This chapter challenges the notion that Ratcliffe Highway was overrun with an anarchic lawlessness. The fear that foreign sailors had introduced a dangerous knife culture into port cities had, by the late nineteenth century, fed into a wider anxiety about race in Britain. By the 1880s, there was an increasing acceptance of scientific racism in wider society and a perception that ‘Englishness’ was being eroded by alien settlers with their own languages, customs, and religions. This final chapter demonstrates that despite the sensational press stoking fears of knife-wielding foreign sailors, there were relatively few serious acts of violence that went before the Old Bailey during this period. Indeed, it is argued that sailortown’s important role as a contact zone often mitigated against extreme incidents of violence as male aggression was relatively self-regulated through recognised fighting customs. British and foreign sailors proved adept in recognising the different customs of upholding masculinity in densely populated working-class districts and, in some cases, aligned themselves with the local working-class population in opposing the police.
In 1660, the majority of the population spoke Irish, and of that majority most were not literate and left little written trace. As a result, they have generally been ignored by historians, notably in relation to the law. It has been argued that ignoring the Irish language ‘consigned the bulk of the Irish people to the role of non-speaking extras in the historiography’. Chapter 3 therefore is an important part of this book and examines Irish-language sources to establish the nature of Gaelic engagement with the law. Virtually the only way of tapping into seventeenth-century Irish opinion is through poetry in Irish, and the most representative poet of the period was Dáibhí Ó Bruadair. It can certainly be questioned how typical the Gaelic poets were of the Irish-speaking majority population and Ó Bruadair might cavil at being considered representative. While his haughty disdain was diagnostic of his poetic calling, he ended his days among the common people in abject poverty. Ó Bruadair made no claim to be a spokesman but his impulse to express himself in Irish reflects his profound understanding of Gaelic-speaking Ireland. Other poets writing in Irish are considered in this chapter and provide greater context before and after the Restoration. The chapter also engages with some works in prose and methodological points in respect of Irish-language sources.
Sex work and Ratcliffe Highway: Brothels, crime, and matriarchal networks This chapter focuses on the women who worked in the sex industry on Ratcliffe Highway and recovers their encounters with sailors, brothel keepers, and ‘pimps’. It will contrast the experiences of sex workers locked into a cycle of exploitation and violence with other women who lived on the margins of the sex industry and were able to exert some agency in a hostile and bleak environment. We shall explore how ports were often contact zones for women living in destitution as waterfront communities provided spaces to foster female environments where they could earn money from sailors and the wider sailortown economy. The chapter will investigate how micro-matriarchal networks evolved in the streets and alleys off Ratcliffe Highway and how women adopted survival strategies that gave themselves a degree of agency in poverty-stricken environments.
In 1663, a unique opportunity arose to recover their estates in the Court of Claims and Chapter 4 explores how Catholics used the court against an overwhelmingly hostile administration. There is a significant body of material that records how Catholics fared. The principal record of the court, a MS in Armagh Robinson Library, is an exceptionally important source for the Restoration. Not strictly a court report, it provides a wealth of information relating to the mainly Catholic claimants. A record of the decrees of the court in the British Library complements the Armagh MS. It is challenging to assess the mass of evidence from the individual cases. The approach taken here is to examine the cases of some smaller landlords which are indicative of the processes followed by the court, and then to trace some of the larger judgments, which are significant in their own right, and frequently have related narratives showing how the Catholic owners fought to recover their lands before and after the sittings of the court. There is a risk that the selected cases are not representative, but they account for about 20 per cent of Catholic claims, and it is clear that some tentative conclusions can be drawn. A number of cases are examined to show how the cost of litigation was a significant deterrent to engaging with the courts, and how religious identity could be flexible, depending on the personal circumstances of the landowner. Finally, a statistical analysis provides some more general conclusions.
The law and legal process cannot be understood without regard to the practitioners who were familiar with its principles, practices and systems. Chapter 5 explores how three Catholic lawyers could exploit the law to make a living or protect and enhance their family and financial interests. The careers of some of the more significant practitioners are relatively well documented and understood. Rather less is known about lawyers who did not exercise their profession in the courts, or in Dublin, and three case studies are explored. As with all case studies, these individuals are not fully representative of the universal experience, but they complement the evidence supplied by other studies. Sir John Walshe is a significant figure as a Munster lawyer whose career was played out on a regionally restricted stage. After 1660, he served as Ormond’s seneschal, but the title of the office does little justice to the complexity of the relationship between the lawyer and his client. Sir William Talbot had no formal legal qualifications and worked primarily as a land agent. His family were prominent Leinster lawyers and politicians. Finally, Gerald Dillon was a lawyer from Connacht who represented both Catholic and Protestant clients. Dillon rose to high office nationally, participated in the negotiation of the Articles of Limerick, and chose to accompany James II into exile. This chapter suggests that, notwithstanding professional skill and status, legal practitioners were as vulnerable as many lay Catholics to the law’s vicissitudes.
