Category Archives: 18th century

1712: Edmund Harrold records his marital love-making

Edmund Harrold owned a barber shop and wig-making business in Manchester in the late 17th and early 18th century. Between 1712 and 1715, Harrold was also a prolific diarist, making daily notes about his business, his customers and his social life. Harrold was not independently wealthy like many other diarists – his business was not profitable and he spent a good deal of his income on drinking binges, which are often mentioned and lamented in his diary.

Harrold’s chronicle also lists brief but informative accounts of his sexual liaisons with his second wife, Sarah. According to Harrold they made love in both the “old fashion” – missionary position – but also in “new fashion”, though he does not elaborate on what this entailed.

In March 1712, Harrold wrote that “I did wife two times, couch and bed, in an hour and a half’s time”. On another occasion, he “did wife standing at the back of the shop tightly”. Another time they copulated on a bed on the roof, and still another time he mentions having sex “after a scolding bout”.

Not unsurprisingly, Sarah was frequently pregnant. In just under eight years of marriage she bore Harrold six children, though only two survived. The birth of her sixth child took its toll on Sarah’s health and she died in December 1712. According to Harrold’s diary his wife “died in my arms, on pillows… She went suddenly and was sensible until one-quarter of an hour before she died”. The newborn child, also named Sarah, also died four months later.

Harrold was distraught and resolved not to remarry, however, by March 1713 he admitted that his sexual urges were getting the better of him:

“It is every Christian’s duty to mortify their unruly passions and lusts to which ye are most prone. I’m now beginning to be uneasy with myself and begin to think of women again. I pray God, direct me to do wisely and send me a good one.”

Harrold did marry again. In June 1713 he wed Ann Horrocks, a customer who had called on him for a haircut – but she too was dead by early 1715. Harrold did not marry a fourth time and died in 1721, aged 43.

Source: Diary of Edmund Harrold, Wigmaker, 1712-15. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1770: Husband disappointed by what lies under wife’s make-up

In the Georgian period, many well-to-do men became paranoid about women using make-up to embellish or even conceal their natural features. There were several apocryphal stories of men marrying statuesque and ravishing beauties, only to discover something much less appealing on the wedding night.

One account comes from a letter-writer to The Spectator in 1711:

“No man was as enamoured as I was of her fair forehead, neck and arms, as well as the bright jet [black] of her hair… but to my great astonishment I find they were all the effect of art. Her skin is so tarnished with this practice that when she first wakes in the morning, she scarce seems young enough to be the mother of [the woman] I carried to bed the night before. I shall take the liberty to part with her at the first opportunity, unless her father will make her portion [dowry] suitable to her real, not her assumed countenance.”

These stories have given rise to one of the enduring historical myths of the period: the so-called Hoops and Heels Act. According to this story, the following bill was raised in the House of Commons in 1770 to prevent women from using costume and cosmetics to lure and entrap unsuspecting husbands:

“Be it resolved that all women of whatever age, rank, profession or degree, whether virgin maids or widows, that after the passing of this Act impose upon and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s male subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the laws now in force against witchcraft, sorcery and such like misdemeanours… and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.”

A great number of historical texts claim this bill was raised in Parliament and either voted down or passed into law. The reality is that no evidence of it can be found in Hansard or other records of parliamentary debate and voting.

Source: The Spectator, April 17th 1711. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1780: Mozart trolls his sister with fake diary entries

In August 1780, Wolfgang Mozart, then aged 24, happened upon his sister Maria Anna’s diary. Pretending to be her, he wrote the following entry:

“About shitting my humble self, an arse, a break, again an arse and finally a nose, in the church, staying at home due to the whistle in the arse, whistle not a bad tune for me in my arse. In the afternoon Katherine stopped by and also Mr Fox-tail, whom I afterwards licked in the arse. O, delicious arse!”

This was not the first time Mozart had written in his sister’s diary without her permission. In May 1775 Maria Anna mentioned attending a concert in the city hall, featuring a female singer. Beneath her entry, Wolfgang scrawled:

“Terrible arse!”

Source: Diary of Maria Anna Mozart, August 19th 1780; May 29th 1775. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1724: Pirates employ musical bottom-stabbing

September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a worldwide celebration of pirate cliches, memes and stereotypes. Real pirates, of course, were less predictable and much more dangerous than cinematic representations.

Pirates of the 17th and 18th century had a well justified reputation for brutality. They reserved their worst tortures for captured sea captains, particularly if evidence suggested they had mistreated their own crews. A 1669 report from a British colonial official described one form of pirate violence:

“It is a common thing among privateers… to cut a man in pieces, first some flesh, then a hand, an arm, a leg… sometimes tying a cord about his head and twisting it with a stick until the eyes shoot out, which is called ‘woolding’.”

