Georgian London

Ada Lovelace Day - Mrs Margaret Bryan, Astronomer of Blackheath

thegaslight-blog — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 07:05:00 -0400

Mrs Margaret Bryan was born, it is thought, some time before 1760. She had two daughters, and was married to Mr Bryan. In her thirties, she opened a school for girls near Hyde Park Corner. But Margaret Bryan’s school had one remarkable difference: it was an academy for teaching girls mathematics and science.

In 1795 she moved the academy to Blackheath, where it flourished until 1806. In 1797 she published A Compendious System of Astronomy. In it, she excuses her temerity in writing on such subjects, explaining that it is for the use of her students, rather than for public consumption. Her friends, she said, insisted she publish and she asks to be judged by those, who like her, seek ‘truth, although enfeebled by female attire’.

Charles Hutton, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, endorsed the work of the 'beautiful’ Mrs Bryan, saying that, 'even the learned and more difficult sciences are … beginning to be successfully cultivated by the extraordinary and elegant talents of the female writers of the present day’. Hutton respected Bryan, and encouraged her in her 1806, Lectures of Natural Philosophy: thirteen lectures on hydrostatics, optics, pneumatics and acoustics.

Her final publication came in 1815, with An Astronomical and Geographical Class Book for Schools. In 1816, she left for Margate, where instead of retiring, she opened another academy.

A Brief Guide for Speakers New To Addressing Blind and Deaf Groups

thegaslight-blog — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 14:04:34 -0400

Recently I taught a week long course for blind students on London’s Georgian history and ordinary life during the period, including living life disabled. Whilst the majority of my students had become blind during their adult life, a significant number had been blind since childhood and were also deaf.

Whilst I had made preparations to have what I hoped would be interesting material available, including objects, eighteenth century books and textiles, I hadn’t quite taken on board various aspects of delivery and the pace of our studies. This brief guide will, I hope, help any other speaker intending to address a blind and deaf group. The terms blind and deaf are used here, as I have been contacted by blind and deaf people by email and asked to use these terms, rather than ‘impaired’, which is less favoured by the students themselves. Also, by issuing this guide, I am not claiming to be any sort of expert at all, just to pass on the things I learned, and wish I had known at the beginning of the course! This is also a work in progress and if anyone wants to contribute to it, as either a speaker/teacher or a student they can always email me lucyinglis77@gmail.com

1) If your group includes deaf members, you may be expected to wear a transmitter fob around your neck. These usually just switch on and off. Keep it away from your mobile phone. Members with compatible hearing aids will also wear one. Often, they will play with them during the talk. Don’t get distracted by this, if there’s a problem, they or their guide will tell you. (Pro tip: remember to switch your transmitter off during any tea breaks and when you are in the loo….)

2) Be aware of your venue. If in a lecture theatre, make sure those using the transmitter are in range (near the front), even if guides have to sit nearer the back. This also applies to sitting in the round. Be aware that some students may not want to be separated from their guides, so just suggest it rather than enforce it. If someone can’t hear deaf or not, you’ll soon know about it because they will tell you.

3) Any disabled group is likely to be from a more diverse range of backgrounds and knowledge bases than your typical lecture audience. If your subject is specialist, speak assuming a basic level of knowledge, but a high level of interest and ability.

4) Introduce yourself at the very beginning. Hopefully, your group will be wearing clear name tags. The group does not know what you look like, which is not necessarily important, but it gives them no yardstick on which to feel acquainted with you before you all engage with the material. Where is your regional accent from? How old are you? Where do you live now? Are you married? Have children? Did you have a shocking journey to the venue? Any tiny anecdote will break the ice. Be comfortable with dispensing a little bit of something about yourself, it will make all the difference to the atmosphere in the room.

5) Speak slowly and clearly. I know, as a speaker, you will think you already speak slowly and clearly. I can almost guarantee you will have vocal nuances that are difficult for the deaf, such as closing your sentences abruptly, or swallowing the odd word. Almost all of these aren’t a problem and will add to your appeal as an individual, but only as long as you SLOW DOWN. This, in turn, will dramatically affect the amount of material you can expect to deliver. Work on approximately 2/3rds of your usual amount but have supplementary up your sleeve for Q&A.

6) Expect to be interrupted. Guide dogs are still just dogs, though they are brilliant too. They sigh, yawn, stretch, grunt and gurgle like any other dog. Plus, disabled students often invest a huge amount of time, effort and emotion into getting to a talk or lecture. If they have a guide, then that’s double the effort. Your talk is important to them, as is their often extensive preparation. It is absolutely usual to be interrupted with shouts of, ‘I CANNOT HEAR YOU,‘ or requests for clarification of a point or a name. This is not bad manners, and it will teach you valuable things about both your delivery and the quality of information you are imparting in a way that may be glossed over in an ordinary lecture.

7) Don’t be worried if you see students with their eyes closed, not looking at you or even with their head resting on arms while you are speaking. They are all listening.

8) If someone stops you, either by interruption or by raising their hand, stop speaking and identify them. For example: Ruth would like to ask a question, Ruth go ahead. Ruth will then ask her question. Bear in mind that people using the transmitter are now sitting, effectively, in silence. Most are very patient with this, but be aware of the length of time the question is taking, and if necessary, reassert yourself as speaker. In ALL CASES, repeat the question, cutting it down to the shortest version. For example: Ruth is asking whether gin really was such a scourge amongst the poorer classes in the eighteenth century, and my answer is x. This maintains context and flow for the deaf members of the group.

9) Don’t fret about your language. Mincing around phrases such as, ‘When we look at,’ or ‘You might have heard about,’ is obvious and the vast majority of your students and audience will use these phrases themselves without any second thoughts.

10) If you can, take along at least one object you can allow to be passed around. Blind people are exceptionally careful when they handle things as they are more reliant on it for experience. They also gain a huge amount from it and it will elevate their experience of your teaching.

11) If you are reading or using notes, which is absolutely fine, do it with your HEAD UP NOT LIKE ME IN THE PICTURE. My students told me they could tell whenever I dropped my head to read a passage or quote. So I stopped doing it. It is a very good lesson for all speakers.

Speaking to students with different levels of ability than you might be used to can be daunting, but they only want you to give what you would give to any other group: respect, commitment and passion for your subject, no matter how niche. If you get the opportunity, I suggest you seize it. It may well be some of the most fun teaching time you’ll ever have.

Independent: Book of a Lifetime

thegaslight-blog — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 06:21:41 -0400

I wrote this for the Independent this weekend, on my choice for a Book of a Lifetime.

As a historian of eighteenth century London, it would be too predictable to choose Samuel Johnson’s great Dictionary of 1775 as my choice for a book with enduring impact. There’s no doubt that Johnson’s work had a pivotal role in defining our modern language, but in terms of cultural significance, there’s another book which is almost equally important: Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia.

In the intellectual crucible of late seventeenth-century Europe, texts on science, astronomy, philosophy and the natural world proliferated, but many were too specialized for the ordinary reader. Gottfried Leibniz, German mathematician and philosopher, described them in 1680 as ‘the horrible mass of books which keeps on growing’. The same year, Ephraim Chambers was born in Kendal. Gifted but poor, he was apprenticed to a London mechanic, ‘but having formed ideas not at all reconcilable to manual labour he was removed from thence and tried at another business’. This attempt also failed and ‘he was at last sent to Mr Senex, the globe-maker’.

Senex globes are now prized for their astronomical accuracy, although his maps are equally prized for showing California as a large island. Ephraim was no ordinary apprentice; Senex, a man from Shropshire turned Royal Society Fellow and Freemason, was only two years older than his charge, making Chambers one of London’s oldest apprentices at the age of about thirty-four. Ephraim spent his time studying, and a friend noted that he left the apprenticeship ‘a very indifferent globe-maker’. Instead, he had decided he was going to curate all the most important knowledge in the world. It seemed a crazy idea.

In 1728, his Cyclopaedia appeared, modestly subtitled, ‘An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences’. Chambers died in 1740, still working on another edition. There were rumours of trouble amongst the collection of publishers who had undertaken to produce the massive Cyclopaedia but the only one mentioned specifically after Ephraim’s death is Longman, who ‘in particular used him with the liberality of a prince and the tenderness of a father’. Longman’s of Paternoster Row went on to publish Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. By then, the first edition of the Cyclopaedia had reached Europe, where Denis Diderot was engaged to translate it. Diderot seized upon the material, adding to it from the burgeoning Republic of Letters, and it was published in 27 volumes from 1751 to 1772 as the famous Encyclopédie.

Diderot’s Encyclopédie was suppressed at stages during its publication, accused of seditious content for asserting that knowledge and not social class or religion lead equated to true status. This monumental work was a core text of the Enlightenment, but it was inspired by a boy from Kendal, determined to write ‘the best Book in the Universe’.

