The Femme Fatale and Her Pimp Uncle: The Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, Part II

by Brian Thornton

(Due to mysterious and unforeseen technical difficulties with the second installment post about Sir Thomas Overbury's murder-by-enema a couple of weeks back- Blogger literally ATE my blog posting! - I am re-posting Part II in its entirety today. For the first part of this post, with general historical background as well as a fair bit about the victim, click here.)

Overbury: schemer and murder victim

A Quick Recap:

When last we left off we were talking about the court of English king James I (originally James VI of Scotland), about the allocation of power, his appreciation of pretty young men, and how those who throve at the center of his court and those who lurked on the fringes shared an appetite for advancement and a willingness to trade on James' predilections in pursuit of said advancement. We also discussed the victim of this post's titular crime (Sir Thomas Overbury, a born schemer if ever there was one), as well as the instrument of his proposed advancement (Robert Carr, eventually earl of Rochester–one of the aforementioned "pretty young men").

So what happens when two guys, one smart, the other handsome, have a good thing going, working an influential "relationship" with the king (which in turn allows them to peddle their own influence to others looking for their own positive outcomes, a "royal ripple effect," if you will), and the eye-candy half of this dynamic duo suddenly falls ass-over-tea-kettle in love?

With a woman, no less?

(Note that I said "woman," not "lady".)

Let's find out!

Robert Carr after he began to lose his looks.

The Conspirators:

Who would want to kill this guy Overbury?

As it turns out, lots of people. In his decades spent enriching himself in royal service he had managed to alienate nearly everyone with whom he came in contact. This included members of the large and powerful Howard family, and most especially one of the great femmes fatale of the 17th century, Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, and initially wife of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, and son of infamous 2nd earl (executed for treason by Queen Elizabeth in 1601).

 

The Femme Fatale: Lady Frances Howard

"Lady" Frances Howard: With a Neckline Like This...

Married to the wealthy earl of Essex at age 12 (he was 13), Frances Howard apparently never consummated her married to the earl, in part because he left not long after the nuptials for a tour of the continent (common for young men at the time), and also in part because the "happy couple" apparently quickly came to the realization that they could not stand the sight of each other.

As reported in her family's suit to annul the union Frances Howard reportedly "reviled [Essex], and miscalled him, terming him a cow and coward, and beast." On top that, also according the "lady" in question, Essex was impotent.

Essex disputed this assertion, insisting that he was quite capable of performing in the bedroom with any number of ladies, just not with Frances Howard, whose virginity he very much doubted.

The Earl of Essex in happier times (Post-annulment)

In a nutshell, Frances claimed Devereux couldn't get it up, and Devereux's defense was that he could, just not with a slut like the one he'd married.

The annulment was eventually granted in September, 1613. By this time Lady Frances had already taken up with  our old friend Robert Carr, earl of Rochester, and favorite of the king. They were married soon afterward.

The Pimp: Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton

As discussed in our previous entry there were any 

Nice Hat, Redux: the Earl of Northampton

number of hangers-on at court interested in advancing their own fortunes and willing to exploit the king's "interest" in pretty young men to their own advantage. Overbury was one of the most successful of this type, but he was hardly the only one.

One other such rank opportunist was Henry Howard, earl of Northampton. The scion of a large and powerful family, Howard was wealthy and connected. But he wanted to be better connected, and he wasn't above prostituting his own niece in order to get what he wanted.

With the Earl of Rochester exercising so much influence over King James and Overbury in turn exercising so much influence over Rochester, it occurred to Howard that Rochester, who was clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, might be pried away from Overbury, and, simpleton that he was, would then need a new "good friend" to tell him what exactly to whisper in the king's ear during those long, late-night tuck-in sessions.

Whether the earl decided to use his niece Frances because of her damaged reputation (you know, her first husband calling her a whore, and all), or because that reputation might be closer to the mark than the family was comfortable with, nevertheless placed her in Rochester's path with the aim of seducing him.

Rochester never stood a chance. He fell. Hard.

