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The Virginia Gazette Foreign News May 4, 1739
Richmond, Richmond, Virginia
What is this article about?
At a London masquerade a richly dressed 'Knight of the Ear' wearing a blood-tipped star with the word JENKINS and a halter burlesqued the Spanish treatment of English sailors, while mock sailors bore bloody ears and mottoes such as 'Ear for Ear' and 'No Search, or no Trade'.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 99.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 0.0% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 96.85% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 99.81% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 96.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 95.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
Feb. 8. This Evening was a splendid Appearance at the Masquerade; where, among many humourous and whimsical Characters, what seem'd most to engage the Attention of the Company, was a Spaniard, very richly dressed, who called himself Knight of the Ear; as a Badge of which Order he wore on his Breast the Form of a Star, whose Points seem'd ting'd with Blood, on which was painted an Ear, and round it, written in Capital Letters, the Word JENKINS, and across his Shoulder hung, instead of a Ribband, a large Halter, which he held up to several Persons disguised like English Sailors, who seem'd to pay him great Reverence; and, falling on their Knees before him, with many Tokens of Fear and Submission, suffer'd him very tamely to rummage their Pockets, which when he had done, he very insolently dismiss'd them with Strokes of his Halter: Several of the Sailors had a bloody Ear hanging down from their Heads, and on their Hats these Words, Ear for Ear; while on the Hats of others was written, No Search, or no Trade; with the like Sentences.
What sub-type of article is it?
Political
Social Customs
Cultural Event
What keywords are associated?
Knight Of The Ear
Jenkins Ear Masquerade
No Search No Trade
Where did it happen?
London
Foreign News Details
Primary Location
London
Event Date
Feb. 8