Georgian London: Into the Streets

thegaslight-blog — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 14:51:00 -0400

Yes, it’s finally here. Georgian London: Into the Streets is now on the streets (via your preferred book purchasing method).

Publication day blogging is a bit like arriving at an exam and being given a blank sheet of paper and the last few weeks have been emotional, in more ways than one. I had this post prepared last week, but on the big day, just didn’t want to put it up. If you read it, you’ll know why. Here goes!

It’s been an incredible journey, from the first post on the blog in 2009, to holding the finished hardback in my hand a little over a month ago. There have, of course, been bumps in the road and I need to thank everyone involved with the book for their patience, skill and enthusiasm. Thank you Eleo, Jillian and Ben and Lija, and Kirsty and Heather, and everyone at Viking and DGA who has worked on Georgian London.

A great big thank you to all the people who have given me so much help throughout the writing of the book. Reading chapters, listening to my worries, sending me videos of Henry Cavill’s Superman workouts. The latter were particularly helpful if only for seeing what a serious work ethic looks like, but thankfully there aren’t that many egg whites involved in writing.

Some of you do know, but most of you won’t, that through the book’s entire gestation period, and for much of my time studying the eighteenth century, Mr I Snr was suffering from terminal cancer. And next week I have to talk about the writing of the book, and it’s easier to write this and then not have to say it. I’ll just raise a glass. He decided, typically, to live far longer than the weeks he was given seven years ago. To the best of our knowledge, this was achieved mainly through pork crackling stolen from someone else’s plate, oysters, wine and willpower. When the proof of Georgian London finally arrived, he read it even as his sight failed, and he got to hold the finished edition although he could no longer really see it: ‘The dust jacket feels simply lovely.’ He died at home just over two weeks ago with the book by his bedside. And Bridie the border terrier on his bed. He leaves a big space in our lives and the world will be a less colourful place. It was he who made me a member of the wondrous London Library all those years ago, setting me on this course through a mutual love of life in another century. I also need to thank him for being half-responsible for my husband, the legendary Mr I, to whom Georgian London is dedicated.

The final and very real thank you goes to all the readers of this blog over the past four years. Your support, comments, messages, likes and even your stats (yes the regular in French Guiana, you especially) have meant everything; the book has come directly from the strength of your interest in eighteenth century London. Thank you. THANK YOU.

This blog will go on, of course, and soon in a new and really quite glamorous home. I’d hoped it would be built already. But now I know you know why. And I know you know too, that I’m nowhere near done with the eighteenth century yet.

p.s. If there isn’t a kindle sale in French Guiana, I’ll assume you’ve emigrated.

In The Dark

thegaslight-blog — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 14:19:00 -0400

What a week. When the estimable Adrian Tinniswood suggested I take a group of visually and hearing impaired students on a week’s tour around Georgian London there was no way to know what to expect. I mean, I sort of knew what to expect in terms of guide dogs (and Poppy, Lyle and Ice defied all expectations) but in terms of student ability and their expectations, I was a bit lost.

Well, they soon set me straight on that. Eighteen students, eighteen guides, various guide dogs. We started out with,’ You’re speaking too fast! Are you wearing the transmitter?’ ‘Where are you sitting? I don’t know where you are!’ 'You have a nice voice but it’s NOT VERY LOUD. Speak up, not all of us have hearing aids, you know.’ I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a situation where not having to wear a hearing aid is a disadvantage. Yet soon I learned that this group haven’t only been to more museums than I’ll ever go to in my lifetime, but they overcome more obstacles in order to just get to those museums than most of the rest of us can understand. Yesterday, the heat and rain in London combined to make the bus changes we had to take to get to Kensington Palace for the special tour beyond minging. We worked out a Tube route. Only some of the group felt confident enough to take it, even with guides and guide dogs. But others, most of them unfamiliar with London, launched themselves onto the Underground with cheerful abandon. I was struck, constantly, with how the visually impaired trust the goodness in others. And how they attract that goodness.

I must extend a special thank you to Goldsmiths’ Hall, particularly Richard McCrow, Sophia and Claire, who guided us brilliantly and wore the court robes and let themselves be felt up, as well as all the furniture, wall coverings, chimney pieces and decorations. And the summer restorers who manned the lifts and took such good care of us. The Foundling Museum found a place in the heart of everyone who attended on Wednesday afternoon, as did Julian at Kensington Palace who had everyone howling with his talk including well-endowed herms and how to take a leak in the presence of the king.

Last night we were lucky enough to have Amy Kavanagh speak to the group about the experience of being a visually impaired historian.

I woke up this morning with the final session’s lecture in my head and on my laptop. And a real sense of sadness that I wouldn’t be working with such a committed and informed group after today. So I ditched the lecture and took questions from the floor. We covered interiors, the tactile exhibitions at European museums, childbirth and menstruation in the eighteenth century (that was in a corner during the coffee break), the trouble with hearing loops in echoing rooms, and finally, Barbara Hepworth.

I only hope my students got as much out of it as I did.

This week I taught a course on Georgian London for Add-Venture In Learning.

On Heroes

thegaslight-blog — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:57:00 -0400

This post is off topic for Georgian London, so I totally understand if you don’t read on from here!

The recent abuse suffered on Twitter by feminist Caroline Criado-Perez is abhorrent. Disgusting, vile, wrong. But I won’t be taking the #trolliday on August 4th, or campaigning for Twitter (the business, not the users) to ‘behave’ better, or boycotting the service. I’m not in favour of women being abused, obviously. But it’s just not as simple as that, is it. There’s too much shouting on Twitter about things like this at the moment, by women who want to be seen as feminist icons and men who want to cement their ‘liberal’ status. And the outragemongers.

This seems to come from a fundamental missing of the point that stupid and/or socially inadequate men are frightened by intelligent and therefore (in the land of these new, free, internet platforms) powerful women. Or about the fact that even more allegedly competent men such as certain American politicians currently in the news have some very peculiar ideas about what constitutes a normal way to address women online. Do people really imagine that these men, or groups of men are going to think, ‘Oh, an online petition shows that xx thousand people don’t like that I said I wanted to rape and sodomise a stupid bitch and show her who’s boss, so I’ll stop that now and never look at extreme porn or leer at a woman in the street again’. I don’t think so.

This is a post about men and women. As much as we want to believe we’re all people, until we admit the differences, we can’t address them and make them work for all of us. I’ve tried to work out what I think about the whole situation, and I remembered something that happened a long time ago. It’s a nice story with a good ending. A reason to be cheerful. So I thought, maybe you’d like to hear it too.

When I was sixteen I had a boyfriend. No really, I did. He was and is, lovely. Then he went off to university and I had to get the train halfway across the country to see him. I know, young love. You wouldn’t know it now, but I was exceptionally shy. On the train, at night, somewhere in Middle England, a man in a black poloneck (*obvious villain klaxon*) sat down opposite me and starting asking if I understood about what God wanted a woman to do with her life, and if I wanted a Coke and where was I getting off and who was meeting me. I knew this was a Very. Bad. Thing. Total Stranger Danger. And I’d seen those videos, a lot (remember The 90s). But I was too politely-brought-up, and too afraid to do anything. I was so afraid that I was still sitting there like a rabbit in the headlights, when the train divided and I was in the front end, the wrong end, and not stopping at the station where my boyfriend was waiting in his Ford Fiesta. But far, far worse, I was with a man who had sat there and talked me into it happening. Without a doubt, he knew exactly what he was doing.

What did I do? Was I some sort of teenage ninja? Did I ask for help from the people walking through the night-time carriage? No, obviously not. I wanted to. A couple of times I almost did. But I didn’t. And these were the days before mobile phones, Twitter and certainly before modern journalists were empowering teenage girls.

So I sat there, with tears leaking from my face, looking out of the window as this man continued to speak to me about God. And the importance of ‘special relationships’. He had a black blazer in his lap with one of those fish badges on it. But he wasn’t a Christian. Christians don’t talk to lone girls about what ‘God’ wants from them. They don’t reach out and try to touch their hands across the table. He was an unpleasant, opportunistic creep at best. At worst, I was in a lot of trouble.

ENTER STAGE LEFT (from the next carriage): Our Hero. He was probably in his early twenties, with brown hair, a bit squinty with tired, wearing a navy t-shirt, board shorts (it was the 90s, people) and carrying a vast rucksack. He stopped, exactly at the end of the table, where so many others had walked by in the previous forty minutes.

‘Are you okay?’

Poloneck: ‘She’s fine.’

Long pause. ‘I wasn’t asking you.’

Poloneck: ‘I told you, she’s fine.’

‘And I said I wasn’t asking you.’

Like your true modern feminist, I started to sob. How on earth could I say I didn’t know this man at all and that I had missed my change and was incoherent with fear?

