Photo
July 13, 2011
Instructions to Apprentices on Leaving the Foundling Hospital Hospital for the Maintenance & Education of Exposed & deserted Young Children, in Lamb’s Conduit Fields. INSTRUCTIONS to _____ upon being put Apprentice to ____ of _____ on the ___ Day of ___ in the year 17__ who on the ___ Day of ____ was ____ years old. _____ is to serve h__ till ____ years old. YOU are placed out Apprentice by the Govrs. of this Hospital. You were taken into it very young, quite helpless, forsaken & deserted by Parents & Friends. Out of Charity you have been fed, clothed, and instructed; which many have wanted. You have been taught to fear God, to love Him, to be honest, careful, laborious, and diligent. As you hope for Success in this World, and Happiness in the next, you are to be mindful of what has been taught you. You are to behave honestly, justly, soberly, and carefully in everything, to everybody, and especially towards your____and Family; and to execute all lawful Commands with Industry, Chearfulness, and good Manners. You may find many Temptations to do wickedly, when you are in the World; but by all means fly from them. Always speak the Truth. Tho’ you may have done a wrong thing, you will, by a sincere Confession, more easily obtain Forgiveness than if by and Obstinate Lye you make the Fault the greater, and thereby deserve a far greater Punishment. Lying is looked upon to be the Beginning of everything that is bad; and a Person used to it is never believed, esteemed, or trusted. Be not ashamed that you were bred in this Hospital. Own it; and say that it was thro’ the good Providence of Almighty God that you were taken care of. Bless Him for it; and be thankful to those worthy Benefactors who have contributed towards your Maintenance and Support. And if ever it be in your Power, make a grateful Acknowledgment to the Hospital for the Benefits you have received. Be constant in your Prayers, and going to Church; & avoid Gaming, Swearing and all evil Discourses: By this means the Blessing of God will follow your honest Labours, and you will also gain the Good-Will of all good Persons. If you follow the Instructions which had all along been taught you, and which we now give you, you may be happy; otherwise you will bring upon yourself Misery, Shame, and Want. Note, Your Master will provide you Meat, Drink, Washing, Lodging, and Clothing: And he has agreed to pay you Five Pounds a year, for the Three last years of your Apprenticeship. Devised 17th of April, 1754

Instructions to Apprentices on Leaving the Foundling Hospital

Hospital for the Maintenance & Education of Exposed & deserted Young Children, in Lamb’s Conduit Fields.

INSTRUCTIONS to _____ upon being put Apprentice to ____ of _____ on the ___ Day of ___ in the year 17__ who on the ___ Day of ____ was ____ years old. _____ is to serve h__ till ____ years old.

YOU are placed out Apprentice by the Govrs. of this Hospital. You were taken into it very young, quite helpless, forsaken & deserted by Parents & Friends. Out of Charity you have been fed, clothed, and instructed; which many have wanted.


You have been taught to fear God, to love Him, to be honest, careful, laborious, and diligent. As you hope for Success in this World, and Happiness in the next, you are to be mindful of what has been taught you. You are to behave honestly, justly, soberly, and carefully in everything, to everybody, and especially towards your____and Family; and to execute all lawful Commands with Industry, Chearfulness, and good Manners.


You may find many Temptations to do wickedly, when you are in the World; but by all means fly from them. Always speak the Truth. Tho’ you may have done a wrong thing, you will, by a sincere Confession, more easily obtain Forgiveness than if by and Obstinate Lye you make the Fault the greater, and thereby deserve a far greater Punishment. Lying is looked upon to be the Beginning of everything that is bad; and a Person used to it is never believed, esteemed, or trusted.


Be not ashamed that you were bred in this Hospital. Own it; and say that it was thro’ the good Providence of Almighty God that you were taken care of. Bless Him for it; and be thankful to those worthy Benefactors who have contributed towards your Maintenance and Support. And if ever it be in your Power, make a grateful Acknowledgment to the Hospital for the Benefits you have received.


Be constant in your Prayers, and going to Church; & avoid Gaming, Swearing and all evil Discourses: By this means the Blessing of God will follow your honest Labours, and you will also gain the Good-Will of all good Persons. If you follow the Instructions which had all along been taught you, and which we now give you, you may be happy; otherwise you will bring upon yourself Misery, Shame, and Want.

Note, Your Master will provide you Meat, Drink, Washing, Lodging, and Clothing: And he has agreed to pay you Five Pounds a year, for the Three last years of your Apprenticeship.

Devised 17th of April, 1754

Tags: JustMigrated Charitable London Hogarth's London London Apprentices Poor London Sick London Young Londoners

Photo
July 12, 2011
Book Giveaway: The Jane Austen Handbook A new guide to ‘Proper Life Skills from Regency England’. This little hardback book covers every part of life as a Jane Austen heroine. It’s a gift book rather than factual history, but would make fun reading for anyone having a go at their first historical fiction (and writing about a nice middle class English girl, of course). To win the copy I have here, tell me in the comments your favourite Austen heroine, and why.

