Electrickery

I’m strangely fascinated by pseudoscience. Homeopathy, Young Earth Creationism, Scientology, all utter bollocks and yet I love hearing about them. I don’t know why. I frankly have nothing but contempt for all pseudoscience, particularly where it crosses into the realm of medicine.

Pseudoscience relies on ignorance to work its magic. You don’t understand quantum physics, do you? So when we tell you that this pendant will use quantum energy transference to resonate with your cellular integral field to reduce your risk of cancer, arthritis and diabetes, promoting weight loss, immunity to disease and essential wellbeing, you won’t know any better. You can’t say it won’t do that, so just run with this here. Only two hundred pounds to you, sir. A bargain if ever there was one.

Oftentimes, pseudoscientists work to actively promote ignorance – maybe those hoity-toity “legitimate scientists” claim to be able to understand quantum resonance, but why should you believe them? You can’t even understand what they’re talking about!

In the case of medical pseudoscience, or “quackery” as it’s more commonly known, I have particular contempt due to the emotional manipulation involved. Sure, quacks sound sympathetic, but that’s because they tell you what you want to hear. Doctors tell you cancer has no cure? Well, that just shows how callous they are, because I can cure it with simple-feng-shui-ley-line-type crap. There appears to be a concentration of toxins in your breasts, let me lay my hands on them. Even when quacks aren’t taking advantage of the desperate and incurable, they’re still emotionally manipulative. Diet and exercise are hard, wouldn’t it be far easier if you just used acupuncture to somehow, against all laws of physics, cause the fat to disappear? The worst aspect of all this is that people often reject conventional medicine in order to spend a fortune on the modern-day equivalent of a bottle of snake oil, endangering their chances of recovery and often their lives.

As quackery relies so heavily on people’s lack of scientific knowledge, it often employs whatever the latest weird and exotic science is to make suckers sit up and take notice. Potential patients may have heard of this new “magnetism,” “radiation” or whatever, but aren’t so likely to know the full range and scope of its abilities. Particularly given that many of these substances are used in legitimate medicine – radiotherapy, for instance.

For an awfully long time, the big thing was electricity. Luigi Galvani discovered in 1786 that passing electricity through a dissected frog’s leg would cause it to kick. This seemingly confirmed a popular misconception that electricity was a vital force.

Not that the quacks had been waiting for scientific confirmation, of course. James Graham (pictured below), for instance, had been convinced ever since seeing a demonstration by Benjamin Franklin in the early 1770s that electricity was worth paying attention to. He proclaimed it to be a force that “invigorates the whole body and remedies all physical defects.”

In 1779, he came to London and opened the Temple of Health and Hymen just off the Strand, at No. 4 Royal Terrace. This was showmanship of which P. T. Barnum would have been proud. No expense was spared. The place was filled with huge, exotic-looking machinery that promised to use electricity to blast “aetherial forces, vivifying air, and the magnetic effluvium into the whole body or any particular part of it.” Various other electrical and chemical treatments were available, including an electric bath and an electric throne.  Don’t try this at home, kids. If you fancied a takeaway, you could purchase Graham’s range of “Imperial Pills” and “Aetherial Balsams.”

If you were having a little trouble in the bedroom (cough), then you might consider a session on Graham’s notorious “Celestial Bed.” This was a large and magnetically-charged bed which vibrated, played music and released fragrances that were supposedly “aetherial” in nature (but frankly, what in the Temple wasn’t?). The unhappy couple would hand over a whopping fee of £50 and spend the night therein in the hope of relieving infertility. I suspect that any successes arising were purely coincidental.

Graham’s particular interest was matters of a sexual nature, and it certainly didn’t escape his notice that sex was a pretty good selling point. To that end, some of the most popular attractions in the Temple were the Goddesses of Health, delightful young ladies whose job was to assist Graham and to depict what physical perfection should look like. In the name of science, of course. Scantily-clad science. Rumour has it that one of the Goddesses, depicted right, would later marry into wealth, becoming Lady Emma Hamilton and later still Lord Nelson’s mistress.

The temple was, initially at least, a roaring success – so much so that within a couple of years, Graham was able to up sticks and move to fashionable Pall Mall. Alas, while Graham was a persuasive quack, he wasn’t so strong on the financial side of things, and his extravagance resulted just two years later in his having to sell up entirely.

He never quite managed to replicate the Temple’s success, and spent the rest of his days promoting ever more bizarre alternative medicines, such as being buried naked in mud and not eating for weeks at a time. He died in 1794 at the age of just forty-nine, which says a lot about the efficacy of his methods.

Fortunately, such quack electrical nonsense didn’t last long, because – oh wait, no, the belief in electricity’s mystical health-giving properties lasted until at least 1951, when the Food and Drug Administration in the USA banned the sale of electrical remedies. Hell, there are probably people even today who think you can cure impotence by electrocuting your gentleman’s prerequisites. There’s a sucker born every minute.

The marriage of heron and hell

I often think the success of a party can be judged by the voyage home. If it was a lame party, the voyage home will be undertaken in a state of sobriety on the Tube. If it was a good party, the voyage home will be undertaken while in a total mess and may well involve a degree of unrelenting horror. Possibly the following morning.

So it was on New Year’s Eve. The party was held in rural Oxfordshire (somewhere called “Bicester” or possibly “Bister”), which for some reason is not served by night buses. Therefore, I had to crash and make my way home the following morning. You get some pretty funny looks when you’re making your way home in a tailcoat, a silver waistcoat and a scarlet top hat, I can tell you.

The train came in at Marylebone, and the quickest route home would have been to simply jump on the Bakerloo line and change at Elephant and Castle, but I felt like a bit of a stroll – I thought I’d walk to Euston, shooting up Baker Street and swinging through Regent’s Park as I went.

