tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/victorian-era-35943/articles
Victorian era – The Conversation
2024-02-27T16:31:33Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/224434
2024-02-27T16:31:33Z
2024-02-27T16:31:33Z
RSPB at 120: the forgotten South American pioneer who helped change Victorian attitudes to birds
<p>Bird conservation has a long and rich history in Britain. This is driven, in part, by the popular – and very British – pastime of bird-feeding, which can be traced back to <a href="https://www.pilgrimageandcathedrals.ac.uk/blog/st-cuthbert%E2%80%99s-ducks-1446120484">St Cuthbert in 7th-century Northumberland</a>. The Lindisfarne monk also introduced one of the first bird protection laws.</p>
<p>This British love affair with birds resulted in the founding of the <a href="https://www.rspb.org.uk/about-us">Society for the Protection of Birds</a> in 1889, which this year celebrates 120 years in existence as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (royal assent was conferred in 1904). The RSPB is now at the vanguard of British conservation in protecting wild places for birds. With 1.2 million members, many volunteers spend thousands of hours working to protect birds and wildlife – but how did it all begin? </p>
<p>Conor Jameson’s recent <a href="https://pelagicpublishing.com/products/finding-w-h-hudson">book</a>, Finding WH Hudson: The Writer Who Came to Britain to Save the Birds, attempts to answer this question by providing a view of Victorian attitudes towards birds through the eyes of an unknown South American naturalist and ornithologist, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/naturalist-ernest-hemingway-others-love-wilderness-180962775/">William Henry Hudson</a>.</p>
<p>After working for the RSPB for 25 years, Jameson sought to uncover the secrets of this mysterious hero of British bird conservation – “the man above the fireplace”, whose gaze was ever-present thanks to his portrait hanging in the main meeting room at the RSPB headquarters.</p>
<h2>The man from Argentina</h2>
<p>Born in Argentina to US settlers in 1841, Hudson made England his home after arriving in May 1874 at the age of 32. It did not take long for him to gain prominence as an ornithologist of considerable repute. In 1888-1889 he co-authored a major two-volume <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/20448">book about Argentine birds</a> with Philip Sclater, founder of The Ibis, the journal of the British Ornithologists’ Union. </p>
<p>His writing was strongly influenced by Reverend Gilbert White, who, a century earlier, had produced one of the <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Natural_History_and_Antiquities_of_Selborne">first and greatest works of natural history</a>, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, describing in passionate detail his observations of nature in his parish.</p>
<p>Hudson’s powers of natural-history observation, and indeed his candour in his writing, were evidently influenced by White whose grave he visited on more than one occasion to pay his respects.</p>
<p>Coming from South America, even common bird species in England were new to Hudson. As a result, he keenly observed them as his considerable naturalist’s skills came to the fore. </p>
<p>Once in England he quickly threw his support behind the “campaigning women of Manchester and London” represented by founder of the Society for the Protection of Birds (SPB) <a href="https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/natureshomemagazine/posts/five-women-who-founded-the-rspb">Emily Williamson</a>, and co-founders of the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk, <a href="https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/natureshomemagazine/posts/five-women-who-founded-the-rspb">Eliza Phillips and Etta Lemon</a>. The two societies joined forces in the early 1890s as the SPB with the “R” prefix added in 1904.</p>
<p>It is clear that Hudson did not seek the limelight, preferring instead to campaign strenuously “behind the scenes”. One example includes writing a letter to The Times newspaper in 1898 to suggest that Queen Charlotte’s cottage and its gardens at Kew be gifted to the nation. It came to pass in the same year. </p>
<h2>Changing attitudes to birds</h2>
<p>So, how did an unknown Argentinian rise to change entrenched social attitudes towards birds in Britain? Hudson moved in circles of influence in London, containing luminaries such as the future Nobel Prize for literature winner, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1932/galsworthy/biographical/">John Galsworthy</a>, author of The Forsyte Saga, who shared his abhorrence of the poor treatment of birds by upper-class fashionistas and collectors.</p>
<p>Hudson came to England at a time when the Victorian fashion for feathered hats was at its peak, though it came at a dreadful cost for birds. For example, one London fashion dealer placed a single order in 1892 for 6,000 bird-of-paradise, 40,000 hummingbird and 360,000 East Indian bird feathers. It pained Hudson that feathers were being used so cavalierly as dress accessories for high-society ladies.</p>
<p>He regularly wrote articulate and passionate letters to national newspapers about the persecution of birds, including long-line fishing for albatrosses and catching gulls using baited hooks. He even wrote about the incompatibility of golfers and birds, deeming it an “absurd game” that endangered flying creatures and their habitat.</p>
<p>Given his mounting influence on bird conservation, it seems strange that Hudson is not better known. While he was a prolific writer whose books attracted critical acclaim, he was no grand orator. As Jameson implies, his aversion to public speaking bordered on the pathological. The book is full of examples of invitations that he rarely took up, and it seems that he preferred to write rather than travel. His opinion was sought by fellow writers to whom he gave rather blunt feedback. Today, these traits may well have led to him being called a loner.</p>
<p>I smiled when reading about Hudson’s love of rooks (which belong to the crow family, known as <em>corvids</em>), mentioned several times in the book. I wonder whether subconsciously Hudson saw himself reflected in this often misunderstood yet intriguing species.</p>
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<p>The book is rich in biographical details about Hudson that have been lovingly and comprehensively researched by the author. The narrative flows smoothly, is eminently readable and provides great insight into a man who was clearly enchanted by the natural world – which is probably why he went to great lengths to protect it.</p>
<p>Frustratingly, however, there is little or no detail about Hudson’s formative years in his homeland. This is perhaps because Hudson destroyed many letters he received and encouraged recipients of his letters to do the same. That said, a timeline of events and achievements that shaped Hudson’s impressive career would have added to the book’s navigability.</p>
<p>But the author has done bird lovers a great service in shining a light on this little-known yet fascinating avian conservation pioneer. Though he never sought it, Hudson deserves this posthumous limelight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224434/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>S. James Reynolds does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A group of determined women founded the RSPB, but they had great support behind the scenes by a little-known Argentinean naturalist.