Book Giveaway: The Jane Austen Handbook

A new guide to ‘Proper Life Skills from Regency England’. This little hardback book covers every part of life as a Jane Austen heroine. It’s a gift book rather than factual history, but would make fun reading for anyone having a go at their first historical fiction (and writing about a nice middle class English girl, of course). To win the copy I have here, tell me in the comments your favourite Austen heroine, and why.

Tags: JustMigrated Reviews

Photo
July 08, 2011
In Memory of Percy Bysshe Shelley 4th August 1792-8th July 1822Outsider, pacifist, vegetarian, selfish inconsistent git, burning talent, a remarkable man.  His ashes are interred in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, not far from John Keats.  Cor Cordium  

In Memory of Percy Bysshe Shelley 4th August 1792-8th July 1822

Outsider, pacifist, vegetarian, selfish inconsistent git, burning talent, a remarkable man.  His ashes are interred in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, not far from John Keats.  Cor Cordium

 

Tags: JustMigrated Intellectual London

Photo
July 03, 2011
Response to Tristram Hunt’s ‘Guardian’ Article   Morning! I’m not sure how the land lies on reproducing large chunks of a national newspaper on here, but I’m sure someone will tell me off pronto if I’m not allowed to.  This morning Tristram Hunt has an article in the Guardian about ‘online history’ and how for him, nothing compares with time spent in the archive.  The article itself is subtitled as a comment on the new British Library-Google venture, but it’s more of a general opinion piece on the nature of research.  There are points on which I agree with him, but there are aspects of this article I take issue with.  If you care, this is why (warning: contains mild swears and apoplexy).  ‘It was discovered in 1907, walled up in a cave on the Silk Road in Dunhuang, north-west China, where it had lain untouched for 900 years. The Diamond Sutra, dated “the 13th of the fourth moon of the ninth year of Xiatong” or 868AD, is a sacred text of the Buddhist faith and one of the hidden treasures of the British Library. Or not so hidden, as it can now be downloaded as a smartphone app.’ What part of this is bad?  Why should the BL have ‘hidden treasures’?  It’s the BRITISH LIBRARY, for the people.  Also, this is a document clearly too fragile to be handled by all the people who might like to look at it.  I don’t want to look at it, but the idea that it is now a smartphone app is rather pleasing.  History belongs to everybody.   ‘The ubiquity of history has taken another huge step forward with the BL-Google tie-up putting some 250,000 books online. An astonishing range of texts from 1700 to 1870, covering the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, the early days of empire and the Industrial Revolution, will soon be accessible via Google Book Search. From a Mumbai coffee-shop or Australian air terminal, we will all be able to mull over such wonders as George-Louis Leclerc’s 1775 treatise, The Natural History of the Hippopotamus, or River Horse.’  History IS ubiquitous.  At least for me it is, and probably for Mr Hunt and anyone else who spends much of their time researching the past.  But it isn’t ubiquitous for the children in our schools, many of whom can’t see the point of dusty old books when they can spend time on shiny screens.  Anything that gets people looking at the past, and thinking about it just a little bit can only be A Very Good Thing.  Furthermore I’d far rather be sitting in a terminal with Leclerc than with the offerings from the airport bookshop. ‘The Google partnership signals an undoubted advance for scholarship. For the arrival of search engines has transformed our ability to sift and surf the past. What once would have required days trawling through an index, hunting down a footnote or finding a misfiled library book can now be done in an instant. Want to find a reference by Marx to Gladstone? Not a problem at www.marxists.org. Want to find the chattels left by Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire? The onlineDictionary of National Biography has the answer.’ Yes, it is an advance for scholarship, but more importantly, for readership.  And yes, those DAYS of trawling through indexes, giving yourself that special library headache, the one that makes your face vibrate.  Remember those?  So far, so positive.  Marxists, marvellous, but the ODNB is a subscription site, available only to paying members or through an institution/local library and Amanda Foreman’s entry on Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire contains no mention of her chattels, only her ‘debts of many thousands’ at the time of her death.  This belittles game-changing projects such as Old Bailey Online.  And unless Google is now making cyborg librarians it’s still impossible to find a misfiled library book through Google.  ‘This techno-enthusiasm should not come as too much of a surprise. For all their fusty reputation, historians are very keen on short cuts for interpreting the past. In the 1970s, the “econometricians” embraced IBM mainframes as a way of crunching data on development. In the 1980s, it was all about placing the Domesday Book on CD-ROMS. Now, no museum experience is complete without an accompanying app, while GPS has transformed battlefield studies. Historians have also fallen for the blog, a perfect vehicle for the lifeblood of gossip, envy, malice and “constructive criticism” that keeps history happening.’ The second sentence is a disturbing comment on fellow professionals.  Regardless of that, imagine the JOY of being able to enter endless, ant-like numbers pertaining to your economic history dissertation and get a meaningful visual rendering such as a chart or graph, allowing you to present it to someone who is not quite so familiar with the financial climate in the Hook of Holland 1740-1748.  Ah yes, the gossipy, envious, malicious history blogs.  Where are these blogs? History blogging isn’t Popbitch, it’s http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/ and http://mercuriuspoliticus.wordpress.com/    ‘Yet when everything is down-loadable, the mystery of history can be lost. Why sit in an archive leafing through impenetrable prose when you can slurp frappucino while scrolling down Edmund Burke documents?’ Because that isn’t patronising AT ALL IS IT.  Excuse me for a moment whilst I lose myself in the vacuity of my own existence just enough to fit in with this image of someone who uses online documents. ‘But it is only with MS in hand that the real meaning of the text becomes apparent: its rhythms and cadences, the relationship of image to word, the passion of the argument or cold logic of the case. Then there is the serendipity, the scholar’s eternal hope that something will catch his eye. Perhaps another document will come up in the same batch, perhaps some marginalia or even the leaf of another text inserted as a bookmark. There is nothing more thrilling than untying the frayed string, opening the envelope and leafing through a first edition in the expectation of unexpected discoveries. None of that is possible on an iPad.’ Yes, original documents are tremendous.  I snivelled in the loo in Chichester after finding a (boring) letter from Shelley in a packet of correspondence about interior decoration belonging to a Derbyshire family.  Getting the hang of reading centuries-old handwriting through familiarity with epistolary convention and sentence construction is a satisfying accomplishment which takes time and dedication.  Original documents are a pleasure, a privilege and treasure.  They are also a fecking nuisance when you’ve traipsed all the way to Countytown and the very thing you wanted, had called up about and were told would be there is now being withheld because it is too fragile.  This also happens with secondary sources when the periodical you were sure you had to see about the export of dried food stuffs to Jamaica to bolster slave diets has gone off for rebinding and will be back in a month or so.  I will also thank my lucky stars if I never ever again see the joyless hole that is Colindale.  Yes, I did track down the commissioning of that Arts and Crafts casket in the end, but it nearly cost me my eyesight and my sanity.  Not to mention time and money. ‘In a lecture, Peter Hennessy recently described the historian’s craft as akin to the cryogenic trade – warming up the frozen history of the archive until it began to talk. Such a delicate procedure is usually best performed by hand.’ Prudent use of sources is key.  Old papers may quicken the blood, but it is harnessing the strongest team to the carriage that will get us where we need to go.  The idea that history is somehow demeaned by popular access is silly, like a child crabbing their arms around their times-tables.   There. I feel better.  And leave you with two examples of where digital has been used to mine the archives for the forces of good.   William Cowper’s poem of 1788, The Negro’s Complaint is often quoted regarding the abolitionist movement.  Rarely is the point made that it was in fact, created as part of a simplistic textbook intended to teach the evils of slavery on a basic level, probably to children, but this is instantly apparent by the BL’s putting it online.  This is an important subject of interest to many thousands, few of whom will have the opportunity physical access to the original text.  Now they do, and can see it in context. Stanford’s mapping of the Republic of Letters.  A thing of beauty.

