Women at Sea: Lilac Chen Part II

Last we spoke of Lilac Chen, the unfortunate girl from China circa 1893, she was on her way to San Francisco without anyone asking her whether sailing across wave to an entirely alien world was something she might care to do. A slave, Lilac had no choice in the matter. And so, we pick up her story as told by her from the standpoint of her own salvation by a missionary in San Francisco named Miss Cameron:

Oh, God has just been wonderful. Just think, I was in such close waters for damnation myself! This woman, who brought me to San Francisco,, was called Mrs. Lee, and she kept the biggest dive in San Francisco Chinatown. Oh, she had a lot of girls, slave girls, you know. And every night, seven o'clock, all these girls were dressed in silk and satin, and sat in front of a big window, and the men would look in and choose their girls who they'd want for the night. Of course, I  didn't know anything, never heard about such things, you know. And whenever police or white people came, they always hid me under the bed and pushed a trunk in front of me and then after the police had left they let me come out again. And I saw these girls all dressed in silk and satin, and they were waiting for their business, see. But I didn't know anything.

When this woman needed money, she had to sell me to another party. Everywhere I had been they were very kind to me, except this last place she sent me. Oh, this woman was so awful! They say she was a domestic servant before and was cruelly treated. She used to make me carry a big fat baby on my back and make me to wash his diapers. And you know, to wash you have to stoop over, and then he pulls you back, and cry and cry. Oh, I got desperate, I didn't care what happened to me, I just pinched his cheek, his seat you know, just gave it to him. The of course I got it back. She, his mother, went and burned a red hot iron tong and burnt me on the arm. Then someone reported me to the home. But they described me much bigger than I was so when they came they didn't recognize me. And then the woman who had reported to the mission said, "Why didn't you take her? She's the girl." They said, "She looked so small," and then they came back again. But even then, they weren't sure that I was the one, so they undressed me and examined my body and found where the woman had beaten me black and blue all over. And then they took me to the home. Oh, it was in the pouring rain! I was scared to death. You know, change from change, and all strangers, and I didn't know where I was going. Away from my own people and in the pouring rain. And they took me, a fat policeman carried me all the way from Jackson Street, where I was staying, to Sacramento Street to the mission, Cameron House. So I got my freedom there. *

Lilac became an integral part of Miss Cameron's work, helping the American missionary and rescue worker to find girls even less fortunate than herself and rescue then from where they were "... sold to work in the dives, or as domestic servants, and bring them to Cameron House so they could be free... When we went on a raid we always took several of our own girls with us to help. Generally I would follow Miss Cameron as interpreter and she and I would go into the house through a door or a window... Poor Miss Cameron, she never knew about these dives, you know. Scottish people, especially the refined, never discussed these things... So nobody told her, she was so innocent. These slave girls used to have terrific sores, and she had to dress the sores, you know. She never wore gloves, you see, and really, it's just the providence of God kept her from these diseases."

Lilac's admiration for Miss Cameron shines through like the innocence Lilac managed somehow to keep through all her harrowing, horrific experiences. Perhaps the saddest and most poignant fact that comes from the story of Lilac Chen is that children like her exist, and are being abused, neglected and exploited, even as I type these words. Slavery and its horrible consequences are not issues for historical research, they are very real matters of global economics that should be addressed far more explicitly than our current climate of "look the other way and we'll all feel good" journalism allows.

Thank goodness there are still people who will march into dives and rescue those who go unnamed, unknown and under-served.

* All quotes from the book Victorian Women Edited by E. O. Hallerstein, L. P. Hume and K. M. Offen, Stanford University Press c 1981

Header: Chinese Slave Prostitute via National Women's History Museum online

Women at Sea: Lilac Chen Part I

When women came from the far east, or Asia if you prefer, to North America, they were not always well treated and welcomed. Particularly children - both girls and boys - were used as sexual slaves and made into what they may not have been in their home state or wished to be for themselves.

The story of Lilac Chen, whose beautiful name does not resemble her unfortunate life, is an extreme example. Swept from her home and over the sea, she may never have amounted to much. But Lilac, a fighter, a survivor, made more of herself than most of us do. Thanks to the wonderful editors of Victorian Women, c 1981, we know a bit about this amazing child who fought so hard to become an amazing woman:

I was six when I came to this country in 1893. My worthless father gambled every cent away, and so, left us poor. I think my mother's family was well-to-do, because our grandmother used to dress in silk and satin and always brought us lots of things. And the day my father took me, he fibbed and said he was taking me to see my grandmother, that I was very fond of, you know, and I got on the ferry boat with him, and Mother was crying, and I couldn't understand why she would cry if I go to see Grandma  She gave me a new toothbrush and a new washing in a blue bag when I left her\. When I saw her cry I said, "\Don't cry, Mother, I'm just going to see Grandma and be right back." And that worthless father, my own father, imagine, had every inclination to sell me, and he sold me on the ferry boat. Locked me in the cabin while he was negotiating my sale. And I kicked and screamed and screamed and they wouldn't open the door till after some time, you see, I suppose he had made his bargain and had left the steamer; Then they opened the door and let me out and I went up and down, up and down, here and there, couldn't find him. And he had left me, you see, with a strange woman. That woman, it was suppertime, took me to Ningpo, China, to eat, and I refused to eat, I wanted to go home, and then she took me to Shanghai and left me with another woman. That woman never asked me to work and was very kind to me, and I was there, I don't know for how long. Then a woman from San Francisco came, and picked me up and brought me over.  

And the horror has only begun for poor Lilac Chen. But that is all for tonight; isn't it?

Header:Ladies of Vancouver via China.org

Seafaring Sunday: Unhappy Nuptials

March 10, 1787: Horatio Nelson marries Frances Nisbet at Montpelier Estate on the Island of Nevis. Prince William Henry gave the bride away. Nelson wrote to his friend William Locker shortly after that he was "morally certain [Fanny] will continue to make me a happy man for the rest of my days." In matters of the heart, however, Nelson proved a poor prognosticator.

Header: Fanny Nelson by an anonymous artist of the British School c 1800 via Wikipedia

Booty: From Far off Shores

Over at the wonderful blog of the USS Constitution Museum, last Wednesday's post told of the wartime letters of a sailors wife at home namely Abigail Chew. Abigail was married to Constitution's purser, Thomas J. Chew, who saw action in the Atlantic and Mediterranean during the War of 1812. What the post offers of their letters shows two people who are very much endeared to one another and who have that wonderful style of writing that is both personal and fluent, and that is almost completely lost in our current milieu: "C U L8R" etc. *sigh*

What caught my eye, aside from that, was the lovely set of jewelry shown above and currently on display at the museum. Known once upon a time - in Abigail's day for instance - as a parure, such sets usually included a necklace, earrings, a pair of bracelets and either a brooch or a diadem. It may be that the set above had all those things at one time or that it came to Abigail just as it is shown. The cameo jewelry is made of coral, a very popular choice in the first two decades of the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic. Also of note are the screw-backed earrings. By this time, particularly in conservative areas of the U.S. such as New England, piercing of the ears was on the decline. Screw-backed earrings would continue in favor through the Victorian era and even make a short comeback in the 1940s and '50s. I remember my mother having more than one pair.

This lovely set was acquired by Thomas somewhere in the Mediterranean, and may very well have ended up in his hands as proper booty. Foreign sailors were a popular target for the selling of stolen goods by local thieves and pirates in many ports around the world. It's almost certain that Thomas purchased this beautiful gift for his wife, but how the seller came to have it is open to quite a bit of speculation.

Click over to Log Lines and enjoy their fascinating posts that make the history and the people of USS Constitution live on. I'll wager you'll enjoy the site as much as I do. Happy Friday!

Women at Sea: "An Extremely Manly Woman"

For over 300 years, the lady we will speak of today was revered as, for lack of a better analogy, the Jeanne d'Arc of Holland. She was, according to contemporary if anonymous accounts, a key player in the city of Haarlem's defense against its Spanish overlords. During the siege of the town that began in the winter of 1572 and would drag on until July of 1573, Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaar fought the Spanish with the spirit of a lion. Or so it was said until a particular Victorian minded historian got a hold of her story and brought the idea of a fighting matron into question.

Kenau Hasselaar was evidently born in the city she held dear some time in 1526. Her parents, Simon Hasselaar and Grietje Koen, ran a brewery and Kenau grew up learning a great deal about business at her mother's knee. It would doubtless be to that Victorian historian's great chagrin that we are now aware of the facts about middle class women in 16th century Haarlem. Most were partners in their husband's businesses, or ran their own outright as Kenau would. Their business acumen was stellar and Dutch women gained a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic for driving a hard bargain, so to say.