S. James Reynolds, Assistant Professor in Ornithology and Animal Conservation, University of Birmingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216116
2023-12-01T12:34:49Z
2023-12-01T12:34:49Z
Why men in 19th century Wales dressed as women to protest taxation
<p>South-west Wales was reeling in the wake of social unrest in November 1843. There had been a series of protests over several years by farmers furious at taxation levels, mainly attacking tollgates. Often, the men involved dressed as women and were therefore known in Welsh as <em>Merched Beca</em> (Rebecca’s daughters). The events that unfolded came to be known as the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Rebecca_s_Children.html?id=7-ohAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Rebecca riots</a> in English. </p>
<p>There has been speculation that the name “Rebecca” stemmed from a literal interpretation of <a href="https://biblehub.com/genesis/24-60.htm">Genesis 24:60</a> in the Bible, which refers to Rebekah’s offspring possessing the gates of their enemies. But the truth is, nobody really knows why the name was chosen.</p>
<p>Tollgates had been <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/transportcomms/roadsrail/overview/turnpikestolls/">introduced</a> in Britain from the late 17th century as a means of raising revenue to maintain public roads. They were regulated and maintained by the <a href="https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/transport/onlineatlas/britishturnpiketrusts.pdf">Turnpike Trusts</a>, individual bodies set up by parliament. </p>
<p>Tolls had long been regarded as a burden by the people. But complaints to magistrates about their unfair regulation were largely ignored. The tollgates therefore became regarded as symbols of oppression to be demolished by the Rebeccaites, with unrest largely concentrated across Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire. </p>
<p>The first recorded appearance of Rebecca was on <a href="https://www.peoplescollection.wales/content/rebecca-riots">May 13 1839</a>, when a tollgate at Efailwen in Pembrokeshire was demolished. Rebecca emerged again during the winter of 1842, with protests <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/rebecca-riots/">intensifying</a> throughout the summer of 1843. </p>
<p>The attacks targeted tollgates and private property, while toll-keepers and authority figures were also intimidated. These included the local gentry, who upheld law and order locally as magistrates and oversaw the administration of the tolls as members of the Turnpike Trusts.</p>
<p>Those who protested were predominantly young men who were tenant farmers, farm servants and agricultural labourers. But other protesters included non-agricultural labourers from industrialised regions of Carmarthenshire and neighbouring Glamorgan.</p>
<p>A striking element of the protest was the adoption of women’s clothing to conceal the identities of those involved. This was theatrically woven into the ritual of protest as “Rebecca”, the name given to the leader of the various protests, called on her children to tear down any gate that blocked their way. </p>
<p>However, the Rebecca riots were more than just a protest movement against the tolls. They were also a reaction to the socio-economic climate, to agricultural depression, failing harvests, rising levels of rent and the weight of various taxes. All these factors collectively placed substantial pressure on rural communities. </p>
<p>There was also widespread <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/1834-poor-law/">criticism</a> of the administration of the new <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/19thcentury/overview/poorlaw/">Poor Law</a>, introduced in 1834, which ensured that poor people were housed in <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Victorian-Workhouse/">workhouses</a>, where families were separated, subjected to hard work and harsh living conditions.</p>
<h2>Escalation</h2>
<p>On June 19 1843, a procession in the market town of Carmarthen led to the storming of the <a href="https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/17651/">workhouse</a>. This signalled a turning point that saw the protests intensify, with attacks on private property in addition to tollgates. </p>
<p>There were reports of physical violence and use of firearms too, with one recorded death, that of <a href="https://historypoints.org/index.php?page=site-of-fatal-rebecca-riot-hendy">Sarah Williams</a>, the 75-year-old keeper of the Hendy tollgate in Carmarthenshire. Someone shot her while she tried to rescue her belongings from the burning tollhouse on September 9 1843.</p>
<p>Following the Carmarthen workhouse attack, The Times newspaper <a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/78848/1/DE-WINTON_A329_RVOR.pdf">sent</a> Thomas Campbell Foster to report on “The State of South Wales”. His reports disseminated news of Rebecca and her daughters across Britain. </p>
<p>Even Queen Victoria was concerned by the events. She wrote in her <a href="http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/search/displayItem.do?FormatType=fulltextimgsrc&QueryType=articles&ResultsID=3399090357290&filterSequence=0&PageNumber=1&ItemNumber=1&ItemID=qvj03918&volumeType=PSBEA">journal</a> how she strongly advised the home secretary, Sir James Graham, to apprehend and punish the Rebeccaites. She feared events in Wales would spur on the movement in Ireland to repeal the laws which tied Ireland to Great Britain.</p>
<p>Into the autumn and winter months of 1843, Rebecca and her daughters appeared less frequently. Although a Carmarthenshire land agent, Thomas Herbert Cooke, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Land_Agent/dy5JEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">wrote</a> in late November how “an incendiary fire however occurs now and then to let people know that Rebecca is still alive, and sometimes awakes from her slumbers”.</p>
<h2>Government inquiry</h2>
<p>During this time, a government <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Report_of_the_Commissioners_of_Inquiry_f.html?id=W5Z7YgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">inquiry</a> was conducted into the causes of the riots, reporting its findings in the spring of 1844. Although the tollgates survived, the findings of the inquiry led to greater regulation of the Turnpike Trusts in Wales. New county police forces were also <a href="https://journals.library.wales/view/1386666/1423395/118#?xywh=-1917%2C-209%2C6097%2C3912">established</a> in the wake of the riots. </p>
<p>In total, around 250 tollhouses and gatehouses were <a href="https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/tollhouse/">destroyed</a> by Rebecca. In the aftermath, those captured and accused were punished by transportation to the penal colonies in Tasmania. Those such as <a href="https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/hughes/john/72743">John Hughes</a>, known as <em>Jac Tŷ Isha</em>, were never to return to their native Wales. Others took on an almost mythical identity among local people, such as <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/In_Pursuit_of_Twm_Carnabwth/irhAzwEACAAJ?hl=en">Thomas Rees</a>, or <em>Twm Carnabwth</em>, remembered as the leader of the first Rebecca attack at Efailwen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A wooden sculpture showing a horse flanked by two women leaping over a gate." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wooden sculpture depicting the Rebecca riots in St Clears, Carmarthenshire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wooden-sculpture-depicting-rebecca-riots-1839-517024174">James Hime/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, Rebecca did not disappear entirely, and instances of protest and threatening letters sent in her name appear later in other parts of Wales. During the 1870s, Rebecca and her daughters appeared in protests concerning salmon poaching on the river Wye in mid Wales, <a href="https://journals.library.wales/view/1326508/1326739/35#?xywh=-1863%2C-216%2C6676%2C4285">described</a> as the “second Rebecca Riots”. </p>
<p>In the 20th century, the concept of Rebecca was invoked once more. In 1956, Welsh language newspaper, <em>Y Seren</em>, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Tryweryn_New_Dawn/zxn5zwEACAAJ?hl=en">inferred</a> that “the spirit of Beca” was once again needed to campaign against the flooding of Cwm Tryweryn in Gwynedd to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64799911">create a reservoir</a> to provide drinking water for Liverpool. </p>
<p>And Rebecca continues to resonate in Wales to this day, inspiring <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/welsh-village-to-stage-re-enactment-of-historic-tollgate-attack-that-sparked-rebecca-riots/">re-enactments</a> and community <a href="https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2721666-students-and-academics-take-cardiff-university-to-the-urdd-eisteddfod">engagement</a> – it shows that the fight for justice and the tradition of protest continues to play a powerful part in Welsh society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lowri Ann Rees does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Rebecca riots saw Welsh farmers disguised as women destroy tollgates as a way of challenging what they believed was an oppressive taxation system.
