A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain

[KEV67]

Daniel Defoe was a man of letters and no mistake. I started reading this. It was first published in 1724-6. I thought it would be like The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett, but it is not. It is much more factual. Humphry Clinker was about the doings of the horrible Squire Bramble. This is more like reportage. I am not very far in. Defoe is reporting on East Anglia. So far, the most shocking bit was that there was an area of lowland Essex where disease was rife. The farmers who had grown up there were immune to the diseases, but the wives they kept marrying were not. Why didn't they marry women who had grown up in the area? Anyway, Defoe has got to Ipswich. At one point of time, Ipswich was renowned for building collier ships.

[KEV67]

Daniel Defoe was a busy man. I am not half way through yet. So far he has done East Anglia, the South East, the South West, and London. He writes about the main industries in an area, the local gentry, a bit about the geography, and interesting tidbits. I am currently reading his letter about the West of England and Wales. The letter about London has been the most interesting so far. He wrote about how big it was getting, the huge trade markets, the hospitals and schools, the financial area and the government buildings and palaces. 

[KEV67]

I am still reading this between other things. Daniel Defoe is now writing about Yorkshire and the North Midlands. He talked about he and his party came across a woman who lived in a cave with her family.  Her husband was a lead miner. He said they were poor, but not desperate. The husband earned 5d a day, while the wife earned 3d a day washing the ore, when she could work, which as she had small children was not often. They made a whipround and gave her a sum not exceeding a crown, which I think is 10 shillings. Later they met a miner who appeared out of a hole in the ground. They couldn't understand what he said, but they had a local as an interpreter, who said he worked so many fathoms under the ground. I am not sure how far a fathom is, but Defoe reckoned it was as deep as St Paul’s Cathedral is high. They gave him a couple of shillings, with which he made off to the pub, but Defoe and his party got there first. They bought him some beer and made him promise to take his money home to his family. I found this quite interesting. This all happened three centuries ago. Who would imagine that you meet someone on an average, mundane day, and people still read about it centuries later.