Our Hero dumped his bag against the table and sat down next to me, smiling.

Poloneck: We were having a conversation.

Our Hero: Don’t let me stop you.

Poloneck: It was a private conversation.

Our Hero: I don’t mind.

After ten very silent minutes, (it may have been two or one and a half; it felt like a lifetime) of staring amongst them and me sniffing, The Poloneck got up and went to sit a few rows away, glowering.

Our Hero’s name was Peter. He was on his way back home after backpacking, somewhere. I don’t remember where. I told him I’d missed my connection. He jumped up and found the conductor. Remember those? I sat, petrified in the half a minute Peter was gone, The Poloneck being no more than a few yards away. Peter came back with an extremely tall Sikh in a plum-coloured turban with the big grey machine strapped around his neck like a cinema ice-cream girl. He had already passed me twice. He’d checked my ticket while tears ran down my face.

But now, because of one young, self-assured man, everything was going to be okay. They had a plan.

Peter had brought back with him a very cold Coke (yes, really, but remember it was the 90s), and did that cool thing with the ring pull and a straw. Then we shared it because he thought I was frightened about it being drugged and this whole thing being some sort of plot. That hadn’t crossed my mind. I can’t remember what we talked about and the Coke made my head ache. A few minutes later, he jumped up and grabbed my bag, and we went to the door. The conductor stood there, waiting. The train slowed, then stopped, at a tiny station. The platform was completely empty apart from a red geranium and an orange overhead light.

The conductor smiled. ‘Your train will be along in a couple of minutes. Stand in this spot and get on quickly. They are stopping it just for you.’ I didn’t register until a long time later that they were stopping not one, but two Intercity trains for me. He opened the doors and Peter jumped out, put my bag on the ground, and got back onto the train. They both waved, through the glass. It pulled away.

As it charged off into the night, I remembered I’d forgotten to say thank you. Or goodbye. Or, in fact, anything. And I’m sorry about that.

A few anxious minutes later, there were the headlights of another train in the distance. It careered to a halt on the platform, the doors opened and I stepped out of the night air and into the carriage. There was no one there, no one to thank. Soon after that, I was climbing into the passenger seat of a Ford Fiesta, only a little late. My boyfriend leant across me to check that the cranky door was shut. ‘Are you okay?’ he said, ‘you look as if you’ve been crying.’

What happened to me that night? Nothing. I had a crap train journey, an indifferent pizza and slept in a single bed with a young man who suffered from the worst hayfever I’ve ever encountered. But what might have happened?

And that’s my point. Being well-meaning in a tweet or an online signature isn’t enough. And all the loud online posturing in the world is not going to take the place of that one good deed. The one moment where we should act in real life, and don’t. And then that moment changes someone else’s life. After all, bad men don’t have to be yelling rape abuse.

Twenty years on, I’m not a frightened little girl any more. I’ve lived in London for most of that time, and I’ve been jostled, pushed, spat on and called all the choicest names for female genitalia by men I don’t know. (If you’re interested in this, you don’t have to go to specialist clubs and pay or anything, just travel by Tube or bus for a month. Or cycling. That really brings out the best in some men. Every journey a joy.) But I try to stick up for myself out there in the world, and for anyone else, man, woman or animal, if I think they need it. Yes, it’s not always that simple. Sometimes it’s frightening. Assistance isn’t always welcome. You have to pick your fights and you can’t always get it right: taking on the mob at Gatwick Wetherspoons at 0630 over a small matter of etiquette probably wasn’t my finest call. What I have learned in those years is that there are a lot of good men out there, and it just takes one of them to see a woman in distress and change the outcome of that situation. There are also lots of not so nice men, but not one, not ten online campaigns are going to take the place of the person on the street, at a party, on the train, or in the office who steps in and says, ‘This is not okay’.

I don’t remember the many people who walked past a tearful teenage girl in the train carriage that night. But I remember the one who didn’t.

The Origins of St James's

thegaslight-blog — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 12:46:00 -0400

St James’s Square has now been a bastion of London clubs and institutions for over a century. But at the time of the Restoration when Charles II, not wanting to live in the Whitehall that had witnessed his father’s miserable last years, chose St James’s palace as his residence, it was not such a desirable residence.

‘St James’s Palace, where the royal family now resides in the winter season, stands pleasantly upon the north side of the Park, and has several noble rooms in it, but it is an irregular building, by no means suitable to the grandeur of the British monarch its master. In the front next St. James’s street, there appears little more than an old gate house, by which we enter a little square court, with a piazza on the west side of it leading to the grand stair case; and there are two other courts beyond, which had not much the air of a prince’s palace.’ (Look’s fine to me, for a little place in town.)

The history of the square is a snapshot of London in her prime: Henry Jermyn, Duke of St Albans was to build what is arguably London’s finest square, and also cut the ribbon on the race for London’s aristocrats to become hereditary landlords. Jermyn was described by a contemporary as ‘a man of pleasure….and entertains no other thoughts than to live at ease’. Perhaps the ideal qualifications for a man to build a garden square designed to house London’s wealthiest families.

Fire and plague was spurring the building craze in London’s second city. When Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he was determined to rule in style completely opposed to that of his father: relaxed and accessible, he worked hard to please his people and reward the friends who had remained loyal. Henry Jermyn, the Duke of St Albans was allowed to start building in St James’s Fields because, as he put it, ‘Ye beauty of this great Towne and ye convenience of your Court are defective in point of houses fitt for ye dwellings of Noble men and other Persons of quality’. Like most aristocratic landlords of his time Jermyn was no architect, but he did have a vision for his development and laid out the square in plots which were to be leased to builders who were to build houses of ‘substantial character’. He worked with Sir John Coell and Sir Thomas Clarges to make a plan, all overseen, in theory, by the King himself. The City, protective of its water supply and alarmed by the expansion of London, were not so keen, as Samuel Pepys recorded on September 2nd, 1663:

‘The building of St. James’s by my Lord St Albans, which is now about, and which the City stomach, I perceive, highly, but dare not oppose it.’

By 1666 St James’s Square had its first resident - Sir William Stanley, who was living on the north side of the square. The rate books record him as owing a solitary pound, on which he defaulted. By 1667, Henry Jermyn was living in a house on the north-west corner of York Street, later to become Chandos House. From there, he could watch over his blossoming development, both in the square, and north towards Piccadilly.

In 1676, St James’s Square first appears as a separate place of residence, by which time the King’s ex-mistress Mary, or ‘Moll’ Davis was living in the south-west corner. Elizabeth Pepys called her ‘the most impertinent slut in the world’, which is presumably how she came by the £1800 she paid for the property, aged 29.

Nearby, St James’s Market was opened to serve the local population. Although Tobias Smollett was less than happy with some of the stall-holders: ‘It was but yesterday that I saw a dirty barrow-bunter in the street, cleaning her dusty fruit with her own spittle; and who knows but some fine lady of St. James’s parish might admit into her delicate mouth those very cherries which had been rolled and moistened between the filthy, and perhaps ulcerated, chops of a St. Giles’s huckster?'

(The market) SAUL’s, for all your drainpipe needs!

In the early part of the eighteenth century, the square retained its rural, though grand appearance, echoing the Rus In Urbe ideal of nearby Buckingham House. Although Jermyn had planned to pave the square early in its life, it never happened, and by the 1720s, the central space was overgrown and beginning to resemble a refuse tip, with garbage ditched there by all manner of residents and passersby. It was clear this could not continue and in 1726, the residents decided to clean up their act, asking Parliament for permission to rate themselves for enough funds to ‘cleanse, adorn, and beautify’ the square which ‘hath for some years past lain, and doth now lie, rude and in great disorder’. Worse than the filth, a local coachmaker had built a shed in the centre of the square in which to store timber. The bill whooshed through both Houses in two months. The new rules included the stipulation that hackney-carriages were not allowed to ply, or pick up in the square, but must drop off their fare and make the quickest exit.

The piles of rubbish were supposed to be replaced with a small ornamental lake and a fountain in 1727. The York Buildings Company won the contract to supply water and after 1734, the square was lit at night. Around this time the railings went in at their current positions to frame the water feature, and the rest of the square outside them was paved. From the middle of the century, the great buildings begin to appear. Matthew Brettingham’s Norfolk House (on the right in the top picture) on the south east side for the same Duke was finished by 1756, and whilst the reviews of its splendid interior (some parts surviving in the V&A) were favourable, the plain exterior was unpopular. Lichfield House, which has just undergone an extensive renovation, was built between 1746-6 by James 'Athenian’ Stuart, is still standing in the north east corner, next to the wonderful London Library.

