Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (54 page)

A Time to Reflect—on Mirrors

by Mike Rendell

I
t is interesting that when my ancestor Richard Hall was writing in 1781 about a mirror it was the old frame which got thrown away, to be replaced with a “New Carv’d Gilt frame”—while the actual glass was kept. Why? Because mirrors were extremely costly.

Mirrors had of course been around for several thousand years, originally using polished bronze or similar materials. But in the sixteenth century, Venetian glassmakers on Murano found a way of coating the back of a sheet of glass with silver mercury.

Rivals stole the method of production and brought it to France, Germany, and particularly England, so that by the 1700s London had a thriving mirror-making industry.

Cheap it was not—and it was also highly dangerous, since mercury is an extremely unstable and dangerous chemical to work with.

The process was quite complicated. First you needed a stone table which was completely level (so that mercury would not run off when poured), but the table had to be capable of being tilted gently. Then you needed a completely flat sheet of tin, moulded to give a gulley running all round its four sides( to catch the mercury as it drained). The tin was tied securely to the table. A small amount of mercury would then be spread across the surface and rubbed gently into the surface of the tin (traditionally using a hare’s foot).

The next stage was to pour mercury over this prepared surface to a depth of between three and six millimetres. It needed to be as evenly spread as possible. Then came the difficult part—lowering the glass sheet onto the mercury so that it floated. The weight of the glass would force the mercury out to the gulley running round the tin sheet where it could be collected and used again. A blanket would be placed over the glass and weights used to press down the glass. The stone table would then be tilted, and the whole shebang left to dry for three weeks. The critical moment would come when the glass was lifted from the table—apparently even a loud noise could cause the mercury to run off from the back of the glass, with potentially fatal consequences. Death by inhalation of mercury fumes was not uncommon in factories where mirrors were made.

Small wonder therefore that a mirror or looking glass was an expensive item, certainly one which it was worthwhile for Richard to spend one pound eleven shillings and sixpence to re-frame (perhaps nearer a hundred pounds in modern terms).

The chemical process of coating a glass surface with metallic silver was not discovered until thirty years after Richard’s death. The actual inventor is a matter of dispute, but one candidate is the German, Justus von Liebig, who published an article in 1835 remarking that
“...when aldehyde is mixed with a silver nitrate solution and heated, a reduction is formed, as a result of which the silver settles itself on the wall of the vessel, forming a superb mirror.”

In Richard’s time, mercury-backed mirrors came in all shapes and sizes. The woodcarver Grinling Gibbons made intricately carved frames to go with his mirrors, but in the eighteenth century the adornment to the frames was often painted rather than carved. They became part and parcel of the design of the fireplace. Designers such as Robert Adams would produce schemes for fireplaces with a matching mirror and frame above it, sometimes reaching to the ceiling.

Mirrors designed to go above a fireplace were known as chimney glasses, while those intended to go between two sets of windows were called pier glasses. It became fashionable in the eighteenth century to have mirrored sconces—wall fittings to hold a candle but with a mirror at the back to reflect light back into the room. Later in the century cheval glasses came into fashion. According to
Encyclopaedia Britannica:

The cheval glass was first made toward the end of the 18th century. The glass could be tilted at any angle by means of the swivel screws supporting it, and its height could be adjusted by means of lead counterweights and a horse, or pulley, from which the name was taken. Thomas Sheraton in the 1803 edition of The Cabinet Dictionary, included a design with a nest of drawers at one side and another with a writing surface. When wardrobes were fitted with mirrored doors, the cheval glass became unnecessary in bedrooms.

Meanwhile, my great-great-great-great-grandfather Richard Hall would have sat at his dressing table in his bedroom, attending to his toilet (or perhaps, as he would have said, his “twaylit”) using his tilting adjustable mirror (which I still use). It makes you ponder on the transient nature of an image to think it was once his visage which reflected in the looking glass, and now it is mine!