The Conflict

Overbury was  understandably livid. He did everything in his power to block his protege/stooge's budding romance, telling his erstwhile only friend that his new love was "noted for her injury and immodesty." Rochester would not be swayed. The only thing keeping him from making Frances Howard the new Countess of Rochester was the formalization of her impending annulment.

But Overbury wasn't finished. While the young lovers awaited the moment when they might marry, Overbury wrote and published a poem entitled A Wife. In this poem Overbury (a bachelor) laid out the characteristics a young man ought to look for in a spouse. It quickly became clear to Lady Frances Howard that in Overbury's opinion she possessed none of these qualities.

Thus was born a rivalry that would culminate in murder...

By enema!

In our next and final installment, palace intrigue, imprisonment in the Bloody Tower, the use of an 

astrologer to further a murder plot, emetics, and poison!

See you in two weeks with the conclusion of our sordid little tale!

Who is THIS mysterious figure? Find out in two weeks!

Posted by DoolinDalton at 01:32  

My Brother, My Editor and The Silent Sister

Diane Chamberlain

      Today it is my pleasure to introduce someone I have known literally all my life.  Diane was the sibling closest in age to me (still is, come to think of it), which means I was the dopey little brother who drove her crazy by following her around.  I hope I've outgrown that.

       I remember the first time she got something published: an op-ed page piece in a major newspaper about being a social worker in a hospital emergency room.  It made a gripping read, I'll tell you.

       Since then we have spent many hours discussing our writing experiences.  Unlike me she had the guts to try it full-time, and that sometimes seemed like a dubious choice ("Are you SURE you want to be in this business?" she asked me more than once) but persistence and talent has produced more than twenty novels, and a ton of fans.  The novel she discusses below is currently #9 on the UK Bestseller List!

        We invited her to write about her new novel and she sent us this modification of a piece she wrote for She Reads back in October.  By the way, the story of mine she mentions, "Shooting at Firemen," is scheduled for the July/August issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  
      And now, here's Diane.  Enjoy.

— Robert Lopresti

My Brother, My Editor and The Silent Sister

by Diane Chamberlain

            My younger brother, SleuthSayers blogger Robert Lopresti, was a writer before I was. We'd been very close as kids but lived on different coasts as adults. Back when I was a social worker, I would go to the gift shop in the hospital where I worked and look through the mystery magazines on the newsstand. I'd feel a little thrill every time I'd find one of Rob's stories inside them. Even though we lived 3,000 miles apart, seeing those magazines in the place where I worked made me feel close to him.

            Fast forward thirty years (yes, thirty!). Rob has published nearly sixty stories and a novel, and my twenty-third novel is about to be released. We've reversed coasts—he's in Washington State and I'm in North Carolina—but our writing still connects us and we commiserate frequently about the publishing world.

            Rob and I write very different types of stories. About a year ago, he sent me a short story he'd written that was set in our hometown. I loved it. In a subplot of the story, a brother laments the disappearance of his sister. I won't give away what happened to his sister, but I knew that in a Diane Chamberlain novel, something very different—not better or worse, just different--would happen. My imagination was off and running. I would write a brother/sister novel! I loved the idea that it was inspired by my own brother.

            Imaginations are fickle things, however. I'd wanted my protagonist to be a young man whose sister disappeared long ago, but whenever I tried to picture him, he turned into a woman. I finally gave in and created a twenty-two-year-old woman, Riley MacPherson, as my central character. Well, there went my brother/sister story! I did give Riley a brother, Danny, but he'd been killed in the Iraq war a few years earlier. That felt necessary because I wanted to isolate Riley to increase her need to find Lisa, the sister who disappeared and the only remaining member of her family.