(Image courtesy of English Heritage)

There are a couple of other survivals, including the link (torch) extinguishers outside Ormond House on the north side*, but change has been part of the life of the square. The water feature was filled in with the first cholera outbreak in 1832. The market was demolished in 1918. Norfolk House remained until 1938 when it was pulled down to make the current offices. The little house at the back where George III was born was being used as a storeroom at the time.

*That’s Berkeley Square but the St James’s ones are similar.

Lost London - The Egyptian Hall

thegaslight-blog — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 09:41:00 -0400

Eighteenth century Piccadilly was a place for all sorts of curiosities to be displayed. Almost opposite Burlington House, at 170–173 Piccadilly, a Starbucks coffee shop now sits where William Bullock’s Egyptian Hall once stood. From 1798, when Nelson triumphed at the Battle of the Nile, English interest in the ‘East’ began to soar. While obelisks and other monumental pieces had been leaking out of Egypt for a century, Napoleon’s heavy thieving from Luxor and Karnak made Egyptian objects desirable amongst the European elite. The victory of the Battle of the Nile also coincided with a period in which an extended grand tour took in Turkey or Egypt. The romance of the East rapidly took hold of the English upper-class imagination, with books, prints and Eastern costume all the rage.

In 1809, Bullock’s Museum arrived in London from Liverpool. The following year, Bullock turned down the opportunity to display the Hottentot Venus, Saartjie Baartman. His reasons are not recorded. In 1812, the Egyptian Hall was ready for occupation. It must have appeared quite surreal to the man on the street. The grand hall of the interior was an extraordinary replica of the avenue at the Karnak Temple complex, near Luxor. By 1819, Bullock was ready to sell his collection of real and spurious objects, and did so in an auction lasting twenty-six days. It was dispersed all over the world. Emptied of its original tenant, the Egyptian Hall received a new and rather more suitable guest: Giovanni Battista Belzoni, known to his English friends as ‘John’.

An Italian strongman and performer, with an English wife, Belzoni was a true adventurer: in 1817, he travelled to the Valley of the Kings and broke into the tomb of Seti I. From Seti’s tomb, Belzoni took a sarcophagus of white alabaster inlaid with blue copper sulphate of great beauty. The retrieval of the sarcophagus, however, was not without peril: the tomb was located in the catacombs, a maze of traps and dead ends, dug to confuse grave robbers. The French interpreter panicked and an Arab assistant broke his hip in a booby trap. Undeterred, Belzoni retrieved the sarcophagus and brought it to England along with the head of the ‘Younger Memnon’. Belzoni suffered constant vomiting and nosebleeds in Egypt, whilst Sarah was unaffected by so much as a case of sunburn – much to her husband’s chagrin.

London eagerly anticipated the imminent arrival of these treasures. Shelley’s famous poem of 1818, ‘Ozymandias’, was written for a newspaper competition held by The Examiner in advance of the arrival of Belzoni’s treasures. The exhibition opened at the Egyptian Hall in May 1821, but a year later the collection was put up for auction. The sale drew two of the greatest collectors of the day: the British Museum and Sir John Soane. The Museum acquired the colossus and Soane the sarcophagus. John Belzoni, financially if not spiritually satisfied, handed in the manuscript of his travels to his publisher, John Murray, and set off for Benin. He died of dysentery one week after arriving there.

Before long, the Egyptian Hall moved on to displaying real-life Laplanders, who gave sleigh rides up and down the central space. It continued on as an exhibition space until redevelopment in 1904, when this extraordinary Georgian flight of fancy was replaced with offices as part of the great slum clearances.

Georgian London Rides Again!

thegaslight-blog — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 08:44:00 -0400

As some of you will know, Posterous turned up its toes earlier this year, and it’s taken a while to get the blog back up and running in any format. Things are busier than ever, and we’re less than two months from Georgian London: Into the Streets, being on the shelves.

So now that I’ve got the platform back and am starting to knock the issues on the head, it’s time to start bringing out all the material that simply wouldn’t fit into the book. Looking at everything from hernia corsets to dockside prostitution, Georgian London is on its way back and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

In the meantime, here’s the cover of the book! I’m unspeakably excited, obviously. It’s available to preorder via this link, or at your local bookshop. Thanks for all your support over the last four years, and as I start the research for my next book, I’m looking forward to bringing you lots more tales from my favourite century.

Lucy

The foundation of the Bank of England and the creation of our...

simonsurtees-blog — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:43:00 -0500

The foundation of the Bank of England and the creation of our National Debt

Last night there was a lot of noise on Twitter about the national debt, and how one politician in particular appeared to regard it as a flexible credit system. Yet, the national debt is just that, and has been since 1694. This is a brief history of the foundation of the Bank of England and the subsequent creation of our national debt, and the symbolism of British money.

During the late seventeenth century banks were private and it was up to the customer to choose which man was trusted enough to deposit money with. Child’s Bank, Hoare’s and Coutts & Co., are three of the earliest, and most famous. Their promissory notes were known as Running Cashes and functioned like a banknote. These men were prominent and trusted, but it was thought London needed an official bank, such as those in Amsterdam or Germany. A group of City merchants, many of the Huguenots, stepped up who believed they could raise a million pounds to start a new Bank. The million pounds would go to the perpetually skint state, and the newly created Bank of England was to reap £65,000 interest for its investors annually, and in perpetuity. Thus, in one swift Act of 1694, the National Debt was created and has swelled over time as successive governments robbed from Peter to pay Paul.

The Great Seal of the new Bank bore the image of Britannia, with her spear and her leg boldly on show, which had appeared on the coins of Hadrian and Antonius Pius in the second century AD. No more was heard of her until after the Restoration, when in 1667 Charles ordered a Britannia medallion to be struck to commemorate the Peace of Breda, which ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War. His own likeness, on the front was captured from a drawing by done by candlelight, by ‘Mr Cooper, the rare limner‘, whilst John Evelyn held the candle. On the reverse, Charles decided that Britannia should feature, and that the Duchess of Richmond should sit as the model. The reaction to the Duchess of Richmond was so positive that she began to appear on the half-pennies and farthings issued soon after. As Samuel Pepys recorded, her face is ‘as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life, I think; and a pretty thing it is, that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by’.

Two years later during the Great Recoinage of 1696, Britannia came to symbolise the new standard of English money. Old fake or clipped coins had become a huge problem. England had minted most of its coins in the Royal Mint near the Tower since around 1279, the high value denominations in gold and sterling standard silver. These coins had a set value, but they stayed in circulation for a long time, and over the decades, the bullion prices changed, so the real value of the metal was either lower, or higher than the face value of the coin. If the value was lower, it was cheaper to ‘buy’ coins and make them into silver dishes, spoons and forks than it was to buy the bullion to make them. So coins were removed from circulation. At the same time the price of bullion on the Continent rose, and clever merchants shipped English coin to Europe where it was purchased and melted down. By the 1670s, John Evelyn recorded that there were not enough coins around to pay for simple household items and food. This provided the perfect opportunity for fakers. As long as no one looked too closely, and simply continued to pass the money around the system, it was worth the face value. Daniel Defoe always attempted to hand over any fake money first, but made sure he had the right amount of genuine money in his pocket in case he was caught. The teenage Isaac Newton made lists of his ‘sins’, and at Whitsuntide, aged 19, number forty-six on his list was ‘Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne’. A less than promising start for the man who would become Warden of the Royal Mint.

With so many fakes and devalued coins around, it was no wonder William III in 1696 decided to give English money a makeover through recoinage, effectively revaluing the pound. Anticipating the demands of recoinage upon available bullion reserves, the Bank of England decided it needed to appoint ‘a fit person who understands gold and silver’. That man was Moses Mocatta, a partner in the firm Mocatta and Goldsmid. Moses Mocatta and his family worshipped at the Bevis Marks synagogue and had strong ties with the Amsterdam bullion community. He established a repository near the Bank, known only as ‘The Warehouse’, where vast quantities of gold and silver bullion were kept. The early bullion trade was supplemented by the issuing of promissory notes, which were an instant and somewhat alarming success. Because Bank of England notes were payable instantly upon presentation and because the Bank’s credit was so good, Bank of England notes became an easy target for forgers. In 1724, the Bank thought it had found a solution. The Huguenot Henry Portal made high grade paper at Bere Mill in Hampshire. This paper, when watermarked, was very hard to fake. The Bank began printing large numbers of notes for fixed sums, whereas previously they had been filled out for the sum specified by the customer. In 1725 the first modern banknotes appeared. The Portals still make the paper for all English banknotes.

Party Pieces: Temporary Architecture of Celebration from the...

simonsurtees-blog — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 06:30:00 -0400

Party Pieces: Temporary Architecture of Celebration from the Restoration to the Regency

For reasons regarding image distribution (it’s a changing field at the moment) I won’t post the slides. However, if you are interested to see some images, open an additional window and google the words around where it says [SLIDE].

