modern era

Back slang and a Barbie pun

So, “lui c’est juste Ken” (he is just Ken) sounds exactly like “lui sait juste ken” (he just knows fucking).

“Ken” is a slang / argot word, and specifically verlan, a type of back slang.

Back slang is a type of cant where words are pronounced backwards. In English, a back slang of street sellers (costermongers) emerged in early Victorian London, so they could talk among themselves behind the customers’ / constables’ back. Possibly prisoners also used it (or something similar) to talk behind the wardens’ back. The words are pronounced backwards phonetically, more or less. So “boy” becomes yob, “pot of beer” becomes top o’ reeb, “no good” becomes on doog. But it’s not always straight forward, rules are always hazy in cant, so for example “police” becomes esclop. Cool the namesclop = look at the policeman.

The French equivalent is verlan. Its origins are hazy, elements of it appear from the Middle Ages, the criminal underworld probably used it (in some regions, at least) in the 19th century, it shows up in literature in the 20th, later the youths of the banlieues picked it up, rap and hip hop ran with it, and by now it’s pretty much mainstream, if informal.

Verlan reverses the syllables, transposing the last syllable to the start of the word. So “métro” become tromé, “bizzare” become zarbi, and “mec” becomes keum (with signle-syllable words it can go backwards phonetically). Sometimes it further truncates them, so zarbi becomes zarb. And “niquer” (“to fuck”, an argot word in the first place) becomes first keni, and from there ken.

[Speaking of niquer: during one of the many rebellions of the Parisian banlieues, a local tv station had sent a crew all the way to Paris to cover the riots, and the reporter found herself in front of a wall with large graffiti that said “SARKOZY NIQUE TA MÈRE”, and awkwardly said to the camera “and here we see a phrase that means, uh, ‘down with Sarkozy'”.]

Another famous back slang is Argentinian Lunfardo, which also reverses the syllables, so tango becomes gotán. (Hence, the Gotán Project.) Lunfardo was supposedly the slang of the criminal underworld and Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires, circa late 19th-early 20th century. It features in songs and in literature (see Borges’s “Streetcorner man”), though I should note its seedy origins are disputed. Roberto Arlt, an Argentinian author who didn’t just write about the underworld, he was of the underworld, commented that he doesn’t use Lunfardo in his writings because he doesn’t know it, he’d never heard it in real life in the shady dens he frequented. So it may have been a literary invention to some degree.

Other back slangs which reverse syllables are Xhosa Ilwimi, used mostly by teenagers, Japanese tougo, Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian šatrovački, used originally by criminals and later by youths in general, and Greek podana, which means exactly the same as the French verlan, it’s the word “backwards” (anapoda / l’envers) backwards, and is a somewhat dated criminal / subculture slang (mostly stoner-related tbh), only minimally taken up by hip hop.

Rule of thumb: hip hop is now the ultimate indicator of cant/slang. If a slang word or type of slang doesn’t take off there, it’s dead. If it’s widely used there, it’ll become mainstream informal in no time. (I believe the AAVE->tumblr speech pipeline is a subset of that, though that’s probably a bit more complicated.) And there’s a sweet spot in between where it’s alive but still marginal.

[originally posted on tumblr]

Swindlers of Victorian London

From Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, Volume IV: Those that will not work, comprising; Prostitutes. Thieves. Swindlers. Beggars., 1861. Notes from the Oxford University Press edition, 2010. Image from the Penguin Classics cover of The Prince of Swindlers by Guy Boothby.

Swindling is carried on very extensively in the metropolis in different classes of society, from the young man who strolls into a coffeehouse in Shoreditch or Bishops-gate, and decamps without paying his night’s lodging, to the fashionable rogue who attends the brilliant assemblies in the West-end. It occurs in private life and in the commercial world in different departments of business. Large quantities of goods are sent from the provinces to parties in London, who give orders and are entirely unknown to those who send them, and fictitious references are given, or references to confederates in town connected with them.

We select a few illustrations of various modes of swindling which prevail over the metropolis.

