Just Kristin

A while back, almost near-quarter-century of Old Bai­ley doings were put online for his­tor­i­cal lookie-loos like myself to peruse. As with most web-gems found, I end up for­get­ting about it and re-finding it, and in a fit of re-found joy, I spent a while with it the other day. I am always amused (minus the sad­ness of peo­ple hav­ing to hide or suf­fer, natch) at cases that include enough sub­terfuge and under-the-table deal­ings to make a novel, such as the case of Messrs John Bowes and Hugh Ryly, first charged with and then, after much effort, acquit­ted of sodomy. The type that caught my atten­tion this time, tho, were cases of infan­ti­cide that only seemed to result in penalty if the child was a bas­tard, due to what was often referred to in these records as the Statute of King James. The statute seems to clas­sify as mur­der either the killing of a bas­tard child, or the still­birth of a child where no mid­wife or other assis­tance was called. As quoted in Mur­der in Shakespeare’s Eng­land
By Vanessa McMa­hon:

Such defences relied on a sym­pa­thetic jury to be effec­tive. Not all juries were will­ing to hear exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances, as a printed text from Lon­don in 1673 illus­trated. A mid­wife and sur­geon judged a ser­vant girl’s infant to be stillborn:

but the law doth pro­nounce in such cases, by a statute of the 21th of King James, That if any child be unlaw­fully begot­ten, and be born dead, with­out one wit­ness at the least, and con­ceal­ing the same to hide their shame (or words to that effect) it shall be accounted as mur­der, so this woman being deliv­ered of a bas­tard child (by her own con­fes­sion), and con­ceal­ing the same, the Jury found her Guilty of Murder.

Sim­ply stated, then: a woman who gave birth unaided to a bas­tard, and loses it, could have — at the whim of a jury or judge — been found guilty of mur­der and put to death. One poor woman was denied help and turned out of her lodg­ings, only to give birth in the street. When the child died, she was found guilty of mur­der and put to death. Her case was not an iso­lated one, with some less sym­pa­thetic juries con­vict­ing women whose still­births were sim­ply under-attended of mur­der. Even more curi­ous, how­ever, was the loop­hole King James opened for some women who, upon being able to prove (or fab­ri­cate proof of) a hus­band, were acquit­ted of mur­der, even when there was a baby’s corpse to hand. Mary Naples, for example,

was Indicted for Mur­ther­ing her Male Infant , but it being proved she had a Hus­band, it was not com­pre­hended in the Statute of King James, pro­vided for the pre­vent­ing lude women from Mur­ther­ing their Bas­tard Chil­dren, so she was found not Guilty .

The case of Ann Price could have been judged either way by a mod­ern jury, but should her attempts to get help have been proven true, hers too is an abom­inable case, result­ing in her exe­cu­tion. Of course, there were also sim­ple cases of ver­i­fi­able infan­ti­cide, but with­out the ben­e­fit of diag­noses like post-partum depres­sion or other men­tal ill­nesses. Here is one chill­ing example:

A wench was Condemn’d for mur­ther­ing her Bastard-child . Being sus­pected by her Mis­triss, and exam­ined, she freely confess’d that she had put it into the House of Office, and that it cry­ing, she pusht it down with a stick.

I know my fas­ci­na­tion with all this seems odd to many, but I can’t help it. What with Old Bai­ley records from 1674 to 1913 freely avail­able, and now newly added Ordi­nary of Newgate’s Accounts for the period from 1676 to 1772, I will be able to hide in crime for a long while longer.

