Words in Progress: Cant and the Georgian Criminal Underworld

When I’m writing a story, I tend to have several books, close at hand laid out on the kitchen table where I write. Rather than apples or peaches, my fruit bowl tends to be a repository for historical reference books!

After finishing a story, for reasons of space and mental clarity (always a challenge!) I put away the current selection and replace them with books relevant to the next story’s historical era and social references. As mentioned before on this blog, there are a couple of books that tend to be universally useful.

One of these is Cant – A Gentleman’s Guide: The Language of Rogues in Georgian London by Stephen Hart. The origins of Cant, the criminal slang for the London underworld had their basis in Elizabethan times, if not far earlier. As Paul Baker notes in Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, “Cant was used by criminals in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, although its roots have been traced back as far as the eleventh century.”

So for me, this slim book is a handy reference whether I’m writing a story in Tudor, Stuart or Georgian times! I also have frequently consulted modern reprints of Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue and James Caulfield’s Blackguardiana. The only problem with these two wonderful books is that I pick them up to check a single world and get utterly distracted by other definitions and anecdotes!

The at-a-glance layout of Cant, in a jokey tourist-style guide for modern visitors to Georgian London, is just as helpful and can be less of a distraction. Usually, I like to add the occasional distinctively archaic word in my stories, just to give an authentic atmosphere. I try to desist from going overboard and confuse my readers as well as myself.

So I was metaphorically rubbing my hands with glee with writing An Unlikely Alliance, my latest release and an MMM Regency romance. Abe Pengelly, one of my trio, is a card-carrying member of the London underworld. So to my disproportionate joy, I could have him greet my other two characters, Clem and Humphrey with “Bene lightmans” which means “Good day,” and “How dost my buff?” (“How are things going?”)

In his youth, Abe was briefly a “cracksman” (housebreaker) doing a bit of “crack lay” or housebreaking, through an open “glazer” (window) with the proceeds or “whack” shared with the rest of the criminal gang. When the “Upright Man” or gang leader he worked for “roasted” or arrested and subsequently transported (“marinated” or “lumped in the lighter”), Abe turned to the less hazardous occupation of “fencing” or receiving stolen goods. From then on, he has become a purveyor of information, rather than “trinkets”.

I had great fun sprinkling those Cant words throughout Abe’s thoughts and speech in An Unlikely Alliance while remembering to exercise a modicum of restraint!

Words in Progress: Molly Houses and Bagnios – the Gay Scene in Georgian London

Since I write historical MM Romance and my stories are mainly set in the popular Regency period, I often encounter an assumption from readers that gay men in the Georgian era were in general repressed and hidebound about expressing their sexuality.

That’s an understandable conjecture given the social attitudes of the times and potentially savage sentences if caught and apprehended. It’s sad to consider that many men lived their lives in stifling fear of blackmail or severe punishment.

Yet the more I read on the subject, it becomes apparent that this presumption is far from the whole picture. I am patiently waiting for a reprint of Rictor Norton’s groundbreaking book, Mother Clap’s Molly House, the first definitive study of the gay community in Georgian England. However, until I get my mitts on that, there is plenty of historical fact to back up a buoyant gay scene in London’s coffee houses, taverns and bagnios.

In my well-thumbed copy of The Secret History of Georgian London, Dan Cruikshank describes “many popular cruising grounds” throughout central London around the public buildings, streets, squares and by the riverside. But for men who preferred a sense of camaraderie or to hook up more comfortably indoors, there were plenty of Molly Houses “as homosexual taverns were called” and coffee houses that catered for the gay community.

Coffee houses in particular were a male domain. Like some taverns, they often had private rooms catering for all kinds of private clubs, so it seems only natural that some of them doubled as gay meeting places.

In my new story, An Unlikely Alliance, an MMM Regency romance, Clem, one of my trio, is very much a part of this vibrant community. Having been dismissed from his post as a confidential secretary and feeling like he has nothing to lose, Clem throws discretion to the winds, diving headfirst into all that London can offer him as a gay man.

Since London has more than its fair share of surviving taverns, it’s easy to imagine my characters inhabiting these locations. But bagnios, or public bath houses, many based on the idea of the traditional Turkish hammam, are long gone. In Georgian London, the term “bagnio” was synonymous with the sex trade. Although some places solely provided luxurious bathing facilities, others also doubled as brothels or houses of assignation.

Again, Dan Cruikshank’s book was an invaluable help for writing a scene in my story set in a Georgian London bagnio. My imaginary bagnio is based on a real place, “a small building on Strand Lane that runs south from the Strand towards the river,” in which there are the archaeological “remains of what could have been a bagnio.”