[[posterous-content:azEguxzvqhikusnwxhtm]]

The History of the Female Shipwright In 1773 Mary Lacy, a...

simonsurtees-blog — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:25:00 -0400

The History of the Female Shipwright

In 1773 Mary Lacy, a married woman in Deptford published her autobiography, The History of the Female Shipwright. It was an instant success, but soon forgotten. Of its author there is no more trace and no image survives. Of all the women who served in the Navy such as Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot, it is Lacy’s account which is the most plausible and in many ways the most appealing, showing how many small lies ended up as one great big one, and depicting life at sea during the eighteenth century.

Mary had been born and grown up in Kent. She was a bright child who liked to be constantly outdoors ‘at liberty’. At the age of nineteen Mary was in love with an old friend who didn’t feel the same way. She went into the room of her employer‘s brother and took an old coat, a pair of breeches and some old shoes and stockings. She stole a hat from her father. Then, ‘On the first day of May, 1759, about six o’clock in the morning, I set off, and when I had got out of town into the fields, I pulled off my clothes and put on the men’s, leaving my own in a hedge, some in one place and some in another’. The choice of donning male dress is crucial to the story. Mary was small, at about five feet high, and flat-chested. Dressing as a man gave her some protection on the road as she was unlikely to be able to fend off any would-be rapist. She arrived in Chatham later that night and had nowhere to sleep, and ended up lodging with some pigs. The following morning Mary headed down to the dockyard, where some men on a coal-boat took pity on her and shared their breakfast with her.

As she was eating it, a hawk-eyed recruiter came up to Mary, and ‘asked me if I would go to sea, “for,” said he, “it is fine weather now at sea, and if you will go, I will get you a good master on board the Sandwich’’. Mary replied, ‘Yes, sir’. At that moment changed her life forever. The Sandwich was a ninety-gun shop of the line, waiting at Chatham for a crew. The navy was short of men as it was fighting the Seven Years‘ War, as well as being active in North America, the Caribbean, Africa, India and the Channel. The crew welcomed Mary on board, but despite them being short-handed, there was not a whiff of her being pressed to join them. In fact, they asked her repeatedly if she wanted first to come aboard, and then to stay. When asked for her name, Mary used her father’s Christian name and her mother’s maiden name, becoming William Chandler. She became the servant to the ship’s carpenter, Baker, who was a kindly man but a violent drunkard.

Although she does not reveal any regret over her decision to come on board, she does reveal how difficult it is to deal with such a man in close confines, both psychologically, when he drunkenly rants over her shortcomings for she couldn’t bear ‘to have my faults told me’, and physically, thinking ‘it very hard to be struck by a man’. For the first part of her autobiography Mary identifies herself as a woman taking on the role of a man, but soon her no-nonsense language makes it clear that her identity was smudging. It begins with a fight.

William Severy was a young nobleman serving the Admiral who picked quarrels with Mary as she went about her duties for Baker. On one occasion she was cooking her master a steak in the galley when Severy gave her a ‘slap in the face that made me reel’. The ship’s cook, who had seen the altercation told Mary that she should call Severy out and that he would mind the steak. ‘Upon which I went aft to the main hatchway and pulled off my jacket, but they wanted me to pull off my shirts, which I would not suffer for fear of it being discovered that I was a woman…Hereupon we instantly engaged and fought a great while…almost enough to dash my brains out, but I never gave out, for I knew that if I did I should have one or other of them continually upon me.’

Mary went back to the steak and took it down to Baker, who said, ‘you have been a long while about the steak, I hope it is well done now’, followed by looking her up and down and concluding, ‘I suppose you have been fighting?’ Mary told him yes, it was that or ‘be drubbed’. Baker’s response was ‘I hope you have not been beat’. It is then that Mary begins her curious fade into what became her male persona. She wrote to her parents in July, ending with ‘Shall be glad to hear from you as soon as you can. So no more at present from, Your undutiful daughter, Mary Lacy. P.S. Please direct thus: For William Chandler on board the Sandwich at Brest’. Mary underwent many hardships onboard ship including a serious attack of rheumatic fever. Worst of all, Baker had fallen into drink and stopped paying her, if he had ever paid her at all. In the autumn of 1760 her rheumatic complaint was so bad that she ended up in hospital at Portsmouth, and was then assigned to the Royal Sovereign. There she met again with William Severy, and formed a friendship with a young woman, living aboard as the companion of one of the sailors. She also met the sailor Robert Dawkins, who became her mentor in her later years in the Navy, and went to a sort of school onboard, where she learned book-keeping. In 1763, she was released from the Navy with the end of the Seven Years’ War. Mary remember that, ‘On this occasion, my joy was so great that I ran up and down scarcely knowing how to contain myself’. But she did not go home. Instead Dawkins helped her get an apprenticeship as a shipwright at Chatham dockyard, and a place living on board the ship the Royal William.

Mary it seems, was now committed to her life as a man. Sadly for Mary her new master was another drunk, and again she had to made shift to earn money for herself by running errands. Once she went for beer in the botswain’s canoe and her master said that if she could beat three men in a four-oared boat he would give her a sixpence. She won, of course. ‘I fell a-laughing at them and called out, “Where’s my money, where’s my money!”’ Her master, of course, did not give her the money, but it shows how competent and confident Lacy had become in her role as both man and sailor.

She was by this stage sharing a bed with John Lyons, a fellow dockyard worker, but he found the work hard and so was always asleep by the time Mary came to bed, and still asleep when she got up. Her best friend at the time was Edward Turner, and with him she went to parties where she met women ‘of the town’, although when she realised this, she stopped going to the parties. There was, after all, no point throwing away her disguise just for an ineffectual engagement with a prostitute. It was at about this time that Mary met a ‘girlfriend’, Betsy. Mary liked her very much but Dawkins discouraged her from continuing the relationship. Instead Mary took up with a servant named Sarah Chase.

Their relationship is a model of eighteenth century tentative, rational courtship: ‘I had not yet served quite three years of my time; nevertheless it was agreed that neither of us should walk out with any other person without the mutual consent of each other. Notwithstanding this agreement, if she saw me talking to any young woman, she was immediately fired with jealousy and could scarce command her temper. This is did sometimes to try her. However, we were very intimate together.’ What intimate means in this case isn’t quite clear, and not necessarily indicative of physical intimacy. But it might well be, as they were living together under the same roof. Furthermore, it seems that Mary was something of a Jack-the-Lad, and couldn’t help flirting with other women. On returning from work one day and asking Sarah for something to eat, Mary could see that Sarah was annoyed. ‘Whereupon I asked what was the matter with her. She told me to go to the squint-eyed girl and inquire the matter there. “Very well,” said I, “so I can”’.

In 1767 Mary visited her parents in Kent after an absence of almost eight years. She went to them in male dress and maintained her male persona throughout the visit. Her family played along. The visit, whilst good for the family, was bad for Mary: a neighbour who knew of the situation then moved to Portsmouth and ‘outed’ Mary. Some of her fellow workers got wind of the situation and came to speak to Mary about it. She held her nerve, and although they searched her things, she was clever enough to have not made a habit of keeping things visible which might betray her.

In 1770, Mary Lacy was made free as a shipwright. Then, she was again struck down by rheumatism. By this time both her parents had died and she had no one to turn to for help until a family friend, a Mr Richardson in Kensington who was apparently aware of her situation invited her to stay with him and his wife, where he helped her apply for a Navy pension. He applied under her real name, and the Admiralty minutes are worth reproducing at length. ‘A Petition was read from Mary Lacy setting forth that in the Year 1759 she disguised herself in Men’s Cloaths and enter’d on board His Maj. Fleet, where having served til the end of the War, she bound herself apprentice to the Carpenter of the Royal William and having served Seven Years, then enter’d as a Shipwright in Portsmouth Yard where she had continued ever since; but that finding her health and constitution impaired by so laborious an employment, she is obliged to give it up for the future, and therefore, praying some Allowance for her Support during the remainder of her life: Resolved, in consideration of the particular Circumstances attending this Woman’s case, the truth of which has been attested by the Commissioner of the Yard at Portsmouth, that she be allowed a Pension equal to that granted to Superannuated Shipwrights.’

Mary was granted a pension without delay. She collected her money in Deptford and there met a sailor named Slade whom she had known in Portsmouth. She married him soon afterwards, moving to King Street in Deptford. What happened to her after that is a mystery.

What folly is this?: Animal Welfare in Georgian London The cruel...

simonsurtees-blog — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:19:00 -0400

What folly is this?: Animal Welfare in Georgian London

The cruel treatment of animals is a sad constant even now, but dramatic changes during London’s Georgian period show the emergence of a modern sensibility towards animals and their welfare.