Kenau grew up tough and smart. She was married at 18 to a shipwright and wood seller named Nanning Borst. It appears that Kenau jumped right in to the ship building business while also continuing to deal in grain, the best of which she funneled to her parents' brewery, no doubt at wholesale. The Borsts were blessed with four children, all of whom had reached maturity by the time Nanning died in 1562.

Kenau along with her youngest child and only son, Gerbrand, continued to run the lucrative shipbuilding business. There is also some hint that Kenau may have been involved in the usually illegal, often piratical and always profitable logwood trade. Although the documentation is sketchy, if true, this would have made Kenau the next best thing to a pirate in her own right.

When the Spanish, who were already occupying the Low Countries, decided they were fed up with the free-thinking and free-speaking Dutch, Frederick of Toledo, the son of the powerful Duke of Alva, descended on Haarlem with 12,000 men. Frederick's intention was to lay siege to the wealthy port city and thereby cut off supply routes to the interior of the country. He imagined the siege would last no more than seven days; in fact it would stretch out to a full seven months.

Inside the city, things were not as bad as they might have been. Haarlem, with its various water ways, was almost impossible to isolate. Provisions and arms came into the city across the Harlemmermeer lake and, despite the vast superiority of Spanish numbers, the 4,000 or so fighting men of Haarlem stubbornly refused to give in to tyrants.

Meanwhile Kenau, now in her forties and, according to one contemporary, "an extremely manly woman", was not about to sit by and let the heretics destroy her city. She rallied some 300 able bodied women - those with children that could be left at home and who were not pregnant, nursing, infirm or too aged to be of much use - and marched to the city walls with pike and sword in hand. From the moment she and her "batallion of Amazons", as historian Vicki Leon refers to them, set right to work. They shored up breaches in the walls, carried earth to build new ramparts, nursed the wounded and sick, carried water both for drinking and to swab the city's cannon, and cheered on those who seemed to falter in their resolve. All in all, their tireless efforts proved very worth while to their city and their cause.

To some degree, all that sweat and struggle was for naught. The city surrendered to the Spanish of July 13, 1573. While it appears that no women were put to death, perhaps in part because of a general ransom paid by the city to Frederick, the entire city garrison and 40 of Haarlem's burghers were executed. According to Robin Cross and Rosalind Miles in their book Warrior Women, there were so many men to kill that the executions took more than a week to complete. When the Spanish executioners grew too weary to lift their swords, they tied their victims back to back and threw them into the Spaame river to drown.

Kenau, whose nephew was briefly held by the Spanish but later released, continued her shipbuilding business. She traveled a good bit after the fall of Haarlem, which is documented by sales receipts for things she bought and sold. Was this a purposeful way of avoiding punishment for her defiance during the siege? No historian I can find has said so, but one has to wonder.

Some time after 1585, Kenau bought a ship and apparently departed upon it bound for Norway. The ship was carrying wood, and possibly some of that precious and contraband logwood, but was lost at sea. When the ship returned to Haarlem under the command and ownership of a captain named Lieven Hansz, Kenau's no doubt savvy daughters cried foul. They took Hansz to court as a possible thief and murderer. Hansz claimed he bought the ship at the port of Flensburg where the port official was selling deserted ships. Hansz's theory, which the court seemed to buy, was that Kenau must have been attacked by pirates and murdered with her crew.

Regardless of the actual circumstances of Kenau Hasselaar's death, she remained a national hero for centuries. She was celebrated at each centennial of the siege of Haarlem in etchings, paintings and song. Ships were named after her, statues erected and her given name, Kenau, became part of the Dutch language; its meaning denoted a feisty, unconquerable woman.

And then along came Dr. C. Ekama who, in 1872, disputed not only Kenau's role during the siege but that of any other woman. His argument centered around the lack of documentation of women dying in battle or, in particular, being executed with the burghers. There is very little to his theory aside from this and, it must be said, his obvious 19th century take on the place and capability of women in general.

Kenau's actual contributions during the siege may never truly be known, but the rewriting of her history is an old and sad story. Our recent ancestors, at least in the West, decided that we should not know the whole truth about our distant past. But we are digging up those truths one at time, and the story of Kenau Hasselaar, that extremely manly woman, and her bravery is worth knowing.

Header: An etching of Kenau Haselaar by an anonymous artist from the 17th century via Wikimedia

Women at Sea: The Pretty Commander

Time is not on my side the rest of this week and so I'm bringing back one of my favorite posts from the Triple P archives today: the story of the intrepid Rose de Freycinet.

What we know of Rose Marie Pinon's early life is nominal. She was born into a bourgeois family at a time when being middle class in France was all the rage: 1794. Pretty and charming, she had a classical education as well. As the Revolution and the Consulate gave way to the Empire, Rose caught the eye of an aristocratic sea captain sixteen years her senior. She married Louis-Claude de Saulces de Freycinet in 1814.

When the Empire fell and things looked bleak for French honor, Louis was hand picked to lead a voyage of discovery. He would circumnavigate the globe on a three year cruise with the very best French navigators, naturalists and artists along. These men would document native cultures, local bays and ports and, with luck, Captain de Freycinet would claim some land for France. The ship chosen for the expedition was L'Uranie, a weatherly French-built corvette of twenty guns and 300 tons. There was nothing at all remarkable about the voyage. That is, until a conjugal ruse was revealed to officers and crew once the ship was well out to sea.

Madame de Freycinet had been smuggled aboard the ship by her husband. Dressed as a boy and under cover of darkness, she slipped into the great cabin posing as a servant. The de Freycinets were determined to be together so, despite Rose's natural reticence at the prospect of so long a time at sea on a ship full of men, their determination paid off. Thus began an adventure that Rose would document in a stream of letters to her mother and her best friend. These were eventually published in book form, and the same was translated in 1996 by Marc Serge Reiviere in A Woman of Courage.

When the ruse was discovered, the men of L'Uranie acted, not surprisingly, like Frenchmen. They were thrilled to have Madame aboard. Rose writes that the conversations at her husband's table were crisp, witty and completely without course or vulgar language. The crew tried to keep up with their officers, allowing Rose the lee side of the ship for her morning strolls on deck. But sailors will be sailors and eventually their cursing got the better of Rose. She gave up taking the air and contented herself in her husband's cabin with "... my guitar, my sewing and letters."

Though she had come aboard in men's clothes, and wore them for a while, Rose was never comfortable cross-dressing. She confided her relief in dawning her gowns again to her mother, saying that she was only "... glad of a man's cloak" when L'Uranie was threatened by a Barbary corsair:

The thought of a seraglio evoked such unpleasant images in my mind and I hoped to escape that fate by virtue of male disguise.

The pirate galley thought better of challenging a 20 gun ship, evidently, and eventually gave up the chase.

Back in Europe meanwhile, the French, who were in general morally opposed to women at sea as anything other than passengers and then only in groups, found Rose's adventures charming. The new Bourbon King mentioned the situation was amusing and the country could not but agree. Paris papers congratulated Captain and Madame on "... this example of conjugal devotion."  Interestingly, it was the British who clucked their tongues at the situation. The Lieutenant Governor of Gibraltar was down right rude to Rose when L'Uranie put in to his port. The Royal Navy, with it's long history of women at sea as both companions and sailors, showed an unfortunately unpleasant and ingenuous side of itself to Madame de Freycinet.

L'Uranie continued into the South Pacific and made several stops in Australia. The watercolor above, by J. Alphonse Pellion, shows the ship's company at Shark Bay. Rose can be glimpsed to the far left, away from her stately white tent and apparently sitting with her arm around another woman or a child. The painters aboard ship, Pellion and Arago, made two sets of each of their works. One was for the captain's official report and did not include his wife. The second sets were true-to-life works that included Rose. Thankfully, both examples of many of these paintings have survived.

Putting in at Mauritius and Reunion, Rose met with welcome and potential disaster. The island of Mauritius was then held by the British and Rose was there introduced to Captain and Mrs. Purvis. Both were delighted by the Frenchwoman and encouraged her to spend time with them while her husband was out surveying. This invitation was particularly welcomed by Rose as Mrs. Purvis had a new baby. Rose, who may very well have nailed her courage to the sticking place to join her husband at sea in the hope of conceiving a child, documents her adoration for children time and again.

