Just fewer than 5 percent (369 out of 7,590) of all reported assaults in early modern Portsmouth, England, had male as well as female defendants. The majority of these fights (250) ranged spouses against their mutual enemies, but a significant minority also included other household members. These fights are also distinguished by having an unusually high percentage of male victims (58 percent, compared to 48 percent for the records as a whole). Although the presence of men emboldened women to confront people whom they might ordinarily evade, it also had a dampening effect on their level of violence, which was lower, as a rule, than it was for women who fought on their own or alongside other women.
George Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies, 3 vols. ( Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1970), 1:83.
2.
Robert Wright, Life of Major-General James Wolfe (London: Chapman & Hall, 1864), 418.
3.
R. W. Chapman, ed., Jane Austen's Letters to Her Sister Cassandra and Others (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932), 1:7.
4.
Portsmouth Museum and Records Service (hereafter, PMRS), S3/125/209, 11 November 1746.
5.
PMRS, S3/101/17, 31 May 1734.
6.
PMRS, S3/124/121, 3 September 1746.
7.
PMRS, S3/114/49, 13 July 1741.
8.
Henry Fielding , The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (New York: Modern Library, 2002), bk. 4, ch. 8, and bk. 9, ch. 3. Background in Christopher Johnson, “ British Championism: Early Pugilism and the Works of Fielding,” Review of English Studies47, no. 187 (1996): 343 (reference courtesy of Professor Simon Dickie of the University of Toronto).
9.
Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 35-36.
10.
Arlette Farge , Fragile Lives: Violence, Power and Solidarity in Eighteenth-Century Paris, trans. Carol Shelton (Cambridge : Polity, 1993), 113-16.
11.
Jennine Hurl-Eamon, Gender and Petty Violence in London, 1680-1720 (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2005), 66.
12.
The approach taken by Roderick Phillips, “Women, Neighbourhood and Family in the Late Eighteenth Century,” French Historical Studies18, no. 1 ( 1993): 1-12.
13.
David E. Underdown, “The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 116-36; and Mark Breitenberg, “ Anxious Masculinity: Sexual Jealousy in Early Modern England,” Feminist Studies19, no. 2 (1993): 377-98.
14.
Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Tool of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review91 (1986): 1053-75.
15.
James A. Sharpe, Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York, Borthwick Papers ( York: University of York, 1980), 28-29; and Martin Ingram, “`Scolding Women Cucked or Washed': A Crisis in Gender Relations in Early Modern England? ” in Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England , ed. Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 48-80. Further examples are in Laura Gowing , “Language, Power, and the Law: Women's Slander Litigation in Early Modern London,” in Kermode and Walker, Women, Crime and the Courts, 26-47, later qualified in Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Peter N. Moogk, “`Thieving Buggers' and `Stupid Sluts': Insults and Popular Culture in New France,” William and Mary Quarterly36, no. 4 (1979): 524-47; and Mary Beth Norton, “ Gender and Defamation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly44, no. 1 (1987): 3-39.
16.
John Bohstedt , “Gender, Household and Community Politics: Women in English Riots 1790-1810,” Past and Present120 (1988): 88-122; Anna Clark, “Whores and Gossips: Sexual Reputation in London 1770-1825,” in Current Issues in Women's History, ed. Arina Angerman (London: Routledge, 1989), 231-48; Farge, Fragile Lives, 19-20, 114-16; Faramerz Dabhoiwala, “ The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society6 (1996 ): 201-13; Garthine Walker, “ Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modern England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society6 (1996): 235-45; Elizabeth Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex, and Marriage, Women and Men in History (New York: Longman, 1999 ), 6-7; and Alexandra Shepard , Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 2003), 167. Also observed in James R. Farr, Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550-1650 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 193.
17.
Daniel A. Baugh , British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), 272-73.
18.
Peter Stuart Christie, “Occupations in Portsmouth 1550-1851 ” (master's thesis, Portsmouth Polytechnic, 1976), 182.
19.
E. Anthony Wrigley, “Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent during the Early Modern Period,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History15, no. 4 (1985): 686.
20.