Bankside had long been the site of London’s bear-baiting venues. The Elizabeth court were particularly keen on this cruel sport. Bankside was a popular destination on Sundays where crowds of both rich and poor spectators gathered to place wagers on the unfortunate contestants, though not everyone agreed it was an acceptable pastime.

What folly is this, to keep with danger

A great mastive dog, and fowle ouglie bear;

And to this and end, to see them two fight,

With terrible tearings, a full ouglie sight.

Bear baiting was prohibited under the Puritans and only hare coursing remained as a dog-based sport that could be done on foot. Upon the Restoration, the Bankside Bear-garden cranked back into life, but Charles did not encourage the sport. Cock-throwing (stones or bottles at a cockerel tied to a stake), dog-fighting and dog versus rats matches abounded throughout. Bandogs were a frightening pit-bull relative, bred in Clerkenwell and used specifically for baiting the larger animals. But tastes were changing and soon spectators wanted to see bears perform rather than die. The bandogs needed new targets, such as the elderly lion baited to death on Bankside in February 1675, and the Earl of Rochester’s ‘savage’ horse to be 'baited to death, of a most vast strength and greatness’. Approximately 19 hands high, the horse stood six feet three inches at the shoulders had destroyed 'several horses and other cattel’, and had been responsible for human fatalities, allegedly. Rochester had sold him to the Marquis of Dorchester, but the horse then hurt his keeper and was sold to a brewer, who put him to a dray. Soon he was breaking his halter and carting the fully laden wagon off behind him in order to attack people in the street, 'monstrously tearing at their flesh, and eating it, the like whereof hath hardly been seen’. Realistically there was no option but to destroy this particular animal. Baiting was not the humane way of doing it, but nevertheless, the horse was put to the dogs for ‘the divertisement of his Excellency the Embassadour from the Emperour of Fez and Morocco; many of the nobility and gentry that knew the horse, and several mischiefs done by him, designing to be present’.

The horse was put to the dogs in the ramshackle Hope Theatre, a Jacobean playhouse which was been taken over exclusively for bloodsports. It killed or maimed them, all. The owner decided to stop the contest, but the crowd became a mob, demanding to see the horse baited to the death and started to pull the tiles from the roof of the theatre and the dogs were ‘once more set upon him; but they not being able to overcome him, he was run through with a sword, and dyed’. The ambassador failed to attend owing to inclement weather.

By the turn of the eighteenth century, baiting was moving north of the river, to Hockley in the Hole in Clerkenwell, where in 1710 there was ‘a match to be fought by two dogs, one from Newgate-market, against one from Honey-lane market, at a bull…which goes fairest and fastest in, wins all. Likewise, a green bull to be baited, which was never baited before; and a bull to be turned loose with fireworks all over him. Also a mad ass to be baited. With a variety of bull-baiting and bear-baiting, and a dog to be drawn up with fireworks. To begin exactly at three of the clock.’ Hockley was the centre of bull terrier breeding in London, and so perhaps it is natural that the sport would move there. In 1756 Hockley disappeared with the continuing Fleet development, and bull-baiting moved to Spitalfields. It did not stay there for long as it became increasingly unpopular and was soon confined almost exclusively market towns.

At the same time, Hogarth campaigning against the ‘barbarous treatment of animals, the very sight of which renders the streets of our metropolis so distressing to every feeling mind’. His work the Four Stages of Cruelty connected the cruel treatment of animals with the degenerate mind, whilst sensitivity was to be applauded. The first plate of the Four Stages features Tom Nero attempting to force an arrow into a dog’s anus, and another youth pleading with him not to.

Learn from this fair Example—You
Whom savage Sports delight,
How Cruelty disgusts the view,
While Pity charms the sight.

Attitudes towards animals and animal cruelty were changing in London. Pets had always been particularly popular in the city, with most households having a dog and at least one cat. And surveys conducted in London between the 1730s and 1750s show that ownership of unusual pets was spread across the social classes, with around a third owned by the artisan classes, including Mr Bradbury the apothecary with his mongoose, Mr Scarlet the optician with his Jeroba, and Mrs Kennon the midwife with her ring-tailed lemur and marmoset.

The barbaric sports were becoming less popular. In 1785 it was reported that ‘a fine horse, brought at great expense from Arabia, would be delightfully worried to death by dogs, in an inclosure near the Adam and Eve, in Tottenham-court-road; and to exclude low company, every admission-ticket was to cost half-a-guinea. But the interposition of the magistrates, who doubted of the innocence, or of the wisdom of training dogs and horses to mutual enmity, put a stop for once to that superfine exhibition’.

In 1822 the Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle was passed. It was known as Martin’s Act. Richard Martin was a politician and campaigner for animal rights who brought Bill Burns, a costermonger to trial for abusing his donkey. Deploying shock tactics, Martin brought the donkey into the courtroom so its injuries could be seen. Burns was subsequently the first man to be convicted for animal cruelty. In 1824 in Old Slaughter’s coffeehouse on St Martin’s Lane, a group of men met with the idea of forming a new society concerned with enforcing Martin’s Act and heightening awareness of animal welfare. They were headed by the Reverend Arthur Broome and included Richard Martin and William Wilberforce. This society would soon have a new name: the RSPCA.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Destroying Angel Lady Mary...

simonsurtees-blog — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:45:00 -0400

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Destroying Angel

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu would not only introduce London to innoculation against smallpox, but also her series of ‘Turkish Embassy Letters’ make up the first secular work on the Muslim Orient by a Western woman.

Her life of adventure began when she escaped an arranged married with the astonishingly named Clotworthy Skeffington by marrying Edward Wortley Montagu. Mary bore him a son and her time in London was spent mixing in the highest circles, both social and intellectual as befitted the widely-educated daughter of a Duke. In the winter of 1715 all of this was to change: Lady Mary contracted smallpox. She survived, but she was ‘very severely markt’ in both appearance and temperament. Although she did not love Edward, she was was forever grateful that he did not cast aside once her beauty was eradicated.

In August of 1716, Edward was made Ambassador to Istanbul and they set out on a long journey via land and sea. In Vienna she was astonished to find that older women were very much in demand.

‘A Woman till 5 and thirty is look’d upon as a raw Girl and can possibly make no noise in the World till about forty. I cannot help lamenting upon this Occassion the pittifull case of so many good English Ladys long since retir’d to pruderie and rattafia, who, if their stars had luckily conducted them hither, would still shine in the first rank of Beautys’

Arriving in Sofia she and Edward went sightseeing, then Lady Mary set out alone on a little mission of her own. She hired a private coach, known as an araba and set out for a Turkish public bath, recording the experience in a letter to a friend dated 1st of April 1717 which opens, I am now got into a whole new World’. The world of the bagnio.

It was hard to tell the mistresses from their servants, Lady Mary remarked for they were all ‘in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked’. Having observed the conversation and seeing ‘some working, others drinking Coffee or sherbet’ Lady Mary came to the conclusion that, ‘In short, tis the Women’s coffee house, where all the news of the Town is told, Scandal invented etc.‘ Amongst her other letters from Turkey is another, also written on the 1st of April 1717. It tells of the inoculation of her son against smallpox, using an accepted Turkish method of ‘ripping’ a four or five veins with a large needle, applying pus from the sores of a smallpox victim, then covering the site with a ‘hollow bit of shell’ and binding them up. She reported to her husband, ‘The Boy was engrafted last Tuesday, and is at this time singing and playing and very impatient for his supper’. The success of this operation led her to ‘take pains to bring this usefull invention into fashion in England’.

Yet on her return to England she found both smallpox and arguments about its treatment raging. During the epidemic of 1719 which saw many of her friends and acquaintances die of the disease, she was remarkably silent. Then in the early part of 1721 it was so warm that roses bloomed in January and smallpox went ‘forth like a destroying Angel’. Lady Mary called upon Charles Maitland, an English doctor she had met in Turkey, to inoculate her daughter but he hesitated. It was one thing to perform the operation in Turkey, but another to do it in London. He made sure he had two witnesses from the Royal College of Physicians before performing the operation. One was James Keith, a friend of Maitland who had lost two of his sons to smallpox in 1717. After seeing the operation he immediately inoculated his remaining son.

London’s aristocracy began to visit Mary to see if they should engraft their own children. The visitors included Caroline, Princess of Wales who was then behind the testing of inoculation on condemned prisoners in Newgate. The experiment was a success, securing royal approval for smallpox inoculation, but the press did not take to it so kindly, or to Lady Mary. She was branded an ‘unnatural mother who had risked the lives of her own children’ and people began to ‘hoot’ at her in the street. Yet, the list of parents taking early action to protect their children is extensively drawn from Lady Mary’s own friends and acquaintances and the people who came to visit her children. She exploited the polite tea party circuit and took her children all over London to show that they had been unharmed by the operation.

