skin, and inducing vomiting. [Joseph] Addison, in The Spectator, called physicians ‘a most formidable Body of Men: The Sight of them is enough to make a Man serious, for we may lay it down as a Maxim, that When a Nation abounds in Physicians it grows thin of People.’”

Folk remedies were also usually useless and often dangerous. “They ate soap for stomach troubles, touched hanged men to cure goiter and swollen glands, drank asses’ milk, made charms of babies’ amniotic sacs, drank their own urine for ague or snail tea for a sore chest, rubbed their eyes with black cats’ tails for styes, and ate eye of pike for toothaches, pigeon blood for apoplexy, tortoise blood for epilepsy, cockroach tea for kidney ailments, puppy and owl broth for bronchitis, and spiders for fever.”

Beauty products could be harmful too. “Most cosmetics were made at home” even in the 1700s, with some recipes “containing harmful chemicals like the white lead in face paint or the mercury in some rouges” and others included irritants such as quicklime or even “cat’s dung.” “Some reportedly also wore false eyebrows made of mouse skin that could, in a hot room, begin to slide down an unfortunate woman’s face.”

The state of dentistry was similarly dreadful. “If something went wrong with the teeth, dentists hand-drilled cavities as always, with no anesthetic but alcohol and filled the resulting holes with molten tin, lead, or gold. Where a dentist was unavailable, one called the farrier (the horse-doctor). False teeth were made of bone, ivory, gold, porcelain, wood, or the purchased teeth of the poor, but such dentures were expensive and, held in place by awkward spring mechanisms, sometimes fell out of the mouth. Tooth problems could also result in infections; 780 Londoners ostensibly died in 1774 from dental problems.”

Standards of sanitation were also unacceptable. London’s streets were “full of sewage and horse dung and butchers’ offal.” “The streets were atrocious in the first half of the [18th] century, full of dust in dry weather and mud in wet. These streams were augmented by dirtied water tossed by maids from the upper stories, by gutters that ran directly onto the streets and pavements, and by rainstorms, which carried into them ‘Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood, / Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, / Dead cats and turnip tops.’ The streets were dirtied by not only horse manure but also human waste, particularly from beggars and children who urinated and [defecated] next to buildings.” In the 1760s, just as industrialization began, so too did the condition of London’s streets start to improve.

Mental health care was appalling as well. A chief amusement of the pre-industrial world was finding entertainment in the act of gawking at anyone unusual, especially those suffering from bodily abnormalities or mental health problems. “The interior of a madhouse such as London’s Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam) was a sight to behold, and many did—Bedlam was one of London’s principal tourist attractions, and until 1770, visitors could pay for admission and a tour, during which guards and visitors alike goaded the inmates to view their violent reactions. Nuts, fruit, cheesecakes, and beer were sold to the tune of ‘rattling of Chains, drumming of Doors, Ranting, Hollowing, Singing,’ and the distinctive uproar that spread like a wave through the asylum when the inmates became outraged at the treatment one of their fellows was receiving. Some inmates fought back by hurling the contents of their chamber pots. Bedlam’s occupants were lightly dressed in both summer and winter, in unheated rooms. Often with only a pile of straw for a bed.” It was somewhat unusual when in London, the rather distastefully named St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, “founded in 1751, explicitly forbade exposing ‘the patients . . . to public view.’”

Executions and other criminal punishments were another popular form of entertainment. There were about 200 capital crimes (for which the punishment was death) in England as late as 1800, including pickpocketing goods over 1 shilling in value, shoplifting 5 shillings’ worth, sheep-stealing, killing a cow, entering land with intent to kill rabbits, “associating with gypsies,” theft of a master’s goods by a servant, and vandalism of fishponds.

