Toxic Beauty

Toxic Beauty

White skin was a must for the most fashionable boys and girls about town in the 18th century.  What we would call a healthy sun kissed complexion was a sure sign of being a peasant labouring on the land and not the sign of a lady or gentleman of leisure and so was to be avoided if one could afford it.

Although the 18th century is known as the Age of Enlightenment, most fashionable men and women poisoned themselves with make-up. Unbeknown to these fashionistas the lead based powder they were using to show their class and their wealth contributed to much of the poor health they suffered. It inflamed the eyes, attacked the enamel on the teeth and changed the texture of the skin causing it to blacken; it also made the hair fall out and it became fashionable to shave the front hairline to disguise its worst effects.

Both men and women of fashion applied bright pink rouge in circles and triangles to their powdery white faces in the form of Spanish wool; this was a pad of hair rather like a pan scourer impregnated with pink coloured lead. Lips were painted to appear small with the same pink powder or with carmine [a bright-red pigment obtained from the aluminium salt of carminic acid] to give a bee-sting effect.

Hair was powdered with the same lead based concoction and some women also powdered their shoulders and breasts. A pure white breasts was the vogue and was accentuated by painting veins onto it with blue paint making the bosom a toxic one. The eyes and eyelashes were mostly ignored.

To make white lead powder it was necessary to take plates of lead, and cover them with vinegar in a bowl. The bowl was left in a heap of horse manure – the manure gave off a slow gentle heat as it rotted (if you’ve kept a compost heap you’ll know what I mean). Three weeks later the lead is soft enough to be beaten to a powder and mixed with perfume and dye.

Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry was the 18th century equivalent of Angelina Jolie; a celebrity who caused men to faint in awe of her beauty.Her beauty regime led to her nasty demise; the same toxic make-up is said to have killed well-known actress Kitty Fisher. Maria entered the social whirl of the Georgian Court in December 1750; within a year, her sister Elizabeth had married the Duke of Hamilton and in March 1752, Maria married the 6th Earl of Coventry and became the Countess of Coventry. For their honeymoon, the Earl and Countess travelled around Europe accompanied by Lady Petersham, but neither lady enjoyed it much, especially Maria who particularly disliked Paris. The Countess’s ignorance of the French language and her husband’s decision not to allow her to wear red powder as make-up (which was fashionable in Paris at the time) intensified her dislike of the city and the trip. On one occasion, her husband saw her arrive at dinner with powder on her face and tried to rub it off with his handkerchief but it was no use she was a make-up addict and it killed her.

Kitty Fisher by Nathaniel Hone

Dressing one’s hair was time consuming and expensive and had to last as long as possible. Rich women rarely wore whole wigs, instead, they hired professional hairdressers (coiffures) who added false hair to their natural hair to big it up and then they added padding, powder, and ornaments, as a women’s hair was supposed to remain “natural” and not have the obvious artificiality of men’s wigs.

Styles sometimes lasted several weeks or months, which could make sleeping difficult, sometimes a wooden block was used as a headrest instead of a pillow to prolong its life. Long scratching sticks were needed when hair became infested with lice. The fashion in France, where all fashions began and were the most extreme, led many men and women to shave their heads for ease and comfort preferring to wear nothing but wigs in public.

Men in particular needed wigs for work and business. There was the Campaign Wig, worn by military men, vicars, lawyers and just about everyone who held a profession or public office needed a wig so the trade was huge and most towns had a thriving trade in wig making. Highly fashionable fops, known as The Macaronis chose elaborate high wigs, sometimes worn up to 18 inches high, they carried men’s fashions and men’s cosmetics to a new extreme. Town and Country Magazine 1764 described them: “They make a most ridiculous figure… it is a puzzle to determine the thing’s sex.”

As the century progressed hair styles and wigs got simpler. The most popular became the Tie Wig where the hair was drawn back from the face and tied at the back of the head with a black ribbon; the tied hair was called a ‘queue’, meaning tail. Men were always clean shaven; beards and moustaches were unpopular, except with the military.

Illustration: Maria Gunning Countess of Coventry, National Trust.

Julia Herdman writes historical fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is  Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 Kindle £2.29  Also available on:

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The Chelsea Flower Show Old and New

The Chelsea Flower Show Old and New

The annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show opened today – 22nd May 2017 with a visit from HM Queen Elizabeth and in the evening with its traditional charity preview. The RHS patron, HM the Queen, is the guest of honour at each show. The show is so popular tickets are restricted to four per person and are already sold out. Tickets for the Gala dinner start at £700 per head for; champagne, canapés and live music followed by a three-course meal.