At Reunion, Rose tried to avoid the French governor, whose name was Lafitte, as she feared that he had orders to remove her from her husband's ship. To her relief, Governor Lafitte had no such intentions. Instead, her fears were replaced concern. She writes to her friend that she had constantly "... to ward off the compliments of someone who was full of admiration for my courage." Rose, it is no surprise, managed to keep Lafitte at arm's length with aplomb and gentility.

Rose's letters give us a sly and very French perspective on the many places, cultures and people that she encountered. She notes in an almost blithe aside that a young woman in Australia was very pretty with a "ravishing ankle, or so Louis noticed." She mentions women on Mariana who, when surprised while bathing by her husband's men, covered not their fronts but their backs. "The gentlemen were not tempted to take issue with them on this matter," Rose reports.

On February 14, 1820, L'Uranie struck an enormous rock off the Falkland Islands. It took some time for realization to set in as the ship continued on under sail with her hull ripped open and water pouring in below decks. The crew manned the pumps and tried to salvage what they could from the hold. The ordeal was horrifying for Rose who spent her time exhorting the laboring crew to "trust in the Holy Virgin." Probably fed up with the woman's yammering, Arago snapped at her: "We put our trust in the holy pump, Madame!" It is to Rose's credit that she included even this in her letters.

L'Uranie made it to shore but the sandy beach was deserted and Rose and the sailors were stranded for weeks in deplorable conditions. There was ice on the ground each morning and no blankets or coats had been salvaged. Rose slept wrapped in a Hawai'ian sarong and her slippers could not keep her feet warm.

The crew was finally picked up by a merchant ship whose captain, Galvin, virtually blackmailed de Freycinet for passage to Rio de Janeiro. Rose and her captain were stuffed into a dark, cramped cabin, but rescue came in short order. The Scottish brig Jane came into company with Galvin's ship near Montevideo. Jane's captain, James Weddell - the future Antarctic explorer - managed to convince Galvin to sell his ship to de Freycinet for moneys already promised.

Galvin and his crew were put in at Mondevideo. His ship was spruced up by de Freycinet's and Weddell's shipwrights and christened La Physicienne - the Lady Doctor - probably in honor of Rose. La Physicienne took de Freycinet and his crew to Rio and then back to France. She made the port of Le Havre on November 13, 1820. Rose was welcomed home and became a sought after guest in French high society.

Unfortunately, this was about as good as it got for Rose and Louis de Freycinet. They were never blessed with the children that Rose so desired. Louis published his manuscript on the voyage to some acclaim and the couple retired to a quiet existence. In 1832, Louis contracted cholera. Rose nursed him tirelessly and he recovered only to see his wife fall ill with the same disease. Rose Pinon de Feycinet, the intrepid woman that Governor Lafitte had named Madame la Jolie Commendante - the Pretty Commander - died at the age of 38.

Header: Watercolor by J. Alphonse Pellion of L'Uranie's crew at Shark Bay, Australia from the Google book version of A Woman of Courage

Women at Sea: Ferocious Saint

The life story of Olga of Kiev, who is now a Saint and "equal-to-the-apostles" in the Orthodox Church is about as far from what we imagine as "saintly" as one can get. Her ferocious treatment of the people who murdered her husband and her repeated grabs for land, wealth and slaves are at best unapettizing to the modern sensibility. But she was, beyond all that, a shrewd businesswoman, a capable leader and a woman - very much to her credit - who would protect her child and his entitlements at all costs.

Olga, or Helga in her people's native Norse, was born in the late 9th century to a tribe known as the Varyag. This was the early Russian word for Vikings and little Helga showed the heart of a Norsewoman from the very beginning. Married to Prince Igor of Kievan Rus at a young age, the alliance was intended to benefit both Helga's Viking father whose holdings appear to have been in modern-day Ukraine and the Kievan empire. Prince Igor's father, Prince Rurik, was just as much a warrior as Helga's Viking kinsmen; expanding his territory seems to have been his one occupation.

The absence of Prince Rurik left Igor and Helga, now Olga, in charge of the Kievan kingdom and they seem to have been well suited to the organization of a pivotal capital. In particular, both of the young monarchs were favored by the Kievan army making them virtually invulnerable to the oddly prevalent palace coupes of the day. It was a delightful 30 years of marriage and rule that produced a number of children. The name of only one has come down to us in the Primary Chronicle (which you can find, at least in part, online at the University of Washington website). This was Igor and Olga's son and heir, Svyatoslav.

Tragedy struck in 945 when Igor, now sole Prince of Kievan Rus, was out collecting tributes (essentially taxes in the form of coins, foodstuffs, textiles and slaves) among the Drevlyans. When he informed this conquered tribe that their taxes had gone up, the leaders of the group summarily executed their Prince.

Olga, now a middle-aged matron with a good bit of leadership experience and a large army behind her, hardly flinched when the rather forward Drevlyans showed up asking for her hand in marriage. The ambassadors sent to Kiev by the tribe wanted Olga to marry their Prince, Mal, and thereby take over the profitable Kievan holdings. A nod from Olga brought her elite guard down on the presumptuous Drevlyans who were corralled and buried alive in the Princess' back yard.

Thinking fast, Olga sent off a message to Prince Mal. She informed him that his ambassadors had insulted her. Not necessarily dismissing the marriage proposal out of hand, she asked that the Prince simply send his "best men" to discuss terms. Mal, clearly not one to understand tactics and/or blinded by greed, did as Princess Olga asked. When the Drevlyans arrived in Kiev, Olga graciously suggested that they cleanse themselves in her own personal bathhouse. This next wave of ambassadors accepted and, no doubt to their horror, were locked in tight. The bathhouse was then set on fire, immolating Prince Mal's "best men."

At this point the Princess, whose capacity for revenge and iron-willed intention to protect her son's birthright seem to have had no check, packed up a longboat and sailed off to the capital city of Drevlya. There she was welcomed by Prince Mal and she pretended that all had been arranged as far as their marriage. She also acted shocked that the Prince's ambassadors had not yet returned. Be that as it may, Olga insisted on hosting a feast for Mal and all his nobles. She had brought a Kievan wine in great vats that they simply must try. Try they did, to a point of falling-down drunkenness. And then Olga's faithful army descended on Mal and his Drevlyan nobles, killing some 1,000 of them.

Olga had something of Vlad the Impaler in her - or perhaps he had her in him; some historians say they were related by blood. She went out to the inhabitants of the largest Drevlyan city and told them that she did not fault them for the crime committed against her family. In fact, she would lower their tribute to the entire sum of one pigeon and one sparrow per family. Overjoyed, the Drevlyans happily complied, pulling sparrows and doves from the eaves of their wooden homes and the perches in their wooden pigeoners. When all the birds had been collected, Olga waited patiently until nightfall. Then she ordered her army to strap flaming tinder to each bird's feet and release them. As the birds returned to their nests, the city exploded in flames hotter than the sun. Olga took those who escaped the conflagration back to Kiev as slaves.

Continuing to rule Kievan Rus until the majority of her son, Olga seems to have kept her hand in politics even after Svyatoslav came to power some time in the 950s. Thereafter she travelled widely and, at some point, converted to Christianity. She traveled to Constantinople in 957 to be baptised and went on to Rome to request bishops be sent to Kiev to convert her people. Adalbert of Magdeburg responded to this call but left Kievan Rus disappointed, saying that trying to convert the Kievans was like trying to "teach a fox to read." His party was overtaken on his way back to Rome and all but three, including Bishop Adalbert who barely survived, were killed.

Nonetheless Olga continued her efforts to Christianize her people until her death around 970. Svyatoslav had been away conquering new lands when his beloved mother died and, despite his lack of adherence to Catholicism, he had Olga buried with a mass said by a second, apparently less taciturn, Roman bishop.

Saint Olga of Kiev, equal-to-the-apostles, was canonized in the Orthodox Church in 1547. It is no doubt due to her efforts to convert the people of her vast empire that she has been given so high an honor. Her actual deeds outside of the Church, however, speak of a ruthless but determined woman whose love for child and country could encourage epic ferocity. And to some degree, you have to admire that. Unless, of course, you're a Drevlyan...

Update: the outpouring of love for St. Olga has caused a few of us to form the Sisterhood of St. Olga Society. Please feel free to join us. Because it never hurts to have the ear of a Viking Princess.

Header: Saint Olga of Kiev icon via Pravoslavie dot ru

Women at Sea: "Fantastic Story..."