My bagnio in that location is considerably more lavish than the original plunge bath dating from Tudor times in Strand Lane, embellished by Dan Cruikshank’s careful collation of contemporary advertisements for bagnios and written descriptions of bagnio visits from the time.

With vital information from such wonderful sources, I hope I have managed to convey at least some of the vibrancy of London’s Regency gay scene in An Unlikely Alliance.

Words in Progress: The Evolution of Soho

This week on my writing blog, I have the perfect excuse to natter about an aspect of social history that never fails to capture me.

It’s the final few days of the Spend Easter with Queer Romance in KU Bookfunnel Promo, highlighting lots of wonderful Kindle Unlimited books from fabulous authors.

My contribution for this promo is London in the Rain, my story set in mid-1930s London with my MCs Raymond and David meeting and falling in love amongst the emerging gay scene. When thinking about what I was going to write about this week on the blog, I couldn’t help comparing it with last week’s blog and the setting of my upcoming story An Unlikely Alliance, set in 1808.

I find it compelling how places developed or dwindled over the centuries. There’s so many examples of towns and villages that were prosperous during the medieval period and then remained untouched for some centuries or even disappeared altogether.

In terms of central London, charting how districts change over time is truly fascinating. In An Unlikely Alliance, one of my MCs, Abe Pengelly, lives in Soho’s Gerrard Street, a very respectable address in early 19th-century London. Roll on just over 100 years and Soho is a very different district as described in London in the Rain, multicultural, becoming the centre of London’s sex trade, thronging with new nightclubs and emerging (and often short-lived) gay clubs like Billie’s, on what was Little Denmark Street. I’ve discussed the vibrant gay scene of the era in previous blogs, but I just have to share this superb article from the National Archives again.

As a result of the Industrial Revolution, London grew out of all recognition during the 19^th century. In 1800 the population was roughly one million. By 1900 it had reached over six million and was continuing to grow at speed.

As you can see from my faithful 1806 Mogg Map, although Soho was a central suburb, it was also an easy walk to the edges of the city, where areas such as Paddington, Pancras and Camden Town were still villages, soon to swallowed up by the spreading conurbation. With the new railways, by the mid-nineteenth century, the middle classes were able to move out to greener suburbs.

From a relatively quiet residential district, Soho was transformed during the 19^th century. For much of the 20^th century (until gentrification, starting in the 1980s), Soho was a colourful melting pot from waves of immigration, known for its continental cuisine in restaurants, delicatessens, and markets. It was also known for its pubs, theatres, cinemas and clubs and was the base of artists, musicians and theatricals as well as the ubiquitous sex trade.

As always, when checking out relevant links for this blog, I came across a couple of excellent articles on aspects of Soho’s cultural heritage, from This is Soho and Hidden London. Well worth a read!

Words in Progress: London Lairs

For this week’s writing blog, I’m remaining in London but fast-forwarding to the Regency era for my upcoming release, An Unlikely Alliance. This Regency MMM story will be published concurrently on May 4^th with The Hunting Box by Alexandra Caluen and As Many Stars by K.L. Noone.

These three stories will also be published in one volume of Trio stories, Regency Lovers. Both separately and together, they are in the 45% off ebook Spring Sale at JMS Books ending today.

In my Regency romances, I prefer not to stick to the ton for my cast of characters and I like to include men from different walks of life to illustrate the diversity of Regency London. That choice is reflected in the locations of my stories. I do mention the West End, and the exclusive environs of Mayfair, St. James’ and Piccadilly, but my characters tend to haunt the main roads eastwards and flock to Covent Garden, the party area of the city where rich and poor mingled freely. As Covent Garden featured heavily in my Town Bronze series, I wanted to choose somewhere new for An Unlikely Alliance.

As An Unlikely Alliance is an MMM romance, I wanted my three MCs to represent a cross-section of London society. So there’s Humphrey, an unassuming gentleman, Clem, an orphan, scholar and a professional private secretary, and Abe, of unknown pedigree and with links to London’s criminal underworld.

I wanted to place these characters somewhere specific in the streets of Regency London and mulled over my trusty online copy of the 1806 Mogg Map without much success. Then one day, I was scanning through a social media site and came across a blog by Lizanne Lloyd on The Old Red Lion Tavern that spanned the Fleet Ditch just off Holborn Hill.

This ancient tavern was a thieves’ den, notorious by the 18^th century. I was rapt by the hair-raising exploits that Lizanne Lloyd describes. It makes for fascinating reading!

