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VISIBLE BODIES:
POWER, SUBORDINATION AND IDENTITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ATLANTIC WORLD
| By Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton |
University of Sunderland |
In the eighteenth century the developing print culture made bodies—particularly the bodies of the poor, the troublesome and the criminal, more noticeable than ever before. While bodies in the early modern period were subject to inspection under many different circumstances (as Gowing has shown), mostly when their owners had come under suspicion or their identity into question, what made the eighteenth century distinctive was that the results of these scrutinies became public in a culture of advertisement.1 Beginning in the late seventeenth century in London, and then spreading throughout the English-speaking Atlantic by the 1720s, newspapers provided a cheap and locally-available means of publicising those who had been seized by suspicious authorities or had proved mutinous by leaving their posts without permission. From masters trying to recover runaway slaves or servants, to officers recovering their deserting recruits, to magistrates and the victims of crimes searching for stolen goods and their takers, the new print culture was used to spread the word—and the image. Everyone unknowingly adopted Sir John Fielding's watchword for detecting criminals: "quick notice and sudden pursuit," applying it to many who had run away and were sought.2 Others were found, suspected and seized for inspection. For example, in Virginia, one advertisement read—
COMMITTED to Suffolk Jail, on Suspicion of being a Convict Servant, a Man about five Feet eight or nine Inches high; he has brown Hair, of a fair Complexion with Freckles, says he is a Weaver by Trade, and that he came from Glasgow, but gives various Accounts of himself. Likewise a Negro Man about the same Height, well set, and very black; says he is a Freeman, and at other times says he has a Master, but will not tell his Master's Name. The Negro has not any Marks that I remember.
WILLIAM GRANBERY, Jailer.
In both England and the American colonies, detailed description was the common method of operation, but the body and its owner were the target, as one account of a London fugitive shows:
Whereas James Goodman alias Footman, made his Escape (with Irons on, by leaping over the Spikes of the Bail-Dock and the Rails) at the Sessions-House in the Old Baily, on Saturday last, being the 14th Instant, about 6 in the Evening; he is about 37 Years of Age, 5 Foot 10 Inches high, much Pock-fretten, has many Freckles in his Face and Hands, a wide Mouth, down Look, speaks very broad, a reddish beard, but did wear a brown Wig, a Carpenter by Trade, and did lately live at Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire: He was shot in the Nape of the Neck about a month since, when he was taken, which Wound is not yet well, and several small Pieces of his Scull taken out of the Wound. Whoever can discover the said Person, so that he be brought to Justice, shall receive Twenty Pounds Reward from Bodenham Rowse Head Turnkey of Newgate.3
The need for these careful descriptions was partly because people were not what they seemed. On too many occasions the person facing the authorities was not how they appeared at first glance, particularly with regard to gender—men passed as women, women as men. Sir John's brother Henry knew this all too well, as his authorship of a history of one of the various "female husbands" of the century shows, a woman who, dressed as a man, had married at least twice. The army and the navy were continually reporting female recruits, or rather, males who turned out to have female bodies.4 In other circumstances men were "discovered" under the guise of women—such as John Cooper, otherwise known as the Princess Serafima, hanging around the pubs of Drury Lane, involved in a case of theft and homosexual blackmail at the Old Bailey. Other "princesses" apparently possessed the appropriate biology, but not the right identity.5 This was in many ways a culture of concealment—an "age of disguise," which was consequently obsessed with discovering the "real" person below the surface. All this made bodies, appearances and identities problematic for eighteenth-century society, whose authorities were forced to develop a full language of description that helped readers to identify people.6 The result is a rich source of representation in which can be found many ordinary men and women, some bizarre and extraordinary, but all provided with a careful description of their appearance, character and style. |
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