Fantastic Story! Girl Pressed into Navy: A young woman, daughter to a respectable brewer in the town of wells, quitted her father's house about nine years ago in consequence of a disagreement with her step-mother and had not been heard of until a few days since, when she was discovered on Board the ship Mercury of Hull dressed in jacket and trowsers. On leaving home, she dressed in boy's clothes and bound herself apprentice to a sailor. At the expiration of her time she was pressed on board the St. George of 98 guns and served on board several other ships of war; but preferring the merchant service, escaped from the navy; and since sailed in traders belonging to Yarmouth, Lynn Sunderland, Shields and other ports, without her sex being discovered.

~ from the London Times circa 1796 via Rose White

I am indebted to Isabel and Loretta at Two Nerdy History Girls for the link.

Header: Sailor by Thomas Rowlandson via Memory Prints

Women at Sea: Rebel Rose

On Monday, Elizabeth Kerri Mahon tweeted about the death of today's angel in the home turned intelligencer. Elizabeth's blog, Scandalous Women, deals with ladies just like Rose O'Neal Greenhow and is well worth checking into. The experience was serendipitous for me as I was just finishing Ann Blackman's excellent book on the same subject Wild Rose: Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Civil War Spy. Though the lady was no seaman, she did cross the Atlantic in the service of her beloved Confederacy and she died - much like Margaret Fuller had a decade before - in the arms of the briny deep.

Rose O'Neal was born in Port Tobacco, Maryland just after the War of 1812, probably in 1817. Her given name was Maria Rosetta and her mother, Eliza, became a widow the same year little Rose was born. It is possible that Rose was orphaned or that her mother simply could not keep the family in tact after the death of John O'Neal. Either way, Rose was sent to Washington D.C. to lodge with and probably work for an aunt who ran an upscale inn at the Old Capitol building.

The Old Capitol had been a temporary home for Congress after the British burned most of Washington down. It was spacious, well appointed, and apparently a hub for the glitterati of Washington even after Congress moved on to their new digs.Growing up, Rose would meet Dolley Madison, the charming widow of one of the United States' greatest presidents, James Madison. She became particularly enamored of John C. Calhoun, the secessionist from South Caroline who was once Andrew Jackson's Vice President.

Though Jackson once regretted not shooting Calhoun, Rose fell under the old man's spell. She caught every word that dripped from his lips and picked up a deep and abiding hatred for the politics of the north. Rose O'Neal helped nurse Calhoun on his deathbed in 1850 and this seemed to seal her resolve to see the south as an independent nation "free of Puritan tyranny".

In 1835 Rose, who had by then become known around town as "Wild Rose" (Blackman says more for her complexion than any questionable behavior) married Robert Greenhow. A minor player in D.C. politics, Greenhow shared his young bride's southern sympathies. He also, apparently, was an ardent lover; the Greenhows would produce eight children in total. Their last child, and Rose's namesake, was born in 1854. Shortly thereafter, Robert Greenhow died.

Now thoroughly convinced that secession was necessary, Greenhow manipulated anyone in power who would listen to her into thinking her way. Attractive, charming and accomplished, Wild Rose Greenhow made her home a center of gracious entertaining in Washington. More and more secessionists were welcome there and it should have come as no surprise to anyone that Wild Rose easily converted from sparkling hostess to "Rebel Rose" the Confederate spy.

When war was finally declared, it was Rose who had a hand in the South's first major victory. General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard - the Little Creole - would later credit Rebel Rose with supplying him the information he needed for his decisive win at First Manassas in July of 1861.

Rose continued her covert activities in Washington but could not escape the prying eyes of none other than Alan Pinkerton. She was arrested for espionage and placed under house arrest. She complained bitterly to anyone who would listen, particularly when she was moved to the now squalid Old Capitol building which the Union had converted into a prison. Nontheless her espionage continued; her youngest daughter was allowed to stay with her and Mrs. Greenhow hung a Confederate flag from her cell window. Mary Chestnut, the famous diarist, wrote snidely that "Mrs. Greenhow is not as put upon as she would have the people of Washington believe."

Though the appearance of a trial was staged by the Union, Rose was considered more of a liability as a martyr. She was released and sent to Richmond with the stipulation that she never return to Washington. She emerged from the Old Capitol with her Confederate flag worn as a shawl and her daughter, Little Rose, by her side.

Lauded as a hero, Rose was approached by the Confederate government to act as an ambassador to Europe. She was supplied with various contacts on the continent and in Britain. Rose shipped out in September of 1864 and made good use of the passage writing a memoir of sorts. My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule in Washington was published in Britain, where it became a bestseller.

Curiously, European states that were vehemently anti-slavery welcomed Rose with open arms. She met Queen Victoria and was received by Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. When she packed up to return to the South aboard the Confederate merchant ship Condor, she apparently carried agreements of concord from both England and France. She also carried a large amount of gold in bar form. Though this is sometimes said to be her royalties from My Imprisonment... it was more likely covert funding for the Confederate cause from European governments.

Condor had a rough crossing that only got worse when she reached the coast of North Carolina. Spotted and chased by USS Niphon, Condor ran aground near Cape Fear. Alarmed at the prospect of being captured, Rose packed up her papers and her gold and demanded that Condor's captain send her ashore in one of the ship's boats. Unable to resist Rebel Rose, the captain sent her out into a raging storm in what probably amounted to no more than a dinghy. The boat was quickly swamped and overturned within sight of the beach. Weighed down by her gold, Wild Rose O'Neal Greenhow drown in the cold Atlantic Ocean.

Her body was recovered not long after the tragedy in October of 1864. An apocryphal story is told of a rebel soldier finding the body, taking the gold bars and heaving Rose back into the sea. When he learned whose body he had defiled, he returned the gold and hanged himself. Even so, it does not appear that the European gold was ever found.

Rose was buried with full military honors. Her tomb's inscription proclaims her as "a bearer of dispatches to the Confederate Government." As Michael Farquhar noted in his September, 2000 article on Rose, "Her death had the epic touch in which she herself would have glorified."

Header: Rose Greenhow via House Divided via Library of Congress

Women at Sea: Mademoiselle de la Rocque

On the face of it, the story of Marguerite de la Rocque reads as a simple one. Good girl from up-and-coming family gets knocked up and kicked out of the house. In Marguerite’s case, the situation and consequences of her scandal were so unusual as to be extreme.

In what year and exactly where Marguerite was born remains somewhat of a mystery. We know that her influential kinsman, Jean-Francois de la Rocque de Roberval, was born around 1500 in the ancient city of Carcassonne, located in southern France. We also know that Marguerite held lands in Languedoc, also in southern France, in her own name by 1536. She also jointly owned land in Pontpoint with Roberval. Roberval would have a significant effect on Marguerite’s life but their exact relationship continues as pure speculation. Certain historians call them brother and sister or half-siblings while others say they were cousins. Either way, Marguerite seems to have been under the protection of Roberval by the time she reached maturity.

Roberval was a social climber who wormed his way into a friendship with the young Francois I of France during a brief military foray into Italy in 1524. Francois took a shine to young Jean and gifted him the estate of Roberval in northern France. There, the two buddies spent time hunting and womanizing but Roberval could not keep up with Francois’ expensive tastes. He borrowed heavily on his estates in the south and did a brief but unsuccessful stint as a French privateer when those same estates were threatened with foreclosure.

Desperate, Roberval returned to Francois and proposed that the king grant him a commission to recolonize New France. This was the area of Canada now known as Quebec and Newfoundland. Roberval had help convincing Francois from a shifty individual named Jacques Cartier. Cartier had been to New France, and he enjoyed flashing the “diamonds and gold” – which were in fact nothing more expensive than quartz crystal and pyrite – that he had found there “in great abundance.”

The king agreed and made Roberval Lieutenant General of New France in 1541. At this time, it is reasonable to assume that Marguerite was somewhere between 20 and 25 years old. And it is here that the narrative of her life’s story turns from standard to curious indeed.

For some reason that history fails to mention, Marguerite de la Rocque signed on for her kinsman’s passage to New France. Why a young, unmarried woman from a good family and with land in her own name would do such a thing is a point for discussion. Even if Roberval was her appointed guardian, one might imagine that a good marriage would be a better way to look after her than packing her off to an unknown, inhospitable colony. All the same, that is what Roberval did and Marguerite, along with her maidservant Damienne, boarded the ship Valentine bound for New France in April of 1542.

