The Lost Occupations of the 18th Century: a gust blog by Eleanor Kuhns

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Eleanor Kuhns and I have several things in common, which is always nice when you meet a new person. We're both winners of the the St. Martin's/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Award. (That never gets any shorter when typing it out,) I've published eight books, and Eleanor has just released her seventh, SIMPLY DEAD. (Since her first book, A SIMPLE MURDER, only came out in 2011, we can see she's made of sterner stuff than I am.) I live in Maine and write about upstate New York, Eleanor lives in upstate New York and writes about Maine. And both our series frequently features weather that can kill you.

There, we part ways, because weather conditions - and illness, and accidents, and childbirth - are so much more dangerous in "the Maine" in the 1790's, where Eleanor's excellent series featuring Will Rees, an itinerant weaver, is set.  I adore historical mysteries, and remain in awe of writers who put in the research time such work requires. One such area of research, as Eleanor explains today, is occupation: what did people do in the late 18th century, and how can a skilled author use them when spinning her tale?

In the Will Rees mystery series, I regularly use several recurring elements. The Shakers, or The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, is one that I return to over and over. I also usually incorporate a disease; they were, of course, much more likely to be fatal in an era before antibiotics.

But the one feature I always include is an occupation from that time period, a different one for every book. People made things then; they had to. And while some of the professions are still around, (think bricklayer or blacksmith), many of the old trades have disappeared.

One of the trades I examine in Cradle to Grave, the third Will Rees mystery, is coopering. Coopering was truly a skilled craft and required a long apprenticeship. In the days before plastic or even metal bins, barrels carried everything. The staves were formed by hand tools and sweated together to make a water proof seal. Before iron bands were used, the hoops were made of wood. In Simply Dead I describe the tools and the process for hoop making.

In Death in Salem, where sailing (either on the merchant ships or on the whale ships) was the number one career, I devote a few paragraphs to rope making and sail making. To construct the thick ropes necessary for the sailing ships, for example, the strands of fiber – either cotton or hemp- were twisted together as the rope maker walked the length of the ropewalk. The building was at least 80 yards (240 feet) long but could be as long as 240 yards (720 feet). The rope maker or his apprentice walked this distance over and over, every day, to make the thick and heavy rope cables required by the ships. (They probably reached 10,000 steps in the first hour.) And the heavy canvas sails for these ships had to be hand sewn.

The kitchen crafts were no less complicated. Take butter. It seems simple enough. Most of us have an image in our minds of a butter churn. But this was not the end of the process. After the butter ‘came’, it was washed and a butter worker, a kind of wooden paddle, was rolled over and over the butter until all the buttermilk had been removed. If this step wasn’t done properly, the butter would quickly go rancid. The butter then had to be salted for storage and crammed into crocks. Besides the churn, at least five other pieces of equipment were required.

Cheese making was an even more demanding job. The milk is heated and when it has reached exactly the right temperature rennet is added. (Rennet is from a cow’s stomach.) Once the milk curdles, the curds are cut into cubes. When they reach the right level of acidity, the whey is poured off. Besides feeding the pigs, whey was used for paint and washing floors.

Every bowl, every strainer, every vat had to be scrupulously clean. To be considered an expert at butter or cheese making, as Rees’s wife is, would be high praise.

Rees himself has a career that was already disappearing. He is a traveling weaver. With the opening up of China and India, and the imported fabrics from the latter especially, women were abandoning spinning and weaving for purchased cloth. The opening of the textile factories in Lowell, Mass in 1816 sounded the death knell for weavers and spinners. Oh, in some parts of the country, particularly the south, hand weaving and spinning hung on. Although there are still weavers and spinners now, it is a hobby instead of a livelihood.

So far, all of the above professions are somewhat familiar to the modern person, even if individually we no longer practice them. But what about those occupations that are no longer practiced or even remembered? What is coppicing? (Answer: A method of woodland management that takes advantage of the tendency of a tree that, when cut, will send out new growth. Once allowed to grow to maturity, these new trunks are cut, and the process begins again.) Or a bodger? (Answer: A chair bodger would purchase a stand of trees, fell just the right ones, and use the wood for chair legs or braces.) Other recognized jobs involved making ladders, rakes, brooms. The Shakers are credited with inventing the modern flat broom, the sales of which became a major source of income because it was so much more effective than the round one.

The inclusion of these past occupations add color to the setting. But the most important reason I include them is to honor these craftspeople who built the world with their hands.

JULIA: Dear readers, what are the occupations long gone that fascinate you?  Would you be a carder, or a bookbinder, or a chandler? A coachman or a mantuamaker? And what do you think are the jobs of today that will disappear into the mists of time?

About SIMPLY DEAD: 1790s, Maine. In the depths of winter Hortense, a midwife, disappears after attending a birth in the woodlands. During the search Will Rees finds her struggling through the snow and woods without shoes or a coat. 

After two young men begin stalking the community in search of her – including targeting Rees’s own family – she is questioned further and claims she was kidnapped . . . but Rees and his wife Lydia are suspicious. It is agreed Hortense’s presence is endangering everyone’s safety and she needs to leave. As the arrangements are made she is hidden in Zion, the local Shaker community, only while there a Shaker Sister is murdered. Witnesses describe a man fitting Josiah Wooten’s description, a ferocious man living in the woods with two young sons.

 
What is the truth behind Hortense's disappearance, and who is responsible for the death of the Shaker Sister?

You can find out more about Eleanor Kuhns at her website, and read excerpts from the Will Rees series at Macmillan. You can friend Eleanor on Facebook and follow her on Twitter as @EleanorKuhns.