Lewis Vaslet, 1742–1808, The Spoiled Child, Scene II, ca. 1802, Watercolor with black ink and gray wash over graphite on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. B1977.14.4342
In just about a week, we’re running a pilot program in the historic house where I work (tickets available here). After Dark, or What Cheer Night, are programs we’ve wanted to do for a couple of years, but all good things take time.
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I’ve drawn the lot chosen to talk about getting ready for bed and sleeping: lighting devices, bedding, washing, chamber pots* and what people wore to bed. While already in possession of candles and candlesticks, and the proud new owner of exhibition and interpretation grant-funded LED candles, there are things I needed to make. Of course.
Print made by Guillaume Philippe Benoist, 1725–ca. 1770, French, Pamela Swooning, after having discovered Mr. B. in the closet, He (frighted) endeavouring to recover her, Mrs. Jervis wringing her hands, and screaming, 1745, Etching with stipple engraving on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Art Gallery Collection, Gift of the Library Associates.
A banyan, for one thing. And you know that will (one hopes) be followed in short order by a night cap. After all, you can’t talk about Pamela if you haven’t got a banyan and a cap in the house. That’s a simple and relatively fun project to tackle when brain capacity is somewhat limited: some piecing, straight seams, setting in facings and sleeve linings can all happen before I must assault the collar.
Piecing it together, as the eventual wearer is taller than available fabric.
Collars are devilishly tricky for me sometimes– oddly, a pad-stitched collar set onto a tailored jacket seems easier to me than a bedgown collar– but I suspect the eventual recipient will manage to enjoy the garment no matter what minor construction errors a tipsy milliner or half-seas over housemaid might make (not, of course, that I am either of those things).
It’s been a fascinating exercise in having a staff-and-docent study group that has taken a decidedly feminist bent (calling Our Girl History!) as we explore what happened in Providence After Dark. Brothel riots in 1782. Warnings by the Baptist Church not to visit the “theatre, circus, or Green Cottage” on pain of punishment. No, I do not yet know what or where the Green Cottage is, but the best researchers I know are working on it. Is this the 18th century answer to the Green Door? We can but hope.
Reading The Coquette? Thomson’s The Seasons? Come experience an 18th century house on a night when people will know what you’re talking about! Or you can watch that questionable housekeeper prepare a room for the night while she talks about sleep patterns and shares tips for 18th century pest control.
*Pro tip: put it on a chair. I fully expect to run an intimate workshop some evening called “Will Humiliate Self for History, or, Everything you ever wanted to know about the 18th century, but were too well brought up to ask.”
This past weekend, I took my show on the road down 95 to Trenton’s Old Barracks Museum, where once again, soldiers’ rooms needed cleaning. Hannah Glasse exhorts servants (housemaids and housekeepers) to clean household rooms daily, and I can tell you this: if you’re cleaning 18th century spaces using period techniques, daily is the way to go.
Unpaved streets and sidewalks meant people tracked significantly more mud and grit indoors, and soldiers would have brought the parade ground indoors every time they crossed a threshold. Not a pretty thing– and then there’s the straw mattresses (to be changed monthly at a minimum), wool uniforms, skin, hair, and vermin that could accumulate as well. Filth: a major contribution to ill health if not managed properly.
Brandy-new broom sweeps clean. Photo by Drunk Tailor
Being possessed of a particularly detail-oriented mind, I went in search of a more 18th-century correct broom at an affordable price and found a broom enthusiast on Etsy who agreed to make and priority mail custom brooms just in time for the trip to New Jersey. On the whole, I’m very pleased with these. They make a satisfying sound as they move across the floor, and draw a fair quantity of dirt. Turns out that strewing wet sand on the floor before you sweep is remarkably effective and absolutely the way to go. The damp sand keeps the dust down and is swept out the door with the filth without harming the floor.
Mop making: surprisingly contemplative. Photo by Drunk Tailor
After sweeping, mopping. Once again, I used the lavender-infused vinegar in the mop water (though I forgot to strain the solution this time). The mixture has a unique but not unpleasant smell, and as the floors dry, the room retains the odor, a sure indication of cleanliness.
This weekend was also the first run for a new wool scrap mop, which was proven the best mop yet. Many thanks to my secret source for the contribution to the effort. It’s clear that mops could easily have been made by binding rag strips to pole handles, and whether made by poor house inmates or soldiers, mop making is cheap, low-tech busy work.
Seen on the way in to Fort Ti: dirt. (Kitty Calash photo)
The dirt on Fort Ti came home on my shoes. And my petticoats. And my gown. And possibly my face, which could explain the reactions I got when I stopped for gas on the Pike Saturday evening.
It’s incredible how how dirty, dusty, and straw-filled a room can get– and that’s just the officer’s room. For all I know, a horse had been sleeping in the back corner of the barracks room we cleaned– who else would leave so much straw?
Regular readers know I have a thing about portraying women’s work in the past, as well as historical cleaning methods and what I like to call “experimental archaeology” and other people call “that crazy hobby- thing- where you get cold and dirty.” We started with mop making, of course, and when I loaded the car on Friday morning, I was pretty well pleased with my swag.
Every good experience begins with a meal. Friday night supper included bread, cheese, pork loin and apple, imported from Rhode Island. Yes, I also helped myself to bacon, to ensure none was wasted. Bedtime for officers’ servants comes early: I’m not a stranger to rope beds, but found this straw tick far more comfortable than a previous arrangement elsewhere.
Ticks rolled back for cleaning
Start in one corner…don’t stop!