Lesser crimes were punished with public shame. “People exposed in the pillory were tormented by the crowd, sometimes for fun and sometimes out of genuine resentment of the crime. It was not unusual-for-the-person pilloried to suffer death or maiming as a result of being pelted with stones, food, dirt, dead animals, and trash. Those not pilloried were sometimes branded, though the brander could be bribed to use a cold iron. Another common punishment was public flogging, and it was a holiday of sorts when women, particularly prostitutes, were flogged. Crowds would gather to see these women stripped to the waist and beaten. The holiday mood only intensified when a hanging was scheduled.” Hence in the 1730s, one writer observed of England, “The Execution of Criminals here is a perfect Shew to the People, by Reason of the Courage with which most of ’em go to the fatal Tree. . . . I lately saw five carried to the Gallows, who were dressed, and seemed to be as well pleased, as if they were going to a Feast.”

A festival-like atmosphere attended public hangings, which were a major source of entertainment. “At Tyburn the crowd either stood or paid for the privilege of sitting in the wooden grandstands, called ‘Mother Proctor’s Pews.’ The cart moved beneath the gallows, and there were final speeches from the condemned, perhaps a last-minute reprieve, prayers from the chaplain, the nooses placed around necks. Then ‘away goes the Cart, and there swing my Gentlemen kicking in the Air.’ Hawkers began selling the alleged dying utterances of the hanged, which made the execution, 1 sale being far more important than factual accuracy. Sufferers from disease snatched at the bodies, believing them to possess magical powers. Entrepreneurs waited for the right moment to make off with the rope, which could be sold in pieces as a souvenir. Friends red lingered, trying either to support them long enough to cut them down (which worked on at least one occasion) or to yank their legs to shorten their suffering (since 18th-century hanging had no drop to break the neck, and death was by slow strangulation) and defending their bodies (sometimes with fierce violence) from the surgeons, who had a right to dissect 10 Tyburn corpses per year and claimed any corpse not purchased by the family. In some cases, the bodies were violated according to the nature of the crime. Jacobites’ heads were, until 1777, severed and displayed on spikes at Temple Bar. Sometimes whole bodies, often shaved, disemboweled, or coated with tar or tallow, were hung in chains near the symbolic scene of their crimes—along roads for highwaymen and near the Thames for pirates, mutineers, and deserters. Far from being shocked by such displays, the crowds positively demanded them. They sometimes rioted if denied a hanging, for example by the suicide of the condemned. In one such case, they seized the dead body and attacked it with such ferocity that virtually all its bones were shattered.”

People also commonly enjoyed violence against animals as entertainment. “The torture and killing of animals and fights between humans were a prime source of entertainment. Thus, in 1730, a showman advertised ‘a mad bull to be dressed up with fireworks and turned loose in the game place, a dog to be dressed up with fireworks over him, a bear to be let loose at the same time, and a cat to be tied to the bull’s tail.’ Some impresarios staged dog fights, or tied an owl to the back of a duck to see the duck dive in fear and half-drown the owl, or hung a goose head-down from a tree or a pair of poles, greased its neck, and gave people turns trying to pull off its head while riding underneath. Children’s games included shooting flies with small guns, sewing a string to a mayfly to keep it on a leash, and ‘conquering,’ or pressing snails against each other till one shell broke.”

“One of the most popular blood sports was cockfighting. Participants of all classes came to the cockpit with sacks holding their prize roosters, whose wings and tails had been clipped and whose legs were fitted with long sharp spurs called gaffles. Amidst a roar of betting, two cocks were placed in the ring and pushed at each other until they began to fight. ‘Then it is amazing,’ wrote one spectator, ‘to see how they peck at each other, and especially how they hack with their spurs. Their combs bleed terribly and they often slit each other’s crop and abdomen with the spurs.’ Battle continued until one of the birds stood crowing on its dead opponent’s body.” One witness to such a battle in 1728 wrote, “Cocks will sometimes fight a whole-hour before one or the other is victorious.”

“Another popular spectacle was the ‘baiting’ of an animal by tying it up and sending dogs against it. The most popular animal for such contests was a bull. In fact, in some places, it was illegal for a butcher to slaughter a bull without first making it the subject of such sport.”