Worse treatment was given to a woman in Porto Bello:

“A woman there was set bare upon a baking stone and roasted, because she did not confess of money which she had only in their conceit.”

In 1724, a mariner named Richard Hawkins, who spent several weeks captive aboard a pirate vessel, described a ritual dubbed the Sweat. It was usually employed to extract information from prisoners:

“Between decks they stick candles round the mizen mast and about 25 men surround it with points of swords, penknives, compasses, forks, etc., in each of their hands. The culprit enters the circle [and] the violin plays a merry jig… and he must run for about ten minutes, while each man runs his instrument into [the culprit’s] posteriors.”

Sources: Letter from John Style to the Secretary of State, 1669; Richard Hawkins in British Journal, August 8th 1724. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1776: Hester Thrale tends her husband’s swollen testicle

Hester Salusbury Thrale (1741-1821) was a Welsh-born writer, best known for her friendship and correspondence with Dr Samuel Johnson. In 1763, Hester married wealthy brewer and future MP Henry Thrale. The union was not popular with Hester’s aristocratic family, who considered Thrale too middle-class and flighty.

Shortly before the wedding Hester’s father told her:

“If you marry that scoundrel he will catch the pox and, for your amusement, set you to make his poultices.”

This prediction seemed to come true in 1776, when Hester wrote:

“Mr Thrale told me he had an ailment and showed me a testicle swelled to an immense size… I now began to understand where I was and to perceive that my poor father’s prophecy was verified… I am preparing poultices as he said and fomenting this elegant ailment every night and morning for an hour together on my knees…”

Thrale denied any possibility that he had syphilis or a similar disease, claiming that his testicular swelling started after an accident “jumping from the chaise”. A relieved Hester later wrote that:

“He has, I am pretty sure, not given it [to] me, and I am now pregnant and my bring a healthy boy, who knows?”

Despite a relatively loveless marriage, Hester Thrale delivered her husband 12 babies in just over 13 years. Only four of these children lived beyond the age of 10. Hester Thrale was widowed when her husband died, aged 52, in 1782. Hester soon took up with and later married her daughter’s Italian music teacher.

Source: Journal of Hester Thrale, July 23rd 1776. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1780: For a long life, inhale the breath of virgins

Philip Thicknesse (1719-92) was a writer for London’s Gentleman’s Magazine, known for his esoteric and eccentric views. Thicknesse served as an officer in private colonial armies, before retiring to Bath and making his living as an author and raconteur. He was three times married and twice widowed.

In 1780, Thicknesse published The Valetudinarians Bath Guide, a handbook for longevity, health and happiness. In it, he suggested a possible secret to longevity was:

“..partaking the breath of young virgins, or what is perhaps the same thing, by partaking the breath of youthful persons.”

He attempted to justify this theory by citing several examples of teachers who had lived to very old age. A schoolmaster named Claudius Hermippus, Thicknesse claims, lived to the age of 115 years and five days because he was:

“..a tutor or director of a college of young virgins, where there might be a constant and quick succession of female children, from the age of five to 13. Doctors Busby, Friend, Nicholls and many learned men who have been at the head of great schools have all lived to a considerable age.”

Source: Philip Thicknesse, The Valetudinarians Bath Guide, or the Means of Obtaining Long Life and Health, London, 1780. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1769: English lord lands in Vienna with his eight-woman harem

Frederick Calvert, the 6th Baron Baltimore (1731-71) was one of the 18th century’s most notorious womanisers. When his father died in 1751, Calvert inherited his titles and the family’s most lucrative asset: the colony of Maryland. Frederick Calvert would never land a foot in America but rents and taxes from Maryland would fund his decadent existence in Europe.

Calvert married after his 22nd birthday but despised his wife and separated from her almost immediately. She died five years later after falling from a fast-moving carriage. Calvert was also in the vehicle and many believed he had pushed her.

His wife’s premature death kick-started Calvert’s life of self-indulgence. He travelled around Europe and lived for more than a year in the Ottoman Empire, where he surrounded himself with a private harem staffed by local women.

Back in London in the 1760s, Calvert continued his sexual antics, taking several mistresses and fathering a host of illegitimate children. In 1768, Calvert was accused of kidnapping, falsely imprisoning and raping Sarah Woodcock, a noted beauty who ran a London hat shop. He was acquitted after claiming that Woodcock had consented to the whole affair, though few outside the pro-Calvert jury believed it.

