Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [157]
And if gentlemen still rubbed elbows with workingmen at cockfights, horse races, and the theater, the widening cultural distance between them was readily apparent now in the contrast between the fancy wig-and-powder fashions of the upper classes and the practical costumes of ordinary craftsmen or the hand-me-down garb of the poor. Nowhere, indeed, did the splendor of a refined gentleman in full regalia shine more brilliantly than in the light of advertisements for runaway servants during the 1750s. These often noted in detail what New York’s poorest inhabitants wore from one day to the next: “a coarse Linnen Jacket”—“a Half worn blue Broadcloth Coat”—“half worn Shoes, with plain Brass Buckles in them”—“homespun Cloth Colour’d Jacket”—“blue Plush Breeches pieced behind with Buck-Skin, an old Felt Hat, blue Stockings, old ribbed leggings over them”—“old Leather Breeches patched before, a half worn Wool Hat, coarse light coloured ribbed Stockings, old Shoes”—“blue homespun coat and jacket, greasy leather breeches, old grey stockings.”
Plebeians as well as patricians remarked on the new, increasingly visible distances between the classes. Some working people began to use terms like “silk-stocking” or “big-wig” as an epithet. In 1761 a certain “Sally Tippet” wrote sarcastically that many women still adhered to “home-bred fashions and complements,” adding that “I believe the one-half have neither milliners, dolls, dressing-maids, dancing-masters, nor indeed pier-glasses.”
Silver beaker, engraved by Joseph Leddel of New York in 1760 with scenes of the devil leading the Pope and Pretender into the mouth of Hell. The full inscription reads: “Three mortal enemies Remember. The Devil Pope and the Pretender./ Most wicked damnable and evil. The Pope Pretender and the Devil./ I wish they were all hang’d in a rope. The Pretender Devil and the Pope.” These figures were no doubt very similar to the effigies carried in the city’s annual Pope Day celebrations. (© Museum of the City of New York)
This same trend can be traced in the emergence of Pope Day as a distinctively popular festival. The fifth of November, nominally a patriotic holiday commemorating the failed plot of Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament, had had a kind of semiofficial standing in New York since the British conquest. It was an opportunity for the governor to make a speech, for gentlemen to toast the health of the monarch, for the artillerymen of the garrison to fire their cannon, for right-thinking inhabitants to illuminate their houses with candles in every window. Beginning in the later 1740s, however, the city’s working people appropriated the day’s festivities for their own purposes. Speeches by persons in authority gave way to raucous, torch-lit parades by tradesmen, sailors, apprentices, laborers, boys, and slaves that culminated with the marchers throwing effigies of the pope, the Pretender, and the devil into a roaring bonfire.
13
Crises
In September 1760 His Majesty’s troops captured Montreal, completing the conquest of French Canada. The focus of the war now shifted from the North American mainland to the Caribbean, where British forces were preparing to assault France’s island possessions. When the Spanish government appeared ready to assist France, Britain declared war on Spain as well. For New York, this turn of events proved disastrous.
Once-lucrative war contracts evaporated almost immediately, and in May 1761 the East River shipyards