However, He (WS) Got Two Particles Severely Wrong

I could subscribe to all of this post, except two particles in the first sentence:

Pen and Pension : A Pair of Famous Quacks
Posted on November 30, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/30/a-pair-of-famous-quacks/

Here is the first sentence as written (minus the red font and the small caps replacing minuscules):

Despite The Enlightenment, the eighteenth century was still an age of credulity and superstition.

And here it is once again, underlining the two particles (a preposition and a temporal adverb) which he got wrong:

Despite The Enlightenment, the eighteenth century was still an age of credulity and superstition.

It is truer to say, as I think a German cardinal said just after WW-II, that when people cease to believe in God, they don't become incredulous, they become credulous about everything and anything.

Or perhaps it was Chesterton, in a Father Brown story.

Because of the Enlightenment, the 18th Century was increasingly an age of superstition.

Paradoxical? A bit. The Englightenment set out to weed out superstitions, didn't it? Yes, but in doing so, it set out looking for it in the wrong places.

In the name of religious and scientific freedom, more leeway was created which quacks could exploit. And while it was stamped as superstitious credulity to suggest that fasting as per the Catholic Church rules or praying the Rosary could be good for your health, people were swallowing the stuff, sorry snuff, of men no better than Cagliostro and Katterfelto.

And outside medicine, a curiosity about men like these was encouraged, like scientific curiosity.

I suggest William Savage gets a bit real about his historic credentials (mine are outside the strict subject and pre-graduate and aside the Academia studies).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Mairie du III
St Andrew Apostle
30.XI.2016

A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Here is his post:

Pen and Pension : Eighteenth-century ‘Packet Soup’
Posted on November 23, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/23/eighteenth-century-packet-that-would-soup/

What strikes any modern reader, I imagine, is just what hard, long drawn-out labour was needed to produce even a simple dish. We’re used to taking something off the supermarket shelf, opening a tin or a package from the fridge or freezer, and there’s the food in a matter of perhaps 15–30 minutes at most. Not so in the eighteenth century.

Providing a stock of packet soup is less laborious if you have a supermarket than if you do it yourself.

USING it, then as now, was a matter of adding hot water and perhaps seasoning to the packet soup.

Nevertheless, howeverso oafish it may be of him not to get that, we should be thankful for his providing good recipes!

Even outside the circle of preppers, there are people like my late granny who did quite a lot of such do it yourself stuff, quite as laborious as making solid soup. That means I know firsthand that use occasion time and preparation time are rather inversely than directly proportional.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Clement I, Pope and Martyr
23.XI.2016

Natalis sancti Clementis Primi, Papae et Martyris, qui, tertius post beatum Petrum Apostolum, Pontificatum tenuit, et, in persecutione Trajani, apud Chersonesum relegatus, ibi, alligata ad ejus collum anchora, praecipitatus in mare, martyrio coronatur. Ipsius autem corpus, Hadriano Secundo Summo Pontifice, a sanctis Cyrillo et Methodio fratribus Romam translatum, in Ecclesia quae ejus nomine antea fuerat exstructa, honorifice reconditum est.

Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic.

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Nevertheless, William Savage poses the question in those terms:

Pen and Pension : Did the Georgians have a Drink Problem?
Posted on November 16, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/16/did-the-georgians-have-a-drink-problem/

Compared with water, alcohol produced by fermentation contained fewer contaminants; the heating involved usually removed the main sources of infection.

Before you say that, how about proving water was generally infected?

Wine, also, was, unlike beer, not heated before the fermentation. However, both alcohol and polyphenols would likely eliminate most.

That said, drinking is not just for hydration. If you prefer lemonade, coffee or tea over water, it is because you need energy. Alcohol is a carbohydrate as good as sugar.

And getting your carbohydrates mainly through solids might clog the digestion apparatus.

