Day 2 Nottingham, Jackson: History under the surface.

Not to long ago in 893 AD, an explorer named Asser, was writing about a little place called Nottingham in the east Midlands of the UK. The particular word he chose to describe this place was "Tiggua Cobauc". This archaic Welsh phrase translates roughly to "City of caves", and as I and my group learned today it was very aptly named. 

The beginning of our day was not much out of the ordinary, other than we missed our bus, and we where late for our visit to the city of caves exhibit. This forced us rather abruptly to learn the hard lesson that if you want a bus to stop for you, you need to wave at it. Luckily we where able to be flexible and reschedule our tours to 1:50, and 2:50, which gave us two hours to kill. As a recommendation, we where told that we should visit the National Justice Museum right around the corner. 

The National Justice Museum was a repurposed court/prison/execution building that was established in the 1700s. While we where their we got to see reenactments of a hanging, and a court session. Now both of these where very comical reenactments even though the subject matter of these events are morbid. However, the reenactments made two very interesting criticisms of the Georgian eras (1730s-1840s) version of justice. For instance at the hanging reenactment the executioner made many jokes with the audience about the idea of an execution being a spectacle to eat popcorn at rather than a horrible event. However, the justification for enjoying the hanging of this person is that it is a horrible person that deserves to be hanged. However right before he is hanged, a judge comes out and produces a paper that is a kings pardon. In response the crowd boos and fusses like a baby who has lost its iPad privilege's. What is interesting here is even though this person is no longer guilty in the sense that he was before, the crowd is still more excited for the spectacle of the hanging itself, rather than seeing justice being done. This is a common theme in Georgian times where the suffering of a fellow man can be sold as a commercial item for everyone's viewing pleasure whether it can be justified or not. For instance if you pay the executioner a few pennies, you might even be able to grab onto the legs of the victim and hear a satisfying pop!

A criticism the court reenactment pointed out was the perversion of justice in order to forward politically correct speech. For instance at the time of the French revolution the Jacobite's in England where big supporters of democracy, and the government was rightfully concerned about the possibility of events occurring in France happening in England. So anyone who portrayed themselves to be a Jacobite was received very poorly by the law, even though it was legal to hold such a view. The specific court scene we witnessed was a retelling of a story where a Jacobite and two of his friends where assaulted by anti-Jacobite people. The man we saw in court was the only survivor of this attack. However, even though this attack would be an instant jail sentence today, the men each received a fine of what amounts to todays money as 5 pounds as their only punishment. This court case showed a little peek into what it meant for the average person of the Georgian era to be faced with a corrupt court system, and the absolute powerlessness associated with it.

Now at this time we entered the prisons, which in turn leads us deep below the surface of the earth. The national justice museum prison has four floors of prisoner accommodations. In the name of efficiency it was built with a court, prison, and gallows'. On the upper levels of the prison there is still sun light and wind. But on the lowest levels there is one dudgeon called the forgotten because it is where they put people they want to forget about. Finally the reason there is so much underground infrastructure was because the sandstone under the prison, and the rest of Nottingham is extremely easy to chisel away, but simultaneously very structurally sound. However we cannot fully appreciate this unique cave system idea until we learn about the city of caves. 

After the national justice museum, we entered the caves with our tour guide. He told us that a long time ago the easiest method for owning a sizable amount of property was to buy a small house, and build out a cave underneath. A lot of the caves we went through where old cellars and store rooms. Our guide told us that many of the pubs that the cellars where connected to where locations where criminals would commonly meet. Interestingly to make sure they where not caught, they would have an alarm system in the form of a child sitting on the surface looking for trouble, and upon seeing it they would drop a handful of pebbles through a small hole carved for that purpose. Throughout the rest of the cave he lead us through how the purpose of these caves have shifted over time, from homes, to cellars, to Hyde tanning rooms, to world war II bunkers. But in the end we had learned a very important piece of Nottingham's history. Mainly that while Nottingham, and England as a whole have a rich history on the front end, it also has many layers that go far below the surface.