I believe the title page above (click on image for full size) is, in fact, from the very first printing of Nell. Prior to finding this edition, my earliest edition was printed that same year, but with a soft cover. There are some very minor differences:
1. Title page on hard cover edition has some lines printed in red ink. Soft cover is B&W.
2. Hard cover edition is missing the very last page #326
Fortunately, that missing page is identical to page #326 in the soft cover edition, so nothing really lost there. But then there are some major differences....
Before I get to the major differences, let me summarize where we currently stand. We have three different versions of Nell in Bridewell and three different versions of Lenchen im Zuchthause. Only thing consistent is: they are all different!
In a future post, I'll talk about the recently discovered 1895 edition of Lenchen im Zuchthause. On this one, I could really use some help from someone knowledgeable about old German and old German fonts. This thing was printed in a long obsolete font, that just chokes up OCR engines.
Anyhow, back to Nell and the major differences. First off, this hard cover edition includes the following page (again click for full size):
As you can see, it claims to be the first ever edition of Nell in English, with only 500 copies and this book was number: 444
Do we believe what it says? I think we can; it certainly sounds plausible.
Now for the other major difference and this is big. Included in this hard cover edition is the following Foreword written by Charles Carrington:
THE BOOK AND THE AUTHOR
The
present work, now placed before the English Reader in his own language for the
first time, is a literal translation of “Lenchen im Zuchthause,” which
was published originally in
Although
the glamour of romance has been thrown around the details recorded, it must be
borne in mind that the work is founded upon a strictly historical basis; in
fact the intense truthfulness of the book in its revelations of female prison
life in Southern Germany created so great a sensation that the Authorities, at
that period, took speedy steps to suppress it. Forty years later the book was
again published in
Of
the Author we have been able to obtain little information. M. Bielefeld,
however, has written us that he was a Municipal Councillor of
This
work is not immoral, or obscene, but breathes a strong pious spirit, and is
evidently, if not written by a woman, due at least to the inspiration of one.
The facts related are eminently vraisemblable. (French for plausible)
Flagellation
was a common punishment in ancient times and may be traced through the annals
of the Middle Ages almost down to the times in the memory of men still living.
If today public opinion deems the use of the rod or whip on woman unadvisable,
on the grounds of this form of punishment having an injurious moral effect, it
must not be forgotten that female flogging was practiced in all the prisons in
the United Kingdom until recently, to say nothing of public whippings at the
cart's-tail.
Many
people strongly oppose the whipping of women for physiological reasons, the
tissues of the body of a female being more vascular than those of a male, and
consequently, more liable to be permanently injured by the lash or rod, but on
the other hand it must not be forgotten that there are a large number of people
who strongly maintain that the lash is the only efficient punishment, as well
as the most appropriate, and that with some natures the fear of a hearty
thrashing of this kind is more likely to deter them from crime than anything
else.
Immoral
women were formerly whipped at the corner of the streets. Women and girls of
less bad character were whipped in houses of correction or prisons, mostly on
the lower part of the body, while in the galleys, the culprits, naked to the
loins, were frightfully flagellated with rods.
The
public whipping of women in
Magistrates
of burghs and county justices took a great deal upon them when sitting in
judgment. A worthy Scottish magistrate, of whom we have read, prescribed the
tawse for all juvenile offences, and without any very formal trial or reading
of evidence, ordered disorderly lads or lasses to be summarily corrected after the
domestic fashion of the time. This gentleman was not particular as to the
age of the culprits. On one occasion, a young woman whom he had ordered to be
flogged tried to get off on the plea of being married. “Married! are ye
married?” exclaimed the bailie. “Yes, sir,” said the woman. “Then it's the mair
a shame that ye're here this day; skelp her weel, skelp her weel,” added his
honour to the gaoler.
Personally,
we are no advocates of cruelty; there is already sufficient pain and suffering
in the world, but at the same time, we should remember that there is quite a
large class of criminals who can be reached in no other way than by threats of
the cat.
Mr.
Justice Bingham, at the Leeds Assizes, in March of the present year, sentenced
three young men to nine months imprisonment and each to receive forty lashes of
the cat, for assaulting a
We
consider this punishment perfectly just and proportionate to the offence.
Highway cut-throats, who throw snuff in the eyes of innocent passers, and not
content with their devilish performance get them on the ground and amuse
themselves with kicking their head, with the chance of maiming them for life,
deserve to be speedily made acquainted with the moral curative powers of
flagellation. Those who think otherwise we would recommend to get themselves
treated in the same way as the commercial traveller, and we will then consider
their theories and protestations about the inhumanity of this form of
punishment.
CHARLES
CARRINGTON
This was my first time reading Carrington’s Foreword, and it turned out to be quite interesting. He obviously had several motives—mostly political—probably to keep his book from being banned. While I found that mildly amusing, it seemed like the logical approach for anyone in his position given the past history of this story. What truly drew my attention was his discussion of the book’s origins, especially his reference to the censorship it endured.
Once again, the date of 1840 is given as the book’s publication year, even though Carrington himself admits the publisher has no records to support it. He further describes how forty years later, it was published again "in a more curtailed form" (in an obvious attempt to get passed censors). He claims this effort failed, once again!
The real question for me—and the one Carrington leaves unanswered—is which iteration of Lenchen served as the source for Nell. Other books published in the early 1900s note that the original version of Lenchen was no longer available. That’s hardly surprising: by then, most of the original purchasers would have been long dead—sixty years had passed since the book first appeared and the authorities had spent decades seizing and destroying copies.
Possibly there will be some answers provided by the 1895 edition, but more analysis is required. What I really want is an 1840 version of Lenchen.
Unfortunately, even if I had one, I’d still run into two major problems.
1. Old German is incredibly hard to translate—and even then, it’s tough to make sense of.
2. Font used in 1895 is impossible, I can only imagine a font from 1840
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