Lowri Ann Rees, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/215003
2023-10-24T15:43:45Z
2023-10-24T15:43:45Z
Concerns over pet food and vet costs affordability are as old as pet keeping itself
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555323/original/file-20231023-23-j8sgs4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/two-guinea-pigs-eating-carrot-MUcxe_wDurE">Bonnie Kittle|Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ever since domestic companion animals first became popular in the west, people’s ability to provide for their healthcare needs has been closely linked to their own economic situation. In October 2022, the British animal charity, the RSPCA, <a href="https://www.rspca.org.uk/-/news-figures-show-more-animals-in-shelter-rehoming-slows">reported</a> a massive 31% drop from 2019 in so-called “rescue” animals being rehomed from its centres. At the same time, the number of animals being surrendered was increasing. Between 2021 and 2022, there was a 11.9% rise in the number of dogs relinquished by their owners and rescued by the charity.</p>
<p>The RSPCA’s animal kindness index for 2023 <a href="https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/latest/kindnessindex/petowners">shows</a> that 81% of pet owners were worried about the increased costs of pet care. Up from 68% in 2022, this is a direct consequence, the charity says, of the cost of living crisis. The rising costs of pet food (32% increase for dog food in April 2023) outstripped inflation at the time (8%), leading to 23% of pet owners expressing concern about being able to feed their pets. </p>
<p>The report also highlights that, in April 2023, there were 45,000 internet searches for “Can I give my pet paracetamol?”, an increase of 13%, compared to April 2022. The British government has since <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66733077">launched a review</a> of veterinary services in the UK, over concerns that pet owners face prohibitively high costs for animal healthcare.</p>
<p><a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/pet-revolution">Our research</a> looks at how and why human and pet lives have become entangled in the UK. People, of course, have invested emotionally in animals for thousands of years. But, as we show in our recent book, Pet Revolution:
Animals and the Making of Modern British Life, it was in the 19th century that larger numbers of people in Britain (and other western countries) had the financial resources to keep pets. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A historic painting of two dogs chasing a cat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555325/original/file-20231023-21-forj5n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555325/original/file-20231023-21-forj5n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555325/original/file-20231023-21-forj5n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555325/original/file-20231023-21-forj5n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555325/original/file-20231023-21-forj5n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555325/original/file-20231023-21-forj5n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555325/original/file-20231023-21-forj5n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Briton Riviere, A Blockade Runner, 1888.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/riviere-a-blockade-runner-n01518">Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894. Photo © Tate</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<h2>The emergence of pet keeping</h2>
<p>Victorian culture celebrated the advent of the companion animal. British artists including Edwin Landseer and Briton Riviere painted <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/riviere-a-blockade-runner-n01518">cats</a> and <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/landseer-low-life-a00702">dogs</a>. King Edward VII commissioned Maud Alice Earl to do <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/401472/jack-king-edward-viis-irish-terrier">portraits of his favourite pooches</a>. And the commercial artist Louis Wain garnered broad popularity for his anthropomorphic illustrations of wide-eyed <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/see-louis-wains-exuberant-cat-art-at-the-bethlem-hospital-180979287/">cats</a>. </p>
<p>Countless contemporaneous novels – with characters including Rochester’s dog Pilot in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Count Fosco’s pet mice in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and the children’s story, <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00086490/00001/5">Peeps into Petland</a> – show how central pet ownership became to domestic life. This led to new markets emerging. </p>
<p>With vets, at the time, mainly concerned with horses and farm animals, pet owners were encouraged to treat animals themselves. There was a boom in <a href="https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/subjects/pets-in-the-archives/">instructional literature</a> on how to care for cats, dogs, wild birds, squirrels and hedgehogs. Prolific pet health advisor Gordon Stables argued, in his 1876 book, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Domestic_Cat.html?id=30oDAAAAQAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Domestic Cat</a>, that cat owners should take scalpels into their own hands. “Cats,” he wrote, “stand operations of all sorts well.”</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A vintage advertisement for Spratts dog cakes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555327/original/file-20231023-23-21xt9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555327/original/file-20231023-23-21xt9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555327/original/file-20231023-23-21xt9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555327/original/file-20231023-23-21xt9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555327/original/file-20231023-23-21xt9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555327/original/file-20231023-23-21xt9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555327/original/file-20231023-23-21xt9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victorian entrepreneurs homed in on the nascent pet food and healthcare market.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.rawpixel.com/image/11493591/image-dog-art-cartoon">Rawpixel</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the 1890s, pet-food manufacturer Spratts was selling dog treatments including cooling powders, cough pills, ear-canker lotion and worm powders. It also marketed “Canarydyne” for asthmatic canaries. </p>
<p>From the late 19th century, vets started to cater to pets, largely targeting the elite owners of pedigree animals. In 1884, the London Royal Canine and Feline Surgery proudly advertised its wares in the Kennel Club Show Catalogue. The advert features a long list of international royalty who had consulted the surgery. </p>
<h2>Unequal access to animal healthcare</h2>
<p>As veterinary treatment for pets became widespread, however, inequalities quickly emerged. Poorer pet owners continued to rely on home remedies. This sometimes meant watching helplessly as a much-loved pet died in agony. </p>
<p>While recognising the potential for exploiting a growing market, vets were mindful of this inequality in accessing animal healthcare. From 1879, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in London ran free clinics for animals of the poor. </p>
<p>In 1900, the Blue Cross animal welfare charity, known at the time as Our Dumb Friends League, made grants available for poorer people to access treatment and seven years later, opened a National Animal Hospital in London. By 1921, this clinic employed three dedicated veterinary surgeons, treating an estimated 10,000 animals a year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A vintage illustration of anthropomorphic cats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555330/original/file-20231023-17-6k4ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555330/original/file-20231023-17-6k4ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555330/original/file-20231023-17-6k4ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555330/original/file-20231023-17-6k4ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555330/original/file-20231023-17-6k4ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555330/original/file-20231023-17-6k4ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555330/original/file-20231023-17-6k4ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Louis Wain, Marketing, 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://picryl.com/media/marketing-by-louis-wain-064a50">Picryl</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In early 1900s Liverpool, meanwhile, the RSPCA launched a scheme distributing grants for veterinary treatment. In 1917, it opened the first provincial animal hospital. By 1920, the hospital had moved to a larger site and by 1930, two further hospitals had opened across the city. </p>
<p>The People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals launched in London’s East End in 1917. It would go on to treat an estimated 1 million British pets a year by the mid-1930s. And in 1925, the Dogs Trust inaugurated canine clinics, making grants to poorer pet owners that guaranteed the charity would cover veterinary bills. </p>
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</figure>
<p>By the mid-20th century, veterinary care for pets was widely established. Increasingly complex treatments were available. Those who could afford it faced the new dilemma of how much they would pay to save their pets. Distressed over the condition of her increasingly immobile Alsatian, Dinah, London-based diarist Florence Turtle <a href="https://pethistories.wordpress.com/2019/01/08/living-flesh-to-clothe-these-bones-the-diaries-of-florence-turtle/">wrote</a> in 1957 that she paid £9 for specialist treatment. </p>
<p>Turtle reflected that she would not have spent that much money on herself. Indeed, £9 for her was the <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator">equivalent</a> of around £180 today, a sum most working-class families simply could not have afforded.</p>
<p>Today, spending on veterinary and other pet services totaled <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/308276/consumer-spending-on-veterinary-pet-services-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/#:%7E:text=This%20statistic%20shows%20total%20consumer,billion%20British%20pounds%20in%202005.">£5.3 billion in 2022</a>. By 2026, gross written premiums for UK pet insurance is currently projected <a href="https://www.globaldata.com/store/report/uk-pet-insurance-distribution-and-marketing-analysis/">to reach £1.9 billion</a>, a rise driven partly by increasing medical and pharmaceutical costs. </p>
<p>The RSPCA is clear that the cost of living is one of the greatest threats to animal welfare. Addressing unaffordable animal healthcare costs is vital to ensure owners are not, as the charity <a href="https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/latest/kindnessindex/petowners">puts it</a>, “only one unexpected bill away” from having to give up their pets.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie-Marie Strange received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for this research. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Hamlett receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>
People have invested emotionally in animals for thousands of years, but their financial situation directly impacts their ability to properly care for for their pets.