The passage was doubtless grueling, as all travel was at the time. Three ships held 200 colonists along with Roberval’s men, a few horses and the ships’ sailors. At some point during the months-long cruise, Marguerite began an affair with one of her shipmates. Who this man was remains part of the mystery surrounding her. Speculation makes him everything from a young knight to a hardened soldier. In her novella about Marguerite published in 1559, the Queen of Spain, Marguerite of Navarre, made the young man a poor carpenter.

Who he was not withstanding, Roberval found out about the man’s dalliance with his kinswoman and he did not take it lightly. In true puritanical fashion (Roberval was secretly a member of the Calvinist church in France, known as Huguenots), the new Lieutenant General marooned a probably pregnant Marguerite de la Rocque on a barren island off the coast of Quebec, along with her maid. In some accounts, the offending lover was set down on the island with them. In others, he jumped off the departing ship and swam to Marguerite’s side. Either way the three, or perhaps four, marooners were stuck on the Isle de Demons – island of Demons which is speculated to be the modern Hospital Island.

What exactly happened during the two and a half years that Marguerite was literally stranded can’t be said, but she certainly encountered one hardship after another. Local legend says that the band of three took shelter in a particular cave. It is known that they had a certain amount of provisions, including at least one gun, black powder and shot, one or more knives, a Bible and perhaps bread. In short order they had to turn to hunting and gathering. Before the birth of her baby, both Damienne the maidservant and Marguerite’s lover had died.

Marguerite managed to give birth on her own. If she was indeed pregnant when Roberval marooned her, the blessed event would have occurred in the spring. It is probably no surprise to anyone that Marguerite’s final companion, and apparently only child, died within a month of her birth.

Even in the face of so much loss, Marguerite went on. She wielded the gun with aplomb, even taking down a bear at one point. She was wrapped in its skin when Basque fishermen from Newfoundland happened by in the fall of 1544. She climbed into their boat, clutching her tattered Bible, and never looked back.

Marguerite returned to France, where legend says she opened a school for girls in Picardy. No records exist of any legal action brought against Roberval on her behalf. It seems a certainty that, after failing in New France, he returned to Paris and claimed her lands as his own. This greedy act may very well have been the motive for his brutal treatment of Marguerite from the very beginning.

But karma, then as now, is a hard mistress. Leaving a Huguenot meeting one night in Paris, Roberval and a group of companions were attacked and beaten to death by a Catholic mob. He was 59 or 60 years old.

The unfortunately little-known story of Marguerite de la Rocque, the female Robinson Crusoe who knew the isolation of a marooner years before Alexander Selkirk was even born, remains a titillating fabric whose frayed edges cry out to be sewn up.

Header: Can You Hear Me Now by Christina Ramos via American Gallery

Tools of the Trade: "That Disgust of Existence"

We’ve discussed seasickness, and its causes and cures, before here at Triple P.  As it turns out, almost all animals can succumb to seasickness and humans are not often spared.  That includes, it seems, literary lions from days gone by.  Here is a little insight into the miseries suffered by none other than Harriet Beecher Stowe of Uncle Tom’s Cabin fame:

That disgust of existence, which, in half an hour of sailing, begins to come upon you; that strange, mysterious ineffable sensation which steals slowly and inexplicably upon you; which makes every heaving billow, every white-capped wave, the ship, the people, the sight, taste, sound and smell of everything a matter of inexpressible loathing! 

An excellent summation, no doubt.  The great Charles Dickens, however, chose to see the bright side, if you will:

I lay there, all the day long, quite coolly and contentedly; with no sense of weariness, with no desire to get up, or to get better, or take the air; with no curiosity, or care, or regret of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can remember, in the universal indifference, having a kind of lazy joy – of fiendish delight, if anything so lethargic can be dignified with the title – in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to me. 

That’s one way to get the old ball and chain to shut up, no matter how extreme.  Ernest Shackleton wrote of some of his comrades in Antarctic exploration being “appallingly seasick.”  In particular, the ponies he had brought along on the expedition suffered interminably in high seas.  Creatures of the equine persuasion cannot vomit, so their misery was doubled by a constant nausea that had no release.

Perhaps Hippocrates put it most succinctly when he quipped “Sailing on the sea proves that motion disturbs the body.”  One wonders if it got his wife to clam up for a while as well.

Header: Sunrise on the Bay of Fundi by William Bradford

History: Laid Up at Haslar

Formalized medical treatment for service people was to a large degree pioneered by the British and by the Royal Navy in particular. In the mid-18th century, when a “hospital” amounted to nothing more than a work house for the majority of England’s population, the Royal Navy was opening impressive buildings at Plymouth and Gosport dedicated to the illnesses and injuries of sailors and marines.


The Gosport location, known as the Royal Hospital Haslar, opened in 1753 with construction continuing until 1761. The structure was large, including three stories, an attic and a basement, with wings jutting forth on either side and outbuildings to house nurses, groundskeepers, guards and cooking staff, just to name a few.

The guards may seem to stand as an unnecessary adjunct to a hospital but, in fact, Haslar was designed as much to keep invalids from running away as to cure them. The hospital was purposefully built in the middle of a murky swamp, and until the early 19th century the only reliable way in and out was by ferry. Men were divested of their clothes immediately upon arriving. After a warm, soapy bath the clean seamen were issued “Hospital Dress” which they were informed would “greatly tend to [their] recovery.” As Kevin Brown points out in his book Poxed & Scurvied, The Story of Sickness and Health at Sea, these oversized shirts were probably cleaner than the clothes the men came to the hospital wearing. They were also an excellent way to tell if a man had left without permission, essentially deserting just as he might from a ship. Men tried this trick nonetheless; Brown notes that the latrines were a particularly popular escape route. They were also used to smuggle in booze, usually by the nursing staff.

At the outset, Haslar was run by medical men. The first physician to oversee the hospital was the famed James Lind whose pioneering research on scurvy was done to a large degree at Haslar. He insisted on separating patients by illness, putting the most contagious cases on the top floor of the building. The second floor was for men recovering from fevers, STDs and the like, while the ground floor was reserved for those who were ambulatory.

The system worked rather well, and men recovered under Lind’s oversight. Unfortunately, however, discipline suffered as most of Haslar’s doctors had private practices to attend to as well. The “dispensers” and nurses began to bicker amongst themselves and the doctors could become martinets when they felt their areas of expertise had been trespassed.

Initially the nursing staff was recruited from seafaring families. Sailors’ and marines’ wives, “the most sober, careful and diligent that can be had,” were brought in to administer medicines, give baths, change bandages and take those who could get up and about on therapeutic strolls. After Dr. Lind retired in 1783, things went steadily down hill and, though there were still excellent individuals among the nursing staff, the standards in general certainly slipped.

Brown notes that the Haslar nurses “developed a reputation for stealing from patients, forging wills, and smuggling gin tied around their waists and under their stays in bladders.” Patients complained about specific women who put them in fear of their lives. In Haslar the Royal Hospital, A.L. Revel quotes invalids speaking of one Nancy Armitage:

… who treated us in such a manner that we were afraid for our lives. We have neglected taking our medicine from her less she should poison us, we never thought it was in the power of any woman to so behave and shew herself in the manner as she has done to us, and we were not able to help ourselves. She strove all she could to hurt us, she broke the poker striving to kill some of us and threatened us with drawing her knife.

What became of the psychopathic Nancy is not revealed.

Meanwhile, cases of nurses trying to assist neglected patients and being reprimanded or dismissed by doctors are also on the books. The middling road included nurses who were illiterate and could not tell which medications should be given to which men. Then there were those who were too drunk or too lazy to bother with medications or bandage changing at all. Then there was Jane Brown, who was sent packing for “going to bed with four or five patients and infecting one of them with the foul disease.”

By 1795 the Royal Navy, whose legendary system of discipline could hardly tolerate such mutinous behavior, had had enough. A position of Governor of the Hospital was established, to be awarded to a seaman of at leas post captain rank. The first at Haslar was Captain Charles Craven. It would be close to 100 years before the hospital was again run by medical doctors and Haslar would remain a functioning hospital, servicing all branches of the British military, until 2007.

Header: Early 19th c engraving of the Royal Hospital Haslar via the James Lind Library online

Women at Sea: More From the Whaling Wife

We've had a look at the shipboard diary of Mary Brewster before. Mary sailed aboard her husband’s whaling vessel, Tiger, from 1845 to 1851 and left a detailed journal cataloguing her adventures. Today’s entries find Mary and the Tiger off the coast of what will become the state of Alaska and indeed very far from their home in New England.


