More Dirt and Foulness in 17th Century London by Katherine Pym

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Later model of Coach with Seat-Box higher & safer

Riding in a coach sounds romantic. I certainly would like to climb into a 17^th century ‘chariot’ as Pepys says on occasion. It would be cool. 

I’ve read a few historical fiction novels where the hero seduces the heroine in a carriage as it rolls down a neat cobblestone lane, the coach lanterns slightly swaying. The visual is pretty. It is clean. Flowers scent the air. Unfortunately, some things in these novels aren’t quite correct. 

Most of the middling sort of society did not own horses and until the latter half of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, my sources say there were no coaches (carts, yes). Everyday folk  foot-slogged wherever they wanted to go. When they finally came onto the scene, you had to be rich to own one. 

Coaches of the late 16^th & early 17^th centuries were not like what we see in movies and television. They were heavy, cumbersome boxes attached to solid frames with wheels. They made for a teeth rattling trip.  

Sometimes leather flaps covered the windows. When doors were attached, they were generally ill-fitted. Cold, rain and dirt found their way inside. Travel was uncomfortable and unwieldy. Eventually, the heavy coach was suspended by great leather straps but the swaying this produced caused terrible motion sickness.  

17th century Coachman

During most of the 17^th century, the coach had no box-seat. The coachman was forced to sit or stand on a low platform attached to the coach pole. If he sat, there was no place to rest his feet. This put his head very close to the horses’ hooves where a coachman could easily be kicked or splattered with mud and waste. The coachman’s foot could snag a root or an object and be pulled under the chassis, breaking a leg.

If you think of a coachman and postilions in plush livery with lace and shiny boots as they jaunt down a country lane, don’t. They would be mud splattered, the lace, their faces, hats and clothes fouled by the time they reached their destination.

The old Roman roads were in disrepair. Other highways were mud tracks or scratched paths. In springtime, farmers plowed across roads then people, carts and horses brazenly trod over this, crushing seed and new growth. Wheel ruts were deep. Great holes pockmarked thoroughfares that could break a horse’s leg, do irreparable damage to a cart or coach. 

Coach with low, unsafe seat-box

The actual city of London resided within its walls, an area of approximately one square mile. Everything beyond was considered the Liberties or suburbs. City lanes were narrow. As years went by coaches were built taller, wider. (Seat boxes were placed higher, equipped with foot rests.)Their sides and roofs scraped along cantilever houses, destroyed the edges of jutting eaves, knocked off butchers’ displays of hanging meats, pushed over vegetable stands. In London, iron clad wheels were outlawed due to the ear splitting noise and road destruction, but for the most part, this law was ignored.

By 1636, it is suggested upwards to 6,000 coaches rumbled up and down the lanes of London, (which seems excessively over the mark). Gridlock! Another source stated 300-700, which is still pretty darn crowded.  

Coaches fought with pedestrians, merchants with loaded carts, sedan chairs and men and women on horses. They rolled down lanes that were a combination of pavers, cobblestones and dirt, piles of muck and filthy mud running down center kennels. [Men were allowed to urinate on fires and empty their bladders in the street.] Cattle and sheep were herded through town. There were no fenders on the coach wheels. This allowed mud and other foul substances to wash onto the coachman and passengers.

Waterman plying his trade on the Thames

Another mode of dirty travel:

Watermen plied their boats for hire up and down the River Thames. They had a strong guild. They were tough and ornery. You never wanted to cross a wherriman. When they were pressed into service during the 2^nd Anglo/Dutch war, soldiers were sent to keep them subdued. Considering the crush of coaches in London, taking a wherry where you wanted to go probably proved to be much faster.

But there were issues. The Thames is a tidal river. When the tide was out, oftentimes you had to walk to the boat on planks of wood spread over mud that held centuries of filth.  London Bridge on the Southwark side of the river held heads of beheaded traitors on pikes. Once the flesh was eaten away, the caretaker would fling the skulls off the Bridge where they sank into river mud.  

The river was used for suicides. Men and women jumped off the Bridge to land willy-nilly on anything flowing beneath. Bodies would bloat up and float for days before the city scavengers could retrieve them. Dogs and rats had a tendency to find their way there, too, where they’d be left to rot.  

The Thames was also a dumping ground, from the Fleet River that was a sewer to anyone who wanted to get rid of something. Your wherriman guided the boat through this sludge to your destination.