Currency in the Second Half of the 18th Century

by Mike Rendell

I
t is one of the most basic of everyday occurrences: you need to pay for something, using cash. But what coins would have been in the purse of your average hero or heroine in the second half of the 18th century? If you want to be authentic, it may help to look at what was, and was not, in circulation.

First, it is interesting to look at inflation during the period 1750 to 1800 to see what buying power money would have had. A useful instant conversion giving the “value” of, say, one hundred pounds in different years is shown at the National Archives website:
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/results.asp
.

£100 in
1750
would have the buying power of £8500 (as of 2005 values).

By
1780
this had been whittled down to £6285.

By
1790
it had dropped to £5603.

In
1800
(with the effect of the war with France firing up inflation) it was £3217.

This demonstrates that “the pound in your pocket” had slumped in value by well over fifty per cent in half a century.

Where were the coins made? At the Tower of London. It may seem odd to us, but the public were actually allowed into the Tower to see the Royal Mint in operation. This was the only place in use as an official Mint, all the earlier provincial mints having been abandoned. Hence my ancestor records,
“April 25, 1771, went with General Whitmore, Mr and Mrs Snooke, Mr Gifford and my Wife to see the Mint at the Tower”
.

Put to one side the question of bank notes. Although they had been introduced by the Bank of England a century earlier, they were only used in high denominations. For instance, from 1725 onwards there were notes of 20, 25, 30 and upwards in multiples of ten pounds to a hundred pounds, and then in multiples of a hundred to five hundred pounds. Above that there was a note having a value of a thousand pounds.

These were huge sums, and although the really wealthy might have access to these notes, they were never in general use. Indeed, the public wanted to “feel the value” and expected their currency to equate to the inherent value of the metal their money was made from.

For centuries there had been no problem: gold was worth twenty times its equivalent weight in silver, and silver was worth 12 times that of humble copper. These relative values were reflected in the age-old division of the pound into twenty shillings, and the shilling into a dozen pennies. But these divisions came under huge strain with the inflationary pressures—particularly affecting the price of silver.

A shortage of that precious metal marked the second half of the century. The silver mines in the Southwest of England had become exhausted, the Seven Years’ War had cut off supplies from the continent, and the price of silver rocketed. The Royal Mint knew it could not reduce the size of the silver coins as they were already tiny—a silver penny weighed just half a gram and was only a few millimetres across. The public had never liked the idea of a debased coinage, so the Mint took the easy option: it didn’t make any silver coins, year after year after year!

During the period 1760 to 1800, it would, therefore, be quite wrong to refer to a “newly minted” crown (5/-) or half-crown (2/6d) because they weren’t made at all.

My ancestor specifically refers to holding on to “a Carolus” (Latin for Charles), meaning a crown coin from the reign of Charles II. I still have the coin, and it is so worn that the portrait is barely discernible.

And so it was with all the coins—those in circulation got older and more indistinct, making it easy for forgers to issue silvery metal blanks as counterfeits. No shillings were issued (other than a special batch designed for Ireland) apart from in 1787 when coins to a face value of £50,000 were issued in shillings and sixpences. For the rest of the time—virtually no silver at all. Gold was coined fairly regularly, mostly “spade guineas” having a face value of 21 shillings. These were frequently counterfeited, using brass gaming tokens of the identical size and similar design.

The spade guinea and the worthless gaming token with a completely impossible date of 1701 (George did not become king until 1760) might easily confuse the public—particularly if offered in change after dark or by candlelight in the gloom of a counting house at the back of the shop.

In the first half of George III’s reign there were no pound coins (twenty shillings), but a quarter guinea appeared for a year in 1762, and a third of a guinea coin (seven shillings) appeared in 1797. By then, the Bank of England had introduced one and two-pound notes, but it is worth remembering that a pound was still a lot of money.

My ancestor records paying his barber Edward Slatter “for shaving this whole year two guineas” (plus a shilling paid to the barber’s son as his Christmas Box). Shaving was of course a whole-of-head task (i.e. not just the face) to enable a wig to be worn comfortably.