A young man calls at a coffeehouse, or hotel, or a private lodging, and represents that he is the son of a gentleman in good position, or that he is in possession of certain property, left him by his friends, or that he has a situation in the neighbourhood, and after a few days or weeks decamps without paying his bill, perhaps leaving behind him an empty carpet bag, or a trunk, containing a few articles of no value.

An ingenious case of swindling occurred in the City some time since. A fashionably attired young man occupied a small office in White Lion Court, Cornhill, London. It contained no furniture, except two chairs and a desk. He obtained a number of bracelets from different jewellers, and quantities of goods from different tradesmen to a considerable amount, under false pretences. He was apprehended and tried before the police court, and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

At the time of his arrest he had obtained possession of a handsome residence at Abbey Wood, Kent, which was evidently intended as a place of reference, where no doubt he purposed to carry on a profitable system of swindling.

Swindlers have many ingenious modes of obtaining goods, sometimes to a very considerable amount, from credulous tradesmen, who are too often ready to be duped by their unprincipled devices. For example, some of them of respectable or fashionable appearance may pretend they are about to be married, and wish to have their house furnished. They give their name and address, and to avoid suspicion may even arrange particulars as to the manner in which the money is to be paid. A case of this kind occurred in Grove Terrace, where a furniture-dealer was requested to call on a swindler by a person who pretended to be his servant, and received directions to send him various articles of furniture. The goods were accordingly sent to the house. On a subsequent day the servant called on him at his premises, with a well-dressed young lady, whom she introduced as the intended wife of her employer, and said they had called to select some more goods. They selected a variety of articles, and desired they should be added to the account. One day the tradesman called for payment, and was told the gentleman was then out of town, but would call on him as soon as he returned. Soon after he made another call at the house, which he found closed up, and that he had been heartlessly duped. The value of the goods amounted to 58l. 18s. 4d.

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The daring escapes of Jack Sheppard on stage

The legendary thief and escape artist Jack Sheppard (1702-1724) was, to quote an excellent article by Executed Today, “a romantic hero, a highwayman of the urban proletariat, a Houdini whom no prison could hold.” He met his end on the gallows, but before that he managed to sensationally escape from prison 4 times, with nothing but an improvised tool, some skill, and a lot of nerve. He inspired, among other things, several theatrical plays, from dead serious dramas to burlesque comedies. Well, at least one burlesque comedy. And interestingly, in the 19th century, it appears a lot of women took his part on stage.

Now, the theatre has always been an ideal environment for cross-dressing, gender swaps, and assorted non-conformity, so a woman playing the role of Jack wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering novelty. But Jack Sheppard was famously slim and short of stature (which helped with his escapes), and this was part of his legend as much as his skills. The public loved the fact that a slip of a man had managed to repeatedly break out of manacles, chains, and prisons, and ridicule the authorities (and many larger men out to get him) at every turn. He was quite literally a little guy sticking it to the man, and everyone loves that.

So as it happened, women playing the role of Jack on stage became the norm rather than the exception. In period illustrations and photographs, we often see them posing in [what we’d now think of as] impeccable swashbuckler fashion.

The real Jack Sheppard never carried or used a sword: he was a thief, not a killer. (Other than one time when he clocked a guard to get his girlfriend out of prison, he never hurt a soul.) And he dressed less extravagantly than the costumes suggest. (Which makes sense, I mean it’s the theatre, of course it will exaggerate.) Still, judging from the visuals, these castings seem very appropriate.

1728 portrait of Jack Sheppard in Newgate Prison awaiting execution / 1839 portrait of actor Mary Anne Keeley as Jack Sheppard; there’s even a physical resemblance, and her costume is more or less accurate

In 1724, at the age of 22, Jack Sheppard was hanged at Tyburn, in front of a massive adoring crowd that celebrated his life and exploits, and literally stole his corpse so that it wouldn’t end up dissected by some anatomist. Less than two weeks later, the first play inspired by him was produced in London. There would be many many more over the next century and beyond. I hope we’ll continue to remember him in the 21st century.