            This is where my editor steps into the picture. I'd written the entire book and typed 'The End' when she said, "Danny should be alive." In my early writing days, my initial reaction to such an extreme editorial suggestion would be, "Noooooo!" followed by twenty-four hours of soul searching at which time I would realize my editor was brilliant. I've now evolved to the point where I can often see the brilliance within minutes. That was the case when Jen Enderlin at St. Martin's suggested I bring Danny back to life. Together, Riley and Danny would search for their missing sister, each with a different motive … and very different plans for what they would do if they found her. Suddenly The Silent Sister was a richer story … and ironically, I once again had the brother/sister novel I'd wanted to write. So thank you, Jen, for the suggestion, and Rob, for the inspiration, and I hope we'll be sharing our stories for a long time to come.

---

Diane's publisher, St. Martin's Press, will give two lucky readers copies of The Silent Sister randomly selected by Diane among the comments. Check back here tomorrow for the winners and how to claim your prize.

A Quick Visit to the Renaissance

by Elizabeth Zelvin

One of the many advantages of living in the Big Apple is access to some of the great museums, and thus some of the great art, of the world. One exhibition I’m glad I didn’t miss was the giant show of Renaissance portraits that I saw back in early 2012.

The Met is a ten or fifteen minute jog across the park for me, though I don’t get there as often as I would like. I particularly like portraits, which feed the fascination with people, the curiosity about what they’re really like inside, that led me to my two careers of writer and therapist.

Getting your portrait painted was serious business back in the quattrocento, much like Victorian portrait photography, though more expensive, I imagine. No spontaneous poses, no “Say formaggio!”

In the early portraits, both men and women were invariably shown in profile (“Do you think they were familiar with Egyptian art?” my companion asked), unflattering as that view was to some of the sitters’ aquiline or otherwise generous noses.

Instead of wedding photos, couples of means had their portraits painted together to commemorate a marriage. I can imagine all sorts of stories about them, especially the gentleman in red and what must have been his much younger wife.

If you think 21st century hairstyles are weird, look at what the Florentine gentlemen were doing with their hair. The blurbs at the museum said this fetching style was called a zazzera. The glossary of the website florentine-persona.com defines zazzera as “a tuft or lock of hair on a man's head, especially in front.” In this case, I think a couple of pictures are worth a lot more than thirteen words of definition. The glossary makes up for its understatement by informing us that “a man with such a notable tuft or front lock” was called a zazzeruto. Notable, yes, that’s more like it. And “a very vain person, especially of his hair,” was called a zazzeatore. The older gentleman’s more conservative haircut makes him look, to my eyes, Roman—or almost modern.

Portraits have survived of some of the celebrities of the day. Here’s Giuliano de’ Medici, one of the family of merchant bankers who ruled Florence for three generations, painted by Botticelli. Considered a playboy compared to his brother Lorenzo, civic leader and patron of the arts, Giuliano was assassinated in the Cathedral (the Duomo) at the age of 25.

And here is Simonetta Vespucci, considered the most beautiful woman of her day and believed to be the model for Botticelli’s Venus on the Half Shell (no, that’s not what they really called it). Or perhaps it’s Simonetta, but not what she really looked like— the museum’s curators hedge their bets.

One of the most remarkable paintings in the exhibit was this one of an old man and his grandson, almost modern in the way it conveys their affection. While the expression “warts and all” would not be applied to portraiture for another three hundred years or so (it’s attributed to Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century), they’re such a prominent feature that if the artist had left them out, the painting would not have resembled the old man at all. The Met’s blurb kindly explained that he suffered from the disease of rhinophyma.

Wonderful as the paintings are, the portrait that fascinated me most, in a creepy kind of way, was a cast of the death mask of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, he was the most brilliant and celebrated member of a family that had it all: wealth, power, patronage of the arts. To whom can we compare them? The Kennedys? The Rockefellers? No, there’s no comparison, because the Medici weren’t hampered by electoral politics or income tax or the media. So here’s a man whose name and achievements are still remembered five hundred years after his death, and this is not a painting. It’s Lorenzo himself. It’s what the guy really looked like, stubble on chin and all.

Not only did I find this intimate glimpse of Lorenzo mesmerizing, but it also raised a lot of questions. Have we killed celebrity by glutting the market? Has the flood of new information and constantly emerging personalities made it a lot less likely for people’s reputations to live on? Would you want the world to be interested in what you look like five hundred years after you die? Would you want them to see you dead? How long a shelf life do you think today’s photographs will have? You post them on Facebook as soon as you take them, and then they're gone. For that matter, how long a shelf life does the planet have these days?