Friday, July 3, 1846: Light winds and weather more pleasant though cloudy and bad heavy swell. One whale sighted, boats have not lowered it being too rough. My employment has been of various kinds, cooking, making poultices for some hands, and numerous small jobs. No chance for idleness here nor lonesome feelings, plenty noise and work. Day closes with the sea more regular and cloudy.

Saturday, July 4, 1846: Beautiful and pleasant all day, warm enough without fire. Saw whales and chased hoping to get one as it would serve our purpose for a celebration but none could be got. At 6 PM we made the land called Roca Pamlonia 40 miles distant. Hope to go nearer, bore by compass N by E. How pleasant to the eye is the sight of land though distant. I often feel that if I can once more see my native land and walk thereon I shall prize it more than I ever did before.

Roca Pamlonia is a stretch of rock some sixty plus miles from the mouth of Prince William Sound near Valdez, Alaska. It is a treacherous area that has been known to chew ships up in bad weather. But Mary’s longing for land speaks to the trouble of “sloth” – depression – that she fought with during her years at sea.

Header: Daguerreotype of Mary Brewster via the Mystic Seaport Historical Society

Women at Sea: Scourge of the Vikings

In the great era of Viking piracy which today we tend to think of as “The Dark Ages”, the British Isles were a favorite spot for Norsemen to spend some time raiding, pillaging and generally making mayhem. It’s a rare occasion when the tables were turned, and today’s oft-forgotten piece of history is made even rarer for the fact that it was a woman who turned those proverbial tables.


The woman in question is known by the tongue-twisting name of Aelfgifu of Northampton or, less frequently, Northumberland. She was born some time in the late 10th century – most scholars put her birth date around 990 – to a wealthy and powerful Saxon family. She grew up in privilege and was probably taught to do more than the usual castle management. Her father, Aelfhelm, was a tribal chief who was eventually slaughtered by a rival clan who was probably either of Viking lineage or in league with the marauding denizens of Swein Forkbeard, the high chief of the Danes.

One version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written after Aelfgifu’s death says that she had three brothers who were either killed or blinded in the same conquest. Either way, Aelfgifu lost a good deal of personal status and doubtless her marriage prospects – at least locally – fell.

Enter Swein Forkbeard, who swooped in some time around 1013 and claimed all of Northern England. This included the territory which had once been Aelfhelm’s. Along with Swein, or perhaps even in his stead, was his son Cnut. Now remembered in English history as King Canute, Cnut was a strapping warrior who may very well have had an eye for the ladies. Vikings being notoriously fond of girls from the British Isles, it should come as no surprise that Cnut took Aelfgifu as something akin to a wife. What her exact status was in his household remains debatable to this day, but we’ll discuss that further in a bit.

The two seem to have settled in amicably while Swein went on to become high chief in England. His seemingly sudden death in February of 1014 created a point of tension both historically and personally for Cnut and Aelfgifu. Aethelred, later known as the Unready, showed up from the south claiming that Cnut had no rights in England, and he brought the military strength to back up his bluster.

Cnut was forced to flee to Denmark, leaving Aelfgifu and their infant son Swein in England. The setback was only temporary, however; by the spring of 1016 Cnut had reclaimed England and the unfortunate Aethelred the Unready was dead. At this point, Aelfgifu was living in Denmark and pregnant once again, so it may have come as a bit of a shock that her “husband” officially married Aethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy, later that year.

As Timothy Bolten, in his 2007 paper on Aelfgifu, points out the new family arrangement was problematic in the extreme. Though Cnut’s official marriage to Emma (who is called Aelfgifu in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles) made his claim to England’s throne more legitimate, it created a potential firestorm of family feuding upon his death. Not only did his sons by Aelfgifu of Northampton, Swein and newly born Harold Harefoot, have claim to England so too did Emma’s sons by Aethelred, Alfred and Edward. To make things even more confusing, Emma would later bare Cnut’s son Harthacnut.

At some point before 1020, Aelfgifu returned to England to live in Cnut’s household along with her children, his “official” wife and queen, and Emma’s children as well. Of course the idea of multiple wives and concubinage was less eyebrow-raising in 1020 than it would be now, but the atmosphere even in this Saxon palace must have been remarkably tense. It may be telling that in 1030 Cnut declared his son Swein King of Norway and named the boy’s mother as his protector and regent, shipping them both off in a flotilla of long boats to the Viking heartland.

She immediately set up a lavish court on the North Sea and began a virtual reign of terror on her son’s people. She raised taxes to a back breaking level, possibly as high as 80% of income per household, and sent military forces to collect on the unpaid portions. The 5 year period of her tyranny was so memorable that it remains recorded in Norse poetry as a time when men “ate ox’s food” and chewed on rinds “like goats.” Ultimate power may corrupt ultimately but one has to wonder if the old adage about a woman scorned isn’t more appropriate in Aelfgifu’s case.

The Viking people were not accustomed to being bullied, and they rose up in 1035 to chase Aelfgifu and the unfortunate Swein, who died of a battle wound, out of Norway. Banished to Denmark and now alone in the world, Aelfgifu was informed that Cnut was also dead. She hurried back to England and strove with all her underhanded might to set her son Harold on the throne. She managed to succeed for a brief two years but as clever and ruthless as Aelfgifu may have been, she had met her match in Emma of Normandy.

The Queen of England began a smear campaign against her hated rival so thorough and lasting that it is passed off as history to this day. The so called Encomium Emma has come down to us as the Queen’s biography. In this contemporary document, doubtless written with Emma’s guidance, Aelfgifu is dismissed as a deceptive harlot who never really married Cnut. Not only that but both of her sons were neither Cnut’s nor hers. She schemed to have lower-class infants brought into her home when she and Cnut were apart and passed them off as both his and hers.

Emma’s son Edward, known as the Confessor, went on to seize the throne of England and Aelfgifu, the determined, powerful and ruthless first wife of King Canute, disappeared into the fog of history. All the same, the Norse remember “Aelfgifu’s time” when a Saxon woman brought them to heel.

Header: Emma of Normandy and her sons, illustration from a manuscript c 1100

Booty: Making WAVES

On March 17th I tweeted one of my favorite #Onthisday tweets to commemorate the founding of the U.S. Navy WAVES corps. On March 17, 1917, the U.S. Navy allowed women to join their ranks – officially – for the first time in history. The WAVES, which stands for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, became an integral if secondary part of navy service and the corps was particularly effective during and after World War II.


In response to my tweet, Triple P’s mate Mike from The Pirate’s Lair (see sidebar) sent me this link to his collection of pictures of some of the first WAVES in history. These “yeoman” were almost exclusively shore-based and most often utilized as clerical support to gentlemen officers. Women as a group did not gain active status – again, officially – until 1978 when the Navy became the first of the U.S. armed forces to integrate their all female reserve unit into service. The formation of the WAVES was a landmark step forward for women sailors and is well worth remembering. The pictures collected over at The Pirate’s Lair are a wonderful celebration of that memory. Thankee, Mike (follow him here on Twitter, by the way).

Enjoy your Friday, Brethren. I’ll spy ye tomorrow for Sailor Mouth Saturday.

Header: U.S. Navy recruiting poster from World War II

Women at Sea: "When A Child is Ready to Be Born"

We've spoken about women aboard ship giving birth before, history showing us that it was not as unusual an occurrence as the Victorians would have us believe. We’ve also touched on the great help that Jane Sharp’s 17th century publication The Midwives Book must have been to those women at sea. Combining the two becomes an exercise in understanding just how much intrinsic knowledge our “uneducated” female ancestors really had.


While it must be admitted that women do not always go into labor at the most convenient times – David Cordingly mentions a case during the Battle of the Nile where a purser’s wife almost literally dropped her child on the gun deck as she was helping to carrying water to the gun crews – trying to hurry things along can do more harm than good. Sharp is very clear in her chapter on labor and delivery that midwives should not “force” the process. She speaks of breaking “the waters” with sharp fingernails and giving “harsh” tonics to speed up the process as uncalled for. Sharp even compares the outcome of such procedures to torture:

… there is great care and skill to be used, or the woman were as good be set upon the Rack.

Sharp makes clear that the “waters” should break of their own accord, but “if the water break away long before the birth, it is safe to give medicaments to drive the birth…” Again, she is patient in her approach, advising first that the attendant massage the mother’s back with warmed “Oyl of Poppies, water Lillies or Violets”. In this case, Sharp is dealing with the Humeral theories proposed by Hypocrites through Galen, her concern being the “heat” of the kidneys. But the error in origin does not discount the treatment; massage with warm oil – particularly if infused with a mild narcotic such as tincture of poppy or water lily – would certainly alleviate a margin of the back pain experienced by laboring women.