This is perhaps not the park at its best.

Regent’s Park is perhaps my favourite of the London parks (though Hyde Park takes some beating). Particularly in the summer, it’s a delightful place to walk when you have nothing particular to do, and it’s easy to get to from Chalk Farm, Camden or the West End. The park was originally land swiped by Henry VIII and used for hunting. In 1818, the Prince Regent (later King George IV) took it over and envisioned it as a rather extravagant town home for himself and his friends, commissioning his friend, the now-legendary architect John Nash, to design the whole shebang. Nash is worthy of an entry in himself, so I won’t go into too much detail beyond saying that he defined the Regency style of architecture more-or-less singlehandedly. His grand plans for the area included a palace and several large villas, but were scaled back into the park we see today. It was, for the time, extremely innovative – the standard concept of the urban park, such as it was then, consisted of rigid, regimented grids. An up-yours to nature. Nash’s concept was the first real attempt to recreate an area of natural beauty within the city, and as such set a trend for urban parkland that would last right up until the present day.

Although the park was open to the public, it was on the basis of an admission fee – well, after you’d spent all that money, you didn’t want just anyone coming in. The fee was abolished in 1835, though the park was still only open two days a week.

Fortunately, we live in more enlightened times (perhaps) and now it’s open to the public all the time. Despite this, on that New Year’s morning there were few people about. The lake was frozen over, which had I known about it at the time might have reminded me of the occasion on 15th January 1867 when the ice on the lake collapsed under the weight of skaters. The Royal Humane Society had stationed icemen nearby, equipped with hooks, ladders and hot baths, but with two hundred in the lake they were utterly overwhelmed. Local boatbuilder William Archer managed to save seven in his boat and Abel Thomas swam out and rescued two (a third attempt being foiled by the intense cold). The master of the Marylebone Workhouse, George Douglas, played a key role in organising the medical care for the victims. Despite these and countless other unacknowledged efforts, forty were killed in the disaster.

Seven years later, the park would bear witness to another disaster, though fortunately with far smaller loss of life.

Following the 1867 disaster, the water level of the lake was reduced somewhat. This might be what made it so very attractive to herons. Herons, specifically grey herons, can be seen all over the place in London, helped in no small part by the number of little rivers, canals, docklands and ponds. They hunt in shallow water, standing motionless, sometimes for hours, before striking. One thing you can’t really say about them, though, is that they’re particularly social birds. It’s quite rare to see more than one at a time. Now, in the above photo, you can see seven. That wasn’t even all of them. There were ridiculous numbers of herons in this place. A little bit freaky, actually. I don’t know if herons are capable of cooperating to, say, bring a human down, but I wasn’t too keen to find out, and left mystified.

I found the answer on my trip to the Greenwich Peninsula a little while ago – it turns out that Regent’s Park is the only breeding colony in London for the grey heron. So all those herons I’ve seen, in Brentford, Merton, Whitton, Hackney, Kingston and so many other places, all came from the same place. Incredible.

No word on whether they can bring a grown man down, though.

He went to a land down under

I was reminded (that is to say, informed) by an Antipodean colleague that today is Australia Day. To commemorate the occasion, I feel I should talk for a moment about a gentleman by the name of Arthur Phillip.

Phillip was a naval officer, born in the glamorous suburb of Fulham. He’s not particularly well-known in Britain, but it’s thanks to him that Sydney even exists.

"Bugger."

First, a little background on Sydney. When Britain claimed Australia, narrowly beating the French, they weren’t entirely sure what do with it. There were vague notions of growing timber or ropemaking, but all this was largely speculation at the time. To Captain Cook’s crew, when they first came upon the continent in 1770, there were few points of comparison with Britain. The plants, the animals, the climate and the people were all radically different to those found in Georgian England. No further expeditions were made to the continent until 1787, when the First Fleet set out to colonise the place. Yes, that’s right, none of those first colonists had a damn clue what they were setting out to do.

As is now well known, the British government did find a use for the continent, namely as a prison. Crime in Britain was rampant, with the Napoleonic wars and the Industrial Revolution bringing social unrest. In overcrowded London, even hanging was little deterrent. Prisons were packed out, miserable and disease-ridden. Policing was undertaken by an inadequate force of Bow Street Runners and the criminal gangs themselves, giving rise to widespread corruption. In 1776, Britain had lost its American colonies, their favoured dumping ground for convicts. 

The situation was little helped by the belief in a “criminal class,” namely the idea that certain people were inherently troublesome and there was no point trying to reform them. This theory had the happy consequence for its adherents that they didn’t have to understand or sympathise with the poor because, morally speaking, there was no point – the good ones were good, the bad ‘uns were bad.

So Australia seemed like a great idea. I mean, what better way to deal with the unrehabilitable than to pack them off literally as far as possible? The practicalities of how they should live when they got there were a secondary concern. If you cannot do the time, sir, you should not do the crime.

This is where Arthur Phillip comes in. Now, Phillip was a competent naval officer. Nothing special. No kind of hero. Had things worked out a little differently, he’d no doubt have continued in his post, leading an uneventful life before retiring to Hampshire. However, he had two useful points. Firstly, he had experience of handling convicts back in Portugal. And secondly, he owned a farm in Lyndhurst. This, to the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney, made him just the man to lead the First Fleet.

As it happened, Sydney was right. Phillip, unusually among colonial leaders, was a practical man, not after wealth or glory. He took his new post very seriously, intending that Sydney Harbour should not simply be some kind of human landfill, but a self-sustaining colony. To that end, he took a great deal of interest in the composition of his First Fleet. He carefully considered the question of what they would need, and who they would need, demanding convicts with experience in agriculture. He didn’t get them – remember that the government’s aim was just to get rid of the scum, anything thereafter was out of their hands.