The fact that she was well-known and her position in society contributed largely to the success of Maitland’s subsequent career in inoculation. Their pioneering work would lay the bedrock built upon by Edward Jenner later in the century. Jenner brought mass inoculation to England, but Lady Mary’s and Maitland’s early efforts laid the ground work, particularly amongst the charitable rich.

William Freeman: A West Indian Englishman At the turn of the...

simonsurtees-blog — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:46:00 -0400

William Freeman: A West Indian Englishman

At the turn of the eighteenth century, London was becoming increasingly diverse. International trade meant that foreigners were a common sight on the streets, although not all of them would be obvious, at least not at first.

William Freeman was born on St Kitt’s in the West Indies in 1645. His father was likely to have been a member of the Suffolk militia had gone out to the Caribbean to seek his fortune. William was raised with his brothers and sisters on a plantation with two ‘sugar houses‘ which filled 260 sugar moulds, turning out large, cone-shaped pieces, which were then exported as part of the ‘triangular trade’ with Britain and Africa. They also owned eight horses, two goats, eighteen cattle, three pigs sixty sheep, some chickens and twenty slaves. His father grew mangoes and pimentos to supplement the children’s diets.

At 19 William moved to Nevis where he took his own wharf and warehouse, dealing in tobacco. He then bought a half share in Montserrat, which in hindsight seems ambitious for a young man. He got his big break when he was appointed a ‘factor‘ or agent for the Royal African Company, acting as the eyes and ears of the Company in the islands, seeing who needed how many slaves and when.

He married the sister of a London merchant and came to London, aged 30. They set up home at the western limits of the City as was fashionable for merchants at the time and he and his brother-in-law rented the dilapidated Crosby Hall on Bishopsgate, once the lodgings of Richard III. They used it as a warehouse for the sugar and also as a counting house, working beneath one of the City finest Gothic ceilings. Freeman’s knowledge of how the Caribbean worked meant he was called to Westminster to advise the government on a regular basis. His copybook, which survives, shows in minute detail the trouble he had managing his own Monserrat and Nevis plantations as an absentee landlord. He wanted not only slaves to labour there, but ‘as many lusty men and youth servants’ as he could get hold of, and he even resorted to sifting through London’s prisons to try to find men who would take up the offer of a new life and plantation work.

‘Tradesmen are very scarce’ he would often write, and thus he took up training slaves into the trades he required on the plantations. He bought a man named Valentine to have trained as a cooper (barrel-maker), but on discovering that Valentine worked left-handed, decided that he would never be able to train him up well enough and swapped him with a neighbour for the right-handed Bando. The swap niggled Freeman, who had much preferred Valentine and lamented the fact that he would remain just a ‘plantation negroe’, rather than a master of his trade, all for being left-handed. Freeman was also concerned for the diets of his plantation staff and had salt beef shipped from Ireland to the Caribbean so that they would have meat of what he imagined to be the best quality.

By the age of 38 Freeman was going blind and decided to retire on his profits to the house he had built near Henley, Fawley Court. Crosby Hall was let out during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a tennis court, an indoor football venue, a chapel and then a warehouse until it fell into disrepair before famously being moved brick by brick to the riverside at Chelsea in 1910, where it stands today. Freeman’s legacy in London is hardly a smudge on the fabric of the City’s official records yet he flourished here in his Gothic counting house, a curious English import. He fathered an illegitimate son, his only child, also named William who grew up to be a dealer in antique porcelain on the Gray’s Inn Road and who died in the 1760s. Out in Henley, Freeman continued to be a man of international correspondence and his library held many books printed in Paternoster Row especially for him, books he was no longer able to read. Perhaps they were read to him, beneath the ceiling he had commissioned for his new home, which bears in one corner the figure of a white boy and the other corner a black boy, the rest festooned with exotic fruit reminiscent of the mangoes and pimentos of his youth.

Saartjie Baartman, The Hottentot Venus Throughout Georgian...

simonsurtees-blog — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:22:00 -0500

Saartjie Baartman, The Hottentot Venus

Throughout Georgian London there are many ‘freaks’, whose main source of income was displaying themselves: tall or strong women, tiny people, the prematurely aged (probably suffering from progeria), ‘mer-people’. Sexual freaks such as bearded ladies or hermaphrodites were particularly popular. Anything exotic or ‘other’ caused queues to form in the street outside the chosen venue of display. All of these factors combined to make the exhibition of Saartjie (‘little Sara’ in Dutch) Baartman, also known as the Hottentot Venus, at 225 Piccadilly one of the sideshows of the age.

Sara was of the Khoikhoi people of South Africa. They had proved of particular interest to missionaries and early travelling scientists for numerous reasons, not least their distinctive features, often termed simian, and their clicking language. However, the greatest attraction for the ‘collectors’ of natural phenomena of the day was the appearance of Khoikhoi females: predisposed to carrying large amounts of fat on their breasts and high on their buttocks (called steatopygia). In addition to these distinctive features, the women of the tribe wore little or no clothing when in their natural environment, making their super-developed labia minora (which could hang down by some number of inches) objects of great curiosity for the white male visitors.

Sara’s origin is unknown. She may not have grown up with the Khoikhoi, but been the child of enslaved parents. Alexander Dunlop was a ship’s surgeon and also acquired ‘specimens’ of all kinds for museums from the African Cape. In 1810, he brought Sara to England through Liverpool. She had been working in the Cape for a man named Peter Cezar, who had likely named her Saartjie Baartman, but Dunlop had promised her fame and fortune before the English public.

Upon her arrival in England, Dunlop sold Sara to a showman, Henrik Cezar (apparently coincidental). She was brought to London, and soon a flyer was produced advertising her presence, and the invitation to view, at 2 shillings a go. Charles Matthews was a keen ‘viewer’ of all London freakery, and he recorded his visit to the Hottentot Venus:

‘He found her surrounded by many persons, some females! One pinched her; one

gentleman poked her with his cane; one lady employed her parasol to ascertain

that all was, as she called it, ‘nattral.’ This inhuman baiting the poor creature

bore with sullen indifference, except upon some provocation, when she seemed

inclined to resent brutality.’

Matthews also referred to Sara being restrained by her ‘keeper’, making the whole idea by turns both grim and dismal in modern eyes. Sara was however, fully clothes during her exhibition, although the dress was tight in order to show her curves. Her naturally small waist was bound by African beads and ornaments for emphasis.

Sara’s exhibition caused an uproar, both by those rushing to see it, and amongst the more sensitive and also amongst the abolitionists who saw her condition as slavery. The Morning Chronicle, a liberal newspaper featured a letter on the 12th of October 1810 declaring, ‘It was contrary to every principle of morality and good order,’ but Cezar soon responded, argued that it was Sara’s right to exhibit herself and thus earn her living, just as if she were a giant or a dwarf. Sarah, however, was not like the other exhibits, she was all of them combined: female, black, physically unique and sexually intriguing.

Sara’s situation prompted a court case, with her would-be protectors stating that she was held against her will and pressing for her repatriation to Africa. The case failed, the court finding for Cezar but it soured the exhibition in London and Sara and Cezar moved on to Manchester (where she was baptised) and probably, Ireland. In 1814, Sara was in Paris, being exhibited by an animal trainer and the following year would be studied by professors from the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. She was finally studied nude, having taken a great deal of persuading, and the resulting images of her were presented in a book about exotic animals. Prurience continued to masquerade as science and upon her death in 1815, she was anatomized in Paris by Georges Cuvier, with particular and particularly distasteful attention given to her genitalia. A cast of Sara’s body and her skeleton remained on show in Paris until the late 1970s, when she was finally able to take a break from exhibiting, it having taken only one hundred and seventy years for people to understand, as the reader of The Morning Chronicle had done in 1810, that it was an ‘offence to public decency’.

Event: A Coffeehouse Tour Dr Matthew Green is rather passionate...

simonsurtees-blog — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:31:00 -0500

Event: A Coffeehouse Tour

Dr Matthew Green is rather passionate about coffeehouses, and coffee history. So passionate, in fact he wrote his PhD on the subject. On Saturday, he’ll be leading a very unusual tour of the City seeking out Georgian London’s coffeehouses. It starts at 2.30pm in St Michael’s Churchyard, Cornhill and lasts 90 minutes. I don’t think I can reveal much more without giving the game away, but it’s ‘interactive’ and promises to be both interesting and exciting. It costs £8 and includes at least one shot of coffee brewed in the eighteenth century fashion. You can hear a sample of the dashing Dr Green warming to his subject here, take a peep at the route here (wrap up warm, for Heaven’s sake), read a summary of the tour here, and book here. Great subject, great host, and something a little bit different from the usual City walking tours.