Hogarth’s famous illustration ‘Gin Lane’ is often produced as evidence of disapproval of alcohol. Yet it needs to be remembered that gin was a ‘foreign’ drink, brought over by the Dutch soldiers in William of Orange’s army. If you compare the poverty and degradation shown in ‘Gin Lane’ to its companion piece, ‘Beer Street’ (a solid, English drink) Hogarth’s message isn’t so clear. It seems less about alcohol than a typical crusty English aversion towards foreign food and drink. Beer Street is clean and prosperous, everyone looks healthy and happy — and the pawnbroker has gone bankrupt!

If you drink beer, you hydrate yourself about the pace you get alcohol as energy drink, besides you get a lot of sugars in it too. Before you get VERY drunk, you will have to get a pee. And if you're in for it for the energy, without express intention of getting drunk, you are better placed to slow down before actually getting so.

And if you drink beer, you drink what your neighbour or yourself has brewed.

Obviously more so back then than now.

Do you know that besides grapes, they grow excellent barley in Reims?

But if you want a beer in Reims, from the barley of Reims, it has generally been brewed in Belgium somewhere. The drink that is produced from field to bottle in Reims is of course Champagne.

That has made beer in Reims less likely to keep you out of debt, compared to drinking stronger, though of course Champagne is not very strong either. However, it is expensive, since exported very widely. Local bar visitors do need to compete somewhat to foreigners buying Champagne as a luxury. And some politicians and some Muslim security guards want it that way.

Yep, Chesterton has a better part in Hogarth than teetotallers have.

Beer was good because it was a do it yourself drink. As mentioned, the kind of cook and household book which teaches you to make bacon (that is, to pickle porc) probably also teaches you to brew beer.

It’s fair to say that contemporary attitudes to heavy drinking were class-based — linked to the economic need to keep people productive, especially the ‘working classes’.

Chesterton mentioned the saying "drunk as a lord" - and sometimes alluded to the fact that building workers don't get that by using beer as an energy drink.

Waiters in restaurants don't get that if using wine as an energy drink either (see Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell), it is when they get laid off and drink as much as when they were working that they may (in fairly rare cases even so) become really drunk people.

However you explain it, it seems likely that a good part of the population of 18th-century Britain had, in modern terms, a significant drinking problem, greater the higher up you look on the social scale. Gout was everywhere amongst the rich and the gentry, especially in men, who were the heaviest drinkers. Men boasted of their ability to drink huge amounts and remain able to function.

Oh, certainly. Real drunkenness is as horrible as Teetotalism to a gentleman.

Not meaning just someone of the gentry. (I happen to be proud of a distiller grand pa.)

To qualify as a rake virtually required you to consume up to three bottles of port a day.

To qualify as a rake required you to consume so much you didn't function and still not go to bed, and be observed doing so.

An observation easier to make in lower classes, because they have fewer places to hide in either loneliness or the kind of company which is entirely understanding.

With lower class, some "observations" may be supplemented without adding alcohol by the person's mouth. Like sleep privations and steady offers of sugar-filled both drinks and foods. Like stinginess about the money he could use for washing in laundries (except on Sundays, when I don't wash, generally, holding the Sunday to be free from house chores as well as heavy work - unless emergencies force me).

Note, in Catholic parts of Europe, generally, even lords and gentry (or what corresponds roughly to these English titles) were, especially after the Counterreformation, expected to not get drunk, to drink with moderation, to set an example.

This has not been entirely lost on at least middle class, but actually also lower classes in cities like Vienna or Paris.

Excepting of course recent Muslim immigrants, who are stuck in the choice between Teetotalism or becoming rakes.

During his time as Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger was said to take up to six bottles daily.

I think Napoleon was more sober.

You have to wonder what effect this had on his decision-making during those years.

If he was used to that quantity without getting drunk (which is possible, if you keep in training), presumably none. Or perhaps as much as drinking six bottles (large ones) of Coke, what with the sugar involved.

It certainly shortened his life.

But on the other hand kept himstrong and healthy while he lived.

There is a thing called the Salerno diet. It was given as medical advise to English kings, by the physicians at the faculty of Salerno.