Nevertheless, he made the best of a bad situation. If he believed in the concept of a criminal class, he certainly didn’t act like it. Prisoners who behaved well were given positions of authority and the privileges that went with it. Life was not easy, food shortages and sickness being commonplace in this new land. Even Phillip’s own officers weren’t always on his side, feeling resentful at, as they saw it, being effectively prisoners themselves. Many had served in America, and felt that this was their punishment. Nevertheless, as we now know, Phillip steered the colony through those difficult early years, and came out triumphant.

One point that I find rather interesting is his treatment of the natives. I’ve written about the First Anglo-Powhatan War in these pages before, which was what occurred in America when the British colonists at Jamestown decided to “negotiate” with the Powhatan tribe nearby – namely, a bloody, futile and wholly unnecessary conflict lasting for years. Phillip was rather saner about the whole thing. He knew they were a small group in an unfamiliar land, heavily outnumbered by the Iora tribe around them, and so endeavoured to reach a peaceful coexistence with them. Killing an Aborigine was a capital offence under his regime, a source of resentment among convicts and officers alike. Perhaps no incident better illustrates Phillip’s diplomacy than one in which, due to a misunderstanding, he was speared through the shoulder by a tribesman. Standard British colonial policy was to basically go out and kill a few blacks  for that sort of thing, but Phillip – despite the severity of the injury, ordered that no action be taken.

Phillip remained in charge of the colony until 1792, when he returned to England. He died in 1814, after falling out of a wheelchair and from there out of a window. I suppose when you’ve basically founded a colony under dreadful conditions, you’ve got to top it off with a remarkable death.

Oh yes it is

Pantomime is one of those British Christmas institutions as traditional as mince pies and the Doctor Who special (incidentally, did you see it yesterday? So good). It’s one of those things that’s a little bit difficult to explain to someone unfamiliar with the concept – it’s a play usually based on a fairy tale, but there are jokes and songs and you usually have a famous man dressed as a woman or a famous woman dressed as a man and at some point everyone is contractually obliged to shout “Oh no it isn’t!” followed by “Oh yes it is!” The whole thing should be very camp and self-aware and strive to avoid major innovation. Basically, it’s pretty much the opposite of conventional theatre. As I sit here with my Boxing Day breakfast (two slices of stollen, a Stilton sandwich, coffee festived-up with brandy butter), it might be nice to look into the history of this weird art.

And no, he wasn't short of work when he did this.

Although it’s come to be known as a peculiarly British phenomenon, the origins of pantomime go back to the ancient Greeks, who regarded it as something to keep the plebs happy. Lots of singing, dancing and vulgar humour, but Serious Dramatists considered it utterly beneath their contempt.

Similar forms of entertainment survived into Britain in the eighteenth century, which is when the story of modern pantomime really begins. To understand this early-modern panto, you have to understand a bit about theatre of that era.

You’d have more than one show on the bill. There would be a formal play (or ballet, or opera), what you or I would normally think of when we go to the theatre. But there would also be something more populist beforehand as a warm-up act, something with lots of jokes and songs to grab the audience’s attention and get them on the performers’ side. Audiences in those days would openly and loudly talk during the show, the wealthy would parade around, orange peel would be thrown, people would come and go as they pleased and it was not unknown for the performers to be heckled so much that they would change the bill right there and then. The opener was, yes, a pantomime.

Pantomimes were deliberately formulaic. They had to be instantly understandable to everyone. No matter what the story, they featured a stock set of characters and devices and – this was significant – no dialogue. Licensing laws were strict. Pantomime performers were not regarded as true actors and so, by that rather snobbish logic, could not be licensed to perform spoken drama. There were various cheats – you couldn’t speak, but you could sing, you could write on a big board, you could rhyme. And nobody paid much attention to a couple of words here and there. But really, it was down to instantly recognisable conventions and physical performers to carry the thing.

Mr Joseph Grimaldi

The inventor of the modern pantomime is often regarded as the legendary clown, Joseph Grimaldi, seen right. He was undoubtedly the first modern clown, and really deserves an entry in his own right. His father (of the same name) was also a brilliant clown, part-time dentist and utter bastard. Young Joey was raised by a father who was physically and emotionally abusive to the point of psychosis (for instance, Grimaldi pere once faked his own death just to see if his sons really loved him). Grimaldi Junior was plagued by depression and insecurity throughout his life – he would often joke that “I make you laugh at night, but I am grim-all-day.” He invented modern clown makeup, and it’s psychologically interesting that a man so uncomfortable with himself should transform himself so completely for the stage. In comedy, he found a means of feeding his insatiable need for affection, and so it’s no surprise that he became a popular and beloved performer.

His first great pantomime triumph was Mother Goose in 1806. To call him the “inventor” of modern pantomime is to unfairly deprive everyone else of well-deserved credit. It was actually created as a last-minute thing. Thomas Dibden was the usual author of Christmas pantomimes for Covent Garden Theatre, but that year, nobody had thought to approach him. It was only a few short weeks before curtain-up that the theatre’s management asked him, “So, how’s this year’s panto coming along?” Panicked, Dibden wrote a low-tech panto requiring no elaborate special effects or routines, tailored for a short rehearsal period.

The resulting show was far better than anyone could have hoped – helped by a clever script and Grimaldi’s naturalistic physical comedy. It was wildly popular, running right until the following Christmas. And so it became the standard model for the pantomimes that followed.

Quite apart from the actual merits of the show, pantomime became a far less restricted form of performance than conventional theatre. Being regarded as low art, the censors didn’t pay much attention. Satire and sexual innuendo were standard, the latter generally coming from the panto dame. The dame, being a man in drag, could get away with lewdness that an actual woman couldn’t. Similarly, the convention of having the principal boy played by a woman was largely so that you could legitimately have a woman showing her legs off.