@fablor posted a link on twit­ter to the lost dog ad found after the jump. It can be read, for now, on craigslist, but I had to make sure the text was saved some­where, as it truly is the best lost dog ad I have seen in ages.
» Read the rest of this entry «

I got caught up in the iPhone “game” WeRule for a while, enchanted by the idea of build­ing my own town, espe­cially one with a Medieval theme and drag­ons. As a child, my brother and I would draw our own detailed island maps on graph paper, and I hoped that this “Farmville”-like app would pro­vide a sim­i­lar feel­ing of omnipo­tent cre­ativ­ity. It lasted longer for me than did Far­mville, prob­a­bly because it is not asso­ci­ated with the time-suck that is Face­book. (Yes, I am on face­book, par­tially for work, and par­tially to more eas­ily keep in touch with peo­ple who live far away, but I would hon­estly be just as happy if every­one was on Twit­ter so there would be no FB app pol­lu­tion in my snippet-based cor­re­spon­dence.) I farmed and ran my busi­nesses, grew my hold­ings and watched clouds float pret­tily by. I even started order­ing goods and ser­vices from neigh­bor­ing “towns”, and ful­fill­ing sim­i­lar orders. My king­dom, at the time of its demise this after­noon, was a siz­able one. Why, then, did I stop? The dis­il­lu­sion­ment came in small increments:

• I had not wanted to build a lum­ber mill. Recy­cled paper goods are far supe­rior, more read­ily renew­able build­ing resources like bam­boo, hay-bale and rammed earth are just as read­ily avail­able, and the impact of both of these on the ecosys­tem is lower… I was given no option for a recy­cling plant, how­ever, and I would not foist my paper and wood needs onto other towns to assuage my own eco­log­i­cal guilt, so I built one.
• I also had no desire for a butcher shop. It didn’t mat­ter that I couldn’t see the killing when it hap­pened (such is the ster­il­ized nature of the game). It was sim­ply hor­rific enough to know that the happy lit­tle cows that roamed my screen were occa­sion­ally made into sausage! How­ever, I am not the type to force my beliefs onto oth­ers. I pre­pare non-vegetarian food for my fam­ily, so I couldn’t keep my towns­folk from their kiel­basa. I built a butcher shop as well.
• I never had any real need for the rulers of my town to be so well-housed. Even if it were a monar­chy, no ruler rules for long if their sub­jects see too great a dis­par­ity between them­selves and the pow­ers that be. The game left no option, how­ever, for increas­ing the land hold­ings of my town with­out also adding on to the cas­tle at its cen­ter. Here, too, I grudg­ingly gave in, promis­ing to set aside whole citadel wings for hos­pi­tals and other social services.
• “They” took my magic cau­li­flower away from me, even though I had been grow­ing it since level 20, and announced that it would only be made avail­able again once I’d reached level 40. This needs no expla­na­tion, really. Steal­ing a woman’s magic cau­li­flower. Really.
• New expan­sion options were reg­u­larly added, and all were wel­come until the most recent addi­tions. Two of the four were a prison and a chop­ping block for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. If a butcher shop made me queasy, imag­ine the effects of these two cel­e­bra­tions of human cru­elty! At the same time, ruby col­ored cas­tles and ruby-fruit trees were also made avail­able. Shock­ing dis­plays of the mis­use of wealth, I say! No thanks!
• Finally, even if all the pre­vi­ous points are just me being silly, the last straw was my real­iza­tion that, despite being able to enact com­merce with other play­ers, there was noth­ing at all truly social about this game-that-isn’t-really-a-game. I real­ized that I was play­ing solely to get more stuff, by myself, for myself: A nox­ious addic­tion to some­thing that, while some­what relax­ing in its rudi­men­tary attempts at fos­ter­ing cre­ativ­ity, was a com­plete waste of my time. These are not val­ues I want to nur­ture in myself in real life, so why do so online, when I could actu­ally be chat­ting with friends or writ­ing poetry or watch­ing my daugh­ter skate or walk­ing out­side or nap­ping with my dogs?

I have, instead, pulled out an old note­book and some crayons. Any­one want to make maps with me?

photo credit: ecsta­ti­cist

Why? Because I love moss, and because I wanted to test the Pho­to­Drop­per plugin.

WTS?!

Orig­i­nally uploaded by justkristin

I will not be able to go to K’zoo this year, but I will some­day. I will, how­ever, thanks to my friend, Jincy, be cel­e­brat­ing Mr. Chaucer’s newest book from my cubi­cle. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Chaucer blog­ger, who­ever you are!