Since neither they nor the kings wanting their advise were Protestants, they presumably did not foresee six bottles a day, but it included more alcohol than bankers are supposed to drink these days.

It also included much meat.

Obviously, the pious Catholics would abstain from both on Wednesdays and Fridays. And lighten the work burden accordingly, especially in Lent when fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays was more compulsory.

Bad Catholics and after them Protestants would on the other hand not do so, so, if following Salerno diet (which remained popular in the time of Hogarth) they would probably have this health balance:

• on the one hand, no infections, or infections very soon cured, no or very few days off (more important if you are a king or a worker who can be laid off any day, than if you have an employment where a replacement is temporary)
• also, bright wits (but that effect is especially such if actually fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, otherwise Salerno diet would probably clog you down a bit)
• and on the other hand, accumulating a health problem which takes you off to the graveyard at about 60.

But if Savage thinks the six bottles of wine affected William Pitt's decision making? No, I think he was used to it.

Or, perhaps it did, making him adverse to adopting the Catholic religion, which would probably have cut even him down to five bottles per day (getting drunk being a mortal sin, getting tipsy a venial one).

To think of it, some have considered Chesterton and Belloc as drunks because they enjoyed at certain times three bottles a day - wonder what they would have said about William Pitt ...

I suspect such constant drinking produced some lessening of the immediate effects of alcohol on mind and body — or at least a greater ability to conceal them.

Here is what I learned in school. If you are a teen and you start drinking, you don't need much to get drunk. If you keep drinking, you heighten your tolerance. The danger is when the tolerance doesn't rise more, but breaks.

Obviously it lessens the immediate effect on your mind, if you have a liver reacting promptly.

Obviously it heightens the immediate effect on your mind, if you have a liver which has given up the task of keeping you sober.

But the same is in fact also true for sugar. Or so I ahve found.

I have encountered alcoholics who seemed able to function quite normally most of the time, despite the amount they drank. It caught up with them in the end, of course, but usually the social impact came before the physical one.

If so, perhaps the physical impact catching up with them is due to the social one? Like offering much sugar? Like adding more stress?

What first limited the Nation’s drinking was the spread of evangelical Christianity, especially in the middle class, who had always been more puritanical than those above them.

Er, no. Catholicism had limited the drinking before that. And in the 16th Century, Puritans were MORE liberal with wine and beer than Catholics. Especially as being opposed to taking Lent off.

It is not by chance that Cromwell was a brewer, nor did he in any way discourage anyone from drinking, as long as he didn't get positively drunk (as opposed to just tipsy or simply unaffected because used to it). Brewers may have enjoyed the Reformation, because the time between Christmas and Easter is better business than if you have a Catholic clientele.

Of course, Puritans do loose you a few extra days on the Twelve Days of Christmas or in Easter Octave. But the regular, non-festive fare would make up for that, if you are the kind of brewer and inn-keeper who wants to earn as much money as possible.

During the first 1700 years of the Church, there was not one denomination who thought every faithful should abstain from alcohol all days and not even drink a glass of wine at night. There were people who thought monks should abstain - and St Benedict laments they did not keep the upper hand. BUT he limits a monk's consummation of wine to 1 measure (a little greater than a pint*) of wine per day. Probably a little less of it at lunch (the days there was one) or divided in the working hours, and a little more of it at the refectorium after Vespers. ALONG with soup and beans and perhaps even meat.

Unless of course you count Mahomet as a Christian heretic rather than as a Pagan. His words are by now famous: "if a large amount intoxicates, even a little amount is prohibited", with the word for prohibited being in Arabic original probably "haram".

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Saint Gertrude
16.XI.2016

* If pint is 50 cl in France, and perhaps less in England, the measure given by St Benedict is supposed to have been 66 cl.

Update, 21.XI.2016:

Here is a dialogue in combox under William Savage's post:

noelleg44

Interesting post, William. I discovered that the Pilgrims drank beer pretty exclusively, although children might drink water, if not fouled. That was one of the reasons why they settled where they did – on a site with a brook with clean water. The children also drank small beer, especially on the Mayflower when the water became fouled.