Other traditions were added and removed over the years. The characters became less rigidly “stock” as the ban on spoken pantomime was abandoned, though the principal boy and the dame remained. The panto horse, two actors in a silly animal costume, became another standard element. The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, pioneered the use of celebrities as a draw in the late 19th century.

These days, it’s regarded as something for the kids – innuendo is still an element, of course, but it goes straight over the children’s heads. If it doesn’t, well, they’re already corrupted anyway.

It’s also regarded as a means for keeping B-list celebs in the limelight, though lately a lot of really quite legit celebrities have been trying their hand, partly I suspect because it’s fun. The picture above is from the Wimbledon pantomime last year, which boasted Pamela Anderson, Paul O’Grady, Ruby Wax and BRIAN BLESSED! in its cast. Sir Ian McKellen enjoys a good panto, as seen up top there, and BRIAN BLESSED! and Christopher Biggins are well-known for hamming it up on an annual basis.

The big ones in London these days are Wimbledon and Hackney. Wimbledon tends to do the big star-studded shows, while Hackney aims for something resolutely traditional but critically acclaimed. However, most reasonably-sized theatres outside the West End will put a show on, and they do tend to do pretty well. The glory days of pantomime are certainly not… wait for it… behind us!

No? Oh, please yourselves. Merry Christmas, chums.

Snuff and nonsense

I see Terry Pratchett is working on a book by the title of Snuff. He says this title will play on the fact that the word “snuff” has more than one meaning (I can think of three). I’m guessing the scenario will be something along the lines of “snuff becomes popular in Ankh-Morpork and there’s a murder, also some candles need putting out fast.”

Snuff, perhaps sadly (perhaps not, depending who you are) is a habit that’s virtually dead in this country. Despite the fact that smoking is becoming less and less legal, there’s no sign of any major resurgence, either. Snuff, if you aren’t familiar with it, is powdered tobacco taken nasally. It’s normally taken either in the form of a pinch between the forefinger and thumb, sniffed from there, or snorted off the back of the hand. Particularly enthusiastic snuffers may choose to snort a line of the length of their forearm. It commonly induces sneezing, but I’m informed this is more common among beginners.

Enthusiasts of the brown stuff point out that it’s probably safer than smoking, and the British Medical Journal notes that it doesn’t involve taking carbon monoxide and tar into your lungs – they note that there may possibly be a risk of nasopharyngeal cancer. I’m going to put in the fact that nicotine – the most addictive substance on the market – is still a thing with snuff. However, one thing both its enthusiasts and detractors have to admit is that the habit is so uncommon these days that it’s impossible to come to any definite conclusions about it. Still, speaking as a non-smoker, it’s a lot less annoying to the rest of us than smoking. Just don’t sneeze on me, yeah?

Snuff first appeared in the sixteenth century, but reached the height of its popularity in the eighteenth. The reason for this was largely availability. During the 1702 Battle of Cadiz, Sir George Rooke seized fifty tons of fine Cuban snuff, which was distributed among the sailors and sold on dirt-cheap at the English ports. With the habit firmly established, a kind of snuff culture began to grow up. Accessories such as the rather exciting snuff box above began to appear (and now fetch a pretty penny at antiques markets). Rules and etiquette were established for the offering of snuff – depending on the person, you could offer them the Pinch Careless, the Pinch Surly, the Pinch Politick, the Pinch Scornful, and presumably some nice ones as well. There were those who condemned the habit on health grounds, but also those who believed it could be beneficial (for instance, the Gentlewoman’s Magazine advised that it could cure sight problems).

There were many varieties of tobacco available, and more could be created by careful blending. Later in the century, artificially scented varieties became available. Ingredients used included prunes, port wine, ale and even strong cheese. Why you’d want prune-flavoured tobacco, I don’t know. Mind you, I also don’t know why you’d want to wear a periwig, but people still did it.

I think I can safely say that the most devoted snuff-taker in England is one described by H. W. Morton, one Mrs Margaret Thompson of Burlington Gardens. Such was her enthusiasm for the powder that when she died in 1776, she stipulated in her will:

I desire that all my handkerchiefs that I may have unwashed at the time of my decease, after they have been got together by my old and trusty servant, Sarah Stuart, be put by her, and by her alone, at the bottom of my coffin, which I desire may be made large enough for that purpose, together with a quantity of the best Scotch snuff (in which she knoweth I had the greatest delight) as will cover my deceased body; and this I desire more especially as it is usual to put flowers into the coffins of departed friends, and nothing can be so precious and fragrant to me than that precious powder.

She also requested that the aforementioned Ms Stuart should walk in front of her bearers, scattering snuff in their path and on to the crowd. The said bearers should the six greatest snuff takers in St James, each of whom should carry a box of snuff from which they should feel free to take as much as they fancy. Instead of black, they were to wear brown.

I think if I were a smoker, I should demand similar arrangements as an up-yours to the healthcare profession.

What really killed snuff as a habit for all but a handful of devotees was the appearance of cigarettes in the middle of the nineteenth century, again as a result of war – British soldiers in the Crimea picked up the habit from their Turkish allies. Another contributing factor may have been a fashion for white handkerchiefs – without getting too detailed, it’s a little difficult to keep a clean handkerchief when you spend your day shoving brown powder up your hooter.

Will snuff ever make a return? I rather doubt it, unless cigarettes were banned outright. Still, it is worth noting that it’s not covered by the smoking ban, so you can get a snozzfull in the pub and no one can stop you. Try it some day.