Review: A Grim Almanac of Georgian London The History Press were...

simonsurtees-blog — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:48:00 -0500

Review: A Grim Almanac of Georgian London

The History Press were kind enough to send me A Grim Almanac of Georgian London by Graham Jackson and Cate Ludlow. Cate’s obsession with the darker side of history is evident in the large collection of horrific crimes and painful deaths she and Graham have put together in this excellent book.

Some of these tales were familiar, but there are plenty of new ones and I found myself reaching for a notebook and pen as I went along. The book is well-produced and illustrated with rare images from the authors’ collections. This is not cosy reading, and the tales of domestic violence, infanticide, beatings, drownings and gory unsolved mysteries means it’s best tackled piecemeal, but that is also one of the best things about it. The authors have also put each case in context, and brought the characters to life as far as the details of the cases allow. Because it’s an almanac, sources are cited only rarely, so it’s a ‘reading book’ not a reference book, but none the worse for that.

From the man who cut out his wife’s tongue for 'telling lies’ about him to children falling under wagons to pub brawls, the pace is relentless and reflects the authors’ enthusiasm for their subject. I was going to write more about this book, but there really isn’t any need to: it’s fun (really!), fascinating, and will tell even the most ardent Georgian London enthusiast something new. I loved it.

At the Harp and Hoboy: John Walsh, Music Publisher Where has...

simonsurtees-blog — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:36:00 -0500

At the Harp and Hoboy: John Walsh, Music Publisher

Where has the time gone? First there was Christmas, then these book thingys which seem to keep you very busy indeed. Then, as some of you know I ended up in hospital this month for a brief, if unexpected engagement with a morphine drip. Also, gas + air, useless or what? So it’s been a rather topsy turvy month and I have neglected poor Georgian London. However, no longer, as the blog will now be the recipient of the things which couldn’t be crammed into the book. It’s not second rate, oh no! - most of these characters will still be in there, but they will have smaller parts than the extrapolated versions you’ll see here. I hope they will give you a taste of things to come later this year.

Whilst there can be no doubt George Frederick Handel defined popular music in London in the early part of the eighteenth century in London, the secret of his success was not confined to his patrons or his charitable leanings.

Immediately upon his arrival in London, Handel formed a relationship with John Walsh who had risen to prominence as music-maker-in-ordinary to William and Mary but was a man with an eye to the future. Since 1647, John Playford had been publishing sheet music and the company had passed to his son Henry. Henry was old-fashioned, focussing on traditional pieces, often for large-scale entertainments and Playford’s was in decline.

John Walsh saw that there was a demand for the new music people heard at parties and events not only to be circulated to professional musicians who would then play it at other events, but for people to play at home. This catered for a large group of amateur musicians amongst all classes of Londoners. From the lady in her drawing room to the fiddler on the street, Walsh imagined there was a demand for this new music, not just the traditional or folk compositions. He was right.

Walsh started publishing in 1695 and was soon innovating: using cheap and quick-to-work pewter instead of copper and punches for notes to speed things up. He had instant success, but his real opportunity presented itself when Handel appeared on the scene.

Handel came to London in 1711 with the ink still wet on his opera Rinaldo, which he had been engaged to write for performance in the 1710-11 season at the Queen’s Theatre, Haymarket. Aaron Hill, the manager, had decided upon an ‘Italian’ season, and Handel was the man to deliver, his reputation already known in the city. Opera was relatively new to London’s sophisticated set and attempts to establish an English style were damp squibs in the main. Rinaldo - a consciously Italianate opera written by a German - was an instant hit.

Rinaldo was played by Nicolo Grimaldi, the Neapolitan castrato who would enjoy such a productive relationship with Handel - between them they established Italian opera in the popular taste. Debuting on February 24th, 1711 it was a sell-out, with two extra dates being added on at the end. Addison and Steele attacked it in The Spectator, pouring scorn on the idea of a foreign language performance and the clumsiness of the production yet the very appearance of an Italian opera in The Spectator, the journal of the thinking man on the street, meant opera had arrived in popular culture.

Handel’s success was assured in many ways but his relationship with Walsh, who quickly published Rinaldo, cemented his accessibility with all levels of Londoner. They tapped into a ready market and by 1716 Walsh was importing and exporting music through Amsterdam in partnership with the Huguenot Estienne Roger. Walsh even launched two music periodicals aimed at competent and interested musicians:The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music and Harmonium Anglicana.

Despite their success, Walsh and Handel would quarrel and the flow of his sheet music was sometimes sporadic, but when Walsh’s son, also John took over the business as a twenty-one year old he had the advantage of having known the composer since he was a tot and was probably young and deferential enough for a great artist now in his heyday. In 1739, Handel granted John the monopoly on his sheet music for the next fourteen years, ensuring a steady and good quality supply of his compositions.

Handel is the iconic composer of the first half of the eighteenth century in London, but it was the Walsh family who made him beloved of the common man, and ensured his works were heard constantly in homes across the city, the country and Europe.

Guest Post: The Gin Lane Gazette That mischievous cartoonist...

simonsurtees-blog — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 06:51:00 -0500

Guest Post: The Gin Lane Gazette

That mischievous cartoonist and scribe Ade Teal is featured on pioneering publishing project Unbound at the moment with his most excellent Georgian miscellany The Gin Lane Gazette. It’s all very exciting and today Ade is guest posting on what the Gazette is about and why he’s so in love with the Georgians.

In his declining, debt-ridden years, Beau Nash, the Master of Ceremonies at Bath, was looked after by his devoted mistress, the feisty and improbably-named Juliana Popjoy. When he eventually hopped the twig, she was so distraught that she lived for the rest of her days in a hollow tree. And there, in a nutshell, is what I love about the 1700s: everything was done with a great deal of commitment and panache. Today, a C-lister will leave her cage-fighter boyfriend, and inevitably it is splashed across the cover of a glossy rag: ‘So-and-So Tells of Her Pain.’ However much ‘pain’ they claim to be suffering, they don’t often renounce the world and live in a tree.

The Georgians make today’s hell-raisers look like teetotal milksops. The eighteenth century gave us boozy Prime Ministers and party leaders who settled their political differences with duels in Hyde Park (when they weren’t gambling, or writing essays about farting); peers of the realm who had the unburied corpses of their cherished mistresses sat at their dinner tables; and celebrity courtesans who ate 1,000-guinea banknotes stuffed into sandwiches, simply to make a point. Before it was dashed from their lips by Victorian party-poopers, our Georgian forebears drank deep from the cup of life.

So, how best to recapture some of the spirit of this gloriously dissipated and star-studded epoch? This question dogged me for some time, after it was suggested to me by John Mitchinson – co-creator of the BBC’s hit panel show, QI, the book spin-offs of which I have supplied with cartoons – that I should write and illustrate an historical tome. A lovely thought, but there is so much to enjoy about the 1700s that tying it all together in an original and exciting format seemed an impossible task.

Then, one day, I was reading a biography of William Cobbett, the Regency-period newspaper editor and author, when it struck me that a journalistic approach would be just the ticket. Why not illustrate and write about these disparate events as if they have just happened? The eighteenth century was both the first great age of newspapers and the golden age of caricature, after all. And books are still the best kind of virtual reality that we have, to my way of thinking. Could I generate virtual Georgian reality with words and pictures? An idea was born.

John was in the process of setting up his crowd-funded publishing venture, Unbound, and given the quirky, esoteric nature of the project I had in mind, it seemed the obvious road down which to push my newspaper cart. An accord was reached, and Unbound is now the book’s kindly and encouraging Fairy Godmother.

The GIN LANE GAZETTE will be a compendium of illustrated highlights from a fictional newspaper of the latter 1700s: a kind of Georgian Heat magazine, if you like. It will contain some of the most sensational headlines and true stories of the period, generated by many familiar figures from history during their more unguarded moments. The presses will be presided over by inky-fingered hack, Mr. Nathaniel Crowquill, the editor and proprietor, whose premises are located in Hogarth’s chaotic Gin Lane, and who has devoted fifty long years to sniffing out bawdy scandal and intrigue with which to titillate his London readership. His drunken acolyte, the rascally Mr. Jakes, supplies merciless caricatures and engravings, which disport themselves across every page. Sports reports, obituaries, fashion news, courtesans of the month, and advertisements for bizarre - and often alarming - goods and services will also feature in a riotous mélange of metropolitan mayhem.

I have spent fifteen years producing cartoons for clients as diverse as The Sunday Telegraph, Jongleurs, and History Today, and have set out to combine my experience in journalistic caricature with my deep love of history in this – I believe - unique and evocative way. In the process, I hope to give readers an authentic flavour of the exuberance, self-confidence, debauchery, bravery, villainy, inventiveness, and eccentricity which characterize the Georgian world.

Prithee honour this beguiling Endeavour, apt to adorn any ATHENAEUM of the Annals of Ages, with YOUR WORSHIPS’ most gracious Patronage. Or alternatively, buy it here.