Response to Tristram Hunt’s ‘Guardian’ Article

 

Morning! I’m not sure how the land lies on reproducing large chunks of a national newspaper on here, but I’m sure someone will tell me off pronto if I’m not allowed to.  This morning Tristram Hunt has an article in the Guardian about ‘online history’ and how for him, nothing compares with time spent in the archive.  The article itself is subtitled as a comment on the new British Library-Google venture, but it’s more of a general opinion piece on the nature of research.  There are points on which I agree with him, but there are aspects of this article I take issue with.  If you care, this is why (warning: contains mild swears and apoplexy). 

‘It was discovered in 1907, walled up in a cave on the Silk Road in Dunhuang, north-west China, where it had lain untouched for 900 years. The Diamond Sutra, dated “the 13th of the fourth moon of the ninth year of Xiatong” or 868AD, is a sacred text of the Buddhist faith and one of the hidden treasures of the British Library. Or not so hidden, as it can now be downloaded as a smartphone app.’
What part of this is bad?  Why should the BL have ‘hidden treasures’?  It’s the BRITISH LIBRARY, for the people.  Also, this is a document clearly too fragile to be handled by all the people who might like to look at it.  I don’t want to look at it, but the idea that it is now a smartphone app is rather pleasing.  History belongs to everybody.  