Julie-Marie Strange, Professor of Modern British History, Durham University
Jane Hamlett, Professor of Modern British History, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212808
2023-09-04T15:51:13Z
2023-09-04T15:51:13Z
The Fraud by Zadie Smith review: a dazzling depiction of Victorian colonial England
<p>Zadie Smith’s latest novel, The Fraud, is her first foray into the world of historical fiction. The result is a stunning, well-studied examination of Victorian colonial England and some of its inhabitants.</p>
<p>As with other works by Smith, the novel takes a patchwork approach, with several interwoven plots taking place over a period of about 50 years. Centrally placed in the plot is the real-life and highly bizarre trial of a man claiming to be a <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/body-double-tichborne-claimant/#:%7E:text=Roger%20Tichborne%2C%20the%20heir%20to,for%20information%20about%20her%20son.">Sir Roger Tichborne</a>, thought to have been killed at sea and heir to a substantial fortune. </p>
<p>The absurd and very long trial, which had people from all communities in 1870s England hooked, is seen in the novel through the eyes of Eliza Touchet, cousin and companion of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Harrison-Ainsworth">William Ainsworth</a>, a novelist well known in Victorian England but relatively forgotten today. </p>
<p>In fact, Eliza and William are both relatively ill-remembered historically (all of Ainsworth’s novels fell out of print, and Touchet is memorialised largely through some letters and a signed copy of a Dickens novel). However, Smith breathes life anew into them and through them, a portrait of Victorian England’s literary scene is painted.</p>
<h2>Remembered</h2>
<p>Touchet is incredibly compelling and a fantastic character through which to experience 19th-century England. She is witty, intelligent and compassionate. Her relationships with her cousin William Ainsworth and his first and second wives are written with humour and heart. </p>
<p>Through her, we witness the hypocrisy of her environment – the nepotism, the false friends, the pretence, the fraud. Through her is also a fictional account of the campaign for the abolition of slavery which, though taken very seriously by Touchet and the campaigners she encounters, is reduced to an intellectual exercise at the dinner parties of the literary middle class.</p>
<p>The novel’s central legal trial introduces a connection between the Tichborne family and Jamaica. This connection makes way for the character of Andrew Bogle, an older, formerly enslaved Black man who acts as the claimant’s star witness and perhaps the novel’s most quietly captivating character.</p>
<p>Moving backwards and forwards in time, the novel mostly focuses on Eliza’s experiences. There is, however, a long interlude depicting the life of Andrew Bogle and his travels across the breadth of the British empire – from Jamaica to England to Australia and back again to the colonial metropole. </p>
<p>Bogle is described as calm and incredibly earnest and, even in 1870s England, his race does not detract from his sincerity. This episode describing his life is by far the most compelling in the novel. Smith’s description of Jamaican plantation life is nuanced and deftly crafted, and its horrors are made plain without excessive graphic detail.</p>
<h2>Empire and connection</h2>
<p>The Fraud is a novel about many things and, as is characteristic of Smith’s writing, it invites us to question what it means to be human by asking us to question who is telling the truth. The reader encounters so many characters that engage in self-deception and hypocrisy that we might question exactly who the titular fraud is. </p>
<p>The novel is also, I think, about empire and connection.</p>
<p>Nothing that happens in Jamaica is at all disconnected from what is happening in England. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator describes England as “not a real place … an elaborate alibi”. The narrator continues: “Everything else, everything the English did and really wanted, everything they desired and took and used and discarded – all of that they did elsewhere.” </p>
<p>The barbarism of empire and plantation life is often discussed and often dismissed by characters having conversations from comfortable homes, but their physical distance from the horrors of the colonies does not disconnect them from it.</p>
<p>I found the characters compelling, the plot is full of scandal and there are many references to several well-known writers that help to ground this historical novel in something quite familiar. Smith is expertly able to interweave moments of levity and humour into a book that deals with some heaviness. I did feel like the novel began to lose some steam in the last 50 or so pages and think it might have worked as a slightly shorter novel. But it is among my favourite reads from Zadie Smith. Historical fiction suits her.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212808/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leighan M Renaud does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This well-researched book brings to life the odd case of Sir Roger Tichborne and those around him.