Then there was the sedan chair.

Like a fly or a gnat, these little guys buzzed underfoot and added to the congestion. Cramped and closed in, it was a cleaner way to travel once you got into the chair.

Attached by two hefty poles, men at each end of the chair carried you to where you wanted to go. They were the ones who got dirty during the journey, not you, unless somehow a man tripped and the whole chair fell to the ground. I don’t want to go into all the hazards this would cause especially if it had been raining. 

Sedan Chair carried by mules. Nifty way to go.

So, no matter what you did in the 17^th century, where you went in London, prepare to get dirty. If you go back in time, go with an open mind.

You’ll find yourself in a rollicking loud place, filled with all sorts of people. Your mind will stagger from the myriad of visuals and powerful scents. Just hope you can safely return to the present where you can take a bath in warm, clean water.

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Many thanks to:

Wikicommons, public domain for sedan chairs

Other pictures taken from the book Travel in England, 1925

Travel in England in the 17^th century by Joan Parkes, Oxford University Press, London 1925

Old and New London: Westminster and the western suburbs By Walter Thornbury, Edward Walford, Vol IV, London 1891

Old London Bridge by Katherine Pym

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Old London Bridge

Old London Bridge was a world unto itself. Not considered London, it was a Liberty, or suburb. People were born, lived, married, and died there, some without stepping off the Bridge the whole of their lives. 

Built in the years between 1176-1209, began by King Henry II, the first Plantagenet king of England, and finished during the reign of King John (who was forced to sign the Magna Carta), it was a massive structure that acted like a dam. It stood stalwart against heavy tides, ice during cold winters, and prevented invading ships to pass upriver. 

Pool of London (Tower of London would be on the Right)

So strongly built, the Old London Bridge lasted 622 years before being pulled down in 1830's. The location of the current London Bridge is some 180 feet upriver from the old. 

It was a stone structure of 19 arches and a wooden drawbridge. Houses, shops, churches and other assorted buildings stood on the bridge. 

The anchors holding the bridge in place were called starlings. Massive and feet-like, they were comprised of broken stones and rubble. The starlings compressed the river flow into one-third of its width, causing the tides to rush through the arches like heavy waterfalls. The rush of water going out to sea could be as high as 6-8 feet, depending on the phase of the moon. 

It brought out the reckless, usually young men, to 'shoot the bridge'. Boats would gain speed and if the water wasn't too high where heads scraped the tops of the arches, or be drowned, they'd fly through and shoot out the other side, over the Pool of London (ships of sail anchored there). After a moment or two dangling above the Pool they'd drop like a rock to the water. Many died upon a wager, or from mishap by getting pulled into the fast current. 

If one were lucky, the wherriman pulled his boat to the river's edge. His passenger got out to walk around the end of the bridge, where he'd catch another wherry in the Pool and finish his journey. 

The bridge had a row of houses on either side of its length with shops at road level. This made the actual road from London to Southwark no more than 12 feet across. Sources state there were about 140 shops at one time, the two story chapel of St Thomas a Becket, Nonesuch House, and the gatehouse (no name). The bridge, with its heavy flow of water, sported water-wheels, corn-mills, and on the London side the water works that supplied running water into surrounding houses. 

Ice Fair on River Thames, London Bridge in background

Then, there was the gateway at the Southwark side where heads of traitors were displayed. The Keeper of the Heads had full managerial control over this section of the Bridge. He impaled newly removed (from the body) heads on pikes, and tossed the old ones into the river. When the original bridge was pulled down, workers found a bevy of skulls in the mud. 

Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction. While researching the Bridge, I came across the following: 

When King Henry VIII demanded Catholicism no longer be the favorite religion of the land, Sir Thomas More refused to follow his liege. As a result he was beheaded. His body was placed in a coffin and his head put on a pike above London Bridge. After the allowable time frame where the Keeper of the Heads knew seagulls had feasted and nothing should remain but putrid flesh and hollow eye sockets, Sir Thomas' daughter beseeched him not to throw her father's head in the river. Instead, she requested the Keeper give her the head so she may join it with the body, and they be interred together. 

The Keeper agreed, but was amazed when he removed the head. It remained pink and whole as if still alive... 

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Thanks to Wikicommons Public Domain

 

Reference: Old London Bridge, the Story of the Longest Inhabited Bridge in Europe by Patricia Pierce, Headline Bok Publishing, 2001.