This chapter explores how violent crimes entered into a world of composition and pardon, where offenders could escape punishment if they gained the forgiveness of their victims or their victims’ kin. The chapter reconstructs these practices and legal institutions, notably the remission of the offended party and their relationship to policies of general pardon. In particular it looks at evidence from the Regia Audienza of Lucera a regional royal court for northern Puglia and the Molise. The chapter further explore the politics and corruption related to these forms of criminal justice. It also explores the peace-making instituted by the viceregal regime between feuding nobles, the oath on the Royal Word.
This chapter explores the phenomenon of banditry in the Kingdom of Naples. By surveying the behaviours and practices associated with bandits, the chapter demonstrates the fundamental significance of the culture of enmity to their way of life. The politics of enmity in the provinces of the kingdom was inseparable from the reality of banditry, therefore this chapter continues the preceding chapter’s analysis. It uses trials from the Regia Audienza of Lucera in Puglia as well as other sources. It explores one case study of a bandit gang in particular, tracing their activities and especially their peregrinations across remote parts of the region and in the papal enclave of Benevento.
When a tall, powerfully, and proportionally built man with a heavy moustache and whiskers arrived at a young widow’s door in search of lodgings, what would have naturally followed in the literature of the time was the widow's hapless pursuit of lodger as a replacement for her deceased husband. However, the reality revealed in the coroners’ inquests tells quite a different tale. Fuelled by popular culture, historians have long speculated on the opportunities for sexual relationships between the female householder and her lodger. This chapter explores a range of widow-lodger and wife-lodger relationships to understand how these relationships played out in reality rather than fiction. First, turning to female-headed households – namely, those run by widows and estranged wives – Chapter 5 examines the circumstances in which these relationships were formed with lodgers and the strained power dynamics that shaped them. Secondly, heading into the male-headed home – where the male lodger was generally a welcome (if somewhat also inconvenient) presence – Chapter 3 explores the potentially destabilising presence of the male lodger in the marital home and its violent consequences. Whether widow or wife, however, Chapter 5 makes evident that relationships between women and their lodgers, at least those coming before Victorian coroners, were more tragedy than comedy.
On a Sunday in October 1882, labourer John Bury returned to his lodgings for breakfast following an early morning walk, before settling before the fire to smoke his pipe in the company of another lodger. Crossing the threshold into England’s Victorian working-class homes, Chapter 4 examines how the lodger wove into the domestic scene, revealing that many lodgers – male lodgers, in particular – were incorporated into the household’s daily rhythms and rituals. Many ate around the family table, sat by the fireside smoking a pipe and discussing the day’s news, or shared a drink both at home and in the Public House. Therefore, Chapter 4 argues that sociability though somewhat enforced by the close quarters of the domestic dwelling lodging, was crucial to maintaining cordial relations. Yet, while it might be assumed that such mingling between family and lodgers continued as they headed to bed, Chapter 4 reveals that – alongside the boundaries created between the outside world and the home through the securing of the front door – a clear nocturnal line was drawn between the householders and their lodgers. Nonetheless, the drive for separations – as well as leading to some rather usual sleeping arrangements in smaller homes – generally brought neither householders nor lodgers a private or peaceful night’s sleep.
The conclusion of this book draws together the insights of the preceding chapters. This looks at the discussion of ‘enmity’ in jurisprudence and juridical practice, both as evidence towards guilt but also how the notion was embedded in the process by which the Neapolitan state attempted to rule through justice. Local disputes were reflected, refracted, and distorted through jurisprudential languages of enmity. But the legal aspects of enmity were also central to how it was experienced as a relationship. The institution of the remission shaped the aftermaths of violent crimes. Love, friendship, forgiveness, and hatred were integral parts of state and legal processes of peace-making. The overlap between law and the emotions is clearly seen in the value that the Jesuits placed on the notarial recording of forgiveness and the variety of grief, resentment, and hatreds that fractured any southern Italian community. The conclusion shows this history of offences, hatred, grief, and reconciliation is central to understanding the early modern Kingdom of Naples.