The significance of moles featured in fortune-telling booklets from the 17th to the 19th centuries. They were thought to be signs of character or fate. One over the heart meant wickedness; over the spleen, a passionate nature, and poor health; on the right armpit or ear, wealth and honour, but on the left, the reverse. During the great witchcraft manias of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such birthmarks as moles, as well as warts, were considered "devil's marks" if they did not bleed when pricked. Professional witch finders like the infamous Matthew Hopkins (died 1647) used pricking on suspected witches. Moles, warts, scars, or other birthmarks were pricked with a long pin; if there was no pain or bleeding, the suspect was claimed to be a witch. Special pricking tools like thin daggers were developed, and some enthusiastic witch prickers (who claimed a substantial fee for each convicted witch) even used trick pricking tools with a hollow shaft and retractable blade, to make sure that the suspect would feel no pain and there would be no bleeding.
ON MAGGIE READING "The Political History of the Devil"
General scholarly opinion is that Defoe really did think of the Devil as a participant in world history. He spends some time discussing Milton's Paradise Lost and explaining why he considers it inaccurate. His view is 18th century Presbyterian - he blames the Devil for the Crusades and sees him as close to Europe's Catholic powers.
A new edition of Daniel Defoe's The Political History of the Devil has recently been published, and receives a review in the April 2 issue of the TLS. The book covers not only Satan's involvement in biblical history, but his continuing involvement in the political and religious events of Defoe's own time. For Defoe, the devil is an enlightened character "advanc'd in all kinds of knowledge and arts" and "really very modern," even "the best Gentleman of you all." Sounds like a fine, and quite timely book.
With that last bit of insight, it is more clear why Maggie is so fascinated with the devil, he posesses many of the qualities that her family admires. And that she possesses as well.
To cut one's comb= To take down a person's conceit. In allusion to the practice of cutting the combs of capons.
(A capon is a rooster whose reproductive organs were removed at a young age. Typically, the castration is performed when the chicken is between 6 and 20 weeks old.
The benefits are a non-aggressive male that can serve as a maternal father for baby chicks. They also produce ample, tender meat when butchered and as such are a choice poultry meat in some locales.The caponisation of poultry is banned in the United Kingdom on animal welfare grounds, though the meat itself is not illegal.)
HEYDAY!: "heyday" comes from the old Germanic word "heida," meaning "hurrah!" In 16th century England, "Hey!" or "Heyda!" was a common interjection, a cry of joy or excitement. Later on, "heyda" came to mean a time of celebration, and the "da" was gradually replaced in English by "day," giving us "heyday."
BEDLAM: An english abbreviation of the word BETHLEHEM. A London hospital originally intended for the poor suffering from any ailment and for such as might have no other lodging, hence its name, Bethlehem, in Hebrew, the "house of bread." During the fourteenth century it began to be used partly as an asylum for the insane, for there is a report of a Royal Commission, in 1405, as to the state of lunatics confined there. The word Bethlehem became shortened to Bedlam in popular speech, and the confinement of lunatics there gave rise to the use of this word to mean a house of confusion. Bedlam was founded in 1247 as a priory in Bishopsgate Street, for the order of St. Mary of Bethlehem, by Simon Fitz Mary, an Alderman and Sheriff of London. This site is now occupied by the Liverpool Street railway station. In the next century it is mentioned as a hospital in a license granted (1330) to collect alms in England, Ireland, and Wales. In 1375 Bedlam became a royal hospital, taken by the crown on the pretext that it was an alien priory. It seems afterwards to have reverted to the city. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the word Bedlam was used by Tyndale to mean a madman, so that it would seem as though the hospital were now used as a lunatic asylum exclusively. In January, 1547, King Henry VIII formally granted St. Bartholomew's hospital and Bedlam, or Bethlehem, to the city of London, on condition that the city spend a certain amount on new buildings in connection with St. Bartholomew's. In 1674, the old premises having become untenable, it was decided to build another hospital, and this was erected in what is now Finsbury Circus. This came to be known as old Bedlam, after the erection of a new building in St. George's Fields, which was opened August 1815, on the site of the notorious tavern called the Dog and the Duck.
The attitude of successive generations of Englishmen towards the insane can be traced interestingly at Bedlam. Originally, it was founded and kept by religious. Every effort seems to have been made to bring patients to such a state of mental health as would enable them to leave the asylum. An old English word, "a Bedlam" signifies one discharged and licensed to beg. Such persons wore a tin plate on their arm as a badge and were known as Bedlamers, Bedlamites, or Bedlam Beggars. Whenever outside inspection was not regularly maintained, abuses into the management of Bedlam, and in every century there were several commissions of investigation. Evelyn in his Diary, 21 April 1656, notes that he saw several poor creatures in Bedlam in chains. In the next century it became the custom for the idle classes to visit Bedlam and observe the antics of the insane patients as a novel form of amusement. This was done even by the nobility and their friends. One penny was charged for admission into the hospital, and there is a tradition that an annual income of four hundred pounds was thus realized. This would mean that nearly 100,000 persons visited the hospital in the course of a year. Hogarth's famous picture represents two fashionable ladies visiting the hospital as a show place, while his "Rake," at the end of the "Progress," is being fettered by a keeper. After an investigation in 1851, the hospital came under regular government inspection and has since been noted for its model care of the insane. It accommodates about three hundred, with over sixty attendants. Its convalescent home at Witley is an important feature. The management is so good that each year more than one-half of the patients are returned as cured.
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