Leighan M Renaud, Lecturer in Caribbean Literatures and Cultures, Department of English, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210188
2023-07-28T04:06:22Z
2023-07-28T04:06:22Z
Long before women police officers came police ‘matrons’: who were they and what did they do?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539442/original/file-20230726-15-y5r0d0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A couple outside a police station on the river flats at Morgan, South Australia, c 1890.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks a significant milestone for women in policing: the 125th anniversary of the first official recognition of a police matron in Australia. </p>
<p>However, women worked in this role for at least 50 years before receiving official recognition.</p>
<p>Known as “police matrons”, these women opened the door for other women to move into the police force as officers, yet their role is still unrecognised or dismissed as an extension of her husband’s policing duties. </p>
<p>While many Australians will have never heard of them, they were trailblazers for women in law enforcement.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-kate-cocks-the-pioneering-policewoman-who-fought-crime-and-ran-a-home-for-babies-but-was-no-saint-191008">Hidden women of history: Kate Cocks, the pioneering policewoman who fought crime and ran a home for babies – but was no saint</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The female touch in policing</h2>
<p>During the Victorian era, it was considered inappropriate for men to touch a woman who was not their wife or an immediate family member. This made men policing women (at least of certain social classes) difficult, particularly if they needed to search a female suspect. To get around this, police began to call on women to search arrestees for them. </p>
<p>Initially, these might have been whoever was nearby – <a href="https://www.clevelandpolicemuseum.org/news/clevelands-police-matrons/">a woman living near the police station</a>, for example. But quickly it was recognised that a “female touch” was also helpful for comforting lost children, talking to female victims of crime, and occasionally soothing an unruly male arrestee. Neighbourhood women were not viewed as entirely suited for these more complex roles, but the wives of police officers were. </p>
<p>In Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, early police stations had both temporary holding cells (a lock-up) and a residence for a police officer. The officer living on site was frequently married – these women became <a href="https://electricscotland.com/history/police/policematrons.pdf">police matrons</a>. </p>
<p>Police matrons in the Victorian era searched female offenders, were responsible for lost or arrested children, kept watch over mentally unwell inmates, and occasionally allowed families facing violence at home to stay in the station. </p>
<p>They also performed tasks we would not generally associate with the work of a police officer. They cleaned and maintained the cells, mended clothes, and hosted clothing drives for the poor. The police stations sometimes doubled as neighbourhood medical centres. These were all tasks that fell to the police matron. They fit within assumptions of the period regarding the natural, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Victorian-era">nurturing role of women</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538856/original/file-20230724-194450-f621sw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538856/original/file-20230724-194450-f621sw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538856/original/file-20230724-194450-f621sw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538856/original/file-20230724-194450-f621sw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538856/original/file-20230724-194450-f621sw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538856/original/file-20230724-194450-f621sw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538856/original/file-20230724-194450-f621sw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<h2>Discrimination leading to innovation</h2>
<p>Because these tasks were viewed as “naturally” women’s work, questions regarding compensation were skirted. For decades, these were not formal appointments. The matrons were not sworn in, they did not have access to a police pension, and they did not have any authority over male inmates (or male officers).</p>
<p>A few received a modest stipend based on the number of searches they conducted or if they performed an extended psychiatric watch. These matrons would be on-call 24 hours a day, and <a href="https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/women-working-1800-1930/catalog/45-990018908790203941">diaries kept by early matrons</a> show the long hours they kept. Yet their activities were viewed as an extension of their husband’s role, not requiring separate pay. </p>
<p>These women did not go on patrol or have powers to arrest. But there is evidence that police matrons performed tasks that align with current approaches to policing.</p>
<p>For example, a key role of male police in the early Victorian era was to prevent crime by being out in the community: an officer’s presence alone would often deter offending. </p>
<p>Police matrons rarely worked outside of the station, but they did get to know the needs of their community and tried to identify causes of crime. They became advocates, trying to address what they saw as the root causes of crime: excessive consumption of alcohol leading to the violent breakdown of families. Matrons advocated for increased regulation of alcohol and for stations to provide sanctuary for domestic violence victims. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539469/original/file-20230726-21-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539469/original/file-20230726-21-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539469/original/file-20230726-21-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539469/original/file-20230726-21-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539469/original/file-20230726-21-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539469/original/file-20230726-21-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539469/original/file-20230726-21-aei2bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police matrons paved the way for women to become police officers, and eventually achieve the highest ranks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, these efforts would be understood as forms of problem-orientated policing: identifying a problem in a community and working with the community to devise solutions for the underlying causes of crime. We cannot go as far as claiming that police matrons started the movement towards problem-orientated policing. But we can recognise that they predated today’s “best practice in policing” model by roughly 150 years. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-have-made-many-inroads-in-policing-but-barriers-remain-to-achieving-gender-equity-123082">Women have made many inroads in policing, but barriers remain to achieving gender equity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Though we know police matrons were working in this field in the mid-1800s, and gained a degree of official recognition in the 1890s, it was not until 1915 that the New South Wales Police Department advertised two positions for women police officers. </p>
<p>These two positions <a href="https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/about_us/history/history_pages/history_of_women_in_the_nsw_police_force">attracted nearly 500 applications</a>. The first two female police officers in NSW were not allowed to wear a uniform and had to sign a waiver releasing the police department of any responsibility for their safety. Their tasks were similar to police matrons – they were responsible for women and children that came in contact with the criminal justice system. It wasn’t until 1979 that female officers in Australia could carry a firearm, though they were required to keep it in their handbag.</p>
<p>Today, women make up over <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/nsw-police-is-not-the-same-with-a-woman-at-the-helm-20221222-p5c8b6.html">30% of police in Australia</a> and have reached the highest ranks as police commissioners. Although Australians may not know much about the early police matrons, it was they who, more than 100 years ago, paved the way for all this to happen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Neikirk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Police matrons in the 1800s opened the door for women to join the police force, yet most of us have never heard of them.
Alice Neikirk, Lecturer, Criminology, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205155
2023-05-10T15:50:01Z
2023-05-10T15:50:01Z
How English women wrote about their travels in the 19th century
