Shadow of the Raven (34 page)

beyond reasonable doubt:
William Paley described the situation in 1785, when jurors experienced “a general dread lest the charge of innocent blood should lie at their doors,” and were therefore less likely to convict.

bump their youngsters' heads:
Boys were often turned upside down and “bumped” on boundary stones, and the day might well degenerate into a drunken brawl.

 

redcoat:
This historical term used to refer to soldiers of the British army because of the red uniforms formerly worn by the majority of regiments.

 

The Fifty-second (Oxfordshire) Regiment of Foot:
This was a light infantry regiment of the British army throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

 

winter bourne:
The permeable nature of Chilterns chalk means that the water table sometimes drops and the head of the stream moves down the valley. As this section flows only after winter rains, it is called a winter bourne, “bourne” meaning “stream” in Anglo-Saxon.

the same regiment that had fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill:
The regiment first saw active service during the American War of Independence.

 

a canal:
In 1769 work began on the Oxford Canal, which was intended to link the industrial Midlands to London via the River Thames. Although work had progressed well, by 1774 the canal company had run into financial difficulties. After more funds were raised, the canal had reached Banbury by 1778, but yet more financial problems meant that work on the final stretch to Oxford did not begin until 1786.

 

Richard Arkwright's power mills:
A large new mill at Birkacre, Lancashire, was destroyed, however, in the anti-machinery riots in 1779.

 

long hours:
The factory gates at Arkwright's Birkacre Mill at Chorley were locked at precisely six o'clock every morning. If a worker did not make it in time, regardless of the reason, they lost a day's wages.

“Hey Down, Derry Down”:
An Elizabethan folk song with a first line that runs “Hey down, ho down, derry derry down, among the leaves so green-o!”

 

Uffington Horse
:
The famous white horse, carved out of the chalk during the Bronze Age, lies on a hillside on the Oxfordshire /Berkshire border and can be seen for miles around. It is also the name of an English country dance.

 

King Arthur:
The subject of many myths, King Arthur came to symbolize English freedom. According to local legend, if the king is disturbed, the Uffington Horse will also awake to dance on nearby Dragon Hill.

seeds of certain diseases:
The widely held belief until this time was that disease was caused by “miasmas” (odorless gases). In 1546 Girolamo Fracastoro published a book called
On Contagion
. He suggested that infectious diseases were caused by “disease seeds,” which were carried by the wind or transmitted by touch. In 1683 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek observed microorganisms but did not realize they caused disease.

 

the rigors:
Now known as lockjaw or tetanus.

 

wound fever:
Now called sepsis.

 

gunshot wounds:
Conventional treatment held that a lead shot or ball be extracted with forceps or a surgeon's fingers, and the debris cleaned away. It was thought that gunpowder was poisonous.

 

trepanning:
The details for this fictional trepanation are based loosely on a report of the operation performed by Lorenz Heister, an eighteenth-century German anatomist, surgeon, and botanist, who left an account of the procedure he carried out on a merchant, Heinrich Bachmann, in 1753.

St. Giles Fair:
In the 1780s it was a “toy” fair, selling miscellaneous cheap and useful wares.

 

Eagle and Child inn:
This still survives as a pub in Oxford's St. Giles.

 

brickbat:
A fragment of a hard material, such as a brick, used as a missile.

 

pease pottage:
Also known as pease pudding, this is a traditional savory dish made from boiled vegetables to which ham or bacon is sometimes added.

racking close:
The lines where woolen cloth was hung out to dry on tenterhooks.

fine foam:
White froth exuding from the mouth is a characteristic of drowning and indicates that the victim was alive at the time of entry into the water.

engage a trustworthy solicitor:
According to
The Oxford Herald,
an Oxford wine merchant who challenged the Otmoor enclosure had his legal expenses paid by more than five thousand supporters.

 

duel:
By about 1770, English duelists had adopted the pistol instead of the sword. The first rule of dueling was that a challenge to duel between two gentlemen could not generally be refused without the loss of face and honor. If a gentleman invited a man to duel and he refused, he might place a notice in the paper denouncing the man as a poltroon for refusing to give satisfaction in the dispute.