Wanted Mystery Readers

by Jan Grape

Mystery readers are a varied and particular group. The majority of them want what they like to read best and all you have to do is point them to their favorites are.
And exactly what are their favorites? Cozy, Private Eye, Legal, Medical, Historical, Soft boiled, Hard boiled, Noir, Police Procedural, Who Dunnit, Woman in Jeopardy Thriller, Paranormal Cat Mysteries, Dog Mysteries, Comic Capers? And what about True Crime?

Did you realize there are so many different divisions in Mystery? Only when I owned a bookstore did I really realize that there is a huge variety under the mystery umbrella. What's funny to me is many people say, "Oh, I never read mysteries." But when you ask who do they read, they say, "Oh, I read James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Charlaine Harris, Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Kathy Reichs, Tony Hillerman, Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan or Faye Kellerman."

Okay, I guess these authors write what is considered suspense, not mystery. I personally would say all of those authors write mysteries. I don't understand why people don't consider these best selling books are mysteries. Are they ashamed and don't want too admit they read mysteries. Do they think mystery is low-brow. Or maybe they think if a book is on the New York Times Best Seller List it's not a mystery? Often when a writer says they are published and they write mysteries, someone invariably will ask (usually one of your off-side relatives) when are you going to write a REAL book. That's when I want to run away screaming.

What about Harlan Coben's books? They are usually high suspense but they also are mysteries. A crime is committed, usually someone is murdered and a man (or a woman) is caught up in a situation they have no knowledge of or how to solve the mystery. Sometimes they or their loved one is in jeopardy and the main character has to use everything they've ever learned or known to save the loved one or themselves.

Back to my original question, what do mystery readers want? I can only say what I want in a book. I want a character that I like and like to root for, although I don't have to have a perfect character. In fact, it's much better if the main character has vices or flaws. However, it's nice if you see the main character in one place and, by the end of the book, the main character is in another place, perhaps changed a bit. Becoming a better person, maybe or at least has a different outlook on life.

I like reading about a location that's new to me like Alaska or Iceland, Hawaii or Florida. Places where I can learn about a state or country, their customs, foods, peoples.

I feel that way about someone who has an occupation I'm not familiar with, like Fran Rizer's character who works in a funeral home. Her character is also from South Carolina and I've never been there so I enjoy reading about the coastal area of the Atlantic side of our continent.

I also enjoy reading about a place when I have been there and see a few things in the story that I've seen. Like reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, set in Sweden. I had two short trips in Sweden, but I had been to Stockholm and several of the other locations mentioned. That made the book more fun and interesting to me.

I enjoy reading good stories wherever they're set or the people who populate the mystery story. I like a story that begins with some action. I'll go along with perhaps fifty pages but something better be happening by then or forget it. It doesn't have to be a bloody murder; the murder can have taken place off scene, but I want to see the main character doing something to move the story forward. If you're a writer, write the best most intriguing book you can. Don't forget that if you are bored with the story then your readers most likely will be bored, too.

If you're a reader, proudly admit that you like mysteries. Some of the best writing is being done under the mystery/suspense umbrella. Trust me. Mystery writers cover the major issues of the day. And in about 98% of mystery books, the bad guy is caught and justice prevails, which doesn't happen in the real world often enough.

That's my opinion, what do you think, class?

Ending a Series

by Jim Winter

Leigh graciously gave me his slot today (we have a special guest coming in on my normal Tuesday slot) to talk about ending a series. And, let's be honest, I'm here to pimp my latest work, Gypsy's Kiss. But it's the end of Nick Kepler. For now. Maybe.