Barry Stapleton , “The Population of the Portsmouth Region ,” in The Portsmouth Region, ed. Barry Stapleton and James H. Thomas (Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton, 1989), 95.
21.
Roger S. Schofield, “Age-Specific Mobility in an 18th-Century Rural English Parish,” in Migration and Society in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Clark and David Souden ( London: Hutchinson, 1987), 253-66; Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations: Essays in Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 177-213; and Ann Kussmaul , Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
22.
Lawrence Stone, “ Introduction,” in An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689-1815, ed. Lawrence Stone ( London: Routledge, 1994), 13-14.
23.
N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London : Collins, 1986), 38; and Baugh , British Naval Administration, 164.
24.
“The Voyage of Don Manoel Gonzales (Late Merchant) of the City of Lisbon in Portugal, to Great Britain,” in A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World; Many of Which Are Now First Translated into English, ed. J. H. Pinkerton (Philadelphia: Kimber and Contrad, 1810), 30.
25.
Margaret J. Hoad, Portsmouth Papers, vol. 15 of Portsmouth as Others Have Seen It: Part I, 1540-1790 (Portsmouth, UK: Portsmouth City Council, 1972), 16.
26.
Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor: or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England, from the Conquest to the Present Period, 3 vols. (London: J. Davies, 1797), 2:218.
27.
Barry Stapleton, “ The Population of the Portsmouth Region,” in Stapleton and Thomas, The Portsmouth Region, 114.
28.
N. McLeod , “The Shipwrights of the Royal Dockyards ,” Mariner's Mirror11, no. 3 (1925): 284-85; and Roger Morriss, The Royal Dockyards during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars ( Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), 93.
29.
Alluded to in Christie, “Occupations in Portsmouth 1550-1851 ,” 177-78.
30.
PMRS, S3/98/122, 12 April 1732.
31.
Jessica Warner , John the Painter: The First Modern Terrorist (London: Profile Books, 2005), 229; National Maritime Museum, Navy Board Warrants, POR/A/27, 1775-1777; and National Maritime Museum, Letters from the Navy Board, POR/G/1, 1773-1803.
32.
PMRS, Index to the Twelfth Rate of 1775 for Portsmouth Common in the Parish of Portsea, as Compiled by E. Edwards in 1982.
33.
Each year, there were two general sessions, each covering approximately six months. Spring sessions included the past two or so months of the preceding year plus the first four or so months of the current year; fall sessions always fell within the current year. The following sessions are lost: the spring of 1708, the spring of 1727, the spring of 1733, the fall of 1735, the spring and fall of 1751, the fall of 1760, the spring of 1761, the spring and fall of 1762, the spring of 1764, the fall of 1765, the spring of 1766, the fall of 1767, and the fall of 1778. All dates from before 1752 have been harmonized with the Georgian calendar.
34.
PMRS, S3/79/35, 15 September 1722.
35.
Norma Landau , “Appearance at the Quarter Sessions of Eighteenth-Century Middlesex,” London Journal23, no. 2 (1998): 37.
36.
Arthur J. Willis and Margaret J. Hoad, eds., Borough Sessions Papers 1653-1688, Portsmouth Record Series (Chichester, UK: Phillimore, 1971), 153.
37.
Robert B. Shoemaker , Gender in English Society 1650-1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? (London: Longman , 1998), 292-96.
38.
Robert B. Shoemaker , Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660-1725, ed. Anthony Fletcher, John Guy , and John Morrill, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991 ), 213; and Hurl-Eamon, Gender and Petty Violence in London, 66.
39.
John M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 40.
40.
PMRS, S3/172/60, 16 August 1775.
41.
PMRS, S3/111/47, 26 March 1740.
42.
PMRS, S3/112/39, 5 September 1740.
43.