In terms of my story, stumbling across this article was pivotal. The Old Red Lion seemed the ideal base for Abe and his dubious past and I couldn’t help but imagine him in terms of a throwback, in appearance, an 18^th-century highwayman, complete with a dashing red velvet frock coat and long, lustrous hair.

Having decided on Abe’s headquarters, the other characters’ haunts fell into place, a bit further eastward than usual in my stories. Rather than a scion of Piccadilly or Mayfair, Humphrey lives in the rather more old-fashioned district of Bloomsbury, off the main thoroughfare of Holborn, and Clem’s employer is near Leicester Square, no longer in vogue by this time.

Because these men inhabit the regions of Holborn, the Strand and Fleet Street, I couldn’t resist choosing a specific and still-existing tavern for their habitual drinking haunt. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a pub near Fleet Street, originating in the 16^th century, has a history to rival the long-demolished Old Red Lion, but far more wholesome, thankfully!

Words in Progress: Travelling Along the Thames

This week on my writing blog, with my recent story, Lucky of Love in mind, I’m looking at another aspect of London, the River Thames.

Given the state of the roads in 17^th century England, mired by lack of upkeep and the dangers of highwaymen, the river along which the city was built was an all-important transport route.

In Lucky in Love, my MC Owen has to take a short trip upriver to Hammersmith to deliver an important message. This sub-plot made me dive deep into researching tides, times and methods of transport.

Water taxis and informal ferries, known as “wherries” in this period, were nothing new. With only London Bridge spanning the river, they were the quickest way of getting from the north to the south bank. Incidentally, a quick check led me to this fascinating blog on London’s bridges. Well worth a look!

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, the Palace of Whitehall had several exits leading directly to the river. These weren’t just functional. There were also musical interludes, firework displays and water pageants that took place on the river for special occasions. When using the Thames as transport, the king and his retinue would have travelled in considerable luxury in the royal barge to the palaces at Greenwich and Hampton Court.

Owen doesn’t have such extravagant options and has to haggle with a waterman to negotiate a price for his trip. In Restoration London, Liza Picard describes the kind of small boat that Owen hires with “one or two men rowing and one or two passengers sitting at the other end.” She comments that the river would have been crammed with such sturdy craft, “in the 20 miles between Gravesend and London Bridge there were more than 1,400 ships.”

In working out the logistics of Owen’s journey upriver, I found the modern Thames River Boats site invaluable. It was not only helpful in calculating the approximate timings but also had some very useful information on tides as well as some lovely pictures of destinations!

Although Owen’s expedition is only a small part of Lucky in Love, I relished this research rabbit hole. I learned enough to be inspired to write about the River Thames again in a future story. Even looking through the books and websites I referenced has enthused me!

Words in Progress: The Banqueting House

This week on my writing blog, I’m remaining in the 17^th century to chat about a line of research for my new release, Lucky in Love, which is 50% off today only at JMS Books, together with all my stories.

In Lucky in Love, country gentleman Owen and his servant and lover John are summoned to the royal court in London and all the decadence therein. Continuing on from last week, I’m sticking around the Palace of Whitehall to focus on a particular building, The Banqueting House.

As I mentioned previously, this spacious royal dining hall, built by James I and improved upon by his son Charles I from designs by Inigo Jones, was one of the few Stuart embellishments on the Tudor palace. Given that most of the Palace of Whitehall was destroyed by fire towards the end of the 17^th century, the Banqueting House, although modified over the centuries, is of especial interest as it is one of the few original remaining buildings from the complex..

When Charles II returned to England in 1660, the restoration and modernization of the Palace of Whitehall was a priority. The richly decorated Banqueting House had been stripped of its paintings as Antonia Fraser notes in her biography of King Charles II. “His father’s great art collection had been tragically sold after his death, and it was with a view to replacing it to some small degree that Charles had acquired some paintings of his own in the Netherlands.”

Rather than a private dining room, the Banqueting House was (and still remains) an official and impressive function room, designed to “impress fellow monarchs and ambassadors” as Lisa Picard explains in Restoration London.

However, the general public was allowed surprisingly frequent access due to the custom of public dining practised by the monarchs of Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Liza Picard describes, “Anyone who looked respectable and could talk his way in could watch Charles dining, three times a week.”

This intriguing revelation was a gift to my imagination and I had to include one such public dinner in Lucky in Love. My main characters behave in their typical fashion. Owen is slightly bored by the entire procedure while John is agog as the spectacle and amazed that the king requires food like any other man!