[originally published on tumblr]

Historical Thieves’ Cant: A Selection

From 18th Century and Regency Thieves’ Cant, though some of these terms are centuries older.

1. Hanging

Up the ladder I did grope
and the hangman pulled the rope
and ne’er a word I spoke
tumbling down

Tyburn was a village in the county of Middlesex. For many centuries, the name Tyburn was synonymous with capital punishment, it having been the principal place for execution of London criminals and convicted traitors, including many religious martyrs. Known also as ‘God’s Tribunal’, in the 18th century, it was the image of a society which was more concerned with property crimes than the value of human life. [x]

ACORN You will ride a horse foaled by an acorn, i.e. the gallows, called also the Wooden and Three-legged Mare. You will be hanged. 1811

BEILBY’S BALL He will dance at Beilbys’ ball, where the sheriff pays the music; he will be hanged. Who Mr. Beilby was, or why that ceremony was so called, remains with the quadrature of the circle, the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, and divers other desiderata yet undiscovered. 1811

CRAP the gallows. 1819

DANCE UPON NOTHING To be hanged. 1811

DANGLE to be hanged: I shall see you dangle in the sheriff’s picture frame; I shall see you hanging on the gallows. 1811

DEADLY NEVERGREEN, that bears fruit all the year The gallows, or three-legged mare. 1811

HEMPEN FEVER A man who was hanged is said to have died of a hempen fever; and, in Dorsetshire, to have been stabbed with a Bridport dagger; Bridport being a place famous for manufacturing hemp into cords. 1811

Oh I went up Holborn Hill
in a cart, in a cart
at St Giles* I had my fill
and at Tyburn wrote my will

HOLBORN HILL To ride backwards up Holborn hill; to go to the gallows: the way to Tyburn, the place of execution for criminals condemned in London, was up that hill. Criminals going to suffer, always ride backwards, as some conceive to increase the ignominy. The last execution at Tyburn, and consequently of this procession, was in the year 1783. 1811

*The village of St Giles stood on the main road from Holborn to Tyburn. Convicted criminals were often allowed, in tradition, to stop at St Giles en route to Tyburn for a final drink – a “St Giles Bowl” – before hanging. [x]

JAMMED Hanged. CANT. 1811

LADDER To go up the ladder to rest; to be hanged. 1811

LEAF To go off with the fall of the leaf; to be hanged: criminals in Dublin being turned off from the outside of the prison by the falling of a board, propped up, and moving on a hinge, like the leaf of a table. IRISH TERM. 1811

MORNING DROP The gallows. He napped the king’s pardon and escaped the morning drop; he was pardoned, and was not hanged. 1811

MORRIS to hang. dangling in the Air, to be executed. 1737

NEW DROP The scaffold used at Newgate for hanging of criminals; which dropping down, leaves them suspended. By this improvement, the use of that vulgar vehicle, a cart, is entirely left off. This is also called the last drop. 1811

NUBBING Hanging. Nubbing cheat: the gallows. Nubbing cove; the hangman. Nubbing ken; the sessions house. 1811

PADDINGTON FAIR DAY An execution day, Tyburn being in the parish or neighbourhood of Paddington. To dance the Paddington frisk; to be hanged. 1811

PISS He will piss when he can’t whistle; he will be hanged. 1811

QUINSEY Choked by a hempen quinsey; hanged. 1811

SCRAGGED Hanged. Scraggem fair; a public execution. Scragging-post; the gallows. 1819

SHERIFF’S BALL An execution. To dance at the sheriff’s ball, and loll out one’s tongue at the company; to be hanged, or go to rest in a horse’s night-cap, i.e. a halter. 1811

SHERIFF’S PICTURE FRAME The gallows. 1811

STRETCHING hanging. He will stretch for it; He will be hangd. 1737

SUSPENCE One in a deadly suspence; a man just turned off at the gallows. 1811

THREE-LEGGED MARE, or STOOL The gallows, formerly consisting of three posts, over which were laid three transverse beams. This clumsy machine has lately given place to an elegant contrivance, called the NEW DROP, by which the use of that vulgar vehicle a cart, or mechanical instrument a ladder, is also avoided; the patients being left suspended by the dropping down of that part of the floor on which they stand. This invention was first made use of for a peer. 1811