In Ireland, at least, it was considered unfair to gang up on an adversary. See Robin Fox, “ The Inherent Rules of Violence,” in Social Rules and Social Behaviour, ed. Peter Collett (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), 132-49; and Carolyn Conley, “The Agreeable Recreation of Fighting,” Journal of Social History33, no. 1 (1999): 57-72. Presumably, similar rules existed in England. César de Saussure, writing in 1727, alluded to “certain rules in use for this mode of warfare.” Daniel Mendoza, the famous Jewish pugilist, likewise alluded to “fair play,” again without defining exactly what this meant. See Madame Van Muyden, ed., A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and George II: The Letters of Monsieur César de Saussure to His Family (London: John Murray, 1902), 180; Paul Magriel, ed., The Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza: The Modern Jewish Experience (New York: Arno, 1975 ), 19; and also John M. Beattie, “ Violence and Society in Early-Modern England,” in Perspectives in Criminal Law: Essays in Honour of John LL. J. Edwards, ed. Anthony Doob and Edward L. Greenspan (Aurora, ON: Canada Law Books, 1985), 46.
44.
John R. Gillis, “ Married but Not Churched: Plebeian Sexual Relations and Marital Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in 'Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality during the Englightenment, ed. Robert P. Maccubbin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 36; Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society 1650-1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? ( London: Longman, 1998), 78; and Timothy V. Hitchcock and John Black, eds., Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733-1766 ( London: London Record Society, 1999 ), xix.
45.
PMRS, S3/36/36, 24 April 1701.
46.
PMRS, S3/89/91, 17 November 1727; and PMRS, S3/150/83, 4 May 1761.
47.
Willis and Hoad, Borough Sessions Papers, 37-38.
48.
PMRS, S3/77/36, 19 September 1721.
49.
PMRS, S3/85/61, 3 July 1725.
50.
PMRS, S3/110/16, 26 June 1739.
51.
PMRS, S3/148/48, 30 January 1760.
52.
PMRS, S3/71/59A, 29 July 1718; and PMRS, S3/71/59B, 29 July 1718.
53.
PMRS, S3/126/142, 4 August 1747.
54.
PMRS, S3/80/96, 28 November 1722.
55.
PMRS, S3/97/120, 6 November 1731.
56.
PMRS, S3/101/35, 2 August 1734.
57.
PMRS, S3/52/74, 15 February 1710.
58.
PMRS, S3/96/89, 18 July 1731.
59.
PMRS, S3/124/154, 4 October 1746.
60.
Katherine Lynch stressed the importance of neighbors in working-class communities. These alliances were of particular importance to women: not only was their social world more circumscribed, but they also had to look outside the family for allies when they were abused by their husbands. See Katherine Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe 1200-1800 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 62-63; and also Roderick G. Phillips, “Gender Solidarities in Late Eighteenth-Century Urban France: The Example of Rouen,” Histoire Sociale/Social History13, no. 26 (1980): 335.
61.
PMRS, S3/111/47, 26 March 1740.
62.
PMRS, S3/122/153, 16 October 1745.
63.
PMRS, S3/172/36, 6 July 1775.
64.
Robert B. Shoemaker, “The London `Mob' in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Journal of British Studies26, no. 3 (1987): 285.
65.
PMRS, S3/115/62, 16 February 1742.
66.
PMRS, S3/130/206, 21 September 1749.
67.
Robert B. Shoemaker , The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Hambledon and London , 2004), 53-55; and Hurl-Eamon , Gender and Petty Violence in London, 72.
68.
PMRS, S3/149/17, 22 May 1759.
69.
PMRS, S3/102/74, 25 January 1735.
70.
PMRS, S3/113/12, 15 November 1740.
71.
PMRS, S3/144/77, 30 August 1757.
72.
PMRS, S3/156/21, 27 December 1766.
73.
PMRS, S3/167/10, 5 November 1772. The case of Jane Sanger, a servant girl, is a curious exception. The first person to assault her was her mistress, Grace Reeves. Reeves's husband then “assaulted her, threw water on her and turned [her] out of the house”; PMRS, S3/57/74, 6 October 1711.
74.
PMRS, S3/110/45, 2 September 1739.
75.
PMRS, S3/120/7, 20 April 1744.
76.
PMRS, S3/146/14, 25 April 1758.
77.
PMRS, S3/158/24, 13 June 1768.
78.
PMRS, S3/71/51, 13 August 1718.
79.
