Crichton’s movie was based upon his book, which is excellent, albeit more fictional than historical, as to the specifics of the case.
The movie relegates to a few seconds of film interesting stories that Crichton dug up about the period:
The cheapest sleep in London were “penny hangs” where men would sleep more-or-less standing up, their upper-body weight hanging on ropes stretched across the room like clotheslines. It required the “guest” to be dead drunk to sleep, of course, which they all were. You could spend your last pennies on a few more beers rather than a real room that way.
It went on at greater length about the same topic Neal Stephenson spent pages on in his Baroque Cycle books: that there was no greater public entertainment in London than a hanging, and people would walk hours in from the countryside to see one, after some time spent mocking and jeering at the person about to die.
And Sean Connery is shown taking tea with a bank officer’s family in their yard, enjoying their “ruin”. At the time, fashionable Londoners would have a ruined bridge or building painstakingly constructed in their back yard, as a conversation piece.
Anyway, loved the book, much enhances the movie, do dig up both.