Chelsea is probably the world’s most famous horticultural shows and is the place to see cutting-edge garden design, find new plants and new ideas to enhance your garden. The show is held in the grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea which was once the site of the famous 18th century Ranelagh Gardens.

Ranelagh was one of the great melting pots of 18th century society. Entry cost two shillings and sixpence, compared to a shilling at Vauxhall and Horace Walpole wrote soon after the gardens opened, “It has totally beat Vauxhall… You can’t set your foot without treading on a Prince, or Duke of Cumberland.” Novelist Fanny Burney described how the nightly illuminations and magic lanterns ‘made me almost think I was in some enchanted castle or fairy palace’. Originally designed to appeal to wealthier tastes, pleasure gardens soon became the haunt of the rich and poor alike.

When it first opened in 1746, Ranelagh boasted acres of formal gardens with long sweeping avenues, down which pedestrians strolled together on balmy summer evenings. Other visitors came to admire the Chinese Pavillion or watch the fountain of mirrors and attend musical concerts held in the great 200-foot wide Rotunda, the gardens’ main attraction where Mozart performed as a child. Yet the novelty soon waned. In June of that year Catherine Talbot wrote to a friend that “…it is quite vexatious at present to see all the pomp and splendour of a Roman amphitheatre devoted to no better use than a twelvepenny entertainment of cold ham and chicken.” And Ranelagh soon lost out to the cheaper and more exciting Vauxhall Gardens. It probably didn’t help that the Rotunda proved to have dreadful acoustics, there was no drinking or gambling allowed and the grounds were too well lit for assignations. However, Ranelagh remained open for sixty years weathering the storms and frosts of the 1780s, London riots and the French wars until 1803.

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is organised by the Royal Horticultural Society which was founded in 1804. The Chelsea Flower Show started over 100 years ago it was just a few tents and was nothing like the spectacle it is today. The Royal Hospital is proud of its links with the Royal Horticultural Society. Today the show is a highlight of the social calendar for the English elites and the Great Pavilion is one of main attractions covering roughly 11,775 square metres or 2.90 acres, enough room to park 500 London buses.

One of the RHS’s campaigns they will be promoting at the show this year is ‘Greening Grey Britain.’ Watch this wonderful transformation.

Julia Herdman writes historical fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is  Available on Amazon – Paperback and Kindle. Also available on:

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Women’s Boxing – A Georgian Novelty Act

Women’s Boxing – A Georgian Novelty Act

In her historical novel set in Bristol, Bath, and London, Anna Freeman follows the story of a young prostitute plucked from the brothel and trained as a female boxer. The story is based on real women who boxed in Georgian England. Anna got the idea of writing a book about women boxers from a children’s book (Horrible Histories) about Georgian Britain. In it there was a reproduction of an advertisement in the Daily Post dated 1728 in which a woman by the name of Ann Field  challenged Elizabeth Stokes to fight her:

“I, Ann Field, of Stoke Newington, ass driver, well-known for my abilities in my own defence… having been affronted by Mrs Stokes, styled the European Championess, do fairly invite her to a trial of her best skill in Boxing, for 10 pounds…”

Stokes replied:

“I, Elizabeth Stokes, of the City of London, have not fought this way since I fought the famous Boxing Woman of Billingsgate 29 minutes and gained a complete victory… but as the famous ass-woman of Stowe Newington dares me to fight her for the 10 pounds, I… doubt not that the blows I shall present her with will be more difficult to digest than any she ever gave her asses.”

This particular fight took place at ‘Mr. Stokes’ amphitheater’, which was owned by Elizabeth’s husband, James. It was a place in which all kinds of brutal entertainments could be seen. An advert for the amphitheater from 1735 promises:

“…fine diversion of bulls, bear, and ass-baiting, and dog fighting, particularly, and a dog will be dressed up with fireworks to augment the diversion of the spectators.”

Elizabeth Stokes fought alongside her husband against other couples, in much the way you might play tennis doubles today. Elsewhere, there are records of women fighting against men, and even several women fighting one man. Elizabeth Stokes was also known to fight with weapons, including the short sword and the cudgel, and apparently, she was very skilled. It should be noted that although Stokes and her husband took on other couples in mixed fights, men and woman never fought each other. Stokes is perhaps the most famous female fighter of the Georgian period, but there were others, including the famous ‘Bruising Peg’ who was of Amazonian proportions and quite terrifying (also very rough), and in 1795 two famous male boxers Mendoza and ‘Gentleman Jackson’ acted as seconds in a fight between Mrs. Mary Ann Fielding and a ‘Jewess of Wentworth Street’. The fight lasted 80 minutes and there were over 70 knockdowns between them for a prize of 11 guineas.