TO SWING To be hanged. He will swing for it; he will be hanged for it. 1811

TOP’D hanged. 1819

TOPPING-CHEAT the Gallows. 1737

TRINE to hang; also Tyburn. 1737

TWISTED executed, hanged. 1737

TYBURN TIPPET A halter; see Latimer’s sermon before. Edward VI. A. D. 1549. 1811

WRY MOUTH AND A PISSEN PAIR OF BREECHES Hanging. 1811

WRY NECK DAY Hanging day. 1811

Oh me name it is Sam Hall,
and I’ve robbed both great and small
and me neck will pay for all, when I die
and I hate youse one and all, damn your eyes

~ “Sam Hall”, traditional

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Admiring and/or vilifying pickpockets

From the 16th century onward, there were many books and leaflets warning law-abiding citizens about the dangers of the criminal underworld, especially London’s. One typical example was The London Guide for Strangers (1819), its full title being The London Guide, and Stranger’s Safeguard Against the Cheats, Swindlers, and Pickpockets. Unsurprisingly, “the methods used by criminals on the unwary had not changed much in the two centuries since Green described them in The Complete Cony-Catching [1591]; and probably have not changed much in our day, another two centuries later.” *

Detail from the title page of "The London Guide for Strangers" (1819), or "The London Guide, and Stranger's Safeguard Against the Cheats, Swindlers, and Pickpockets."

But ever so often, amidst the moral panics, the sensationalism, and the vilification of law-breakers and outsiders of all kinds, admiration seeped through, like in the following excerpt about ingenious and dexterous pickpockets.

“PICKING OF POCKETS. This way of obtaining the property of others, is certainly the most genteel, profitable, and alluring of any, because it requires some degree of ingenuity to exercise it properly, and a great deal of address and firmness to get off without detection. Professors of the art are admired for their dexterity, by everyone but the immediate losers; and people laugh at the droll way in which the sufferers relate how they were done.”
— The London Guide for Strangers (1819)

Basically, writers and publishers did the song and dance where they pretended to write about criminals in order to WARN or EDUCATE or ADMONISH the public, but in their heart of hearts everyone knew that, according to the public, criminals are cool actually. To some extent, at least.

And that’s largely how English rogue literature worked all these centuries. Like 1950s crime fiction and comics: CRIME!!!! (big letters) doesn’t pay (tiny font).

But I don’t want to play down the vilification part, which was always front and centre. So here’s a picture worth a thousand words from that same book:

Pickpockets in *The London Guide for Strangers* (1819): urchins depicted as monsters

The caption is “Example of early depravity”. What we’re looking at is three children pickpocketing a woman. The method is well attested: a child (or a short person) gets underfoot someone in the crowd, makes them lose their balance and trip over towards an accomplice who’ll try to draw their attention (“oh dear, are you alright?” or “oi! watch it!”), and in the confusion another accomplice will dive for their handkerchief, watch, pocketbook etc., before they all meld into the crowd again.

So look how that’s depicted: not in a crowd, giving the impression that the victim could fall over and get seriously hurt (that never happened, the crowd was crucial to the whole set up, and one person’s job was literally to catch the victim). It looks very violent, which it wasn’t. The victim is a terrified young woman, and in contrast to her innocence, the children look mean and vicious, their heads drawn larger than the adult’s.

And they called that “early depravity”. You know what’s depraved, mate? Making your industrial revolution with the hard labour of eight-year-olds in the mills and mines — forced labour in most cases (and in all cases of orphans and delinquents). Picking pockets instead is an improvement.

*quote by Ex-Classics , a site that’s a great source for early modern rogues, republishing old books in PDF and epub format with introductions, notes and everything. Here’s their subject index.

[originally posted on tumblr]

The Prison in Twelve Landscapes

The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016, dir. Brett Story) is a Canadian documentary about the US prison-industrial complex. It manages to say quite a lot in twelve vignettes without voiceover and without stepping once in a prison, or even showing us one until the last moment.