After the trial one of Calvert’s former mistresses further embarrassed him by writing a tell-all book, suggesting that he was sexually inadequate. Eager to escape the scandal, Calvert assembled another harem and embarked on another grand tour of Europe. According to an Austrian noble who encountered him:

“…My Lord [Baltimore] was travelling with eight women, a physician and two negroes which he called his corregidores… With the aid of his physician he conducted odd experiments on his houris [harem]: he fed the plump ones only acid foods and the thin ones milk and broth. He arrived at Vienna… when the chief of police requested him to declare which of the eight ladies was his wife, he replied that he was an Englishman.”

Calvert contracted an illness and died in Italy in 1771, by which time his travelling harem had doubled in size. His body was returned to England for an extravagant funeral, though few genuinely grieved his loss.

Source: Letter from Count Maximilien von Lemberg, December 2nd 1770. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1745: Invading Scots beshit the streets of Macclesfield

John Stafford was a lawyer and the town clerk of Macclesfield, near Manchester, at the height of the Jacobite uprising in 1745. Led by the ‘Bonnie Prince’, Charles Stuart, the Jacobite rebels invaded England in November 1745. By the end of the month, the Jacobite advance had reached Macclesfield, where it was warmly welcomed by most townspeople.

John Stafford, a Hanover loyalist, was much less enthusiastic about their presence. Nevertheless, Stafford took an interest in the arrival of the ‘Pretender’s forces, recording observations about their numbers, their personnel and Charles Stuart himself.

Stafford was also required to provide lodgings for two Scottish soldiers. One was a young officer, “exceedingly civil” and a “person of sense and account” who charmed Stafford’s daughters. His second guest was a “very ordinary fellow” who “tried all the locks in my bureau and in my wife’s closet” and pilfered several small items from the Stafford house.

After enduring a sleepless night, Stafford walked across the road to visit his neighbour, who was hosting more than 50 Highland soldiers and their camp followers. To his horror:

“The house floor was covered with straw, and men, women and children lay promiscuously together like a kennel of hounds, some of ’em stark naked.”

Stafford then took a walk around the neighbourhood and discovered that it had been befouled by the visiting Scots:

“As soon as it was daylight the streets appeared in the Edinburgh fashion, being beshit all along on both sides, from one end to the other.”

To Stafford’s “great joy” the Jacobite contingent left the following day and pushed on towards Derby. They passed through Macclesfield again a week later, this time in retreat. In April the following year, Charles Stuart and his army were conclusively defeated at the Battle of Culloden.

Source: Letter from John Stafford, December 2nd 1745. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1731: Brazilian termites abide by court order

In 1713, a group of Franciscan monks in north-eastern Brazil lodged a complaint with their local bishop. A swarm of termites had taken up residence in their monastery, St Anthony’s, and chewed their way through food, furniture, floorboards and foundations. Attempts to drive away the termites had failed and St Anthony’s was now on the brink of collapse.

The friars asked their bishop to excommunicate the hungry insects before it was too late. The bishop agreed to submit the matter to an ecclesiastical court, which heard the matter over several days.

As was usual in legal action against animals, the termites did not attend but were granted human legal representation. Their lawyer, whose name is not recorded, argued that his clients were resident in the area long before the monks; not only that, as God’s creatures they were entitled to foraging rights. Further, the lawyer suggested that the termites’ busy activities:

“…some might contend, hath proven them more industrious and attentive to their labours than those who stand to accuse them [the monks].”

The court eventually reached a compromise, ruling that the monks set aside timberland and ordering the termites to relocate there forthwith. According to the chronicles of St Anthony, cited by Evans, the court’s ruling was:

“…read officially before the hills of the termites [then] they all came out and marched in columns to the place assigned… conclusive proof that the Almighty endorsed the decision of the court.”

Sources: Bernardes, Nova Floresta &tc., vol.5, 1747; Edward P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, 1906. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1730: Somerset pig-gelder tries neutering wife

In August 1730, a London newspaper report claimed a Somerset man was under arrest for cruelty to his wife. The article did not name the man but identified him as the local pig-gelder in Bridgwater in the county’s north.

According to the report, the accused man was:

“..in the company of several other married men [and] over a pot of ale they all joined in complaint of the fruitfulness of their wives… [and asked the gelder] whether he could not do by their wives as by other animals; he said he could and they all agreed their good women should undergo the operation.”

The man returned home, probably drunk, and proceeded to gag and bind his wife. He laid her on their table and made an incision in her belly but became reluctant to proceed after finding:

“..there was some difference between the situation of the parts in the rational and irrational animals… he [sewed] up the wound and was forced to give up the experiment.”

Source: London Journal, August 22nd 1730. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.