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524650/original/file-20230505-21-1b6ybb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=111%2C260%2C2276%2C1463&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Illustration of explorer Isabella Bird's first walk through Perak (Malaysia), from her book 'The Golden Chersonese and the way thither'.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Author%27s_first_ride_in_Perak_LCCN93509597.jpg">Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years, a series of <a href="https://www.cristinamorato.com/viajeras-intrepidas-aventureras/">publications</a>, anthologies and <a href="https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/mujeres-viajeras/">documentaries</a> have revived the figure of the 19th century English woman traveller. On screen we can also see their lives adapted to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8075008/">neo-Victorian fictional characters</a>.</p>
<p>Generally, these protagonists are described as “rebellious”, “intrepid”, “ambitious”, “brave”, “queens” or even “adventurous”. Their lives serve as inspiration for today’s screenwriters and artists who, for some reason, are eager to show us a different version of women’s history. For many, their stories are inspiring; for others, almost implausible. Weren’t Victorian women very repressed?</p>
<p>In general, the writings of these travellers reflect the experiences of women writers from a variety of backgrounds and social classes, although they tend to depict the experiences of the wealthy. This is due to the availability of these texts and the imprint these women have left on historiographical archives and on ourselves. </p>
<p>It is important to remember that our interpretations of their travels and experiences can be influenced by cultural and social bias, so it is necessary to take some distance when reading travel accounts written by nineteenth-century women. When we read their works, we are looking into the experiences and inner world of “one” woman, undeniably conditioned by her environment, her culture and her own history.</p>
<h2>Victorian Travel Writing</h2>
<p>During the 19th century, England was part of the British Empire. Travel was not only for pleasure, but also for conquest or exploration. Colonial travel was reserved for men, who had a more active role in spreading the Empire – they had to fight or participate in diplomatic missions abroad. </p>
<p>However, we tend to forget that British women also played a decisive role in this desire for conquest. They often travelled with their husbands, fathers or brothers to try to replicate English society in the colonial settlements. There they would create these nuclear families, surrounded by their sons and daughters, their servants (in the case of the wealthy classes) and their social events. </p>
<p>Of course, many of them also felt the desire to recount their experiences in the first person. <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/The_%22English_governess%22_in_Egypt._Harem_life_in_Egypt_and_Constantinople_%28IA_cu31924028659369%29.pdf">These writings</a> aroused much interest and were often published in newspapers and magazines.</p>
<p>We usually distinguish between two types of texts when talking about travel writing in the 19th century: on the one hand, texts of scientific rigour, usually dealing with socio-political issues and with anthropological overtones. On the other hand, lighter and observational texts, perhaps of an anecdotal nature. They reflected an alternative experience and dealt with lifestyle, people and generally mundane subjects. </p>
<h2>Those who discover and those who observe</h2>
<p>As we can imagine, it was common to classify the writings of women travellers under the latter heading. In <a href="https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/adams/celebrated/celebrated.html"><em>Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century</em></a> (1882), one of the leading anthologies on women travellers of the nineteenth century, the writer William H. D. Adams differentiates between two broad categories of travellers: discoverers and observers. </p>
<p>Discoverers, according to Adams, enter regions previously unknown to civilisation, adding new lands to the maps. Observers, on the other hand, simply follow in the footsteps of their daring predecessors, gathering more accurate information. For Adams, women travellers of the time belonged to the latter category and could not compare with such great names of exploration as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Livingstone">David Livingstone</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Heinrich-Barth">Heinrich Barth</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Franklin">John Franklin</a> or <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Sturt">Charles Sturt</a>.</p>
<p>Adams’s impression illustrates very well the tendency to dismiss the work of nineteenth-century women travel writers. The gender ideology of the 19th century placed women in the private sphere and made it difficult to see the relationship between women and scientific, political or economic matters. In this way, an infantilised or unserious image of everything produced by women was perpetuated. </p>
<p>Moreover, we must remember that for many women access to “elite culture” was quite limited. Not all of them could receive more than an elementary education, nor did they have the time and resources to develop their interest in science.</p>
<h2>“Only a woman”</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499612/original/file-20221207-4016-dn7dnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Mary Kingsley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Mary_H_Kingsley_Wellcome_L0046617.jpg">Wellcome Images/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is common to read in the introductions to women travellers’ texts or in their private correspondence phrases expressing modesty or apology for their “daring” to meddle in male subjects. Many of them exaggerated their womanhood and took care to remind the reader that they were “only” women. Of course, this was merely a device to avoid the censure of their contemporaries. </p>
<p>A notable example is <a href="https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/mujeres-viajeras/mujeres-viajeras-mary-kingsley-reina-africa/4526080/">Mary Kingsley</a> who, with a biting sense of humour, described herself in one of her letters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I am only one woman and we, although we are great in details and concrete conceptions, are never able to feel devotion for the things I know well enough to be great, namely abstract things”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://www.librarything.com/work/1335165">Anna Forbes</a> hides behind her womanhood to avoid being criticised for devoting herself to writing. Forbes describes herself as “a small and very feminine woman” in her <a href="https://books.google.es/books/about/Unbeaten_Tracks_in_Islands_of_the_Far_Ea.html?id=t9ILAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y"><em>Unbeaten Tracks in Islands of the Far East</em></a> (1887), reminding the reader of her status as a respectable person.</p>
<p>Some of the women writers who travelled earned, with great effort, the respect of their compatriots. One of the best known examples is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Bird">Isabella Bird</a>, the 19th-century female traveller par excellence. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1266&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1266&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499614/original/file-20221207-11275-gnsmah.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1266&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Reverend James Heywood Horsburgh was the first member of the Church of England Missionary Society sent to Sichuan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rev._James_Heywood_Horsburgh,_M.A._In_Travelling_Dress_(China_c._1899).png">_The Yangtze Valley and Beyond_, Isabella Bird</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She was the first woman to be accepted by the prestigious Royal Geographical Society of London in 1891, after trying for many years. Her writing, honest and descriptive, raised suspicions among her readers for often being too explicit (among other things, the number of sexual double entendres in her writing is often commented on). </p>
<p>Bird travelled alone, but often had local guides, men who knew the terrain she was exploring. It is not hard to imagine why this might have been uncomfortable for more conservative audiences. In addition to writing, Isabella Bird took <a href="https://digital.nls.uk/isabella-birds-travel-photographs/archive/116676134">photographs</a> of the people she encountered on her travels in Persia, Japan, Korea and Manchuria.</p>
<p>Bird, Forbes and Kingsley are just a few examples that show us that there is not just one “female travel writer”: there are as many as we want (and are able) to rescue from oblivion. Hopefully, the adaptations and versions of them that we see in popular culture will help us to feel some curiosity about their lives, which are very real and therefore very possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Puchal Terol no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.</span></em></p>
In the 19th century, several English women wrote accounts of their world travels. While considered by some as second-rate travellers, they were just as restless as their male contemporaries.
