'The Powder Monkey and the Phycologist' by Karen Maitland

Anne Perriam 

There will be many famous women celebrated today, on International Women’s Day, who achieved amazing things in the arts, sciences, sports, medicine and politics, and we owe a great debt to them. But in thinking about these women, what fascinates me is the great diversity of their lives, even between those living in the same time and place. Take two Georgian women, Anne and Amelia, who were born within a year of each other, lived just a few miles apart along the Devon coast, whose lives both became bound up with sea, but who achieved fame in such strikingly different ways.

HMS Orion 1787.

Anne (Nancy) Perriam was born in 1769 and joined her first husband, Edward Hopping, in the Navy, working as a seamstress on board HMS Crescent. But when the couple enlisted on HMS Orion, Anne volunteered to also serve as a ‘powder monkey’ during the sea-battles. Her job was to carry gunpowder from the powder magazine in the ship’s hold to the artillery guns, either loose in pots or as cartridges, to minimize the risk of fires and explosions. At the height of battle, the powder monkeys had to scuttle through dark, cramped spaces between decks on a ship that was rolling in heavy seas and juddering under the noise and impact of explosions from their own guns, while enemy shot smashed into its hull.

Firing of 18 pound gun, with a 'powder monkey' on left.

Artist: Louis-Phillippe Crepin (1772-1851) 

Anne fought in several sea-battles including Battle of L’Orient in 1795, Cape St. Vincent in 1797 and the Battle of the Nile in 1798 with Nelson’s fleet. Whenever there was a lull in the fighting, instead of resting, Anne assisted the surgeons with operations and amputations.

She gave birth to two daughters. After five years on HMS Orion, the government granted her a small annual pension of £10 in recognition of her services. She was one of only four women serving on the naval ships during the Napoleonic Wars to be given a pension. She returned home to Exmouth. Her first husband drowned in 1802, and she subsequently married a ship's pilot, John Perriam, who died in 1812. For the rest of her life until she was in her 80’s, she sold fish on the streets of Exmouth, only giving up when she became too ill to continue. She sadly died in poverty her late nineties, but by then was so famous that the press of the day dubbed her the ‘warrior woman.’ There is a memorial to her at the Powder Monkey pub, named in her honour, in Exmouth, Devon.

Battle of the Nile.

Artist George Arnald (1763-1841)

National Maritime Museum, UK

Amelia Griffiths (nee Rogers) was to have a very different life from Anne. though she’d been born just a year earlier in 1768 in Pilton, near Barnstable also in Devon. She married Revd. William Griffiths, who died only six years later leaving her to raise five children alone. Amelia eventually settled in Torquay, Devon where she was ideally placed to develop a passion which was to make her famous. She collected and classified seaweeds, in the process helping to popularise the ‘seaside holiday’. She corresponded with the most important phycology experts of her time and she became so well-respected in her field that Carl Agardh, a leading Swedish botanist named a genus of red seaweeds, Griffithsia, after her.

Torquay in 1811

Torre Abbey Museum

Her daughter, Amelia Elizabeth, become an expert in mosses, but Amelia Griffith’s great companion was a former family servant, Mary Wyatt who ran a pressed plant shop in Torquay. Pressed plants were much in demand by ladies who used them to decorate boxes, screens and create ornate friezes on drawing room walls. Together Amelia and Mary produced four volumes of pressed and named seaweeds entitled ‘Algae Danmoniensis’. The first two volumes alone, published in 1833, contained 100 different species. Like ‘powder monkey’ Anne, Amelia lived a long life, passing away just before her 90th birthday.

Griffithsia rhizophora

Photographer: Phillippe Bourjon

In 1854, the author Charles Kingsley visited Torquay and later wrote of Amelia,

‘Mrs Griffiths to whose extraordinary powers of research English marine biology almost owes its existence and who survived to an age, long beyond the natural term of man to see, in her cheerful and honoured old age, that knowledge become popular and general which she pursued for many a year unassisted and alone.’

Anne and Amelia, I salute you both!

Shoelaces

by Marie-Louise Jensen

One of the things that always struck me as especially unfamiliar in historical fiction, that is to say Georgian and Regency historical fiction, was reading of a gentleman's 'freshly ironed shoelaces'. It also struck me as rather odd. In modern days, I've never seen a shoelace that would benefit from ironing.
I've always assumed that the laces must have been wider than now, and must therefore have become creased. I still haven't found a definitive answer to this and have no mental image. But the topic occurred me again when I was watching episode two of The Crown a couple of days ago. (Yes, I realise that I am late to this - no doubt all you history buffs saw it ages ago!)  There is a scene where the young, newly-bereaved Queen Elizabeth is dressed in mourning on the plane and just for a moment, the camera pans down to her shoes, which are laced with black ribbons.

Well, ribbons make sense. They would probably need ironing to stay looking nice. And in fact, a quick google shows that ribbons are still occasionally used for lacing shoes today. Something I (as someone entirely lacking in fashion sense) had no idea of.