London Lit: The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

Early nineteenth century literature revisited and reinterpreted is a popular theme with authors these days. Well, revisiting and reinterpreting Pride and Prejudice is a popular theme with authors these days. I heard Waterstones was considering introducing a new shelving category headed “Books In Which Modern Women Fantasise About Mr Darcy (N.B. You Know He Doesn’t Take His Shirt Off In The Book, Don’t You).” In a shocking display of defiance against convention, Peter Ackroyd’s reimagining focuses on an obscure 19th century work known as Frankenstein, written by Mary something.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is a bit of an oddity. I suppose you could call it a parody of the original, in which Victor Frankenstein and his experiments are dropped into the real world of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his social circle. Frankenstein himself is a contemporary of Shelley, and conducts his experiments in darkest Limehouse (shades of Fu Manchu and The Picture of Dorian Gray). Fact and fiction intermingle as Victor’s attempts to defy death are overlaid on top of Shelley’s life and work. Indeed, there are several points at which things get dangerously metafictional – most notably, Frankenstein accompanies the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori on the trip to Geneva that would inspire Mary Shelley to write the original novel. The death of Bysshe’s first wife is here given a distinctly more gruesome motive. And, bizarrely, the body of a consumptive young man named “Jack Keat” is donated to Frankenstein’s experiments – though it’s not clear how far we’re meant to take this allusion, as few of the character’s biographical details match those of the real John Keats.

"I hope I didn't do anything stupid last night. Oh no, I've created a blasphemous parody of life. The wife's gonna kill me."

The novel as a whole appears to be a tribute of sorts to the Gothic genre – I’ve mentioned that there are echoes of The Picture of Dorian Gray, but Ackroyd also alludes to Dracula and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde at various points. The ending and the final explanation of just what the hell has been going on all this time leaves a lot of questions unanswered, not to mention the fact that it doesn’t really stand up to close scrutiny. To be honest, I found it something of a disappointment as twist endings go, but perhaps Ackroyd is playing with the tendency of the Gothic novel to be ambiguous on supernatural matters.

A major theme, and one that particularly grabbed my interest, was Ackroyd’s exploration of early nineteenth century science. The classic image of Frankenstein is the wild-haired scientist surrounded by electrical coils, lightning flashing all around as he brings his monster to life. Although this owes more to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis than anything in the original novel (although at one point in the book, Frankenstein is inspired by the power of a lightning strike), Ackroyd runs with the idea that electricity is how things are done.

Screen cap from Metropolis in which C3PO is turned into a woman using electricity or something.

Indeed, in those days, electricity did have all sorts of strange supernatural abilities ascribed to it. One early electrocution victim reported a distinct whiff of brimstone. Luigi Galvani (from whom we get the word “galvanise”) had conducted experiments in 1786 in which, when touching the nerves of a dissected frog’s leg with metal during a thunderstorm, the muscles would contract. From this, he concluded that electricity was the source of all life. We now know this to be a lot of hooey, but it was taken very seriously at the time, and Ackroyd goes with the idea that Galvani’s assumption was correct. The Shelleys were themselves rather interested in the possibilities of this hypothesis, and had discussed the possibility that it might function as a means of resurrection.

The morality or lack thereof of science is, as per many adaptations of Frankenstein, discussed. Although Mary Shelley never really made it clear how Victor creates his monster, Ackroyd uses the time-honoured “bits of dead people” explanation. This allows him to bring in the Resurrection Men, one of the grottier trades of the era. Long story short, surgeons and doctors needed bodies to carry out their experiments, and the Resurrection Men supplied them. Although hanging victims were the most legit source (apparently it was not unknown for friends of the condemned to have to fight the Resurrection Men off following the execution), bodies might also be sourced from mortuaries, graveyards or even – as per the case of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh - by cutting out the middleman and killing people yourself. Older cemeteries often have a watch house as a reminder of the scale of the problem. But the sad reality was, bodies were needed – were it not for the horrible trade in corpses, many of the medical discoveries of the nineteenth century might never have been made. Frankenstein’s use of such men, and the dodginess of their methods, crops up repeatedly and comes to have an important bearing on the story.

The juxtaposition of the scientist Frankenstein and the poet Shelley raises another factor concerning science of the era. Namely, the fact that science, politics and art were closely intertwined. This was perhaps best illustrated by the friendship of political writer Thomas Paine and steam engine pioneer James Watt, or Benjamin Franklin’s dual role as scientist and politician. The new inventions and discoveries of the era seemed fantastical, and raised certain questions concerning society. What did it mean for the class system if we could have engines to do our work? Meanwhile, the Romantics saw their own restlessness and discontent mirrored in the march of technology, which seemed Faustian or even Promethean. Indeed, the sub-title of Frankenstein was The Modern Prometheus. In short, this was an age when everything seemed to be pushing forward, and all fields of endeavour seemed to mirror each other.

Overall, it seems that Ackroyd’s aim here is to use the basic structure of Shelley’s original novel to offer a commentary on the world of the Romantics, both in fact and fiction. If I’m going to be quite frank (har har), I don’t think it’s his best novel, but it’s fairly enjoyable if you have an interest in that world. Otherwise, you may prefer the Mel Brooks version, which has Marty Feldman in it.

Adultery at the produce counter

Handel died in London, you know. His house in Mayfair is now a museum.  His death has been the cause of some speculation, as always seems to be the case when a famous person dies. His failed eyesight and ornery temper (apparently he once threatened to throw a soprano out of the window) has led to the interesting theory that he died from lead poisoning.

But how did he get so poisoned? Well, now, let’s talk a little about wine in Britain in the 18th century. See, although the reputation of British wine has improved in recent years, back then our taste was the laughing stock of Europe. British tastes were not particularly in favour of wine, which was considered sour and sharp (often, it is fair to say, due to poor storage). It was common to add sugar to sweeten it, which the French in particular found most risible. But sugar was expensive. A cheaper alternative to take the edge off was, yes, lead.