In October 1726 a fight was announced between Stokes and the Irish Mary Welch, to take place at James Stokes’ amphitheater. A note at the bottom of the advert states “They fight in cloth Jackets, short Petticoats, coming just below the Knee, Holland Drawers, white Stockings, and pumps.” At the time it was more common for women, sometimes prostitutes, to fight topless. By competing fully clothed Wilkinson and her opponents defined themselves as serious athletes.

Little evidence survives to detail Stokes life. She was born in London Elizabeth Wilkinson, referring to herself as being ‘of the famous city of London’ in proclamations. She appears to have come from a working-class English background, typical of English boxers of the time. It is unclear whether Elizabeth Wilkinson was her birth or legal name. There has been speculation that she was either married or related to Robert Wilkinson, a prizefighter, thief and murderer executed on 24 September 1722. She probably married the pugilist James Stokes; a 1725 report describes her as his ‘ much-admired consort’ and sometime between 1722 and 1726, she became known as Elizabeth Stokes. After her last documented fight in 1728, no further information about her life can be found in the historical record.

Bare-knuckle fighting for women continued into the 19th century, drawing an ever-rougher crowd. Fights were often staged at dawn before everyone went to work, or as they were coming home. The Victorian period drove bare-knuckle fighting underground, and in 1867, the Marquess of Queensberry made boxing a sport for gentlemen.

Sources: http://www.historyextra.com/female-boxing-georgian, http://georgianlondon.com/post/49461276531/elizabeth-stokes-lady-bare-knuckles, Wikipedia

Julia Herdman writes historical fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is  Available on Amazon – Paperback and Kindle. Also available on:

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Nursing by Numbers

Nursing by Numbers

Throughout her life, Florence Nightingale’s gift for mathematics was often to be a source of frustration for her. This was because many of those she sought to influence simple did not understand numbers. In 1891 she wrote that: “Though the great majority of cabinet ministers, of the army, of the executive, of both Houses of Parliament, have received a university education, what has that university education taught them of the practical application of statistics?”

Nightingale came to prominence while training and managing nurses during the Crimean War, where she organised the tending to wounded soldiers. She gave nursing a highly favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of “The Lady with the Lamp” making rounds of wounded soldiers at night. She was revered more as a representative of the female carer than the promoter of scientific medicine.

Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia,in Florence, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth. Florence’s older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth, Parthenope, a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples. The family moved back to England in 1821, with Nightingale being brought up in the family’s homes at Embley, Hampshire and Lea Hurst, Derbyshire.

As a young woman, Nightingale was described as attractive, slender and graceful. While her demeanour was often severe, she was said to be very charming and possess a radiant smile. Her most persistent suitor was the politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, but after a nine-year courtship she rejected him, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing.

In 1853, Nightingale took the post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London, a position she held until October 1854. Her father had given her an annual income of £500 (roughly £40,000/US$65,000 in present terms), which allowed her to live comfortably and to pursue her career. A year later, on 21 October 1854, Nightingale and a staff of 38 women volunteer nurses that she trained arrived in Scutari, the base for casualties from the war being waged in Crimea between the British, France, The Ottoman Empire and Sardinia on one side and the Russian Empire on the other.

Immediately, Florence calculated that deaths from disease were seven times those arising in battle and used the information to campaign for better food, hygiene, and clothing for the troops. She persuaded the government to commission Isambard Kingdom Brunel to design a prefabricated hospital to be shipped out to Scutari, though it arrived after hostilities had ceased.

Upon returning to England, Florence continued her work and calculated that, even in times of peace, mortality among supposedly healthy soldiers, aged 25–35 and living in barracks, was double that of the civilian population. She wrote to Sir John McNeill (who was conducting the inquiry into the mismanagement of the Crimean campaign): “It is as criminal to have a mortality of 17, 19 and 20 per thousand in the line, artillery and guards, when that in civil life is only 11 per thousand, as it would be to take 1,100 men out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot them.”

She bombarded the commissioners with questions about the relationship between the death rates in barracks and such factors as the provision of water, sewerage, ventilation, accommodation, and food, using a ‘coxcomb’ chart (a sort of pie chart)  to press home her points. She used her contacts to ensure that her views received publicity in newspapers. The commission reported in 1863, accepting most of her recommendations and Florence then used her royal connections to ensure that they were put into effect. Death rates fell by 75 percent.

Florence’s campaigns continued to the end of her life,1891. She didn’t get everything right. Her analysis of the 19th‑century cholera epidemics convinced her that they were caused by foul air, not polluted water and her influence was such that she probably hampered the fight against the disease. But, despite such miscalculations, she was certainly a passionate statistician and reformer.

Sources: Wikipedia, http://www.historyextra.com/article/people-history/florence-nightingale-nursing-numbers

Illustration: A portrait of Florence aged about 20 by August Egg.c. 1840.