PMRS, S3/93/64, 23 December 1729.
80.
PMRS, S3/108/9, 17 April 1738.
81.
PMRS, S3/116/60, 27 July 1742.
82.
PMRS, S3/125/152, 13 March 1747.
83.
PMRS, S3/149/110, 10 October 1759.
84.
PMRS, S3/73/38, 10 August 1719.
85.
PMRS, S3/94/54, 29 August 1730.
86.
PMRS, S3/119/55, 10 February 1744.
87.
PMRS, S3/128/120, 28 July 1748.
88.
PMRS, S3/147/15, 15 November 1758.
89.
PMRS, S3/39/25, 18 August 1702.
90.
PMRS, S3/145/16, 13 December 1757.
91.
PMRS, S3/150/93A, 23 June 1761.
92.
Noted in John M. Beattie, “The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Social History8 (1975): 82; and Anna Clark, Women's Silence, Men's Violence: Sexual Assault in England 1770-1845 (London: Pandora, 1987 ), 24. Alexander Somerville, writing in 1848, remembered that his mother used to haul sheaves. It was, he said, “heavy work”:
93.
Two women had a barrow made of two poles, with canvass stretched between the poles; upon which canvass were laid ten or twelve sheaves. The two women then carried that load through the yard and up a gangway to the upper floor of the barn, meeting another couple going down empty. (See Alexander Somerville, The Autobiography of a Working Man [London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1967], 20)
94.
PMRS, S3/122/88, 3 August 1745.
95.
PMRS, S3/125/199, 30 October 1746.
96.
PMRS, S3/127/86, 18 January 1748.
97.
PMRS, S3/172/88, 3 October 1775.
98.
PMRS, S3/173/29, 22 November 1775.
99.
PMRS, S3/183/104, 25 June 1781.
100.
PMRS, S3/89/18, 2 April 1728.
101.
PMRS, S3/125/207, 10 November 1747.
102.
PMRS, S3/152/84, 2 June 1763.
103.
PMRS, S3/154/12, 6 November 1764.
104.
PMRS, S3/45/41, 13 July 1705.
105.
PMRS, S3/80/96, 28 November 1722.
106.
PMRS, S3/61/121B, 19 May 1713.
107.
Willis and Hoad, Borough Sessions Papers, 62.
108.
Willis and Hoad, Borough Sessions Papers, 127-28.
109.
This count is low to the extent that it does not include couples who would have supplemented their earnings by selling liquor as a sideline.
110.
PMRS, S3/49/87, 27 August 1707.
111.
PMRS, S3/27/36, 10 March 1696.
112.
PMRS, S3/63/65, 10 August 1714; and PMRS, S3/63/66, 11 August 1714.
113.
Willis and Hoad, Borough Sessions Papers, 62.
114.
PMRS, S3/36/93, 31 October 1700.
115.
PMRS, S3/B/194, 26 January 1743.
116.
B.J. Bushman, “ Effects of Alcohol on Human Aggression: Validity of Proposed Mechanisms,” in Recent Developments in Alcoholism, ed. M. Galanter (New York: Plenum , 1997); and Kathryn Graham and P. West, “Alcohol and Crime: Examining the Link,” in International Handbook of Alcohol Dependence and Problems, ed. Nicholas Heather, T. J. Peters, and Tim Stockwell (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2001).
117.
London Daily Gazetteer, 18 September 1736, 2.
118.
London Evening-Post, 20-22 April 1738, 1.
119.
Nancy Tomes, “`A Torrent of Abuse': Crimes of Violence between Working-Class Men and Women in London, 1840-1875,”Journal of Social History11, no. 3 ( 1978), 37; and Margaret R. Hunt, “ Wife Beating, Domesticity and Women's Independence in Eighteenth-Century London ,” Gender and History4, no. 1 (1992): 13.
120.
Willis and Hoad, Borough Sessions Papers, 23.
121.
PMRS, S3/149/46, 5 July 1759.
122.
PMRS, S3/167/104, 27 April 1773.
123.
PMRS, S3/B/207, 1 June 1821.
124.
Julie Hardwick , The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 87.