I wonder that the death rate was from cirrhosis in Georgian England? The rich might have been able to handle their liquor with practice, but their livers wouldn’t!

William Savage

No answer to that, since medical science at the time wouldn’t have known what it was. I suppose people reckoned there were so many things around that would kill you, why worry about one more — especially if it was enjoyable while it did it!

noelleg44 is correct - taking liquor without getting drunk is not the same as taking liquor without charging, overcharging or really harming the liver. Hence the wisdom of the monks who were taking far less than William Pitt.

William Savage is incorrect about at least one thing, medical science back then. Or perhaps correct about English version of it, but if so English were behind the times.

English wiki has nothing, but German wiki says: Die erste makroskopische Beschreibung einer Leberzirrhose in der Medizingeschichte findet sich in den Anmerkungen zur Zeichnung del vecchio von Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Die Zeichnungen zur Gefäßanatomie der Leber basieren auf einer Autopsie, die Leonardo da Vinci 1508 in Florenz an einem über 100-Jährigen vornahm.

Georgian England is after all a few centuries after Leonardo, and if their doctors had no clue what cirrhosis was, they were severely behind the times, compared to the continent./HGL

Fridge Logic

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

More from William Savage, same post as my previous one:

Although some grand families had ice houses from quite early in the eighteenth century, it took a surprisingly long time for people to realise the preserving power of freezing food. It was never common, even well into the twentieth century, probably because the volume of ice needed was too great and there were few containers of suitable size that could be made sufficiently insulated to stop everything melting in a few days. So far as I have been able to discover, the first attempts to preserve meat by the use of cold happened in the nineteenth century. In some cases, the carcasses of hunted animals, like deer, would be hung above the ice in the ice house. Cold then, but not frozen; the equivalent of a modern fridge rather than a freezer.

The historic sequence is entirely possible - if only because it is entirely possible that people go on neglecting sth which would be useful.

However, this is not a case of pre-industrial technical possibilities.

Having, not indeed a freezer, for long preservation, but a fridge, so you can at least open a can of bacon (see previous), desalt it (partially), fry it and mix it in some stew (like Irish stew, but with bacon instead of mutton) in a cooking which will last a few days, like perhaps earlier or later or mid part of the Twelve Days of Christmas - that was entirely possible, technically speaking.

In the early part of 20:th C Sweden, before fridges and freezer part of fridge became standard, it was done like this.

An ice cupboard was first of all procured. Manufactured at home or bought. It had an inner large compartment, surrounded by metal, like iron or steel. It had an upper compartment (smaller in height, same horizontal extension, or even wider) for the ice. It had very narrow side compartments for the melting ice water to drip down to a lower compartment, which was regularly emptied, much like the ash compartment of an oven is emptied when too much ashes fall down.

When using it, you needed to buy a block of ice to lay in the upper compartment - and it would last a few days.

Whom did you buy that from? Well, an ice merchant would in a larger city like Malmö or Stockholm, perhaps even a smaller one like Södertelge, procure large quantities of ice blocks, sawed out of frozen lakes, stapled together in ice houses with straw as insulator, and he would sell it off an ice block at a time - I think even ordinary folks had a chance to buy such, at least when it came to cooking rationally for Christmas tide.

However, South Sweden is further North (55°36′21″N 13°02′09″E = Malmö, our South tip) and less exposed to the Atlantic warmth than North Norfolk (52°56′N 1°18′E).

And of course, the whole scheme depends on there being a town big enough for an ice merchant to stock his ice over winter and sell it piecemeal to those using above kind of fridge.

This is some logic about existence of fridges in pre-industrial cultures. But TV Tropes defines Fridge Logic as sth else, so as to title, I've been off topic so far. Off to TV Tropes and read what is on topic!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XI
St. Martin of Tours
11.XI.2016

Turonis, in Gallia, natalis beati Martini, Episcopi et Confessoris; cujus vita tantis exstitit miraculis gloriosa, ut trium mortuorum suscitator esse meruerit.