This was far from the only unpleasant additive one could find. Food adulteration was incredibly widespread back in the day. If you have a problem with artificial colours now, you may wish to look away. Colourings in the 18th and 19th century included compounds of iron, copper and mercury. There’s a popular, if unsubstantiated, theory that Napoleon was killed by vapours from his arsenic-dyed wallpaper. Well, if it’s possible to kill someone with arsenic-infused wallpaper, one shudders to think what the sweets coloured bright green with the poison were doing to their young consumers.

Even if you weren’t being outright poisoned by the colour of your food, plenty of unscrupulous vendors were making a little go a long way with some unorthodox filler material. Curry powder would be bulked out with clay. Milk would be watered down and then thickened with chalk dust. Fruit preserves would contain some fruit, but as like as not would be augmented with turnips or potatoes. Beer, as you might expect, suffered a severe drop in alcohol content on its journey from the brewer to the customer, thanks to the addition of water, salt and crushed oyster shells. Some of these additions sound almost as if they were put in for a dare.

Tea and coffee were not sacred either. Tea leaves would be made to go a bit further by the addition of more-or-less any kinds of leaves that could be found, iron filings, wood chippings and crushed graphite.

As for coffee, there’s a famous letter from Isambard Kingdom Brunel (a recurring character in this blog) concerning the quality of that beverage at the Swindon station buffet. Brunel complained to the manager and, as he was a high-up in the Great Western Railway, which owned the buffet in question, an apology was rapidly forthcoming. To which Brunel penned the following response:

Dear Sir,

I assure you Mr Player was wrong in supposing that I thought you had purchased inferior coffee. I thought I said to him that I was surprised you should buy such bad roasted corn. I did not believe that you had such a thing as coffee in the place; I am certain that I never tasted any. I have long ceased to make complaints at Swindon. I avoid taking anything there when I can help it.

Yours faithfully,

I. K. Brunel

This is the urn that coffee came from. It must be pretty hot, because Mr Player just got burned! Zing!

Continued appalling standards of railway catering have assured this letter’s place in history. Brunel was probably not far wrong in suggesting that the coffee was made of corn. Even the best coffee London’s department stores could supply in the early 19th century was rarely more than half coffee – beans, peas and, yes, corn had been common additions. An Act of Parliament had banned this nefarious practice in 1803 (three years before Brunel’s birth), but it was almost certainly this that the engineer was alluding to.

Even the mighty Fortnum and Mason were not immune from slipping a little something in. Their greengage jam, as noted by Arthur Hall Hassall in a survey, was a remarkably vivid green due to the presence of copper. Hassall was something of a one-man crusader against adulteration, causing no end of Hassall (har har) to the provision merchants of London, and his work led directly to the 1860 Food and Drugs act which, theoretically at least, would put a stop to this nonsense.

Often, though, the additions weren’t the result of greed as much as they were the result of carelessness. Metal contamination could come from the use of an inappropriate storage vessel with which the stored liquid might react. Tinned food, which was invented in Bermondsey in 1812, could be contaminated with lead from the solder used to seal the tins.

I suppose it was better than drinking the water, at least.

All in all, I’m sure you can understand why the bottle of wine on the right, seen in a wine merchant’s on the Strand, somewhat alarmed me.

Where did I start? Oh yes. Handel. Lead. Possibly.

Canal Penetration

I do not appear to understand the concept of a short walk. This fact was brought home to me on Sunday. Having attended a wedding on Wednesday, I was feeling somewhat guilty at the Elvis-level calorie intake I had managed that day, and therefore had resolved to behave myself with a little more restraint. Sunday, I thought, would be an ideal day to get a little exercise. I thought it might be nice to do some more of the Regent’s Canal.

The Regent’s Canal, if you’re not familiar with it (though you may have some passing acquaintance with it if you’re a regular reader of this blog), is a waterway running from the Thames at Limehouse to the Grand Junction Canal at Paddington. The canal was opened in two sections – from Paddington to Camden in 1816 and Camden to Limehouse in 1820. In those days, before decent roads and railways, canals were the arteries of industry. The Grand Junction Canal was the quickest means of transporting goods in quantity from the industrial Midlands to London. The Regent’s Canal therefore served an important economic purpose, as it formed the final link between the Midlands and the Port of London and therefore the rest of the world. It survived the coming of the railways and the roads, but by the 1930s was largely obsolete.

Today, although there is a small amount of cargo, it’s primarily used for pleasure craft. The warehouses and factories that once lined its route have either been demolished or repurposed (most notably, one major interchange between rail and canal is now Camden Lock Market and the Stables). The towpath is a popular route with cyclists, walkers and idiots (yo).

My original intention was to only walk a short section of the canal, say Camden to King’s Cross or Islington. But I have this tendency, once I start walking, to keep on going far longer than is perhaps wise. As a result, I ended up walking all the way to Limehouse Basin. As I had previously walked from Camden to Paddington (hence the photos you have been seeing so far), I can now say that I have walked the full length of the canal.

From a psychogeographical point of view, what’s interesting about this walk is that it let me see familiar places from a different point of view. Of course, I’d seen the canal at Paddington, Regent’s Park, Camden, King’s Cross, St Pancras, Caledonian Road, Islington, Hackney and Limehouse before. Indeed, I’ve written about it in at least two of those locations in this very blog. But it had just been a landmark then, with no sort of context. I had some vague awareness that this stretch of canal was the same as that stretch of canal, but only as a theoretical thing. To experience the whole thing from a boat’s eye view, as it were, was rather novel. I think I’ve been enlightened in some way.