When I thought about writing about this, what came to mind was the end of a series. They all eventually end. Sometimes. I'm not so sure if it's wise to continue them beyond a certain point, but success often makes that decision for writers. It's clear Robert B. Parker had finished telling Spenser's story around the time of Ceremony. The novel had a certain finality to it as the consequences of the previous A Savage Place presented themselves. But Spenser and Parker continued. Within a few novels, it was clear he was just having fun now, making good money having that fun, and giving readers something nice and comfortable. But what if Parker had decided to end it all right there? Could he have continued as a writer?

My beloved 87^th Precinct series ended when Ed McBain, AKA Evan Hunter, passed away. He wisely opted not to allow publishers to continue his series after his death (except for a posthumous release or two.) Sue Grafton has said that Kinsey Millhonne will also end with Z is for Zero. We are up to W now with X due out this year and Y in a couple of years. Sue Grafton has publicly stated that Z is for Zero will take place on Kinsey's 40th birthday so we won't have to watch her go through menopause. Hey, she said it. I didn't.

Which brings us back to Gypsy's Kiss and the end of Nick Kepler. Maybe. If I don't get the itch or a request to do it again. There are a lot of reasons for closing the book on Kepler. For starters, all but the first novel are independent releases. Mainly, I was burning off a couple of finished novels in various late stages of editing. I thought about returning to Nick's story again as I prepped a new novel (and potential series) to send to an agent. So I sat down to prep Kepler #4 and found he's stopped speaking to me. I hadn't written anything but a short story called "Gypsy's Kiss" in years. I liked the idea of Nick and Gypsy moving on, but I hated the result. So I hit on the idea of making it a novella, long enough to make the premise - call girl Gypsy wanting Nick for her final client - work while not taxing the reader with a long novel. Besides, I'm busy.

So what's it about? Gypsy is Nick's favorite informant. She's taken a bullet for him and even risked her own life to trap a sexual predator he once followed. Like Elaine in Lawrence Block's Scudder series, she's used her income from the sex trade to escape a life of being used. Now that she's ready to move on, and to celebrate, she wants a dollar from Nick to be her last "client," nothing outrageous (though it's pretty clear she's game even if Nick can't see it), just a quiet evening splitting a bottle of wine and watching old movies. But someone doesn't like Gypsy leaving the skin trade and leaves her a violent calling card.  This being early spring, Nick stashes Gypsy on an island in the middle of Lake Erie, guaranteed to make her hard to find during cold weather. He digs through her past to find who wants to hurt her all the while trying to save his business from closing.

I wrote Gypsy's Kiss for a number of reasons, not the least of which was working with this form. I've done novels. I've done short stories. I've never done a novella. Also, even though all the Kepler novels were released, I wanted to give the Kepler series some closure. I didn't just want to walk away with Nick confused and angry at the end of Bad Religion. Since this was going to be my last original independent release (not counting short fiction), I wanted to go out with a bang. What happens to Elaine? What happens to Nick? Is it really safe to go to New Orleans in 2005?

It's left open-ended. Nick could appear again, either back in Cleveland or someplace else. But if I never pen another line of Kepler again, I've left him in a good place.

Gypsy's Kiss is available for order today.

Chair Today - Gone Tomorrow

Funny how things start out so innocently.

“I need a new office chair,” I said to hubby.

“Fine,” he said.

“Because mine is 40 years old and worn out,” I said, determined to convince him.  “It also doesn’t fit me anymore.”  Bottoms can change after many years.  My tush might have been a tad smaller back then.  Now it is a lazy, adult tush that needs more seat padding.

“You don’t have to convince me.  You’re in that chair all day long, writing.  It’s only a steno chair and it was old when we got it,” he said.

Well, that was easy, I thought.  Piece of cake. 

Cake, it appears, can be deceiving.  (This is where the idiom starts to go totally astray.)

Day 1: CHAIR NO. 1

By this subtitle, you might have caught on that project “Find a Chair” did not go as planned.

Like every good Canadian, we went to Staples to look for a chair.  Like every good couple with a Scottish last name, we went right after Christmas.

Chair No. 1 was not on sale.  It was the only chair in the store that I really felt comfortable in. 

“It has arms,” I said, sighing with delight.  “I’ve never had a chair with arms.”