"If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!"

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Here is another piece by William Savage.

Making Georgian Bacon
Posted on November 2, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/02/making-bacon/

Nearly every family who could afford it kept a pig or two. When the pig was slaughtered, some of the meat would be shared with neighbours and friends, who would repay the compliment when their own pig met its appointed end. Even so, there would be far too much left to eat before it became rancid. The solution was to preserve it by turning it into ham or bacon.

Almost no one does this today. Bacon is too easily available at any butcher’s shop or supermarket. Back in Georgian times, of course, if you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!

...

After all that work by the servants, one wonders how much of the resulting bacon they would ever have tasted themselves. Rather little, I imagine.

...

This recipe comes from Katherine Windham’s Boke of Cookery and Housekeeping, compiled in the early years of the eighteenth century, and transcribed by my friends Bonnie Lovelock and Roger Sykes.

You are talking of people living either as landlords or their servants. I presume, at least.

First of all, bacon was a rather cheap food, I think some of it would go to servants.

Second, you seem totally to neglect towns.

If you lived as a cobbler in a town, did you produce your bacon yourself?

Pretty certainly not.

The fact that doing bacon yourself was very much done comes in with people having some kind of country connexion.

Does this mean a cobbler in town never ate bacon?

Pretty certainly not that either.

Pretty certainly, some innkeeper was following that recipe who had pigs, and who sold bacon to those who hadn't.

You see, having recipes for bacon in cookbooks doesn't mean no one ever bought bacon readymade.

In a Swedish cookbook I once possessed, there was an extensive instruction about how to brew beer, generalities and diverse variaties, ranging from small beer to probably rather strong things.

Does that mean every Swede in 19th C. (when the cookbook and householdbook was from) brewed his own beer?

Or could there have existed a kind of service for townsfolk who couldn't brew beer, namely ... once again : inns?

I think that would be the solution to buying bacon in 18th C. England too, if you were no pig keeper.

That said, making bacon yourself is as of recently a neglected art, and some farmers in US who are also preppers (even if prepping might be less anxious these days, now that Obama seems to be going) would certainly appreciate not just this recipe, but all of that householdbook by Katherine Windham. Put it on internet for free and do prepping mankind a service. So much of what preppers seem to want to learn is only available (or so it seems) if a some businessman is selling them a course. You have an income from your novels.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Dedicace of Our Saviour's Basilica
9.XI.2016

Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Source for quotations from him

Cleanliness and Class
Posted on October 12, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/10/12/cleanliness-and-class/

William Savage

Being clean was expensive.

HGL interposes.

Oh, yeah?

William Savage

All water for washing or bathing would have to be fetched in buckets from a well or a stream.

HGL interposes.

Unless someone strong enough to take a tub with water helped carrying (ok, don't see many paintings with men carrying tubs of water, point granted, probably didn't happen too often).

More to the point, the expense in this case is of work, not of money.

And the well was usually not far off. When you lived in town.

William Savage

Then it had to be heated by burning suitable amounts of wood or coal.

HGL interposes.

Depending on season or your willingness to take ablutions in cold water even in winter.

Btw, ablutions may be made by a glove dipped in little water and applied to body, these gloves are still offered as part of showers in France, even if original intent is no longer there.

Not sure if this was used in England, though.

William Savage

To heat enough even for a shallow bath

HGL interposes.

Meaning the writer had not considered gloves dipped in water.

Perhaps they never were in, in England?

William Savage

would take a good deal of fuel — fuel which otherwise could have been used for cooking or heating a room.

HGL interposes.

Who says it couldn't be used for both at the same time?

You heat water in cauldrons on a fire, you have to light it. You light it and it gives heat to the room as well.

And who says it would really be all that great a quantity?