After formation, to tasks. I was ably assisted by Miss Sam, who was a better height for the brooms than I. The brooms are speculative on the one hand, and later on the other. The corn broom was markedly more effective than the broom straw, which disintegrated with use, though not for lack of care in making. We were up against some serious accumulation.
Housekeeping and servants manuals from the period, like Hannah Glasse, tell you the cleaning must be done every day. It’s certainly something I heard within my own lifetime, though an ideal I continually struggle to achieve despite the advances of Mr Kenmore. The general rule is to begin at the top and work your way down: gravity is, at last, your friend. I use brushes– a large, soft round paint brush and a stiffer circular whisk– to remove dust and dirt from upper surfaces, and cobwebs from corners, and other wall-borne detritus. Gentlefolk: your cleaning ladies know much about you in any century.
After sweeping (yes, into the fireplace or out the door, it’s that simple), scrubbing. I scrubbed the baseboards first with vinegar and water (the vinegar infused with lavender for several years). Filth, my friends. Then we mopped. Again, filth.
I would have preferred to do another dust collection on the floor– the water did pool a bit on the dry dust that remained, but swabbing seemed to work and I believe we left the floor cleaner than it had been. The three mops we tested (wool, cotton, and linen strips) each had benefits and deficits.
The cotton and wool caught on the rough floor boards, but did a good job spreading water around the floor and lifting dirt. The linen strips were better at not catching and at scrubbing.
No matter what, the water got filthy and took on the look and nearly the consistency of the chocolate we drank that day. Remember the iron museum rule: don’t lick it! That rule applies everywhere.
Everyone and everything got cleaned Saturday. Miss V broached the laundry with vigor, but discovered that possibly untoward things had been done in her laundry tub. Things that might involve shoes, and blacking. Marks were left on shifts and shirts, so even the wash tub got a scrub this garrison weekend.
Some of the best comments came after the fact: I’ve never heard cleaning called “one of the coolest things” seen all day, but when someone says it helps them see a space in an entirely new way, I’m incredibly happy. There’s so much about the everyday use– and maintenance– of space and objects and each other that we take for granted in our own lives. Surely the people of the past who had servants took all that work for granted.
But for me, enamored as I am of details and of the quotidian, transforming a space through the everyday work of women is a job with doing. Thanks to Fort Ti’s staff for giving me the chance to step back in time and enjoy (really, I mean it) a day of hard work bringing the mundane back to life.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos by Eliza West, courtesy of Fort Ticonderoga.
But here’s the thing: if the Monday is emphasized, the Massacre stands out. Focusing on the normal makes the unusual ever much more so. And in the case of Monday, March 5, 1770, the usual is actually unusual.
Paul Revere, “The Bloody Massacre in King-Street, March 5, 1770.” Boston, 1770
Over the course of the month leading up to Saturday’s event, Drunk Tailor and I spent a lot of time talking about the night watch, peddling, food supplies to Boston, population, and what I might call “the texture of everyday life” in a meeting at work. Any reading you do forces you to realize that the key to the Massacre is how very abnormal everyday life had become in Boston that winter.
Edward Langford, disaffected nightwatchman. @BostonStrolls on Twitter
By 1770, Boston was an occupied city: Ferguson comes to mind, or Ramadi. Soldiers and watchmen patrol the streets, civil and martial structures clash, and the Sons of Liberty chafe under this control– or attempt at control. Scuffles, fights, brawls, break out. A boy is shot to death– accidentally– and tensions mount higher. Sailors and soldiers alike commit acts of vandalism. Women are assaulted. Normal isn’t normal anymore, and Boston was always expensive to live in. Even in a city occupied by “friendly” forces, gathering supplies and going about one’s daily business became harder.
People are scared. This is a tense city. Lots of people are just trying to survive. Lots of those people are children. Roughly 16,000 people, and if the estimates are correct, 2,000 soldiers and 4,000 men (white, African, other, free, indented and enslaved), which means about 4,000 women and 8,000 children under 16. Let that one sink in: lots of children, lots of teenagers. I don’t know about you, but a city with a large population of teenagers is going to be tense under the best of circumstances, even in an era before the rise of youth culture. Hormones, man. The kid can’t help it.
So imagine this: instead of a mobile monument and a commemorative ritual that substitutes fists for muskets, the Massacre commemoration expands to include the day, and not just the night. Monday and a Massacre.
Townspeople hurry home as dark falls. Women lug laundry back to customers or to the washhouse, or trundle barrows home, empty, after a day of hawking cats’ meat, oysters, or fish. Tired cordwainers trudge the streets, hoping for meat at supper. A mother scavenges firewood to warm her rented rooms, keeping an eye out for the watch. Those are not Mr Hutchinson’s fence posts, truly.
Photo by Tommy Tringale (Claus’ Rangers, 2nd NH, 3rdMA and HMS Somerset)
Women look over their shoulders, nervous at the sound of hobnailed shoes on the streets. Older men skirt closer to buildings, out of the way of soldiers in the street. Apprentices mock an officer, a sentry responds.
Insults, a scuffle, a boy knocked down. A mob, soldiers, a woman shoved, shots fired, men killed and wounded, blood on the snow.
Murder in the midst of the mundane. More horrifying (in truth, I have never heard Boston so silent as I did on Saturday night) within its context than set apart.
The Women of the 2017 Boston Massacre commemoration. Photo by Drunk Tailor at the behest of Our Girl History
The benefits?
A more complete picture of life in 1770 that puts the events of the evening of March 5, 1770 into deeper context and thus a sharper contrast.
A recognition that history isn’t just about men and conflict.
Understanding that what made living under occupation so hard was more the living– trying to be normal–than the occupation.
And, yes: more for women to do.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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