Victoria Puchal Terol, Profesora y Coordinadora de las Especialidades de Lengua Extranjera y Lengua y Literatura Española en el Máster Universitario de Profesorado de la Universidad Internacional de Valencia (VIU), Universidad Internacional de Valencia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196981
2023-01-03T20:50:15Z
2023-01-03T20:50:15Z
How 19th-century Victorians’ wellness resolutions were about self-help — and playful ritual fun
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502947/original/file-20230103-26-4tnfru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C464%2C2547%2C1295&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">January is named after the two-faced Roman god Janus, and the Victorians understood this has long been a season of looking backward as much as forward, and not just in search of lessons.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-19th-century-victorians--wellness-resolutions-were-about-self-help-—-and-playful-ritual-fun" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>On Jan. 1, 1887, a poem appeared in two British newspapers. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/readers-guide/rg_resolutions1.htm">I am resolved throughout the year</a> / To lay my vices on the shelf,” begins “New Year Resolutions.” </p>
<p>In what now reads like a familiar vow of post-holiday abstinence, a young <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rudyard-kipling">Rudyard Kipling lists</a> the temptations of women, horses and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/whist">card game whist</a>, pledging “A godly, sober course to steer / and love my neighbour as myself.” </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-new-years-resolutions#:%7E:text=The%20ancient%20Babylonians%20are%20said,when%20the%20crops%20were%20planted.">some sources,</a> the practice of making resolutions at the new year <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-did-the-new-years-resolution-come-from-well-weve-been-making-them-for-4-000-years-196661">can be traced back 4,000 years</a>, originating with the ancient Babylonians. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.17744/mehc.43.3.05">Opinions differ</a> on the origins of contemporary wellness culture, often the packaging for self-improvement through self-denial at the new year.</p>
<p>As sociolegal scholar <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/article/39/5/957/13664/What-Is-Wellness-Now">Anna Kirkland describes,</a> wellness as a contemporary buzzword can be defined as the belief “<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/article/39/5/957/13664/What-Is-Wellness-Now">that each individual can and should strive to achieve a state of optimal functioning</a>.” </p>
<p>And this — echoing Kipling’s promise to better himself in the new year — also sounds very Victorian. </p>
<h2>Individual and national progress</h2>
<p>In 1859, Samuel Smiles, the Scottish journalist, biographer, social reformer and physician, published the authoritative text on 19th-century “character, conduct and perseverance” aptly <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/self-help-by-samuel-smiles">titled <em>Self-Help; with illustrations of character and conduct</em></a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A painting of an elderly Victorian man with white hair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1877 portrait of Samuel Smiles by George Reid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Portrait Gallery collection/Wikimedia)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was at the height of mid-Victorian hubris, and amid a year of epoch-defining ideas (Charles Darwin’s <em>On the Origin of Species</em> and John Stuart Mill’s <em>On Liberty</em> both entered the scene). </p>
<p>By the time Smiles (yes, that is his real name) died in 1904, <em>Self-Help</em> had sold over <a href="https://shepheardwalwyn.com/product/the-spirit-of-self-help">a quarter of a million copies in Britain alone and was an international hit</a>. </p>
<p>Smiles may now be less well known than some of his contemporaries, but his thesis on “<a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Self_help/_eUUAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=socrates&pg=PR13&printsec=frontcover">morals and manners</a>” and belief that “<a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Self_help/_eUUAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=samuel%20smiles%20self%20help&pg=PR3&printsec=frontcover">national progress was the sum of individual industry, energy and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness and vice</a>” shaped the stalwart Victorian work ethic. </p>
<p>This made self-help, as historian <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/samuel-smiles-gospel-self-help">Asa Briggs describes</a>, one of the <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/samuel-smiles-gospel-self-help">defining virtues</a> of the era. These same ideas also helped form the ideological backbone of the wellness industry today. </p>
<h2>Strict habits, hard work</h2>
<p>Over a century and a half after <em>Self-Help</em>, and a week before Christmas 2022, the <em>Toronto Star</em> served readers <a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/12/18/oh-honey-here-you-go-nine-wellness-trends-to-help-you-kick-start-the-new-year.html?utm_source=share-bar&utm_medium=user&utm_campaign=user-share">“Nine wellness trends to help you kick-start the New Year</a>.” </p>
<p>Unlike <em>the Star’s</em> wellness list, there is nothing in Smiles on the benefits of “functional fungus.” </p>
<p>Instead, <em>Self-Help</em> consists largely of a series of case studies: bootstrap narratives of successful men through history (Milton, Newton, Napoleon) who apparently rose through the ranks with strict habits and hard work. </p>
<p>But how different, really, are Smiles’s motivations from our own aspirations for annual self-improvement? </p>
<h2>Converting idle pleasure into profit</h2>
<p>Smiles’s biographer <a href="https://shepheardwalwyn.com/product/the-spirit-of-self-help/">John Hunter</a> describes <em>Self-Help</em>’s “bite-size pieces, undemanding of readers’ time,” with its “quotability” a boon to publishers. These are similar to the easily <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/aug/12/5-ways-listicle-changing-journalism">digestible “listicles”</a> that fill January lifestyle sections. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/12/18/oh-honey-here-you-go-nine-wellness-trends-to-help-you-kick-start-the-new-year.html?utm_source=share-bar&utm_medium=user&utm_campaign=user-share">Personalized wellness plans</a> may, on surface, signal hedonism over Smiles-like austerity and productivity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-resolve-to-be-thinner-and-fitter-this-year-wont-lead-to-salvation-107956">The resolve to be thinner and fitter this year won’t lead to salvation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/nyregion/napping-in-a-new-york-minute.html?smid=url-share">office nap pods</a>, to the rebranding of friendship as “<a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/12/18/oh-honey-here-you-go-nine-wellness-trends-to-help-you-kick-start-the-new-year.html?utm_source=share-bar&utm_medium=user&utm_campaign=user-share">therapeutic socialization</a>,” we too have come to convert idle pleasures into future profit, just as holiday indulgence becomes fodder for a January cleanse.</p>
<h2>Quantifiable self-improvement</h2>
<p>While often entailing deprivation, resolutions imply the sort of quantifiable self-improvement that would meet Smiles’s approval. </p>
<p>Yet we tend to make — or at least are told to make — the same ones every year. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-16/here-s-how-quickly-people-ditch-weight-loss-resolutions">Data shows</a> that gym memberships do indeed spike, only to fall again by February, until the cycle repeats the following year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A ferris wheel seen behind people skating." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wheel of perpetual seeking? People skate on the Old Port skating rink on New Year’s Day in Montréal, January 1, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This could be evidence of what English professor <a href="https://journals.upress.ufl.edu/rhm/article/view/223">Colleen Derkatch terms the wellness industry’s “moving target</a>.” She notes how wellness discourse promotes seemingly opposed notions of restoration and enhancement. </p>
<p>This means people are perpetually seeking wellness — and often spending money trying to achieve it.</p>
<h2>Time for rest</h2>
<p>But the Victorians offer more than the origins of the wellness industry’s current capitalist trap. </p>
<p>While I certainly do not look to 19th-century Britain expecting a road map for a fulfilled life, or to mimic the many abominable views held by men <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/209518">like Kipling</a>, it’s worth noting that such writers can also provide models for unproductive fun that make the repetitive nature of resolutions a positive way to punctuate time.</p>
<p>In many years spent rereading the Victorians, I sometimes glimpse scraps of unproductive joy outside of the stereotypical narrative of hard work and discipline. </p>
<p>While never abandoning his belief that “<a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Autobiography_of_Samuel_Smiles_LL_D/DKVaBKcujpoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=samuel%20smiles%20autobiography&pg=PP2&printsec=frontcover">work plenty of work is necessary for my happiness and welfare</a>,” in Smiles’s autobiography he also allows time for rest, and even for useless recreation. </p>
<h2>Vows ‘lightly made’</h2>
<p>At one point, the book details how, recovering from a stroke, he replaces his reliance on work with amateur painting. </p>
<p>The artworks he produces “are not of much importance, but the execution of them was a great relief to me …[so] I went on cultivating idleness.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C739%2C8086%2C4207&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man seen with his arms outstretched in a giant gold person-sized public sculptural installation of the numbers 2023." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C739%2C8086%2C4207&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is letting it all unravel part of the fun of resolutions?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A commitment to unproductivity, perhaps, offers another way to approach resolutions. The lapsed exercise regimen or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/dec/28/stop-worrying-about-everything-thing-ill-do-differently">abandoned writing project</a>, then, are not just marks of failure, or potential targets for wellness profiteers. They can also be signs of happily wasted time.</p>
<p>In the final lines of his new year’s poem, Kipling flips the resolution narrative, letting his goals unravel, as our annual pledges so often do: “<a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_resolutions.htm">I am resolved—that vows like these/ Though lightly made, are hard to keep.</a>” </p>
<h2>Playfully pointless</h2>
<p>Despite the cynicism, the language stays lighthearted. The form mimics a children’s rhyme — regular in meter, with each quatrain followed by a bouncy couplet. </p>
<p>The poem ends with a bout of numerical diversion: “One vow a year will see me through,” so “I’ll begin with Number Two.” By pulling readers back to reread the second stanza, Kipling loosens the attachment to linear self-improvement. </p>
<p>January takes its name from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Janus-Roman-god">the two-faced Roman god Janus</a>. This has long been a season of looking backward as much as forward, and not just in search of lessons, or warnings or evidence of progress. </p>
<p>Turning to the past also places resolutions in the repetitive time zone of ritual: playfully pointless, and without expectation of future returns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Dufoe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 1859 book ‘Self-Help’ by Scottish journalist and physician Samuel Smiles was written in bite-sized pieces reminiscent of today’s wellness and lifestyle New Year tips.