Words in Progress: A plan of the Palace of Whitehall

This week on my writing blog, we’re heading to 17th-century London and the Palace of Whitehall. This building features heavily in my upcoming story, Lucky in Love, the sequel to last year’s Lucky John set on the cusp of the Restoration period.

Both these stories and all my ebooks are 45% off in the final day of the Easter weekend sale at JMS Books.

Lucky in Love takes place in 1661, when Charles II was re-establishing himself on the throne, having returned from exile the year before. My MCs Owen and John, now an established couple, are happily settled at Owen’s family home in Monmouthshire. So I thought it would be fun to bring them to the extravagances and temptations of the royal court.

As this fascinating article explains, the Palace of Whitehall was mainly destroyed by fire at the end of the 17^th century. So I was thrilled to find this fantastic plan of how the palace would have looked in 1680 when Charles had had the time and opportunity to do some refurbishing.

However, the Royal Palaces blog relates that the Palace of Whitehall was far from new and was inherited wholesale from the previous century and the Tudor dynasty. So it was easy for me to imagine the palace without the few modern refinements like the sundial in the Privy Garden that Charles commissioned.

With the plan, I could visualise Owen and John proceeding through the gate at Scotland Yard to the stables and then Owen reaching his brother Lewis’ rooms in one of the outer courtyards. I have to say, I spent far too long looking at the key below the plan that lists the inhabitants of the palace in 1680 and wondering who they were and their specific roles.

As you’ll notice on the plan, the functional structures are on the right-hand side of the palace, and the more ceremonial areas like the Privy Garden, the chapel and the Great Hall are arranged near the royal apartments. One of the most important buildings, The Banqueting Hall, deserves a blog of its own, so I’ll be chatting about that next week.

The plan of Whitehall Palace was invaluable when writing Lucky in Love. I could imagine Owen’s unexpected meeting with the king near the Privy Garden and John’s encounter with Sir Charles Sedley (a real-life courtier) near the Great Hall. I could even arrange Owen’s trip upriver to Hammersmith from the Whitehall Palace steps leading down to the River Thames. I spent many happy hours perusing the Whitehall Palace plan as a fascinating research rabbit hole and an intriguing glimpse into the past.

Words in Progress: Blackguardiana and The Vulgar Tongue

From our schooldays, we’re used to categorizing history by centuries, neatly packaged to define a certain age into sound bites and facts. Although this is a useful learning tool, it would be quite wrong to think that dramatic changes occur simply because of a new century or arbitrary measurement of time.

 From our own family histories, we know that real life is not that streamlined. I’m sure we all have relatives whose lives spanned a change of centuries and momentous events regardless of how history is packaged.

Similarly, I was born in the twentieth century and my life has straddled the 21^st. I don’t feel much different frankly. Definitely older, possibly wiser and increasingly baffled by technology!

In terms of writing, I’m shifting from The Way Home and all things Regency which I’ve been chatting about for the past few weeks back to the Restoration period for my upcoming release Lucky in Love.

It would be tempting to fall back on school book history and assume these are completely separate periods. However, as anyone who follows the wonderful lexicographer Susie Dent would know, language provides an important and ever-changing link through time.

Today, I’m chatting about two books, published within 20 years of each other that provide an extraordinary overview of language and social history.

Blackguardiana by James Caulfield, first published in 1795, is a book I dip into whenever I have a spare moment as it’s a fascinating read. It’s an informal encyclopaedia of the criminal underworld. Partly a dictionary of cant terms, Blackguardiana is threaded through with colourful anecdotes and potted biographies of notorious rogues. Its references stretch from Tudor, through Stuart times and into the late eighteenth century. Whenever I dip into this book, I feel like I’m drawn back into the distant past in an immediate and vivid way.

At first glance, Francis Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue seems far more modern than Blackguardiana in its layout. The title describes its function as a dictionary explaining cant terms that were becoming fashionable slang at this period. This enjoyable BBC article provides great insight into the dictionary! However, Grose’s book owes a debt to Blackguardiana. Many of the words and definitions are identical in both volumes and Grose often slips into enjoyable narratives to illustrate a word with a real-life example.

Blackguardiana looks to the past for inspiration while the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue popularises gaol slang for a generation of young bucks. But these two volumes have much in common. The use of language and the salutary examples provide a bridge between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries which proves invaluable for writing historical fiction.

Words in Progress: Georgians at the Seaside

In my mind, I tend to associate the rise of the seaside holiday with the mid to late nineteenth century. It must be all those railway posters exhorting the bracing air of the coastal destination and old photographs of holidaymakers wearing bathing suits that almost covered them from head to foot.