Anyway, I’ve waffled on for far too long already, given that this was supposed to be a photo-ey entry. I shall keep the prattle to a minimum from here on in, and instead continue to present my (usual crappy) photographs in geographical order from Paddington to Limehouse. Camden Lock is a notable omission here,  due to the fact that on neither of the walks presented here did I actually intend to document the entire canal.

One last point I would like to make is the range of contrast as you go along the river, from affluent Regent’s Park and Little Venice to the post-industrial landscape of the Docklands. I’ll shut up now. For now.

Sorry, me again. At this point on the walk, the canal cut through the hill at Islington, and I had to leave the towpath. Some explanation may be needed for the following photos.

I snapped this because I had walked along this road once before, a couple of years ago, desperately hungover. I was leaving the Barnsbury flat of a friend we shall simply call The Monster early one Sunday morning. I attracted disapproving looks from pious souls. Anyway, to end up here again was rather surprising.

I eventually reached Angel – you may recall that my first paid acting gig was near here. Despite my familiarity with the area, I wasn’t entirely sure how to get to the canal. Fortunately, this sign guided me. It may also explain some of the stranger sights coming up.

Isn’t this just the dearest little owl?

Spitalfields already? God be damned.

And Shoreditch! How we are honoured!

This is a nice thing to do with a block of council flats. Photographic portraits of local folk. It’s like Eastenders, only without the death and unimaginable horror.

Hackney. If you feel a chill down your spine, that is because we are but a stone’s throw from the Last Tuesday Society’s sinister museum.

A dilapidated narrowboat advocating the cleaning up of canals. This would be that famous bargees’ humour I’ve heard so much about.

Some sort of junction. Further investigation is required, I feel – especially as there’s something familiar about this canal here.

Lo the Isle of Dogs!

Herons are basically the easiest birds in the world to photograph. How I managed to make this one blurry enough to shame the most avid Bigfoot enthusiast is therefore beyond me.

I feel this toy boat has a story to tell.

We are so close, me hearties, I can practically taste that lime!

Is that not the viaduct of the London and Blackwall Railway?

It is! Limehouse! We made it! Long live, long live!

I say “we” made it, but mostly you just looked at photos. I didn’t want to make a big thing of this.

The Thames as the sun begins to set.

The Docklands Light Railway at Westferry. Everyone wants to get on the seats at the front of the train, but for a novel experience I recommend the seats at the back as you enter the tunnel for Bank. It’s like disappearing down a giant oesophagus.

 

Further Reading:

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/talk-about-burning-your-bridges/
 - An earlier entry focusing on a particular part of the Regent’s Canal.

Beau Selecta

One of the most disagreeable phenomena of modern times must surely be the gossip magazine celebrity. The person whose fame (and thus wealth) is out of all proportion to their talent. Take, for instance, Peaches Geldof, who is classed as a writer and model due to an administrative error. Or Paris Hilton, the only person who could make me yearn for a Communist revolution.

The sad thing is, though, that this vile situation was in place long before the age of mass media. I’d like to take you back in my magical time machine, the RETARDIS, to  the Regency. This is perhaps my favourite historical period, because you just couldn’t make up the stuff that happened then. Well, you could, but you’d be criticised for being unimaginitive.

The gentleman we’re going to look at today is George “Beau” Brummell, possibly the world’s first fashion guru. He was firmly of the opinion that, when it came to fashion, less is more. Notice in his picture on the left that he favoured a basic cut in understated fabric.

However, to achieve such understated elegance took a hell of a lot of effort. He claimed to have three hairdressers, each one taking a different part of his head. He was said to take five hours to dress, and at the end his room would be covered in rejected clothes. He was unable to find a stock that looked right, so he invented his own in starched muslin, a foot wide. He believed that the best shine on boots was achieved with champagne – and his taste in champagne was not exactly restrained (at one dinner party where the champagne was second-rate, he was heard to call, “Bring me some more of that cider!”) His taste in clothing was so influential that, legend has it, he was once able to make the Prince of Wales (later King George IV) burst into tears when he insulted Prinny’s coat. This tale doesn’t sound all that implausible, but it can’t be denied that the Prince was an enthusiast for Beau’s fashion tips – before he met Brummell, he was in the habit of wearing brightly-patterned, flamboyant clothing. After, he became more restrained in his tastes.

The Prince of Wales prepares for a night on the town.

Yes, Brummell was part of the Prince’s social circle, men who favoured heinous amounts of drinking, gambling and whoring even on a school night. How did he rise to such a prestigious position? Well, now, that’s the odd part.

Brummell was not born an aristocrat. He did not come from old money. In fact, he only acquired wealth by chance. His grandfather ran a lodging house, one of whose guests was father of a future Prime Minister, Lord North. North Senior was able to get Old Man Brummell’s son a post in the Treasury, and the son rose to be the Prime Minister’s private secretary, amassing a fortune of over £200,000 (which, accounting for inflation, comes to… ooh, lots). Thus, through hard work and opportunity the Brummells rose from the servant class to the cream of society.

Young George Brummell didn’t particularly intend to follow in his father’s footsteps. He was briefly in the Army, but sold his commission when his regiment transferred to Manchester (because, so the story goes, that would have taken him away from the London social scene). He quickly became a fixture of West End society thanks to having met the Prince at Eton. And, as mentioned before, his fashion sense took London by storm – this perhaps owed something to the fact that his grandfather had been a valet before he had been a landlord, and thus would have been expected to know what was what clothing-wise.

Brummell was famous for his bitchiness as much as for his sartorial mastery, though. For instance, an up-and-coming industrialist once invited him to a dinner party. Brummell asked him how many would be attending. The host said, “Well, there are to be ten other guests, plus you and me, so twelve in all.” “Good Lord,” Brummell reputedly replied, “you don’t mean to say you are to be one of the party?”