Hubby showed his generous side.  “You can have it, even though it isn’t on sale.”

Of course, it came in a box half its size.  Which meant we were really buying a bunch of chair pieces.

Back home, Hubby started putting the pieces together.  Two hours later, he handed me the assembly instructions. 

“Can you read this?” he said.  “I can’t, even with my reading glasses."

I peered at the wee instructions.  They appeared to be written for Barbie Dolls.

An hour later, we had a chair.  Unfortunately, it was too short for the desk.

“I can’t work the keyboard,” I wailed.

Stoic Hubby said, “I suppose I could cut an inch or two off the desk legs.

We set out to return the chair.

Day 2: CHAIR NO. 2

Because the chair hadn’t been on sale (yay Hubby!) we could exchange it.  I was back in Staples facing 30 chairs.  Now the mission was to get one tall enough.

I became Goldilocks for an entire hour looking for the chair that was ‘just right.’  Finally the sales clerk got off her cell phone and came over.  I explained the First Chair Dilemma.

Clerk:  “You need one of our totally adjustable chairs.  It’s even on sale.”

She pointed me to it and I tried it out. 

Me: “It seems okay.  But it doesn’t have any padding.”

Clerk:  “These new chairs have webbed backs and seats.  They adjust to you.”

Hubby (getting antsy):  “We’ll take it.”

Clerk:  “Oops. We’re out of them.”

Me: “Can we order one?”

Clerk: “I don’t know if we’re getting any more.”

Me:  “Then we’ll take the floor model.”

Clerk:  “Oh no!  You can’t take the floor model.  We need it.”

Hubby:  “How can you need it if you have no chairs to sell?”

A battle ensued.  It involved the clerk, the manager, Hubby, and another frustrated male shopper who popped over to say something like: “You sales people have the brains of a long-dead lake trout. Let them take the blasted floor model.”

We loaded the floor model into the Outback.

Back home, I tried out the new chair.  It was the perfect height.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the perfect seat.  Within twenty minutes, my butt was asleep.

Me:  “I can’t move!”

Hubby:  “Try falling out of the chair and landing on your hands.”

Day 3: CHAIR NO. 3

Chair Number 2 had been on sale so we couldn’t return it.  Luckily, Hubby has an iron butt and agreed to take possession.

But Chair Number 3 is a happy story.  In an adjacent city, we found a store that deals only in office furniture. They had leather desk chairs with all sorts of padding.  We chose the cheapest (still Scottish here, after all) and brought it home.  Goldilocks had found her cake.

Unfortunately, Goldilocks left her wallet in that store, which is why we’re headed back there today.  Which only goes to show, even having your cake can be a pain in the butt.

Melodie Campbell writes funny books with her butt in a new office chair.  You can find The Goddaughter mob caper series at Chapters, B&N, Amazon and all the usual places.

---

SleuthSayers Communiqué

The month of February opens with a few surprises. For the next few days, our members bring you:

1. Feb: Jim Winter announces his new release!
2. Feb: Jan Grape appears in her usual spot.
3. Feb: Liz Zelvin drops by with a new article.
4. Feb: A special surprise guest visits SleuthSayers!
5. Feb: We return to our regular broadcast schedule…

And later in the month, the 24^th of February, you'll meet our new author, Paul D. Marks. See you then!

Locked Room Mystery in Argentina

by Dixon Hill

There are times when I read something, and I think it would make an excellent post here on SleuthSayers.  Often, I try to post a synopsis of what I've read, adding information about it from other sources in order to round out the story a bit more.

When the originating source, however, is such a truly fantastic article that appeared in The New York Times, I find myself thinking that any attempt at a synopsis would simply be foolish.

There are those who may cry foul, claiming that I shirked my duty by doing what I'm about to do. While I, personally, would admit that I'm not submitting my own writing on this post today, which means my own work here on SleuthSayers is pretty short this time, I don't feel I'd be able to agree with the idea that I'm shirking my duty.

Drawing people's attention to a story such as this, is something I feel duty bound to perform.