“All this is about – at the end of the day, no matter how we see it – money.”

I highly recommend it. It’s quite depressing, but then again, so is the US prison-industrial complex. Highlights include:

A man in the Bronx runs a store that sells packages for prisoners, helping friends and families navigate the mindbogglingly complicated, arbitrary or just nonsensical restrictions on what they can send to their loved ones in New York State prisons. There’s a whole industry for that market.
Over footage of burning redwood forests, a woman describes her work as a firefighter in an all-woman prison crew. It’s intense. She thinks of herself as a hero, saving people’s homes. “And let’s face it, without fire camps, California’s fire would just burn.” She says people sometimes wave and talk to them when their vehicle passes through, but they’re not allowed to talk back, they’ll get in trouble. She wishes she could become a firefighter when she gets out, but doesn’t expect it, she’s got a felony.
A town in Kentucky that declined after the coal industry left is now solely dependent for jobs on federal prisons. “They are recession-proof”. One man, having strangely moved to the Appalachia, works in a radio station that broadcasts messages to prisoners sent by their loved ones. “Hi, you’ve reached the “Calls From Home Show”, would you like to leave a shout-out tonight?“ It’s heavy.
In St. Louis County, the ticket industry thrives. Bullshit traffic violations, bullshit violations of all kinds, bullshit arrests, fines, jail sentences if the ticket isn’t paid, and all that enforced pretty much arbitrarily and with intense racial profiling, right around the time of the Ferguson protests. “My last jail incident, I went to jail over a trashcan lid. It was not secured to the can.”

And so on and so forth and what’s even the point of prisons, again?

[originally posted on tumblr]

On the criminalisation of poverty

(with sincere apologies to comrade Tyranitar)

Capitalism indeed creates poverty and then criminalises it, but that’s not exclusive to capitalism, that’s just class society. It applies to all its types. There was a criminalised underworld of the poor in 2nd century Rome, and 10th century Baghdad, and 12th century Hangzhou. Urban growth always came with an urban underworld, while itinerant groups were outcasts everywhere. The depressingly widespread practice of slavery has arguably been an extreme form of criminalising poverty, for all people born into it, and many forced into it – slaves weren’t only taken in war and raids (and when they were, the rich might have a chance to buy their freedom, the poor never), they also got enslaved to pay off debts. See also: castes.

That said, in Western Europe there WAS an uptick in criminalisation (with strict anti-vagrancy measures, the establishment of workhouses, and wildly disproportional sentences for theft up to and including capital punishment) in the period preceding capitalism, and all through its first stages. It coincides with the culmination of a cultural shift from “it is our religious duty to help the poor” to “poverty is a sin, actually”. And workhouses, and later penal transportation, were forms of blatant capitalist exploitation. So in this specific context, as well in the context of colonialism (let’s extract the local resources by exploiting and brutally suppressing the local lower classes with the help of the local ruling classes) it makes sense to study the two phenomena in tandem, they are indeed related.

However, this uptick in criminalisation wasn’t limited to places with an emerging capitalist class. Workhouses WERE exclusive to such places, but everything else could happen regardless, and did. In eastern Europe it even happened at the same time, except its social outcome (if you got caught) was serfdom of some form or another, or becoming an outcast. And in places where urban growth wasn’t as delayed as in Europe, it had started happening a lot earlier. To give one example, in Persia the Buyids outright banned begging back in the 10th century. (It didn’t last, these measures never do, but I want to point out how extreme that was, in a region where giving alms to the poor was considered a sacred duty.) It wasn’t the harbinger of a new economic system or anything, just the result of social upheaval. In the 14th century Timur “decreed that the beggars in his territory be rounded up and given assistance; if found begging again, they were to be transported to remote places or sold as slaves”. There’s nothing capitalist about any of this.

So while related in some contexts, this isn’t a simple cause/effect situation. Neither the creation nor the criminalisation of poverty is exclusive to capitalism. Of course, don’t get me wrong, capitalism IS the class society we got now, so it makes perfect sense to focus and be angry about that one.

