1700: Scenes from London Life

I read this book a few years ago while I was doing geneaological research. It seems I have a French Huguenot relative who came to America from a small ship he boarded in London in the Fall of 1700. I saw this book advertised somewhere and had to have it. This book helped me to see London the way my ancestor must have seen it in the months he spent there before his voyage. This is a fascinating, extremely well-written book. I felt I could feel, touch and taste 1700 London. My imagination was most gratified as I imagined what it must have been like to live at that particular time and place. It's a fine read even if you have no purpose for reading it other than the delight found in reading an excellent book; oh, and it's a cheap vacation and exercise in time travel. Congratulations and thanks to the author for an excellent job!

This book is fantastic. It tells you stuff about everyday life in London at the turn of the 18th century that I spent hours and hours learning by reading old books in the Clayton genealogical library in Houston. If you working in this period, the book is invaluable. It is concise, yet covers the minutea of everyday life. Miss Manners of that day is quoted with instructions that if several eat from a large communal bowl, you should not dip your spoon in a second time without wiping it off; and to not fill your mouth with so much food, your cheeks swell like a pair of Scotch bagpipes. [Yes, they said Scotch, and not Scottish.] What is fun is that this era opened up much of modern day life and that turn of the century saw the introduction of the "toast," thick cream [eggnog], punch, coffee and tea. Coffee houses came into existence, and the varieties of specialty shops that could be accommodated as people began to make enough money to buy commodities they had previously bartered for or made themselves. Unlike in Dickens' time, the 18th century issued in a time of great prosperity in England.

Waller's vibrant social history is an entertaining introduction to life as it was lived by Londoners in the era of William & Mary. Divided into topical and thematic chapters covering the stages of family life (Marriage, Childbirth, Childhood, Death, etc.), the minutae of daily life (Fashion, Food and Drink, Amusements, etc.) and period brutalities (Religion and Superstition, Prostitution and Vice, Crime and Punishment, etc.), Waller's smoothly-written chronicle is a lively tour of a fascinating, dynamic and ghastly civilization. Although solidly based on primary resources, Waller wears her learning lightly and her book is a triumphant panorama of the epoch it surveys. Not to mention being a fine antidote to any nostalgia for the age of Defoe and Swift. It also serves as an excellent non-fiction companion to David Liss' period novel "A Conspiracy of Paper."

Eighteenth century London was posed between a medieval world and a modern society in 1700, and no other book captures this dichotomy like Maureen Waller's 1700: Scenes from London Life, which blends investigative reporting with popular history using newspaper accounts, court records, letters and eyewitness descriptions to examine urban life of the times. From fashion and work to politics, this packs in a broad-based consideration of London life and experiences.

This is a wonderful book and I had a great time reading it. It is full of many interesting tidbits on many topics, such as: marriage, childbirth, death, fashion, food and drink, amusements, coffeehouses and taverns, etc. The book is beautifully written and holds your attention from start to finish. Here is the first paragraph from the opening chapter, concerning marriage: "Thirty-four years after the Great Fire, the worshippers at St. Paul's still gaze up at open sky. Within a decade, Wren's completed dome will cast a shadow over the grim Fleet Prison, the ominous building where debtors count out their days. At the foot of Ludgate Hill lies the Fleet Ditch, wide enough for a coal barge to sail north to Holborn, if it can tackle the stinking sewage, discarded guts and offal, drowned puppies and dead cats sliding down its muddy channel towards the Thames. Passing the brawling concert of fishwives and stall-holders gathered around the Fleet Bridge, we come to a warren of alleyways known as the Rules of the Fleet. Here, forty marriage-houses do a busy trade." Every chapter is chock-full of interesting things and I guarantee that no matter how many books you may have read on English history you will still learn many things and be thoroughly entertained. In the chapter on disease, for example, you learn a little about sanitary conditions and the state of medical knowledge. Here are two quotes:"Contaminated food and drinking water caused frequent outbursts of bacterial stomach infections. Flies traveled from faeces to food. It did not occur to those preparing or handling food to wash their hands after defecating." "The eminent physician Sir Thomas Sydenham prescribed his own highly popular remedy (for dysentery): two ounces of strained opium, one ounce of saffron, one drachm each of cinnamon and cloves in a pint of canary wine." In the chapter on amusements you find out that the common people entertained themselves by attending public executions and by going to Bethlehem Hospital (popularly known as Bedlam) to watch the antics of the insane. When coffeehouses became all the rage after coffee was introduced by a London merchant who had been trading in the Ottoman Empire, women became jealous of all the time their husbands spent in these establishments, and also suspected the vile black brew made their men impotent. "Never did men wear greater breeches," they complained, "or carry less in them of any mettle whatsoever." I had a blast reading this book and I can't recommend it highly enough!