Of course, his most famous bitchy remark was to be his downfall. Like most socialites, Brummell thrived off attention. So when the Prince showed up at a party with Lord Alvanley in 1812 and totally ignored him, Brummell’s nose was rather put out of joint (well, actually, that had been the result of a kick in the face by a horse during his army days, but metaphorically). Eventually, he went up to Lord Alvanley and said, as loudly as possible, “I say, Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?”

Now, the Prince was rather sensitive about his weight, and he had a lot of weight to be sensitive about (20 years later, Charles Lamb would dub him “The Prince of Whales”) and, as we have seen, something of a vain man. And so he proved that he was just as adept as Brummell at being a total prick and cut the fop off entirely.

Beau might have recovered from this, were it not for his weakness for gambling. Gambling was taken very seriously in the 18th century, with almost unimaginable amounts being made and lost in a single night at the card table. Yr. Humble Chronicler is no puritan, but there’s something mildly revolting about a man thinking nothing of losing the price of a townhouse in a hand of poker. If you were lucky, you could be set for life. Unfortunately, no one’s luck lasts forever, and by 1816 Brummell found himself hopelessly in debt. Few were willing to lend him money, and those that were were disappointed to see him back at the tables soon afterwards.

He fled to France in order to escape his many, many creditors and eked out a bare bones existence working for the British Consulate in Caen, thanks to Lord Alvanley’s influential word (obviously Alvanley found the “fat friend” joke funny). He would eventually die in hospital, apparently quite insane and, so the story goes, in a vile state of undress and filth.

We can only hope.

Still, on the bright side, that might yet happen to Peaches Geldof as well.

2009 in retrospect, with naked people

Typically in the first blog entry of the New Year, you’re either supposed to talk about the year that’s just gone or make your predictions about the year coming up. I intend to do the former, but only going as far back as December 30th. I’ve spent the entire year writing about the things this blog is about, and so a recap is surely unnecessary.

The 30th, however, was a night of note about which I have not written so far. The Directrix organised a trip to the Last Tuesday Society’s event, the New Year’s Eve Eve masked ball, held at The Bridge under the arches of the London Bridge railway viaduct. The dress code, according to the website, was “Divine Decadence.” The same site also advised that while masks were obligatory, clothes were optional. I decided that clothes were certainly the preferable option in my case due to my compassion for greater humanity. In the meantime, I busied myself painting the mask you see on the left there.

On the day of the party, it soon became clear that there was a problem I hadn’t anticipated, namely that of condensation – the mask had almost no ventilation, and within a few minutes I had something akin to a tropical rainforest going on in there. In the queue I found there was actually water leaking out of the eye holes. Classy, not to mention sexy.

Anyway, once we got in I was pleasantly surprised. Generally when “decadence” is promised, the full extent of said decadence consists of a fat guy in a nappy and a 17-year-old drinking too much and being sick on you. This time, however, the party was very much as advertised. Decadence was abundant.

The best thing about the masked ball, as a concept, is that your face is hidden. If I might get a little philosophical here, one of the major things that prevents you from being naughty in your day-to-day life is the fact that you might be recognised. You might also be prevented by reason of being boring, but that’s outside the scope of this article I’m afraid. My point is that the masked ball is an opportunity to really misbehave.

Thanks, strategically-placed peacock feather!

This one was no exception, if the dude wearing nothing but a mask and a leash around his gentleman’s prerogatives was any indication. I mean, seriously, I’m hardly a prude, but there were enough naked people around there to turn a chap vegetarian.

Of course, it wasn’t just a case of making your own entertainment, and there was plenty laid on. Music was being provided by the Texas Chainsaw Orchestra, Seas of Mirth, the Trans-Siberian Marching Band, Jimbino Vegan and his Jazz Cannibals and various other escapees from The Mighty Boosh. If that wasn’t to your taste, there was a Santa Striptease for the ruination of your childhood. There was a giant mechanical penis that one could ride and, if successful, receive a bottle of gin as a prize. I don’t know if this was supposed to be a tribute to William Hogarth or what, but one of our party received a bottle for her mastery of bucking genitalia.

The bar, it has to be said, was a little slow – on one occasion I found myself recalling when the entire area was fields. The buffet, however, was really something else – as you may see a couple of photos above, it was presided over by four naked ladies. Apparently there was supposed to be a man as well, but “he pulled out at the last minute.” Well knowing the double meaning of this phrase, I avoided the semolina pudding. Having said that, I can’t remember what I actually did eat. I consider myself a fairly enlightened guy, but when faced with four unexpected naked ladies, my thought process goes something along the lines of, “By George, how Bacchanalian – but are not all pleasures of the flesh closely linked? Are not the act of eating and the act of love traditionally associated with each other? This display is, in fact, an illustration of that which we instinctively BOOBIES BOOBIES BOOBIES“

CENSORED FOR YOUR PROTECTION

We left before the hot tub, but in that time I learnt many things. First of all, in a lesbian orgy, it is important to expect the unexpected. Secondly, you can get away with a lot more if nobody can see your face. Thirdly, if you feel something prodding your left buttock on the dance floor, you should not turn around. Fourthly, full-face masks make it a little difficult to drink. Others of the party learned that the more complex your costume is, the harder it is to get to the toilet, and that nipple damage is no laughing matter.

Overall, the event was Most Enjoyable, and I would heartily recommend it to licentious folk across the city.

I should probably warn you that this entry was NSFW.

Further Reading

http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/index.html
 - The Last Tuesday Society’s website

http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/gallery_2.html
 - The gallery of the night. Yr. Humble Chronicler’s party was among those photographed, but you do have to scroll through quite a lot of nudity to get to us. As in real life.

 - A video of events.