And if I hadn’t seen so many terrible takes about capitalism inventing stuff that’s been around for millennia, and how all 12th century peasants were merrily frolicking in the fields and having the time of their life because they didn’t have to commute or some shit, this nitpick would be totally unnecessary.

[originally posted on tumblr]

The Pirates of Monaco: A fable in three parts and four pictures

1. History

“In 1297 a rebel faction from Genoa, led by a member of the Grimaldi family whose habit of wearing a hood supposedly earned him the nickname ‘the Monk’, seized the rock of Monaco at the extreme west of the Genoese land dominion (in fact, the name Monoikos originated with Phokaian settlers in antiquity and has nothing to do with a monk, or monaco). The sailors of Monaco made thorough nuisances of themselves for many decades, posing as supporters of the Angevin king of Naples, Robert the Wise, who had become overlord of Genoa in 1318. In 1336 Monegasque pirates seized two galleys returning from Flanders laden with merchandise. The Senate felt obliged to suspend all its Flanders sailings, which did not resume for twenty years. The Grimaldi stayed put, remained a nuisance, and are still rulers of Monaco, though they found slightly more respectable ways to make money than piracy.”

~ David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

Coat of arms of the Principality of Monaco

2. Reference

“Albert II is the reigning monarch of the Principality of Monaco and head of the princely house of Grimaldi. He is one of the wealthiest royals in the world, with assets valued at more than $1 billion, which include land in Monaco and France. Although Prince Albert does not own the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, he does own shares in the Société des bains de mer de Monaco, which operates Monaco’s casino and other entertainment properties in the principality.”

~ wikipedia

3. Fiction

“They were indeed what was known as “old money,” which meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of.”

~ Terry Pratchett, Making Money

Alessandro Magnasco, *Embarkation of the Galley Slaves at the port of Genoa* (1740s)

Damn those jacks of all trades!

In Satire III, Juvenal explains all the reasons why Rome is now a hellhole (it ain’t, not for people like him at least; he’s just exaggerating because that’s how satire works), and one of those reasons is that it has become infested with Greeks. They come here, they steal our jobs, and why the hell are we imitating these losers? Didn’t we, like, conquer them?

And he presents a specific type of Greek, the con artist/jack of all trades, who’s short on cash and can’t afford to eat actually, and will talk you into giving him any job at all, claiming to be an expert:

Quick witted, of shamelessly audacity, ready of speech, more
lip than Isaeus, the rhetorician. Just say what you want them
to be. They’ll bring you, in one person, whatever you need:
the teacher of languages, orator, painter, geometer, trainer,
augur, rope-dancer, physician, magician, they know it all,
your hungry Greeks: tell them to buzz off to heaven, they’ll go.

That was in ~110 CE. Centuries later, in 1738, Samuel Johnson writes London: A Poem In Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal, explaining all the reasons why London is now a hellhole. And adapting this excerpt, he presents a similar type of foreign con artist/jack of all trades (that Londoners inexplicably mimic), but directing his ire to – of course – the French. “The supple Gaul was born a parasite,” he says.

All that at home no more can beg or steal,
Or like a gibbet* better than a wheel;
Hiss’d from the stage, or hooted from the court,
Their air, their dress, their politicks import;
Obsequious, artful, voluble and gay,
On Britain’s fond credulity they prey.
No gainful trade their industry can ‘scape,
They sing, they dance, clean shoes, or cure a clap;
All sciences a fasting monsieur knows,
And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes.

* Gibbet, “A gallows; the post on which malefactors are hanged, or on which their carcasses are exposed” (Johnson). The gibbet was the usual English means of execution; the wheel was used for executions in France.

The pirate Captain Kidd gibbeted (London, 1701) / the highwayman Cartouche broken on the wheel (Paris, 1721)

[originally posted by Rogue on tumblr]

Stealing back the commons

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

— 17th Century poem condemning enclosure

marzipanandminutiae: for background: this protested an act of Parliament in England that prevented people from grazing their livestock on the village common (an open area of green space) as they had for centuries. a later variant began with “They hang the man and flog the woman…”

Enclosure wasn’t the result of a single Act of Parliament, it had been going on since ~1200, and little by little it grew worse, as the landlords became more powerful and the peasants did not.

