Hooded cloaks or any kind of disguise or "false face" were prohibited in the middle ages. Today's fear of "hoodies", it turns out, is nothing new. Gangs such as the Scowrers, the Hectors and the Mohocks regularly abused pedestrians, knifing them in the face or standing women on their heads and "misusing them in a barbarous manner". There was gratuitous and unprovoked violence and plenty of vandalism (one great wheeze was to hang a dead cat on someone's front door). The hours of darkness belonged to bullies, bawds, pimps, rakes, fops and the occasional fribble. Murderers and thieves exploited night's advantages. However, the greatest hazard at night was not running into Beelzebub but, as Thomas Hobbes complained, "being knockt on the head for five or ten pounds". The night always offered greater opportunities for sexual misconduct, from adultery and prostitution to the wickedness of "self-pollution". They indulged in occult rituals or congregated to worship God in the nude. People scavenged for food or fuel, pilfered livestock, poached, smuggled and robbed graves. Fugitives fearful of arrest travelled freely, tenants slipped away without paying the rent, unmarried mothers abandoned their newborns, and homosexuals visited "molly-houses" or solicited in public gardens. In the dark one could evade the vigilance of church and state. This "nocturnal licence" encouraged an entire night culture very different from daily life. Under cover of darkness adolescents, servants and the poor escaped from the prying eyes of their parents, masters, owners or employers, and they made the most of it. As one French adage put it: "The good people love the day and the bad the night." In fact, as A Roger Ekirch reveals in this wise and compendious history of nighttime during the early modern era (c1500-1750), the reason why the night had such a bad reputation was because it undermined the social order that prevailed during the day. Honest people were too exhausted from working all day to wander abroad at night. "Nightwalkers" were obviously up to no good. They were thought to be responsible for deaths, broken legs, withered arms and even "bewitched genitals". An imp, perhaps, or a hobgoblin, a will-o'-the-wisp, a sprite, a pixie, a dobby, a kelpie, an elf, a troll, a boggle, a boggart or a waft. If you didn't bump into Old Nick himself on your travels, you were sure to encounter one of his minions. Night was demonised in the middle ages as Satan's playtime.
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