Blog
The Catch-Me-Who-Can: A True Regency Marvel
It’s summer. It’s dang hot. I’m tired of writing about Regency midwives and man-midwives. What sort of light-hearted topic might suit for a short July blog post? Quite by accident I came across an image of Trevithick’s “Catch-Me-Who-Can” steam circus. Ah! Just the...
A Regency Labor: Are You Prepared to Take a Pain?
Any pregnant woman during the Regency period would have known what a man-midwife meant when he asked: Are you prepared to take a pain? To “take a pain” was a popular expression meaning to submit to an examination per vaginam (“via the vagina”). I found this gem in Dr....
Anne de Bourgh Sits as a Gossip: Is Society Shocked?
Would polite Society censure Miss Anne de Bourgh for sitting as a gossip during her friend’s delivery? This question was one of the first I asked when researching my Regency novel, Rosings Park, which is based on characters in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It...
When Gossiping Was a Good Thing
Strange as it seems to us, the word “gossip” had a friendly meaning during the Regency period and for many centuries before that: a “gossip” was a woman who attended her daughter's or sister's or friend’s delivery. In its original sense, the word was a corruption of...
Forceps Use in the Regency Era vs Today
Forceps were invented by a surgeon in the early 17th century and gained acceptance among man-midwives or accoucheurs during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Midwives, not surprisingly, argued strongly against their use, believing the hands were Nature’s best...
5 Things I Learned about Regency Cooking
My husband and I hosted a Regency dinner party for friends on March 28th. Earlier this month I described the menu or Bill of Fare, as cookbook author John Mollard would call it, and posted photos of the final dishes. In this post I list the five things I learned about...
March Folly: Food Served at My Regency Dinner Party
Previously I described the menu for my March Folly Regency dinner party held March 28th. Today’s post shows more photos of the cooked dishes I chose from John Mollard’s 1802 cookbook, The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined, Comprising Ample Directions for Preparing...
March Folly: Menu for a Regency Dinner Party
It’s time for a break from writing about Regency midwifery practices (a topic I’ll return to later). Today I want to share with you my March Folly—the Regency dinner party my big-hearted husband and I hosted for a few close friends. I began planning for it by reading...
Battle Passionné: Midwife vs Man-Midwife
Two parties waged a passionate battle throughout the Regency period and long afterward over the admittance of men to the practice of midwifery. On one side stood the midwives, who promoted patience and a reliance on Nature during delivery. On the opposing side were...
Man-Midwives Behaving Badly
It was not the case that only midwives could be ignorant and incompetent. Some man-midwives were equally injurious when delivering children, despite being trained under doctors and man-midwives who taught classes and used obstetrical machines or phantoms. Mistaking...
Forceps Fostered the Rise of Man-Midwifery
For most of human history midwives ruled the roost when it came to delivering children, as you may have read in my previous post on Regency midwives. Man-midwives or accoucheurs, as they were known in France, were called to a delivery only when there was a problem or...
Midwives Behaving Badly
The Regency midwives Margaret Stephen and Martha Mears appear to have been hard-working, knowledgeable, and competent. (See my previous post on these famous midwives.) Margaret Stephen defined her craft as “the art of delivering women safely of their children, and...
Regency Midwives: Toil and Trouble
For most of human history the act of giving birth was women’s work. Midwives governed all aspects of the process, from arranging the space where the mother gave birth — the lying-in chamber — to taking charge of the delivery, tying-off the infant’s umbilical cord, and...
A Life of Perpetual Pregnancy for Regency Women
Many women today can choose when to become pregnant, thanks to the availability of safe and reliable contraceptives.1 It wasn’t always so. During the Regency period women were often pregnant every few years, beginning within the first or second year of marriage and...
Happy birthday, Jane Austen!
On this day—the 16th of December—Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, in 1775. She was the sixth child and second daughter of the Reverend George Austen and his wife, Cassandra. Not many drawings of Jane's likeness exist. One of the most famous is this...
Does Mr. Darcy Have a Sense of Humor?
Lately I have been thinking about laughter and its importance in marriage, friendship and life. My 88-year-old mother-in-law, Doreen, got me started down this path. Her son—my husband, Peter—and I visited her recently in her new home. She had only moved in a few days...
Warm Caudle: A Potion for Regency Women in Childbed
During England’s Regency period, women in childbed were advised to sip a caudle—a warm drink made by mixing a thin gruel of oatmeal with wine or ale, spices, and sugar. Although often given to sick people, caudles were enjoyed by women in labor and during their...
Clamping the Umbilical Cord: A Return to the Midwifery Practice of Jane Austen’s Day
When Jane Austen lived, midwives and man-midwives were advised to delay tying off or clamping the umbilical cord—what an early 19th-century midwifery practitioner would call the “navel-string” or funis—until a newly birthed child had gained some mastery over its...
Linseed Tea: Popular in Jane Austen’s Day and Today
During Jane Austen’s day, linseed tea and other preparations made with linseed were prescribed by doctors and apothecaries to treat a variety of aliments. A simple recipe from Dr. William Buchan’s popular book Domestic Medicine was among those medicines commonly used...
A Tedious Regency Labor: Hog’s Lard and Laudanum
Thanks to Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, the character of Anne de Bourgh is forever fixed as “sickly and cross”1—which begs a question: Why is she so disagreeable? In my Regency novel, Rosings Park, Anne has two reasons to be cross as crabs....
Anne de Bourgh: Heiress, Landowner, Change Leader
Anne de Bourgh, the heroine of my novel, Rosings Park, is an heiress who inherited a considerable property when her father died. With his death she became the Master—now held accountable for her estate's success and sometimes derided for being a woman standing in a...
It Is a Truth Universally Acknowledged
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”1 It is another truth that the opening sentence of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice is considered among the most memorable in all fiction. Two...
Anne de Bourgh Inherited Rosings Park
When I first began plotting my novel, Rosings Park, I knew two things about the Regency period: the Napoleonic wars raged across Europe and a pelisse was a woman’s garment usually worn outdoors. Being ignorant of nearly every aspect of Regency life, I was forced to...
Mr. Darcy Was a Second-Class Citizen
Fitzwilliam Darcy was the handsome, wealthy gentleman who fell in love with the sparkling Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth’s mother was confounded and amazed to hear that her daughter would marry a man of fortune, especially as she at first thought...
There’s a Leech for That!
If you lived during England's Regency era (1811-1820), you considered leeching a standard medical therapy for nearly every ailment. Did you suffer from pleurisy? Then leeches were applied to your rib cage where the stitch or side pain was located. Was your brain...