Posted by David Owen on December 10, 2014 at 14:15:10 user Gavi_Dai.
I was startled the other day by a line I must have previously read several times. Near the end of SA, when Titty and Roger have found Captain Flint's trunk, the retired pirate says he doesn't want to send anyone to prison. Nancy explodes: "Prison!" said Nancy. "They ought to be hanged in chains at Execution Dock, and rattle their bones in the wind."
Gibbeting, or 'hanging in chains' was a gruesome, barbaric practice that was finally made illegal only in 1834 (Wikipedia has a cogent enough description!) Yet Captain Flint's next line is "They only do that sort of thing to Amazon pirates nowadays." Yes, it was a 'joke', and Execution Dock had been used specifically for pirates and their like. But it referred to something that had stopped a hundred years before. It may still have been part of AR's cultural heritage; but Nancy's?!
I'd be interested to hear of other anachronisms - unless you think this wasn't one?