‘The ubiquity of history has taken another huge step forward with the BL-Google tie-up putting some 250,000 books online. An astonishing range of texts from 1700 to 1870, covering the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, the early days of empire and the Industrial Revolution, will soon be accessible via Google Book Search. From a Mumbai coffee-shop or Australian air terminal, we will all be able to mull over such wonders as George-Louis Leclerc’s 1775 treatise, The Natural History of the Hippopotamus, or River Horse.’ 
History IS ubiquitous.  At least for me it is, and probably for Mr Hunt and anyone else who spends much of their time researching the past.  But it isn’t ubiquitous for the children in our schools, many of whom can’t see the point of dusty old books when they can spend time on shiny screens.  Anything that gets people looking at the past, and thinking about it just a little bit can only be A Very Good Thing.  Furthermore I’d far rather be sitting in a terminal with Leclerc than with the offerings from the airport bookshop.

‘The Google partnership signals an undoubted advance for scholarship. For the arrival of search engines has transformed our ability to sift and surf the past. What once would have required days trawling through an index, hunting down a footnote or finding a misfiled library book can now be done in an instant. Want to find a reference by Marx to Gladstone? Not a problem at www.marxists.org. Want to find the chattels left by Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire? The onlineDictionary of National Biography has the answer.’
Yes, it is an advance for scholarship, but more importantly, for readership.  And yes, those DAYS of trawling through indexes, giving yourself that special library headache, the one that makes your face vibrate.  Remember those?  So far, so positive.  Marxists, marvellous, but the ODNB is a subscription site, available only to paying members or through an institution/local library and Amanda Foreman’s entry on Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire contains no mention of her chattels, only her ‘debts of many thousands’ at the time of her death.  This belittles game-changing projects such as Old Bailey Online.  And unless Google is now making cyborg librarians it’s still impossible to find a misfiled library book through Google. 

‘This techno-enthusiasm should not come as too much of a surprise. For all their fusty reputation, historians are very keen on short cuts for interpreting the past. In the 1970s, the “econometricians” embraced IBM mainframes as a way of crunching data on development. In the 1980s, it was all about placing the Domesday Book on CD-ROMS. Now, no museum experience is complete without an accompanying app, while GPS has transformed battlefield studies. Historians have also fallen for the blog, a perfect vehicle for the lifeblood of gossip, envy, malice and “constructive criticism” that keeps history happening.’
The second sentence is a disturbing comment on fellow professionals.  Regardless of that, imagine the JOY of being able to enter endless, ant-like numbers pertaining to your economic history dissertation and get a meaningful visual rendering such as a chart or graph, allowing you to present it to someone who is not quite so familiar with the financial climate in the Hook of Holland 1740-1748.  Ah yes, the gossipy, envious, malicious history blogs.  Where are these blogs? History blogging isn’t Popbitch, it’s http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/ and http://mercuriuspoliticus.wordpress.com/   

‘Yet when everything is down-loadable, the mystery of history can be lost. Why sit in an archive leafing through impenetrable prose when you can slurp frappucino while scrolling down Edmund Burke documents?’
Because that isn’t patronising AT ALL IS IT.  Excuse me for a moment whilst I lose myself in the vacuity of my own existence just enough to fit in with this image of someone who uses online documents.

‘But it is only with MS in hand that the real meaning of the text becomes apparent: its rhythms and cadences, the relationship of image to word, the passion of the argument or cold logic of the case. Then there is the serendipity, the scholar’s eternal hope that something will catch his eye. Perhaps another document will come up in the same batch, perhaps some marginalia or even the leaf of another text inserted as a bookmark. There is nothing more thrilling than untying the frayed string, opening the envelope and leafing through a first edition in the expectation of unexpected discoveries. None of that is possible on an iPad.’

Yes, original documents are tremendous.  I snivelled in the loo in Chichester after finding a (boring) letter from Shelley in a packet of correspondence about interior decoration belonging to a Derbyshire family.  Getting the hang of reading centuries-old handwriting through familiarity with epistolary convention and sentence construction is a satisfying accomplishment which takes time and dedication.  Original documents are a pleasure, a privilege and treasure.  They are also a fecking nuisance when you’ve traipsed all the way to Countytown and the very thing you wanted, had called up about and were told would be there is now being withheld because it is too fragile.  This also happens with secondary sources when the periodical you were sure you had to see about the export of dried food stuffs to Jamaica to bolster slave diets has gone off for rebinding and will be back in a month or so.  I will also thank my lucky stars if I never ever again see the joyless hole that is Colindale.  Yes, I did track down the commissioning of that Arts and Crafts casket in the end, but it nearly cost me my eyesight and my sanity.  Not to mention time and money.
‘In a lecture, Peter Hennessy recently described the historian’s craft as akin to the cryogenic trade – warming up the frozen history of the archive until it began to talk. Such a delicate procedure is usually best performed by hand.’

