16 June 1634: Punishment aboard royal ships

A quick MEMSO extract that records the harshness of punishment aboard ships, but also the rather quaint nature of 17th century insults. 'Huble Buble' hardly seems a deadly offence, even in the 17th century, and seems, according to the OED, to have implied the ship's master was confused and unclear. Click on the image to see full size text.

26 May 1746: Lady Anne Leslie to her brother

(Click image to see full size letter).

"I have been the most courageous creature in the world for some weeks, and I wear a sword and will make it revenge me upon any body who dare brand my name with ... injustice. As I am but a young soldier I have not tried any fighting yet (duels excepted), but I know I can bragg as well as any man."

Our daily MEMSO extract turned up a fantastic personal letter from Lady Anne Leslie to her brother, David, lord Balgonie, future 6th Earl of Leven. Writing in the days after the final defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden on 16 April, Anne describes how she was taking part as secretary and aide de camp of the Earl of Crawford in the aftermath of the defeat. She claims, probably in jest, to have taken to wearing a sword, and mixes jokes and cheekiness to her brother with descriptions of how she danced with the Prince of Hess at an Edinburgh ball.

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How dirty was a 17th century floor? Evidence from saltpetre diggers.

Today's Twitter extract from MEMSO reminds us of just how strange people's behaviour in the past can seem to us today.

The extract recounts the results of an examination of the behaviour of two saltpetre diggers (saltpetre being a key component of gunpowder). The men clearly had royal commission to seek saltpetre on private property, but were going beyond the bounds of decency in how they exercised their rights (see large copy of the report here). They were digging up the floors of churches, parlours, malting houses, dovecots, and even the private chambers of women 'in "childbed" (ie, in labour).

Why the men sought saltpetre in the (probably dirt) floors of private houses and buildings is not immediately clear, but a solution seems to appear in the facts relating to the historical manufacture of saltpetre.

Urine has also been used in the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. In this process, stale urine placed in a container of straw hay is allowed to sour for many months, after which water is used to wash the resulting chemical salts from the straw. The process is completed by filtering the liquid through wood ashes and air-drying in the sun. (Wikipedia, extracted 30 April 2009)

The soil floors of the population's houses and barns were seemingly a rich source of both urine and straw, which also perhaps were allowed to build up over the months in a way which encouraged the crystalization process required for saltpetre.

A more detailed account of historical saltpetre manufacture can be found in an account of Joseph Leconte for the American military in 1862, which seems to confirm the process by which saltpetre built up naturally in the confined surroundings of the poor.

These conditions are often found in nature, as in the soil of all caves, but particularly those in limestone countries; and still more frequently under a concurrence of circumstances which, though not strictly natural, is at least accidental, so far as the formation of nitre is concerned, as in cellars, stables, manure-heaps, &c. In crowded cities, with narrow, dirty streets and lanes, the decomposing organic matter with which the soil is impregnated becomes gradually nitrified, oozes through, and dries on the walls and floor of the cellars, as a whitish crust, easily detectible as saltpetre by the taste.

If you know more about the history of salpetre, please post a message below.

MEMSO 3.0 Launched!

We've launched a new version of MEMSO, with lots of new features. Read more

Click on the screenshot to see MEMSO 3.0 it in all it's glory. The screenshot illustrates how a user can have mutiple open books at once, or view different pages from the same book side by side.

Key new features include:

• Ability to open and navigate multiple books and manuscripts side by side
• Personal bookshelf: save books and manuscripts to your 'bookshelf' to have them quickly available every time you visit the site.
• Taskbar saves search history and allows you to manage many open books.
• Change and save the interface colour scheme.
• More manuscripts with more metadata.
• A host of other improvements to the interface.

April 2009 - TannerRitchie newsletter

In the April 2009 issue:

1. Call for suggestions
2. Latest publications
3. Latest manuscripts
4. MEMSO 3.0 - new features
5. New places to find TannerRitchie: Blog, RSS feed, Facebook & Twitter
6. Historians who can program: invitation to programmers to try our API.

1. Send us your suggestions for books and manuscripts to publish

TannerRitchie is looking for great new series and collections to publishing during the years 2009-2012, and we need your help!

What series would you like to see added to our collections? What series do you think would be popular with our clients and users? The only requirement for digitising printed books we have is that material is out of copyright, and within a broad definition of British medieval and early modern history. As a rule, books published by HMSO or the government are covered by Crown copyright, which expires 50 years after publication.

Alternatively, let us know of collections of manuscripts in the UK National Archives, or elsewhere in Britain, that would be a useful and popular addition to MEMSO.

Send your suggestions to office at tannerritchie dot c o m.

2. Latest publications

Register of the Privy Council, series 3: remaining volumes are being published this week, completing this huge series on which we began work in 2002!

Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved in the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall: Series completed, and available for only $15 Canadian per volume.

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, volume 1650 (1650-1650)

3. Latest Manuscripts

State Papers, Foreign, for the reign of Elizabeth I (SP 70), completed (over 21,000 images)

State Papers, France (SP 78), 1587-1631 completed (30,000 images)

Already available: State Papers, Foreign, Edward VI (SP 68), State Papers, Foreign, Mary (SP 69), State Papers, Foreign, Spain (SP 94) (total, over 34,000 images).

Collectively, these now form an incredible resource for early modern historians, and one which we intend to develop in new ways to enable increasingly easy access to these manuscripts in the future.

4. MEMSO 3.0

In the next 7 to 10 days we plan to launch version 3.0 of the MEMSO interface, introducing some major usability and speed improvements.

Key new features:

1. Save books and manuscripts you use frequently to your personal bookshelf.
2. Open and browse multiple books and manuscripts at once.

If there are features you'd like added to MEMSO, please let us know.

5. New places to find TannerRitchie: our Blog, RSS feed, Facebook and Twitter

TannerRitchie can now be found in a range of new places on the internet apart from our main website.

1. tannerritchie.blogspot.com: News, new titles and articles about interesting material we find in MEMSO.
2. RSS feeds. Subscribe to updates from the blog, or get instant notification of new titles via our RSS feed at www.tannerritchie.com/newtitlesrss.php
3. Become a fan of TannerRitchie at our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/TannerRitchie-Publishing/48000059684.
4. Follow us on Twitter (we'll follow back) at www.twitter.com/tannerritchie. We publish a daily excerpt from MEMSO that gives an interesting snippet from the past in 140 characters or less.

6. Can you program? MEMSO has an API, would you like to use it?

If you know what an API (Application Programming Interface) is, then chances are that you know a little about programming, and the possibilities that using APIs opens up for reusing data across different websites and applications. We are now working on the first generation of a MEMSO API, which is integral to MEMSO 3.0.

We are interested in speaking to subscribers who would like to be involved in working with MEMSO data. Could you use MEMSO data on your website?

Contact roland at tannerritchie dot c o m to discuss ideas with us.

State Papers, France (TNA SP 78), 1587-1631 completed

We have completed the addition of the current batch of manuscripts from the State Papers, France, held in the National Archives, covering the years 1587-1631. Login to MEMSO to use them. Additional features coming to MEMSO within days should also assist with using the manuscripts to their fullest effect, while we are also going to integrate quite extensive metadata on the series from the National Archives into the resource.