In 1797, one pound also represented six months’ school fees paid for educating both of his children, or the amount spent on soap in an entire year. It would cover his wine bill for six weeks or, alternatively, a fortnight’s worth of meat from the butcher. Coal cost him about a pound a month (at between ten and fifteen shillings a ton delivered to his house). A pound was also what he paid by way of taxes for nearly six months (that was to change in 1800 with the introduction of the hated Income Tax, when he was suddenly faced with a bill for £36 p.a.).

My ancestor’s diaries show that on Valentine’s Day every year he gave each child in the local school one penny (
“98 Boys and Girls one penny each i.e. Eight shillings and two pence, plus a penny for the post boy”
).

War with France resulted in the issue of paper notes, and these gradually became acceptable to the public, meaning that the Royal Mint was able to stop making gold guineas between 1797 and 1813. The smaller items of currency were, however, still left in desperately short supply.

To get round the silver shortage, various alternatives were tried including over-stamping Spanish 8 reales coins with King George III’s head in the centre, using the goldsmiths’ hallmark. In monetary terms they were given the curious value of 4/9d. The Bank of England (as opposed to the Royal Mint) then issued dollars of five shillings between 1804 and 1811 along with a token currency of three shillings, and its half (eighteen pence). None of these were particularly common.

The 8 reales silver coins of the king of Spain over-stamped in the centre with the head of George III were not much liked, giving rise to the comment,
“they may have the heads of two kings but they are not even worth a crown”.

Copper coins were also far from plentiful in the early years of the reign of George III. Pennies and halfpennies were minted in the first half of the decade in the 1770s—and then nothing until 1797 with the introduction of the “Cartwheel” coinage. All of the cartwheel coins are dated 1797, regardless of the year of issue.

These giants, containing respectively a penny and two-pence worth of copper, were unique in having the inscription impressed on to the surface as opposed to being raised up. They demonstrate the power of the newly introduced steam-powered presses. Using pure copper, which is soft and easily worn, meant that whereas vast numbers of these coins were minted, comparatively few remain in really good condition. They cannot have been too popular with the public—they weigh one ounce and two ounces respectively, so carrying a stack of them would ruin the stitching in anyone’s purse!

Instead, the public got used to using smaller tokens often issued by traders in a particular town or area, satisfying the local need for pennies, halfpennies, and farthings. (As an aside, my ancestor diligently wrote down a reminder that it was proper to pronounce the word farthing as “fardun”). The problem with these tokens is that they were technically illegal (breaching the monopoly granted to the Royal Mint by the Crown) and could often only be exchanged in the town of issue.

Things did not get back to a sensible footing until the whole coinage was overhauled in 1816. This coincided with the move of the Royal Mint from its old headquarters in the Tower of London to new and more spacious premises nearby, where mechanisation was more practicable. This involved the new steam presses supplied by Boulton and Watt.

It was decided to allow silver and copper to be representative, i.e. without equivalent intrinsic value, and from then on the coinage was based solely on the gold standard. Out went the 21 shilling guinea and in came the twenty shilling pound (using 22 carat gold) with its multiples in two and five pounds. Also in 1816, back came the silver crown and half crown. Back came the shilling and the sixpence, along with the smaller silver denominations (4d i.e. groat, 3d, 2d and 1d).

In conclusion, the issue of coins other than for higher values was a complete mess in the period 1760 to 1816. Partly this was caused by inflationary constraints, partly by the limited space available within the Tower of London to bring in new machinery. The results were chronic shortages, poor quality coins in circulation, and an increase in forgeries—even though counterfeiting carried the death penalty.

The problems existed because we were wedded to a dual standard (i.e. both gold and silver), and the problems went away “overnight” in 1816 when the coinage was completely re-vamped. Prior to that date the public had to endure fifty years of confusion and inconvenience, as well as the financial loss caused whenever anyone unscrupulous or dishonest palmed off inferior foreign coins, forgeries, or blanks. It must have been a rotten time to be in business, and my ancestor’s diaries reflect this damaging uncertainty.