However the shoelaces were made, it would have been the valet's job, poor soul, to iron them, along with his master's neckcloths and shirts. I seem to remember it was the dandies who required their shoelaces to be ironed in Georgian times, but I may be wrong.

Another fascinating fact that came up when I started to search ironing shoelaces on the internet is that apparently Prince Charles still requires his shoelaces to be ironed every time he has worn them. Very strange indeed, as I doubt he wears ribbon-laces. As he is probably one of the last men in England to have a valet (he has three) he can still demand such customs are observed. For those of us who have to do our own laundry and ironing, this is probably not something anyone today choses to spend their own time on. Hands up, anyone?

One final fun fact on the topic of ironing shoelaces - apparently in the 1920s, it was a euphemism for going to the bathroom in American English. A bit like going to see a man about a dog in the UK.

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Christmas, Paris and Kate Beaton Catherine Johnson

There have been some fantastic posts here, so thoughtful and entertaining and erudite. This will not be one of those. I am currently in Revolutionary France in my head and as with all writing sometimes it is the hardest thing and sometimes you have to stop yourself thinking too hard and give in to the impulse of the story and just let it carry you away and onwards and mop up the mess afterwards.

I use a lot of maps when I write historical novels, and there are some cracking maps of Paris before, during and afterwards, when road names changed to things like Rue de l'Hommes Arme, Rue du Contrat Social and Rue des Droits de l'Homme.  

This one's from's 1792. I've used it extensively, imagining how you'd get around, gauging distances and doing a sort of analogue version of Google Streetview which involves dragging your brain down to street level and looking around.

But because of this I have rather let Christmas drift by. I was hoping I might squeeze in a very late present to myself which involved long walks round the city. But alas I've been writing and there are no decorations, the tree is still outside and the freezer is empty. I haven't even bought all my books.

So on that note I thought I'd recommend some disparate and diverting reading. Rush along to your local independent bookshop quick sharp.

Georgian London  Into the Streets  by Lucy Inglis.  I so wish this book had been published when I started writing historical novels. It would have saved me a lot of time. This is a wonderful book with so much useful and fascinating information, law and order, the stink of the tanneries, the bustle of Covent Garden and the mystery of Bow Wow Pie amongst many others. I knew nothing of Southwark's melon pits or Hackney's orange trees and there's loads of wonderful pictures and maps. It's a really useful guide for any reader who's interested in how the metropolis came of age. And I've just noticed it's been shortlisted for the Longman History Book of the Year.

The Big Con by David W. Maurer. Jump forward a couple of hundred years and immerse yourself in the argot and culture of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. This is a book written by a linguist about the world of Confidence Tricksters. The Sting - the film with Robert Redford and Paul Newman was made on the back of the information in this book. It's full of wonderful and specific criminal slang too, which is always a plus.

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton.  If you have never come across the drawings of Kate Beaton you are in for such a treat. She is a Canadian cartoonist who draws (not always) historical cartoon strips. My personal copy is adorned with a hand drawn sketch of Matthew Henson heading north. I wrote loads of sentences trying to explain them, but you're better off having a look yourself. But consequently I have not done any work at all this afternoon re reading them, and laughing. Here's the link  http://harkavagrant.com/

Happy Holidays

My book Sawbones is out now too http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/view/33334

Cant

by Marie-Louise Jensen

In early Georgian times it became fashionable, especially for well-to-do young men to speak 'cant' or slang; the language as spoken by the poor or more especially by the less-respectable members of society. Namely, the sharpers, the sharks, the bites, the wild-rogues, the varlets, the queer-bluffers, the rascals and scoundrels.

There is a lot of fun to be had. I've not yet been able to master the vocabulary fully enough to create a canting character, and in any case I think it might be bewildering for my young readership, but I do like to throw in a few Georgian expressions now and again. Some of these are cant and some are simply expressions that have fallen out of usage.

We had some discussions about some of these at the copy-edit stage recently. Because most are outdated and unheard-of now. Where would be the fun if they were still current? But who today knows about job horses, match-bays or wantyres? Horses are no longer our form of transport.
Nor do we any longer have such widespread suffering from gout, so the expression 'in the gout' to depict an ageing gentleman rendered grumpy, difficult and at times incapacitated by a painful condition is no longer familiar.
I also wanted a character to use the expression 'sick as a cushion' for comic effect. Then when called upon to defend it, I couldn't find it anywhere. One of my editors did track it down in the OED (hurrah!) but in the end we settled for 'sick as a parrot' which is probably more comic.
I haven't yet managed to work in 'farting crackers' to a manuscript (a cant term for breeches) although I fully intend to one day. But I did have to track down an era-appropriate term for a man's privates. I found tool, which I thought was comic without being crude. And did you know that a cant term for testicles was 'whirlegigs'? I don't even want to think about how that might have originated...
 Here is the cover of the new book (publishing next June) that provided the fun: