Georgian London Quotes

“Unlike most of the other London trades, women were not barred from becoming ‘freemen’ of their chosen trade, so they could work within the City walls without prejudice. Elinor James was the widow of printer Thomas James but published a broadside under her own name circa 1715, titled Mrs. Elinor James’s Advice to All Printers in General and starting 'I have been in the element of printing for above forty years, and I have a great love for it.’ During her printing career, Elinor published around fifty pamphlets. Some transcripts of speeches she gave, including Mrs. Elinor James’s Speech to the Citizens of London at Guildhall (1705), show that she was not only politically active as a publisher, but also as a speaker. She addressed everyone from the King down, with what she believed was the correct way to carry on. More than once, Elinor’s efforts would lend her in Newgate 'for dispersing scandalous and reflecting papers’.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets

“The area housed many successful medium-sized businesses, such as the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, founded in 1570 (and Britain’s oldest continual manufacturer). By the eighteenth century, the foundry was exporting bells to the Americas, including the Liberty Bell, in 1752. The Liberty Bell left England bearing a biblical inscription which would have been familiar to both the French Protestants who had sought refuge only a stone’s throw away, and also the Jews who worshipped close by. It came from the book of Leviticus 25: 10: ‘Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets

“Open ground was very important to the cloth industry: when large bolts of fabric were treated, they needed to be dried on the ‘tenter grounds’ marked on many of the maps of the area. To prevent the dyes settling unevenly, they were pulled out tightly with tenterhooks, giving us the saying ‘being on tenterhooks’.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets

“By 1722, traffic on the bridge was so great that the wagons and carts were fined if they didn’t have their pennies ready to pay the toll. Traffic ran on the west side coming into the City, and on the east side out of the City. Legend has it that this is one of the precedents for why we now drive on the left.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets

“The Royal Humane Society had taught resuscitation techniques to many Londoners, and the Society’s receiving houses formed the earliest model for what became Accident and Emergency departments. Lifeguards and icemen had become familiar sights, patrolling the Serpentine. Whereas at the beginning of the century chances of survival for those thought drowned were almost non-existent, by the end of the Georgian period the Society’s operatives had learned to do everything they could because, in the words of their motto, ‘a small spark may perhaps lie hid’.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets

“By the early Victorian period, there were eighteen receiving houses in London, and the Illustrated London News estimated some 200,000 people were bathing in the Serpentine each year. In winter, the lifeguards donned greatcoats emblazoned with ‘Iceman’ on the back and patrolled the banks for any skater who might fall through the ice. Icemen operated throughout London at all regular skating grounds.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets

“In the same year, William Henly, a Fellow of the Royal Society, wrote to the Humane Society with a suggestion that electricity be used to shock the heart and brain in ‘cases of Apparent Death from Drowning’. After all, he reasoned, why not use ‘the most potent resource in nature, which can instantly pervade the innermost recesses of the animal frame’? In 1794, the first clear success in using electricity to restart the heart was recorded by what had become the Royal Humane Society. Sophia Greenhill, a young girl, had fallen from a window in Soho and was pronounced dead by a doctor at Middlesex Hospital. Mr Squires, a local member of the Society, made it to the girl in around twenty minutes. Using a friction-type electricity machine, he applied shocks to her body. It seemed ‘in vain’, until he began to shock her thorax. Then he felt a pulse, and the child began to breathe again. She was concussed but went on to make a full recovery, and the Royal Humane Society was finally sure of the importance of electricity in reanimating those in ‘suspended animation’.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets

“Mansfield ruled that habeas corpus applied to anyone in England, even if they originated elsewhere. He was aware of the significance of his ruling, stating, ‘Fiat justitia ruat caelum,’ or, ‘Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.”
― Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: Into the Streets