Additionally, as you'll see, this is a real and quite contemporary locked room mystery of sorts -- though whether we'll ever see justice done, remains an open question.

To understand what I'm talking about, please click on this link HERE . You'll be taken to a page of The New York Times, and a story that -- in my opinion -- is must reading.  About something that happened far south of where you and I live, on the day when our nation was celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Sadly, this story is one of injustice to another group of people.  But, it's one I firmly believe you'll find worth reading.

Since I originally created this post, I saw that one national television news outlet had run a story about it.  I was on my way out the door at the time, so I didn't get to see what they reported, or how they handled the story.  On Wednesday, January 28th, I found an interesting follow-up article in The New York Times, which you can read HERE .

Sincerely,
Dixon

Is Time Money, or is Money Time?

James Wallman

You may or may not know that this last week has been wild, because on January 23^rd, a gentleman named James Wallman had an article on the BBC Magazine based on his book, Stuffocation, and mentioned me. (I'm also cited in the book.) The citation was for one of my history lessons, "The $3,500 Shirt", which I gave regularly in my Western Civ and World History classes when it came time for the Industrial Revolution talk. I also shared it with several people, including Mr. Wallman, and here on SleuthSayers on June 6, 2013.

After the citation in BBC Magazine, the article got a few hits. (!!!) It also got a few comments. Some people simply could not (perhaps would not?) believe that clothing could be that expensive. Most of time their quarrel was with my multiplying the time spent making the shirt by current minimum wage, saying that didn't show how little people were paid back then, and so the shirt would be much cheaper. Which, in terms of cash paid out, is absolutely true. BUT not when it comes to the amount of time: time-wise, it was infinitely more expensive. Because for most of history, labor (time) was what counted, more than money:

Father took out a round, big silver half-dollar. He asked, "Almanzo, do you know what this is?" "Half a dollar," Almanzo answered. "Yes. But do you know what half a dollar is? It's work, son… You know how to raise potatoes, Almanzo?… Say you have a seed potato in the spring, what do you do with it?" "You cut it up. … Then you harrow - first you manure the field, and plow it. Then you harrow, and mark the ground. And plant the potatoes and plow them, and hoe them. You plow and hoe them twice… Then you dig them and put them down cellar." "Yes, and then you pick them over all winter, you throw out the little ones and the rotten ones. Come spring, you load them up and haul them here to Malone, and you sell them. And if you get a good price son, how much do you get to show for all that work? How much do you get for a bushel of potatoes?" "Half a dollar," Almanzo said. "Yes," said Father. "That's what's in this half-dollar, Almanzo. The work that raised half a bushel of potatoes is in it." Almanzo looked at the round piece of money that Father held up. It looked small, compared to all that work.

— Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy, pp. 182-184.

Work is important. Work is time. How much a penny or a dollar is worth changes over time; but the number of hours in a day don't. And you don't get the whole 24 hours to do anything you want: you have to sleep, eat., etc. So if you subtract 8-10 hours a day for all those other things (sleep, eating, bathroom, washing, travel to and from work, etc.), what you have left is 14-16 hours a day to work, play, live. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, most of us (at least in the Western world) don't have to spend 12+ hours a day at hard physical labor, so we have a tendency to think in terms of money (how much did it cost?) rather than time (how long did it take?), but, as I say, that wasn't the way people used to think about things.

Here are a couple of ways to look at things:

First, the Shirt, and then I want to move on to such fun things as criminals and celebrities. First off, some weavers and spinners gave me some more exact figures (I under-figured for spinning; over-figured for weaving), so here goes:

Note how long the shirt is.

To make a shirt entirely by hand - and we're going to go with 25 gauge for a decent, but coarse shirt - we start with the spinning. 25 ÷ threads per inch × 36 inches wide × 8 yards (shirts were longer then) = 7200 warp yards, plus about the same for weft = 14,400 yards of thread; divided by 30 yards per hour = 480 hours. The weaving (which I admit I over-estimated in the original) requires about 20 hours including 10 hours minimum for set up – stretching the warp, setting up and threading the loom – and then another 8-10 for weaving. And the sewing, which I still say would take 7 hours, including finishing all the seams. So the new figures are:

Spinning - 480 hours
Weaving - 20 hours
Sewing - 8 hours
Total: 508 hours of labor to make a shirt.