The right to use the commons — lands, on a lord’s estate, where people could enter and forage for themselves, fish, herd, gather wood etc — was taken very seriously, and was often necessary for the peasants’ survival. Enclosure was basically the privatisation of a previously communal resource. It was landlords putting up hedges and digging ditches around common lands, and saying “nope, you can’t enter any more; IT’S ALL MINE, and if you pick a berry it’s now THEFT”, either because an Act of Parliament allowed them to do that (remember that Parliament was comprised of landlords…), or just because they could. In the tug-of-war between King and Parliament, the law occasionally attempted to limit enclosure… and generally failed.

And every time commons were taken away, by law or by force, at any point from the 13th to the ~19th century, you had misery and suffering, because people were unable to sustain themselves. And then of course you had unrest, you had masses of destitute vagrants and/or pissed off outlaws, you had riots and armed revolts, again and again.

For example, when Kett’s Rebellion erupted in Norfolk in 1549, this “Rebel’s Complaint” was issued:

“The pride of great men is now intolerable, but our condition miserable. These abound in delights; and compassed with the fullness of all things, and consumed with vain pleasures, thirst only after gain, inflamed with the burning delights of their desires. But ourselves, almost killed with labour and watching, do nothing all our life long but sweat, mourn, hunger, and thirst. […]

The common pastures left by our predecessors for our relief and our children are taken away. The lands which in the memory of our fathers were common, those are ditched and hedged in and made several [“severals” were hedged plots of privately controlled land]; the pastures are enclosed, and we shut out. […]

We can no longer bear so much, so great, and so cruel injury; neither can we with quiet minds behold so great covetousness, excess, and pride of the nobility. We will rather take arms, and mix Heaven and earth together, than endure so great cruelty. […] We will rend down the hedges, fill up ditches, and make a way for every man into the common pasture. Finally, we will lay all even with the ground, which they, no less wickedly than cruelly and covetously, have enclosed. […]

We desire liberty, and an indifferent (or equal) use of all things. This will we have. Otherwise these tumults and our lives shall only be ended together.”

In the 17th century, enclosure was becoming rampant again, now with the full support of the law, and even more trouble was caused by disafforestation – the sale of royal forests (which were not necessarily woodland, mind you, they were just called that way, and at that point they included common lands), to new owners who enclosed them as soon as they got their hands on them. More suffering, more indignation, more unrest, more revolts.

…And that’s how that INCREDIBLE poem came to be. (Also that’s why we have today Creative Commons and Wikimedia Commons and so on. They’re, like, commons.)

ADDENDUM

karasu-dono: Technically the lords would be fully within their rights to do so. It is their land they provided for common use, though it doesn’t make it any less Jerkish. Should you govern a people, and they work your land, and rely upon parts of your land to maintain their livelihood to prevent unrest, and maintain common order, you must find a way to replace what was taken away.

Okay, first, fuck the lords’ rights. :p

Second, what are you on about? The right to the commons was a completely legitimate and integral part of the feudal system, it wasn’t a voluntary gesture of charity that landlords could extend or withdraw at will. That’s why there were Acts involved — laws that specifically allowed this or that common to be enclosed. Legally, you couldn’t just decide to do it.

Please unstick your mind from modern notions of property, where owning something means you can do whatever you want with it, and that’s that. These notions DO NOT apply here. Feudalism came with rights and obligations for everyone, including landlords, and how land was used was a huge part of it.

Between 1604 and 1914 only, over 5,200 individual Enclosure Acts were passed, enclosing 6.8 million acres – about a fifth of England’s total area. And all this wasn’t “jerkish”, dear, it wasn’t bad manners. It was a naked grab. It was a privileged social class taking full advantage of its economic and political power in order to completely shaft another social class. It was the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. It’s that blatant and that simple.

Welcome to Class Warfare 1.01. 🙂

[originally posted by Rogue on tumblr]