Prudent use of sources is key.  Old papers may quicken the blood, but it is harnessing the strongest team to the carriage that will get us where we need to go.  The idea that history is somehow demeaned by popular access is silly, like a child crabbing their arms around their times-tables.  
There. I feel better.  And leave you with two examples of where digital has been used to mine the archives for the forces of good.  

William Cowper’s poem of 1788, The Negro’s Complaint is often quoted regarding the abolitionist movement.  Rarely is the point made that it was in fact, created as part of a simplistic textbook intended to teach the evils of slavery on a basic level, probably to children, but this is instantly apparent by the BL’s putting it online.  This is an important subject of interest to many thousands, few of whom will have the opportunity physical access to the original text.  Now they do, and can see it in context.
Stanford’s mapping of the Republic of Letters.  A thing of beauty.

Tags: JustMigrated

Photo
July 01, 2011
More writering - Shortfire Press The pioneering Shortfire Press are featuring a short story by….me! It’s about summer, and revenge. It costs 99p to download, but you can check out a free preview here. Needless to say I’m very chuffed to be in such esteemed company. And not a little astonished. I’m also experimenting with a new website all about…me. Honestly, it’s a funny thing to have to create, like doing double hands up at little school. If you do download the story, or visit the website, I’d love to hear what you think. Drop a comment or send me an email. Thanks.

More writering - Shortfire Press

The pioneering Shortfire Press are featuring a short story by….me! It’s about summer, and revenge. It costs 99p to download, but you can check out a free preview here. Needless to say I’m very chuffed to be in such esteemed company. And not a little astonished.

I’m also experimenting with a new website all about…me. Honestly, it’s a funny thing to have to create, like doing double hands up at little school.

If you do download the story, or visit the website, I’d love to hear what you think. Drop a comment or send me an email. Thanks.

Tags: JustMigrated

Photo
June 30, 2011
Review: The Politics of Space in Regency London at the ICA Last night I took part in a panel at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, on the Politics of Space in Regency London.  My fellow panellists were Pablo Bronstein, the artist whose current exhibition Sketches for Regency Living inspired the debate, Steven Parissien, architectural historian, author, and curator of Compton Verney, and Professor Tim Hitchcock, author and the man behind putting the Old Bailey Proceedings online.  We were most ably chaired by Paul Stock of the LSE. Well, what to say?  It was brilliant fun, if I do say so myself.  This is a brief write up on the things we covered.  For ‘politics of space’, read ‘what was public space? what was private space? how were they used?’  The public spaces we discussed were Regent’s Park, which was never really designed as ‘public’ - Nash meant everyone who lived in the villas there to be under the illusion that they were in their own private park; it was only towards the end of the Regency that it was given over to the people, roughly when the Zoo moved in.  Tim and Steven debated how as the concept of the private home grew, and wealth grew, and Crown glass was replaced with transparent plate glass c1810 (they can see in), the notion of protecting the home also grew, resulting in basement areas and railings, as well as external shutters and an explosion in the home security business.  Pablo and Tim and I debated the politics of the body itself, and how postures became more natural, less forced, even as the architecture around London became more rigid and Classical (think of Lawrence and Romney and the relaxed postures seen in their sitters in contrast to earlier in the eighteenth century).  We all talked about the place of the poor in street scenes - rarely seen before the Regency period, but by the 1820s becoming more accepted as part of the ‘human architecture’ of London.  We also discussed Regency colour, building methods, sexuality, portraiture, interior design, domestic servants and Robert Adam’s continuing influence as well as communal latrines and mussel shells (don’t ask).   It was a great pleasure to be part of a group so lively, knowledgeable and full of ideas.  The questions showed just how much everyone in the audience knew, which made it even better.  I was also deeply impressed by the couple in the front row who slept right through the whole hour and a half, and by the video installation of naked women in stiletto heels which was playing behind Steven the whole time.  Tim and I weren’t distracted by it at all.  As usual, I managed to fulfil my remarkably largely quota for malapropisms.  It’s a wonder I’m let out in public to be honest.   If you came, and I know some of you did because I spoke to you afterwards, thank you very much for making it such a good evening.  Pablo’s exhibition is on at the ICA until the 25th of September.  Go see.