This still doesn't include things like buttons, or the needle and thread to sew the shirt, nor the labor that went into raising/processing the linen, cotton, or wool.

Imagine spending 480 hours to make enough thread to weave a shirt. No wonder Ellen Rollins said "The moaning of the big [spinning] wheel was the saddest sound of my childhood. It was like a low wail from out of the lengthened monotony of the spinner's life." (Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, p. 26) And that would be 480 hours "fitted in", because almost no woman (luckily!) could spend an entire working week (72 hours in pre-Industrial times) doing nothing but weaving. She had chores to do, like cooking, cleaning, dairying, weeding, minding children, etc. No matter what price she got for that yarn, she would undoubtedly have felt like Almanzo - a pretty small sum for that much work.

480 hours: that's 7 weeks' work in pre-Industrial times; 12 weeks' work in today's Western working world. What do you have around your house that costs that much? That costs three months' worth of your time, of your year? A shirt? How many shirts, at that rate, could you actually afford, considering you also have to pay for rent and food? And could get no credit?

Now you have some idea of what most people were up against before the Industrial Revolution. (And why the first thing the industrial revolution produced was cloth, and why the first inventions were spinning machines.)

NOTE: one thing about medieval objects, they were, for the most part extremely well-made. Things lasted. I have read of a hand woven linen sheet lasting 100 years. (Of course, well-cared for linen only gets better – more supple and soft – with successive washings and bleachings.) And they didn't waste anything. Everything was darned, mended, cut down, reused, repurposed, recycled, you name it. (Most of the Victorian poor bought or received their clothing second hand.) But there was cheap stuff, too: the ribbons and gee-gaws that were sold at the annual St. Audrey's Fair in medieval England got cheaper and cheaper until, by the 17th century, "tawdry" had become a synonym for "cheap, gaudy and showy".

Back to hours and time. Today we calculate almost everything in terms of money, how to get it, how to increase it, how to spend it, save it, bank on it… But money is only a symbolic representation of labor, of time. (There isn't any currency, at least in the Western world, that has any intrinsic value.) Perhaps our obsession with money is that it buys us time - or does it?

Not always. Exhibit 1: Criminals.

Quite simply, most criminals don't understand why people work. Why exchange all those hours of hard labor when you can get money so much easier by stealing, conning, forging, robbing, or even killing for it? Much less time, much less effort. Of course criminals ignore the endless mental planning and rehearsing - the obsession - that is their life. They ignore the fact that the $20,000,000 heist is literally one in 20,000,000, and is probably not going to be theirs. They ignore the immense effort and hardship that a life of crime requires. And they most definitely ignore the fact that, if caught (as so, so, so many are), they will give ALL their time for the crime, spending years, if not their entire life, on 24/7 watch with no privacy at all.

Of course no one reading this would give up all their time for something as stupid as crime. So I give you Exhibit 2: Celebrities.

Celebrities - including royalty, athletes, movie stars, rock stars, CEOs, and some politicians - live a lifestyle of fabulous wealth and almost unlimited access to anything the celebrity wants. But, they pay for that with ALL their time. A celebrity is never off-stage. Paparazzi are omnipresent. Phones are tapped. (Ask Rupert Murdoch.) National Enquirer has their hairdressers and stylists on speed-dial. So the exchange is everything for everything. What's left of the person underneath the celebrity? If everything is public, is there any private person there? People have been wondering for centuries if there was anyone under the mask of Louis XIV. What was under Norma Desmond's mask but the hunger for more?

The hunger for more: for more time, more money, more fame, more stuff, more, more, more… Well, we've got the machines, and we've got the stuff, but now everyone complains how they don't have enough time. So what are you willing to spend your time on? What can you afford to spend your time on? What is worth your time?