I'm writing a novel and one of the central places it's set in is Krakow in approximately the 1720s. I have quite a bit of source material but there are some questions which I can't seem to find an answer to. Any help would be much appreciated. I can join a cult or sell my soul if you want to.
I seem to remember having read about taverns being placed usually outside the city borders as a feudal leftover. Is that true?
Was there impoverished szlachta (nobility) living inside the city, seeing as it was a regional center and a former capital?
How would the city guards enforce law at night? Was there curfews?
What was a somewhat decent equivalent of about a thousand dollars? I'm assuming 10 zloty/florins, but if you know better feel free to correct me.
What was a common punishment for a thief?
What was the literacy rate? Could an average artisan, like a locksmith or a barber, read? Would his sons be schooled by the church?
Plus if you know any interesting tidbits like local rivalries between communities, strange customs and so on, I'd love to hear about them. You never know what's useful. One scene will take place during a market day so especially anything about that would be great, but if you can answer only one question, even that would be helpful and I'd be immensely grateful.
I'm poor as a church rat and it's a wonder I'm not starving on the street yet so I can't give you gold in return but I promise I'll put your name in the book as long as it's not Thunderdick van Necrophilia (there are different time periods so you don't need to wonder about Haileys or Chads wandering the streets of 18th century Krakow either).
I'm not a native speaker and I'm slightly intoxicated so mandatory apologies for any grammatical errors.
I am a historian of modern Poland, but I try to help out. For many of your questions, it might be a good idea to look into the history of the Jewish population of Kraków (technically Kazimierz). Even though Jews were restricted to this suburb, they were still fixtures in the market square and in the city's trade generally (sparking a good deal of hostility and competition from the city's burghers). Jews also ran many (most?) of the taverns, especially those located on the outskirts of towns/cities. Jews were often the target of thieves and of restrictive decrees, which might provide good fodder for the plot.
If I am not mistaken, thieves were merely jailed for long periods of time, but I may be mistaken.
If you know Polish, look at the relevant sections of Meir Bałaban's Historja Żydów w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu, 1304-1868. It's available from http://www.dbc.wroc.pl .
Hope that helps a little!
This is not my area of expertise precisely, but I strongly recommend you read A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1864 edited by J. K. Fedorowicz et al. Published in 1982, this is one of the few decent English-language works on the subject of daily life and social fabric of early modern Poland. It specifically has a chapter by Maria Bogucka entitled "Polish Towns between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries". This book also cites a great many Polish-language sources that I am not able to access myself, since I cannot speak Polish and I live on a different continent.
I am not able to do your research for you, but early modern Poland is a fascinating place and I wish you the best for your works! If you need full-text sources of anything, PM me and I'll see what I can do.
For additional sources, what languages do you speak? English, Polish, German, Russian? I can only read English myself, but I can ask around and maybe recommend some sources for the sort of things you are looking for.
Finally, please consider PMing /u/Premislaus, who is our resident expert on all things Polish, and might be able to help you more than I can.
I'm going to go dig up some sources and see if I can't answer your questions about urban literacy rates.
Now I'm a Western European medievalist but I'm certain that, for point '1.' in my region and period: taverns were not on the outskirts of towns. It was the opposite. They were at the heart of towns and cities (see a fascinating discussion in Hannah Skoda, Medieval Violence Physical Brutality in Northern France, 1270-1330, Oxford, 2013). Of course, this is not necessarily true for Poland in the eighteenth-century - it is highly likely though considering the socio-economic role of 'pubs' in the Middle Ages.
Also, for concepts of literacy. It might be useful to think about what you mean by the term 'literacy'.