Regular examination of the cervix, or “inward neck of the womb”, is also recommended by Sharp. She admonishes the midwife to “[anoint her hand] with fresh butter or oyl of sweet Almonds” before this procedure. If the infant’s head is present, then delivery is imminent. While Sharp does not designate time frames for regular re-examination, she is clear that this procedure should not be attempted prior to that natural “breaking of the waters.”

Sharp does not recommend that women in labor eat or drink much of anything. Again, this is a good rule of thumb that any modern obstetrician would agree with. For long labors, when a woman is losing her strength, warm broth or a “potched egg” with an “ounce of Cinnamon water to comfort her” is permitted. These recommendations assume the best of conditions, and stories of births at sea include the mother drinking grog or wine rather than water.

If things aren’t going as planned, however, priorities have to shift and Sharp gives more than one recipe to “hasten and ease delivery.” “Featherfew or Mugwort boil’d in white wine” are recommended, as are similar “sirrups” containing tansy, pennyroyal, dittany, betony, cinnamon and saffron. Many of these herbs would have been available at sea from surgeon and cook, and doubtless some of these “sirrups” stood by in the sick birth or a lady’s personal cabinet. Some of the herbs mentioned are well known to modern medicine; “featherfew” for instance is now lumped in with its cousin feverfew which is used in migraine treatments to relieve pain and nausea via its anti-inflammatory properties. Mugwort and pennyroyal can increase muscle contraction; tansy calms anxiety.

Of course the ultimate goal of the entire process is the health of both mother and child, and Sharp keeps this in mind throughout. The knowledge that she set down on paper had been passed from one woman to another and continued to be communicated up until the mid-19th century, when male doctors replaced the helping hands of midwives and friends. It is, perhaps, a curious coincidence that women were far less often aboard ship – other than as passengers – by that time as well. Speculating on any correlation between the two is probably useless, but the rediscovery of just how intrepid our distaff ancestors actually were is gratifying nonetheless.

Header: Taking Caudle by Richard Dagley c 1821 via Ancestry Images

Women at Sea: Medieval England's Legal Stews

In Roman influenced countries of the Middle Ages such as Spain, France and Italy, prostitutes were considered a necessary evil. No doubt due to actual experience to some degree but also due to the legacy left by the Romans, the officials of these Latinate countries feared that men who did not have legal access to women would turn to rape and sodomy. This was probably overstating the case since most people have a moral compass that prevents them from doing violence and then, as now, homosexuality was a “born this way” issue more than an “any port in storm” sort of thing. That having been said, legalized prostitution in the form of regulated brothels was common on the Continent by 1300.


Not so in England, where the Roman ethic that kept women as prisoners of their fathers, brothers and husbands did not quite saturate into the soil. While women were not “free” per se they were certainly less restricted in society than they were in Europe. Legalized, regulated brothels were uncommon enough to be nonexistent in 1300. But that changed mid-century and, though the institutionalization of prostitution was not far reaching at the time, it did seem to have a very specific reason for appearing. The so called “stews” sprang up in port towns that welcomed and catered to the newly successful merchant Leagues such as the Hanseatic League and the Cinque Ports conglomerate. Sailors and merchants drove the trade in places like Southampton, Sandwich and especially Southwark across the Thames from London.

In Common Women, Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England, Ruth Mazo Karras makes a good argument for the influx of seamen of all kinds being the main reason for the opening of legal brothels in England. Authorities saw a chance to not only regulate a booming trade but to profit from that regulation as well. Southwark is a particularly interesting case as its two dozen or so stews were within the jurisdiction not of secular authorities but of the Bishop of Winchester, who technically owned the land upon which they were built.

This mixture of the sacred and the profane led to particular regulations within the so called Winchester liberty that did not necessarily apply in Southampton and Sandwich. The prostitutes were expected to live off the premises of the brothel but to nonetheless pay rent to the brothel keeper for a room and victuals. The keeper, who was called a “bawd” regardless of their gender, could collect an average of 14 pence per week from the girls according to Karras. As she points out:

… [compare] the sixty shillings eight pence paid annually by each prostitute for her room to the twenty shillings per annum for tenements owned by Sir John Fastolf in Southwark.

And the ladies, at least on paper, still had to rent a place to sleep. This particular regulation was meant to ensure that the prostitutes made themselves scarce on holy days and Sundays, but it seems that this was not generally the case. The disregard paid by both prostitutes and bawds to this law meant that the Bishop could collect fines when it was broken; another hefty expense that the working girl had to pay via the bawd.

Regulations also existed to keep bawds and customers from doing violence to the prostitutes and to keep bawds from forcing women into prostitution, either by the threat of violence or debt or by out and out kidnapping. The latter seems to have happened with a frightening regularity that brings to mind the human trafficking extant in the modern sex trade. A specific complaint from the Court of Aldermen in London and quoted by Karras has a distinctly current feel:

John Barton, tailor, confessed that on Thursday last, in the highway coming from Our Lady of Willesden, he faithfully promised to one Joan Rawlyns… to bring her to a good and honest service in the city. Whereupon she, putting her trust and confidence in him, went with him throughout the city until he, unknown to her, brought her to the Stews side and there left her in a waterman’s house, and then went immediately to a bawd there and made covenant with her to set the said maiden with the said bawd…

Essentially, Barton sold Rawlyns into prostitution. It was only through the sympathy of the unnamed waterman’s wife that Joan Rawlyns managed to escape becoming a sex slave.

This later example – the case came to court in 1517 and resulted in Barton’s conviction, imprisonment, pillorying and banishment – came at around the time that the legalized brothels were being reconsidered. Despite continued and increasing merchant trade, the Protestant Reformation in England seems to have disavowed the regulated sex trade. Henry VIII issued proclamations against the stews of Southwark. Though they decreased in number, their location in the Winchester liberties meant that they did not shut down all together.

Organized brothels, whether actually regulated or simply a house where prostitutes shared rooms, continued with different levels of acceptance in Southwark into the 19th century. From famous houses like the Holland’s Leaguer to forgotten sites of assignation, London would continue to have a place for the wayward sailor to find companionship with a “common woman”.

Header: A Medieval Stew from a contemporary manuscript via Historum History Forums

Women at Sea: Great Whore or Selfless Heroine

The story of a humbly born Irishwoman in the 19th century could have been very boring indeed. Opportunities for such a personage were limited but, as today’s curious example shows, perhaps only by the imagination and ambition of the specific individual.

Elisa or, alternatively, Eliza Lynch was born in County Cork some time in 1835. Her origins are dim and she seemed to have preferred to keep them that way. When she spoke of her parents at all it was to tell a tale of illegitimate birth; she was, she claimed, the daughter of an Irish housemaid and a very aristocratic gentleman. No later researcher seems to be able to verify this juicy tidbit.

In 1850, Elisa and her mother showed up in Paris. The fifteen year old was a striking beauty with auburn hair and skin so white that the blue veins showed through at her neck and temples. Mother must have been in the market for a good catch for strolls in the more fashionable districts were a daily entertainment for the pair. This was the great age of Paris courtesans in the mold of Marie Duplessis, La Dame aux Camelias, and one wonders if Mom wasn’t looking to turn a profit on her lovely daughter. If this was the case, Elisa foiled her plans; she eloped with a French soldier, Lieutenant de Quatrefages, and followed him to his post in Algeria.

The life of a soldier’s wife in North Africa did not suit Elisa, however, and within three years she was back in Paris pursuing the life of a demimondaine. Within this glittering, sordid milieu, Elisa came into contact with a visiting dignitary from one of the newly antonymous states in South America, Francisco Solano Lopez. The illegitimate son of the dictator of Paraguay was nonetheless next in line for the seat of power. The two could not have been an odder couple. He was short, perhaps even a dwarf, ugly, and ill-mannered; the notorious wit Theophile Gautier called Lopez “a barbarian.” Elisa, on the other hand, was poised, well-spoken and tall; she was also hungry for both power and wealth. The two became lovers in short order.

When Lopez was called back to Paraguay, Elisa packed up her belongings and followed him within a few months. The crossing was abysmal, with Elisa seasick most of the voyage. Because Paraguay was landlocked and in constant conflict with its coastal neighbors, Elisa met obstacles to entering the country upon arriving in Brazil. These hardships seemed only to have hardened her resolve; she was reunited with Lopez not long before he became Paraguay’s “El Supremo” with the death of his father in 1862.

