I was imagining a bunch of medieval peasants standing in line to see an execution, but then I started wondering how old the phenomenon of waiting in a queue for something was.
Wikipedia tells me, "The first written description of people standing in line is found in an 1837 book, The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle.[5] Carlyle described what he thought was a strange sight: people standing in an orderly line to buy bread from bakers around Paris.[5]"
Is that remotely true? Do we have accounts from Ancient Rome of people waiting in line to get into the Coliseum, or people in Jerusalem standing in line to enter one cathedral or another, or are queues/lines a modern concept? If so, why are they such a new innovation? Did people before then just sort of congregate in large crowds and slowly shove their way someplace?
Thanks!
I can't speak to any possible earlier examples, but we can say that queues were already centuries old by the time of Carlyle's experience. We can, of course, blame the British! The bylaws of King's Lynn mandated a first-come, first-served policy for all who came to fill their vessels at the conduit, regardless of their social class, and anyone cutting in at the head of the line got fined. (Showing that the British hate of queue-jumpers is centuries old!) Roberta Magnusson cites two different dates for the bylaws but doesn't specify which bits were promulgated when - we just know that these stipulations derive from the bylaws of December 17, 1390, and May 1426.
There's also this print called 'Tittle Tattle', visible here via the British Museum. Note the circular structure in the center, with 'At the conditte' written just under its roof. Note the women gossiping while they wait, and a dust-up occurring on the right side of the conduit.
The queues in this case are a consequence of the standard design of the British conduit. This reproduction of the Campo Fountain in Siena shows the standard Continenal design - note the open basin, letting many people dip their vessels in at the same time. British fountains preferred a closed cistern surrounded by outlets, and thus to fill your vessel, you'd hold it under one of these outlets. As you can imagine, this limits the number of people who can draw water simultaneously. (You can just about make them out in the Tittle Tattle print - the conduit in that case has the outlets decorated with faces. Look to the women filling their buckets on either side of the conduit.)
I shall leave you with the little verse that accompanies Tittle Tattle:
At the conduit striving for their turn
The quarrel it grows great,
That up in arms they are at last,
And one another beat.
