After 20 years of hard labour Professor Ekirch has produced an absorbing social history of nighttime in pre-industrial society from the Balkans to the British colonies of North America. His vast accumulation of quotations from diverse sources — he has employed ‘a legion of translators’ — threatens, at times, to overwhelm the reader, but they are linked together in a narrative of clear prose.
Nighttime for our ancestors 300 years ago had a significance and an importance we have lost. ‘Rather than a backdrop to daily existence, or a natural hiatus,’ Ekirch writes, ‘nighttime in the early modern age instead embodies a distinct culture, with many of its own rituals and customs.’ Called ‘night season’ it was, as the poet John Gay put it, ‘an alternative reign’.
It was the reign of fears we do not experience. It was the realm of Satan and his demons; every village had its churchyard ghosts and tales of witches’ sabbaths. Darkness was the cloak of violence; in towns violence was ten times more frequent than it is today. Hobbes, ever the realist, confessed not to ‘be affrayed of sprights’ but of being ‘knocked over the head for five or ten pounds’. Three quarters of thefts occurred after dark. Men of property hurried home while it was still daylight barricading their houses against intruders of the lower orders. Shooting a burglar was, in law, a legitimate act of self-defence. Nightwatchmen were no protection in keeping undesirables off the streets and were universally despised as infirm cowards; a Portsmouth constable who accosted a suspicious night wanderer was told ‘to kiss his arse’.
Apprentices were 12 per cent of the population of London. Confined at work by day, they found ‘liberty’ at night.
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