Review: The Politics of Space in Regency London at the ICA

Last night I took part in a panel at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, on the Politics of Space in Regency London.  My fellow panellists were Pablo Bronstein, the artist whose current exhibition Sketches for Regency Living inspired the debate, Steven Parissien, architectural historian, author, and curator of Compton Verney, and Professor Tim Hitchcock, author and the man behind putting the Old Bailey Proceedings online.  We were most ably chaired by Paul Stock of the LSE.
Well, what to say?  It was brilliant fun, if I do say so myself.  This is a brief write up on the things we covered.  For ‘politics of space’, read ‘what was public space? what was private space? how were they used?’  The public spaces we discussed were Regent’s Park, which was never really designed as ‘public’ - Nash meant everyone who lived in the villas there to be under the illusion that they were in their own private park; it was only towards the end of the Regency that it was given over to the people, roughly when the Zoo moved in.  Tim and Steven debated how as the concept of the private home grew, and wealth grew, and Crown glass was replaced with transparent plate glass c1810 (they can see in), the notion of protecting the home also grew, resulting in basement areas and railings, as well as external shutters and an explosion in the home security business.  Pablo and Tim and I debated the politics of the body itself, and how postures became more natural, less forced, even as the architecture around London became more rigid and Classical (think of Lawrence and Romney and the relaxed postures seen in their sitters in contrast to earlier in the eighteenth century).  We all talked about the place of the poor in street scenes - rarely seen before the Regency period, but by the 1820s becoming more accepted as part of the ‘human architecture’ of London.  We also discussed Regency colour, building methods, sexuality, portraiture, interior design, domestic servants and Robert Adam’s continuing influence as well as communal latrines and mussel shells (don’t ask).  

It was a great pleasure to be part of a group so lively, knowledgeable and full of ideas.  The questions showed just how much everyone in the audience knew, which made it even better.  I was also deeply impressed by the couple in the front row who slept right through the whole hour and a half, and by the video installation of naked women in stiletto heels which was playing behind Steven the whole time.  Tim and I weren’t distracted by it at all.  As usual, I managed to fulfil my remarkably largely quota for malapropisms.  It’s a wonder I’m let out in public to be honest.  
If you came, and I know some of you did because I spoke to you afterwards, thank you very much for making it such a good evening.  Pablo’s exhibition is on at the ICA until the 25th of September.  Go see.

Tags: JustMigrated

Photo
June 24, 2011
Politics of Space in Regency London at the Institute for Contemporary Arts Next Wednesday, the 29th of June, I will be taking part in a panel at the ICA on The Politics of Space in Regency London. The panellists are artist Pablo Bronstein (whose work on Regency space forms the current exhibition), architectural historian Steven Parissien and urban historian/historian of Poor London Professor Tim Hitchcock. And me. It will be chaired by Paul Stock of the LSE. The idea of the evening is to have a lively, informed discussion about how domestic and public space was created and used in London during the Regency. Questions from the floor will be invited and encouraged, so there’ll be plenty of opportunity to get involved, and less of us holding forth but instead pulling the subject apart with your help. Tickets are available here.

Politics of Space in Regency London at the Institute for Contemporary Arts

Next Wednesday, the 29th of June, I will be taking part in a panel at the ICA on The Politics of Space in Regency London. The panellists are artist Pablo Bronstein (whose work on Regency space forms the current exhibition), architectural historian Steven Parissien and urban historian/historian of Poor London Professor Tim Hitchcock. And me. It will be chaired by Paul Stock of the LSE. The idea of the evening is to have a lively, informed discussion about how domestic and public space was created and used in London during the Regency. Questions from the floor will be invited and encouraged, so there’ll be plenty of opportunity to get involved, and less of us holding forth but instead pulling the subject apart with your help. Tickets are available here.