Julia Herdman writes historical fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is  Available on Amazon – Paperback and Kindle.  Also available on:

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A Trip to the Theatre

A Trip to the Theatre

The 18th century saw an explosion of opera across Europe. Opera houses were built in all the major European cities and new operas were commissioned for each season. The King’s Theatre in London became the home of opera in the 18th and 19th centuries where operas were the main offering in the evening’s entertainment, usually interspersed with dances and sometimes a short play or farce as an afterpiece.

It was the music of Frederick Handel that really established the popularity of opera in London. Operas were composed for individual singers who were the great stars. The composer’s job was to produce music to show off the star’s voice and many composers could write an opera in just two or three weeks. These star singers had considerable freedom to improvise within the music. Indeed certain passages of ornamentation were left to the singer’s own inclination and would change from night to night.

Going to the opera was a social occasion in the 18th and 19th centuries. The rise in the popularity of theatre and opera reflected the growing leisure time and wealth of the upper middle classes. Theatres were noisy, chaotic places and the aim was to see and be seen. The stage and the auditorium were lit from great chandeliers that hung from the ceiling and the audience was as visible as the performers. Audiences would chat, walk around and play games. It wasn’t unknown for ladies to have a card table in the box for a game of cards during the performance.

The aisles in the pit were known as ‘Fops Alley’ and young men would cruise up and down flirting with the ladies. In addition there was standing room on stage for audience members which provided another distraction from the focus of the performance. Audiences stopped talking to listen to the aria which was the great show piece that everyone recognised. Then they would resume their conversation, card game or perusal of other members of the audience.

Here is a scene from my novel Sinclair which is based on the programme of an actual show in 1787.

“Frank Greenwood joined Sinclair and Bowman at the Sadler’s Wells theatre, buoyed up by the eight guineas in his pocket he had earned from Lord Wroxeter. The atmosphere was vibrant and expectant as the fashionably dressed audience took their seats. A pair of red velvet curtains hung across the gilded proscenium, hiding the delights to come, and in the pit there were two enormous A frames supporting a slack line that ran front to back, high above the audience’s heads, ready for a display of rope-walking.

“Goodness, I haven’t been to the theatre for years,” Greenwood gushed, taking his seat. “I’ve spent far too long in barracks or in the country chasing foxes. This is wonderful,” he rejoiced, gazing at the tiers of ornately gilded boxes opposite and admiring the young women playing coyly with their fans.

“As a married man I have no interest in the ladies,” said Bowman with happy resignation. “One woman is more than enough for me.”

“But looking is permitted,” said Sinclair, “and from what I can see is positively encouraged. I prefer it that way if I’m honest. I find that admiration from afar is often preferable to an actual encounter with the female of the species.”

“In your situation, Sinclair, it would be wise to stay well out of Cupid’s range. Wives have many delights and great benefits, but they’re fearfully expensive creatures to keep and you, my dear friend, are broke.” Bowman turned to Greenwood. “I blame Sinclair for my addiction to the theatre; he drags me out whenever he’s in town.”

“Aye,” Sinclair chuckled. “I’m making up for all those years of misery in Scotland.”

The drums rolled, and the Master of Ceremonies stepped in front of the curtain. “Tonight for your delight and delectation, ladies and gentlemen, we have a show featuring breathtaking rope-walking from Naples; death-defying tumbling, acrobats from China and the music of an angel, the virtuoso Madame de Chanson with her timeless songs of amour.” The three men roared their approval with the rest of the audience, the red curtains opened and the show began.

The friends watched open mouthed as Signor Romeo and Adriani walked the rope at the same time as they juggled with batons and hoops. The act finished with Signor Romeo performing the splits above the heads of the audience, who thundered their applause. The Joseph Brothers somersaulted and rotated across the stage at amazing heights in their yellow and red costumes, and the Chinese acrobats made a tower of human flesh ten men high. Finally, Madam de Chanson, a buxom woman dressed in white with flowers in her hair, played a golden harp and sang French songs with an exquisite and lilting voice that moved the audience so much that even the hardest hearted of them were forced to wipe a tear from their eyes.

When the performances were over, the friends made their way to the lobby feeling happy and relaxed, enjoying the jostling crowd with its smell of perfume and powder and the opportunities for surreptitious bodily contact with the ladies and girls as they made their way out onto the crowded street. Bowman managed to attract the attention of a driver with an empty cab, and soon they were on their way to Bread Street. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you in at the moment,” he apologised. “It’s just that Emma has banned Sinclair from the house for stealing one of her father’s patients.”

Julia Herdman writes historical fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is  Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 Kindle £2.29  Also available on:

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