Elisa set to work immediately. Styling herself as “Empress”, she began systematically controlling access to Lopez. Bribes had to be paid directly to her in order for officials to see or even petition the dictator. She amassed large tracks of arable land at scandalously low prices and launched into a mania for building. Theatres, opera houses and mansions in the French style went up brick by expensive brick, only to stand either unfinished or empty. The backwater capitol of Asuncion became like a Hollywood sound stage, all show and no substance.

Meanwhile, Lopez became more and more megalomaniacal. He ignored the needs of his people, who lived – for the most part – at the very edge of subsistence and lined his pockets at their expense. Elisa was given the jewels and clothing of women whose husbands had been declared “enemies” of Lopez who included his own brothers and sisters. El Supremo’s final bungle, the one that would nearly destroy his country, was declaring war on his neighbors, Uruguay, Argentina and most disastrous of all, Brazil, over access to the Atlantic Ocean.

Now known as the War of the Triple Alliance, this six year holocaust would wipe out 90 percent of the male population of Paraguay. Women and young boys were reduced to fighting crack Brazilian units with rocks and bottles. All the while, Elisa continued her grasping, greedy bid for personal wealth. She collected silver and gold from citizens. This was ostensibly to fund the war effort but, more often than not, the wealth was shipped to her bank accounts in Europe. Occasionally she would appear in the military camps, dripping with jewels and wrapped in silk, to play her piano which went with her everywhere along with a retinue of innumerable servants and slaves. Doubtless her visits did not bring the good cheer she imagined they might.

Personal tragedy struck the “Empress” when her lover and their oldest son were killed at the Battle of Cerro Cora, which ended the ill-advised war in 1870. Elisa, in a fashion unfamiliar to her character, personally buried the bodies near the battlefield. She attempted to keep vigil over them but Lopez was dug up and mutilated overnight. Elisa again buried the body, but her troubles were just beginning.

Elisa’s assets were almost immediately frozen by the new rulers of Paraguay and she was accused of war profiteering. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, she left for Europe, arriving in London and then heading for Paris where she arrived in the winter of 1870. Her prospects were bleak; the Franco-Prussian War and the rise of the Paris Commune were giving the boot to the Golden Age of Courtesans. Old friends like the notorious Cora Pearl were as destitute as “Madame” Lynch; living in a garret did not appeal at all.

In 1875, Elisa returned to Paraguay to try to regain some portion of her vast, ill-gotten wealth. She was jeered as a “whore” and booted from the country with very little ceremony. She died in Paris of stomach cancer at the age of 50, a lonely woman living hand to mouth.

Perhaps surprisingly, Elisa’s legacy turned on a wave of nationalism and historical fantasy in mid-20th century Paraguay. Both she and Lopez were remade as national heroes. A monument was built to Elisa in one of Asuncion’s cemeteries, her remains were brought over from France and the inscription praised her as courageous, loyal and – perhaps most surprisingly – selfless.
As Robin Cross and Rosalind Miles assert in Warrior Women, Elisa Lynch may arguably have been one of the greatest adventuresses of the 19th century. She was certainly a force to be reckoned with, if not in the most altruistic of ways.

Header: Elisa Lynch as Empress of Paraguay c 1864 via Wikipedia

Women at Sea: "My life is not accepted..."

Some time in the early 17th century a remarkable woman was born somewhere in England. This vagueness on my part may sound coy but, as with so many biographical sketches here at Triple P, the beginning of the life of Mary Dyer is lost to the mists of time.


Our first historical glimpse of this woman who would change the course of New England’s history is in 1635. In that year Mary and her husband William crossed the treacherous Atlantic Ocean to join fellow Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay colony. The crossing in an unnamed merchant vessel would have been no less harrowing for the Dyers than it was for the original Pilgrims. Fortitude and faith were probably about all that saw them through that wet, sickening, miserable time on the vast sea. Sailors, it must be admitted, these people were not.

Mary and William set up housekeeping in probable relative comfort. Mary at this time, perhaps in her early twenties, would later be described by those who knew her as “comely,” “grave,” and “of goodly personage… fearing the Lord.” A God-fearing goodwife to an up and coming lawyer probably appeared the very root-stock of Puritan society, but Mary was a rebel in drab homespun linsey-woolsey.

Not long after the Dyer’s settled in, Mary met Anne Hutchison. Anne, the now famous Puritan heretic who had the audacity to claim that even women to could have a profoundly personal relationship with the Divine, was probably a neighbor and the two women seem to have become fast friends. Mary began attending Anne’s all-female “Bible studies” where local women sought to understand God’s plan without the guidance of preachers or even husbands.

When Mary went in to labor in late 1637, Anne – who was a practicing midwife – was by her side. The birth was not a joyful occasion; the baby was stillborn and malformed. Anne whisked the infant away and buried the little girl’s corpse privately. This may have been standard operating procedure for midwives of the era, who were often accused of causing children to be born dead, with defects or both.

Little was said of the unfortunate incident until after Anne Hutchinson’s trial for heresy and subsequent banishment. The Dyers chose to follow their friend and her family to the wilds of what is now Rhode Island, where the Hutchinsons established a new colony. Once they were gone, Massachusetts Bay colony Governor John Winthrop had their houses and property searched. Discovering the little grave he had it dug up and distributed his account of the “monstrous birth” locally and in England. The malformed infant was, he assumed, proof of God’s wrath against heretics.

Mary and William, meanwhile, seem to have prospered in the new Rhode Island colony. Life was doubtless hard, but William was successful enough by 1652 to make a trip back to England on business. Mary accompanied him and it was in England that she came into contact with George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends known as the Quakers. Mary was entranced with Fox’s teachings; his doctrine of personal revelation jibed nicely with what Anne Hutchinson had been preaching back home. Mary joined the Society; when her husband returned to Rhode Island, she stayed behind to become a Quaker preacher in her own right.

In 1656, the Massachusetts Bay colony enacted an anti-religious law that included a ban on Quaker preaching and practices. When news that men, women and children of the Quaker faith were suffering mutilation, imprisonment, banishment and threats of death reached England, Mary booked passage straight to Boston. She would arrive there, after another untenable crossing and this time at around the age of 47, in 1657.

Mary immediately began preaching in the city and was almost as immediately arrested. The authorities, led now by new Governor John Endecott, released Mary only when William – who had not converted to the Society – arrived in the city to take charge of her. Both were admonished that Mary should not return on pain of death, a threat which frightened her not at all.

When Mary learned that two of her Quaker congregation who had gone out to preach in Massachusetts, had been arrested, she hurried to Boston to help. She was herself put back in prison and all three were brought before the court in September of 1659. The miscreants were again banished and warned that their sentence would be death if they returned. A short time later Mary’s companions, Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson, were back in Boston to “bear witness against” the colony’s anti-Quaker laws. Mary followed them soon after.

As good as their word, the authorities arrested the three Quakers again. This time Robinson and Stephenson were hanged while Mary stood by with a noose around her neck. An 11th hour reprieve was staged by Endecott and Mary was again remanded to the custody of her husband. Obviously, the Governor imagined that this brush with death would put Mary in her womanly place. Clearly, he wasn’t paying attention.

Mary continued to preach in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and elsewhere but ongoing persecutions in Massachusetts drew her back to Boston. Horatio Rogers says in Mary Dyer of Rhode Island that she stated her mission at her final trial before the Governor:

I came in obedience to the will of God… desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death. And that same is my own work now, and earnest request, although I told you that if you refused to repeal them, the Lord would send others of his servants to witness against them.

This time Mary had gone too far. Endecott, who at her trial became so infuriated with Mary that he screamed “Away with her,” ignored her family’s pleas and sentenced her to hang. She was marched to the tree at Boston Commons, all the while refusing to repent. Mary Dyer died by hanging in May of 1660.

Mary’s fight for religious freedom in New England was won only after – and to a large degree because of – her martyrdom. A year later, King Charles II forbade imprisonment, banishment or execution on religious grounds in his colonies. In 1686, the Massachusetts Bay colony’s charter was revoked, an English Governor was set in place and the reign of terror instigated by the “Pilgrim fathers” was brought to a halt.

All this because a “goodly personage” had the courage to cross the ocean and stand up for what she believed.

Header: “I Have Been Preserved for This”, a portrait of Mary Dyer by Howard Pyle via Ideas Made of Light