Tags: JustMigrated

Photo
June 17, 2011
The Shoreditch Body-Snatchers and The Murder of Carlo Ferrari So, I’m currently mired in the subject of Death in Georgian London.  As you can imagine, it’s everywhere and has so many different qualities, all of them tinged with sadness.  But amongst all this, there are very few as sad as the case of Carlo Ferrari, a fourteen year old Italian boy, who ‘got his living showing white mice’ as a little sideshow on the streets. Medical science demanded a steady flow of bodies on which to research anatomy and practice surgical procedures.  This demand was met largely through those of the pauper population who lay ‘unclaimed’ after death.  But not always: fresh corpses were exhumed from burial grounds and sometimes more sinister methods came into play.  Heard of Burke and Hare and their murders in Edinburgh in the late 1820s?  Thanks to them ‘burking’ became an urban myth, with the idea that body-snatchers killed prime victims such as women pregnant with twins or people with unusual physical characteristics.  ’Burking’, by the way, doesn’t mean offing someone to sell their corpse, it’s to murder by suffocation, the technique Burke used to keep the bodies undamaged.  In London there’s nothing but circumstantial evidence that anatomist-surgeons chose corpses to order, but there is one case where body-snatchers did murder speculatively.   ‘On November 5th, 1831, two men, named Bishop and May, called at the dissecting-room at King’s College, and asked Hill, the porter, if he “wanted anything.” On being interrogated as to what they had to dispose of, May replied, “A boy of fourteen.” For this body they asked 12 guineas, but ultimately agreed to bring it in for 9 guineas. They went off, and returned in the afternoon with another man named Williams, alias Head, and a porter named Shields, the latter of whom carried the body in a hamper. The appearance of the subject excited Hill’s suspicion of foul play, and he at once communicated with Mr. Partridge, the Demonstrator of Anatomy. A further examination of the body by Mr. Partridge confirmed the porter’s suspicions. To delay the men, so that the police might be communicated with, Mr. Partridge produced a £50 note, and said that he could not pay until he had changed it. Soon after, the police officers appeared upon the scene, and the men were given into custody.’ The gang were found guilty and sentenced to death.  Their evidence revealed ’that they had enticed the boy to their dwelling in Nova Scotia Gardens; there they drugged him with opium, and then let his body into a well, where they kept it until he was suffocated. To the last the prisoners declared that the deceased was not the Italian boy, but a lad from Lincolnshire. They seem to have had great difficulty in disposing of the body, as Bishop, in his confession, said that, before taking it to Guy’s, they had tried Mr. Tuson and Mr. Carpue, both in vain. Bishop and Williams confessed, also, to the murder of a woman named Fanny Pigburn, and a boy, whose name was supposed to be Cunningham. Both of these bodies they sold for dissection.’ Quite why they imagined insisting on a different identity for Carlo is a mystery.  It seemed that he was a known figure on the streets and perhaps they feared public backlash against their crime.  They had removed Carlo’s teeth to sell ‘to Mr. Mills, a dentist, for twelve shillings’ and they hadn’t treated his body well in transit, all of which was reported in the papers and pamphlets to a huge public outcry.  One paper reported a record circulation of 50,000 on the day of the confessions - massive by the standards of the time. Carlo’s case is the only proven incidence of ‘murder to order’/speculative murder for London’s corpse trade and highlights the vulnerability of street children.  It also shows the very fine line the anatomist-surgeons trod in their work.  Researching death in all its myriad forms hasn’t been my favourite part of writing this book but of all the more macabre stories, from the Lambeth Articulator who wired up a baby’s skeleton as ‘a doll’ for his own child to play with to the beggar woman who froze to death on her knees in the Fleet Market, for some reason it is Carlo Ferrari, a fourteen year old Italian boy who got his living showing white mice who just won’t leave me alone.

The Shoreditch Body-Snatchers and The Murder of Carlo Ferrari

So, I’m currently mired in the subject of Death in Georgian London.  As you can imagine, it’s everywhere and has so many different qualities, all of them tinged with sadness.  But amongst all this, there are very few as sad as the case of Carlo Ferrari, a fourteen year old Italian boy, who ‘got his living showing white mice’ as a little sideshow on the streets.

Medical science demanded a steady flow of bodies on which to research anatomy and practice surgical procedures.  This demand was met largely through those of the pauper population who lay ‘unclaimed’ after death.  But not always: fresh corpses were exhumed from burial grounds and sometimes more sinister methods came into play.  Heard of Burke and Hare and their murders in Edinburgh in the late 1820s?  Thanks to them ‘burking’ became an urban myth, with the idea that body-snatchers killed prime victims such as women pregnant with twins or people with unusual physical characteristics.  ’Burking’, by the way, doesn’t mean offing someone to sell their corpse, it’s to murder by suffocation, the technique Burke used to keep the bodies undamaged.  In London there’s nothing but circumstantial evidence that anatomist-surgeons chose corpses to order, but there is one case where body-snatchers did murder speculatively.  

‘On November 5th, 1831, two men, named Bishop and May, called at the dissecting-room at King’s College, and asked Hill, the porter, if he “wanted anything.” On being interrogated as to what they had to dispose of, May replied, “A boy of fourteen.” For this body they asked 12 guineas, but ultimately agreed to bring it in for 9 guineas. They went off, and returned in the afternoon with another man named Williams, alias Head, and a porter named Shields, the latter of whom carried the body in a hamper. The appearance of the subject excited Hill’s suspicion of foul play, and he at once communicated with Mr. Partridge, the Demonstrator of Anatomy. A further examination of the body by Mr. Partridge confirmed the porter’s suspicions. To delay the men, so that the police might be communicated with, Mr. Partridge produced a £50 note, and said that he could not pay until he had changed it. Soon after, the police officers appeared upon the scene, and the men were given into custody.’
The gang were found guilty and sentenced to death.  Their evidence revealed ’that they had enticed the boy to their dwelling in Nova Scotia Gardens; there they drugged him with opium, and then let his body into a well, where they kept it until he was suffocated. To the last the prisoners declared that the deceased was not the Italian boy, but a lad from Lincolnshire. They seem to have had great difficulty in disposing of the body, as Bishop, in his confession, said that, before taking it to Guy’s, they had tried Mr. Tuson and Mr. Carpue, both in vain. Bishop and Williams confessed, also, to the murder of a woman named Fanny Pigburn, and a boy, whose name was supposed to be Cunningham. Both of these bodies they sold for dissection.’