William Savage

Many of the wealthy would have used perfumes to keep themselves smelling good — another expense beyond the reach of the poorer classes — and had access to clean underclothes, shirts and bed-linen whenever they wanted. If you couldn’t afford the large quantity of linens needed for this, you might wash, but you wouldn’t stay clean for very long. This was a time when washing clothes was both labour-intensive and expensive, as I shall show in an upcoming post, so even the better off might undertake it once only every few weeks.

HGL interposes.

Labour intensive, granted.

If poor could NOT afford the labour, that means they were being too much harassed and their labour taken too much in requisition by the paymasters or landlords. This only happened at Industrial revolution, where it was at its most intense.

But expensive, not if you did it yourself at a lavanderie - a large basin where water would fill in (given for free by the city, in France) which could be propped so you could let your laundry soak and then rince it. Obviously, women would take turns washing.

And if you have enough clothes for keeping clean with a large wash once every two weeks (unlike homeless who cannot carry that much clothes), this should be no problem for cleanliness.

William Savage

However, while this might have been fine in the summer, outdoor winter bathing during the “Little Ice Age” was never going to be possible.

HGL interposes.

Meaning that the fuel for heating your bath was doing double work in heating also your room.

William Savage

What any type of bathing, or even extensive washing, needed was energy to fetch water, heat it and carry the used water away afterwards. That energy was supplied by servants.

HGL interposes.

In case you were rich. In case you were poor, you served yourself.

William Savage

I’ve included time and leisure in the list of essentials for two reasons. Although actually bathing or washing might take no longer for the individual than it does today, the entire process was lengthy. Servants engaged in making it possible would need to be taken off other duties. Fine, if you had many of them. Not so easy if you had only one or two.

HGL interposes.

The argument presumes people were as harrassed by financial pursuits as the girl working overtime until she killed herself on last Christmas Day or Christmas Eve in Japan at age 24!

Not true for people before the Industrial Revolution. His argument was most apt about Manchester in later part of 18th Century.

William Savage

Working people would be on the go from dawn to dusk, probably six days a week. When could they find the time for more than an essential minimum of washing?

HGL interposes.

If you were working on your farm, you decided that for yourself. If you were working as a farm hand, your farmer decided it for you when you stank.

If labour hours or opening hours were indeed dawn to dusk, they were not without pauses or as intensive as in a Lao Gai.

As for six days a week, probably exactly Saturdays had an afternoon off for housecleaning and washing and such - except during Industrial Revolution.

William Savage

Artisans and the poor — the very classes most likely to become sweaty and grimy in the course of their employment — would have least time to clean themselves.

HGL interposes.

An artisan was usually self employed, meaning he could take time off when he thought he needed it.

Imagine a notice on the cobbler's front porch: BATHING, WILL BE BACK IN HALF AN HOUR OR LESS.

Or even more, WILL BE BACK IN HALF AN HOUR without specifying exactly why. Happens when people own their own shops.

William Savage

Perhaps the unwillingness of their masters to come into more than the essential contact with the servants — more marked as you passed into the 19th century, when the facilities for the family to wash were much improved — stemmed originally from trying to avoid unpleasant human smells. Certainly the 19th century records of Felbrigg Hall show quite a few servants being dismissed for being dirty.

HGL interposes.

That is 19th C. and an increased work burden for the employees. AND after Industrial Revolution had really taken off.

William Savage

Was cleanliness next to godliness? Maybe it was in the evangelical 19th century, when the links between hygiene and freedom from disease were becoming clear. Before that, it was more likely to be next to wealth and social class, as so much else at the time. The rich man in his castle enjoyed a clean body in clean clothes. The poor man at his gate had neither, and never would have. That was the way of the world.

HGL interposes.

No, not really. And when we talk about "castle" we talk about Middle Ages, and thus of times when, excepting high seasons, work was even though spread from dawn to dusk not too intense for surviving that.

If William Savage had set his historical novels in Manchester 1800, he might have been more likely to be right, but Norfolk was not among the earliest victims of Industrialisation.