Also, perhaps because the Georgians made spa towns so popular; Bath, Cheltenham, and Leamington to name but a very few, I forget that they were also inclined to seawater!

There are myriad reasons why the seaside became attractive to visitors during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The popular belief that sea air was good for the constitution, improved roads, a growing middle class with a disposable income, and the influence of Romanticism exhorting natural beauty, and so on. Also, during the Regency period, the Napoleonic Wars that tore across most of Europe severely curtailed the option of continental travel.

Coastal towns were quick to adapt to this extra source of seasonal income with boarding houses, bathing machines and assembly rooms, so that the tourists were properly accommodated and entertained.

This fashionable preference was widely mentioned in contemporary literature. I always think of the quote from Jane Austen’s Persuasion (one of my favourites of her books) where a trip to the Dorset coast to visit Lyme Regis is met with great approval by a lively party of unmarried friends. “The young people were all wild to see Lyme.”

So I don’t know why I  was so surprised to learn, when researching the Kentish town of Whitstable for my latest book release, The Way Home, that the seaside town advertised its bathing machines from as early as 1768.

Maybe I was preoccupied with more genteel resorts such as Brighton, adopted by the Prince Regent and adorned with his extravagant Pavilion where he entertained high-ranking guests from London. Unlike many booming resorts dotting the southern coast, Whitstable primarily remained a working fishing town – but of course, there’s no reason it couldn’t have been a popular resort as well!

Words in Progress: Regency Mealtimes

As you know, I don’t need any excuse to talk about food on this blog! Today, rather than recipes or specific dishes, I’m chatting about the concept of mealtimes regarding my new Regency story The Way Home (Twelve Letters Book 8).

In modern-day UK, (if we leave out complications like elevenses and afternoon tea) there tends to be a pattern of three meals a day. Breakfast on rising, lunch (sometimes called dinner, depending on where you live) is generally taken between 12-2 pm, depending on school, work, and shift patterns which can be either the main meal of the day or a light meal. The evening meal can be called dinner, tea or supper (depending on your location) is often the main meal of the day. It can be taken between late afternoon and mid-evening, depending on your preference and routine.

Going back to the pre-industrial era, traditionally, according to Ruth Goodman in How To Be a Tudor, the three meals in the 16^th century had a similar flexibility to modern-day customs. Breakfast was more important for labourers than aristocrats as fuel for the working day, which began before dawn. “As people rose at 4 am in the summer months, breakfast had to wait until around 6 am.”

Dinner, the main meal of the day could be consumed as early as 10 am, although some households stretched that to 11 or twelve. In times without much artificial light, supper was normally taken around 5 pm, or 4 pm during the winter months.

As Ruth Goodman comments, “A single fixed hour for supper was, of course, an artificial concept.” This holds true for mealtimes throughout history leading up to the present day.

By the late 18^th/early 19^th century, there was a gradual change in mealtimes, particularly in urban areas, specifically London. Dinner, at least for the aristocratic classes, shifted to later in the day, sometimes in the late afternoon or during the evening. As Rachel Knowles says in her wonderful Regency blog, “Dinnertime was affected by many factors: class; town or country; fashionable or less fashionable; dining as a family or giving a dinner with guests; on the road or at home.”

That left a long gap between breakfast and dinner that could be filled by a midday smack of lunch. However, like modern mealtimes and as both Tudor and Regency experts observe, this was not a universal habit. I’ve read blogs that insist that there was no such meal as lunch in the Regency period. They’re not wrong, it’s simply that their opinion is based entirely on the specific habits of their sources.

My recent story, The Way Home, reflects the contrast in habits between town and country and rich and poor. My MCs, Luc the musician and Harry the actor have left London to stay in rural Essex with Luc’s parents in their rented cottage on a country estate in December. Naturally enough, country meal times are observed; an early morning breakfast with a midday dinner and supper at dusk.

In contrast, the Reids, the family at the big house who condescend to allow Luc’s parents to live in the cottage, throw an evening dinner party to show their sophistication and that they are up to speed with London fashions, They also expect Luc and his violin to provide the postprandial entertainment.

Such a lavish evening event in the dead of winter would rely on a full moon for travelling or plenty of spare rooms for the guests to stay overnight. It’s a statement of wealth and status in itself. However, Harry is not impressed. He’s seething that after a simple supper at the cottage, Luc is expected to traipse back and forth in the dark to the main house simply so that the Reids can impress the neighbours – without even the prospect of sharing in the extravagant evening meal!