Quite why they imagined insisting on a different identity for Carlo is a mystery.  It seemed that he was a known figure on the streets and perhaps they feared public backlash against their crime.  They had removed Carlo’s teeth to sell ‘to Mr. Mills, a dentist, for twelve shillings’ and they hadn’t treated his body well in transit, all of which was reported in the papers and pamphlets to a huge public outcry.  One paper reported a record circulation of 50,000 on the day of the confessions - massive by the standards of the time.
Carlo’s case is the only proven incidence of ‘murder to order’/speculative murder for London’s corpse trade and highlights the vulnerability of street children.  It also shows the very fine line the anatomist-surgeons trod in their work.  Researching death in all its myriad forms hasn’t been my favourite part of writing this book but of all the more macabre stories, from the Lambeth Articulator who wired up a baby’s skeleton as ‘a doll’ for his own child to play with to the beggar woman who froze to death on her knees in the Fleet Market, for some reason it is Carlo Ferrari, a fourteen year old Italian boy who got his living showing white mice who just won’t leave me alone.

Tags: JustMigrated

Photo
June 10, 2011
O.M.G. &c.,   I wrote a story about a foggy, gaslit Weird London set in 1872.  Contrary to my usual mode of operation in the solidly non-fiction world of being a historian, it’s completely made up.  I showed it to my agent (the splendid Kirsty Mclachlan at David Godwin Associates) a bit shyly; not supposed to be what historian types do, is it now.  Anyway, the thing is, the amazing Chicken House team want to publish it, in the early part of 2013.  The Chicken House list is tremendous and I am delighted, proud, bowled over and hugely excited to be working with them (hence the adjective overload - sorry).  It’s a detective story featuring a teenage girl in her first job, whose boss is an American with an eerie heritage and some remarkable body art.  London is awash with new inventions and Darwin’s revelations have sparked controversy over the theory of who we are, and where we’ve come from.   The race is on to find out what makes us human.  There’s mystery, romance, science, murder and a two-headed dog.  If anyone else has as much fun with it as I’ve had, I’ll be pleased and honoured. I realise that for everyone else 2013 is miles away, but I can’t help it, I had to share.   p.s. I don’t know why it’s set in Victorian London, it just is. 

O.M.G. &c.,

 

I wrote a story about a foggy, gaslit Weird London set in 1872.  Contrary to my usual mode of operation in the solidly non-fiction world of being a historian, it’s completely made up.  I showed it to my agent (the splendid Kirsty Mclachlan at David Godwin Associates) a bit shyly; not supposed to be what historian types do, is it now.  Anyway, the thing is, the amazing Chicken House team want to publish it, in the early part of 2013.  The Chicken House list is tremendous and I am delighted, proud, bowled over and hugely excited to be working with them (hence the adjective overload - sorry).  It’s a detective story featuring a teenage girl in her first job, whose boss is an American with an eerie heritage and some remarkable body art.  London is awash with new inventions and Darwin’s revelations have sparked controversy over the theory of who we are, and where we’ve come from.   The race is on to find out what makes us human.  There’s mystery, romance, science, murder and a two-headed dog.  If anyone else has as much fun with it as I’ve had, I’ll be pleased and honoured.

I realise that for everyone else 2013 is miles away, but I can’t help it, I had to share.  

p.s. I don’t know why it’s set in Victorian London, it just is. 

Tags: JustMigrated

Photo
June 05, 2011
Giveaway: Leo Hollis’s ‘The Stones of London’   Leo Hollis’s new book, The Stones of London tells the history of this ever-changing city in twelve buildings both old and new.  It is both charming and erudite like its author, and combines striking imagery with Leo’s knowledge and love of London.  Georgian London has a signed copy to giveaway and the winner will be picked from the right answers to this question: at one point in its life 19 Princelet Street wasn’t only a house, but a house of worship - for which religion?  Answers in the comments by Friday the 10th of June please. Good luck. x

Giveaway: Leo Hollis’s ‘The Stones of London’

 

Leo Hollis’s new book, The Stones of London tells the history of this ever-changing city in twelve buildings both old and new.  It is both charming and erudite like its author, and combines striking imagery with Leo’s knowledge and love of London.  Georgian London has a signed copy to giveaway and the winner will be picked from the right answers to this question: at one point in its life 19 Princelet Street wasn’t only a house, but a house of worship - for which religion?  Answers in the comments by Friday the 10th of June please. Good luck. x

Tags: JustMigrated