Nicole Dufoe, PhD Candidate in Victorian Literature and English Instructor, University of Toronto
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/195639
2022-12-20T13:37:36Z
2022-12-20T13:37:36Z
How an American magazine helped launch one of Britain’s favorite Christmas carols
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501171/original/file-20221214-15862-si7n43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C12%2C2101%2C1397&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'In the Bleak Midwinter' didn't begin life as a song, but being set to music helped it find fame.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/snowy-mid-winter-field-royalty-free-image/543085094?phrase=in%20the%20bleak%20midwinter&adppopup=true">starryvoyage/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1906, a new carol appeared in “<a href="https://archive.org/details/theenglishhymnal00milfuoft/page/n75/mode/2up">The English Hymnal</a>,” an influential collection of British church music. With words by British poet Christina Rossetti, set to a tune by composer Gustav Holst, it became one of Britain’s most beloved Christmas songs. Now known as “In the Bleak Midwinter,” it was voted the “greatest carol of all time” in a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/3631068/In-the-Bleak-Midwinter-voted-greatest-carol-of-all-time.html">2008 BBC survey</a> of choral experts.</p>
<p>“In the Bleak Midwinter” began life as a poem, which Rossetti simply titled “A Christmas Carol.” When the hymnal paired her words with music, the poem took on a new identity in song – a phenomenon documented by literature researcher <a href="https://biblio.uottawa.ca/omeka2/christinarossettiinmusic/exhibits/show/inthebleakmidwinter-popculture/sacred-spaces-pop-culture">Emily McConkey</a>. But it also became embedded into popular culture in nonmusical forms. “A Christmas Carol,” or parts of it, has appeared on <a href="https://us.benandhannahdunnett.com/shop/greetings-cards/christian-christmas-cards/in-the-bleak-midwinter/">Christmas cards</a>, ornaments, <a href="https://littlethingsstudio.com/product/in-the-bleak-midwinter-christmas-hymn-tea-towel/">tea towels</a>, mugs and other household items. It <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-the-bleak-midwinter-m-r-sellars/1104346556">has inspired</a> <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250006516/inthebleakmidwinter">mystery novels</a> and, more recently, became a recurring motif in the British television series “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045fz8r">Peaky Blinders</a>.”</p>
<p>As <a href="https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/english/profile/maura-ives/">a scholar of Rossetti</a>, I’ve long been fascinated by the afterlife of her poems in music. The <a href="https://biblio.uottawa.ca/omeka2/christinarossettiinmusic/about">Christina Rossetti in Music project</a>, a database of musical adaptations that incorporates my work, now lists 185 versions of “In the Bleak Midwinter.” </p>
<p>But before it could be set to music, “A Christmas Carol” had to make its way into print as a poem – and that wasn’t so easy. Though written by one of Britain’s mostly highly regarded poets, the poem failed to make its mark on British readers until Holst set it to music. Instead, it found its first, and most enthusiastic, audience in the United States.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SE0aIQp9V4s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gustav Holst wrote the tune that made Christina Rossetti’s poem a beloved carol.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Victorian music</h2>
<p>“A Christmas Carol” circulated during a carol revival in the United Kingdom. In December 1867, shortly before Rossetti started offering her poem to British magazine publishers, the century’s <a href="https://hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk/e/english-carols">most influential collection of carols</a> <a href="https://www.ccel.org/ccel/bramley/carols/files/carols.html">was published</a>.</p>
<p>Previously considered <a href="https://britishheritage.com/history/history-british-christmas-carols">a folk tradition</a> – and not considered fit for worship, given the revelry they were associated with and the mix of sacred and secular lyrics – carols were coming into vogue. And increasingly, they were finding their way into church.</p>
<p>At a time when women could not be ordained as preachers, writing carols and more formal hymns was a rare opportunity for women to shape the church. Barred from the pulpit themselves, female writers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/30/artsandhumanities.highereducation">spoke from the pews</a>, including Sarah Flower Adams – she wrote “<a href="https://hymnary.org/text/nearer_my_god_to_thee_nearer_to_thee_een">Nearer, my God, to Thee</a>” – and Cecil Frances Alexander, author of the beloved carol “<a href="https://hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk/o/once-in-royal-david%E2%80%99s-city">Once in Royal David’s City</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A black and white sketch of a brunette woman with puffy sleeves and a serious expression." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501172/original/file-20221214-15787-4jpt5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501172/original/file-20221214-15787-4jpt5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501172/original/file-20221214-15787-4jpt5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501172/original/file-20221214-15787-4jpt5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501172/original/file-20221214-15787-4jpt5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501172/original/file-20221214-15787-4jpt5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501172/original/file-20221214-15787-4jpt5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christina Rossetti, drawn by her brother, the pre-Raphelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/english-poet-christina-rossetti-best-known-for-her-news-photo/3368477?phrase=christina%20rossetti&adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/104081/maura-ives/christina-rossetti-a-descriptive-bibliography">Rossetti</a>, a devout Anglican and the author of a number of devotional poems, was among them. Although 21st-century readers may know her primarily through her poem “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OSlDAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=goblin%20market%20and%20other%20poems&pg=PP13#v=onepage&q=goblin%20market%20and%20other%20poems&f=false">Goblin Market</a>,” Rossetti’s religious poetry was well known to her contemporaries. By the 1870s, several of her poems had been reprinted in British religious anthologies and hymnals. </p>
<h2>A bleak beginning</h2>
<p>“<a href="https://poets.org/poem/christmas-carol">A Christmas Carol</a>” opens with a vivid description of the harsh physical and spiritual landscape into which Jesus was born: </p>
<p><em>In the bleak mid-winter,</em></p>
<p><em>Frosty wind made moan;</em></p>
<p><em>Earth stood hard as iron,</em></p>
<p><em>Water like a stone</em></p>
<p>But it failed to impress George Grove, the new editor of Macmillan’s Magazine at the time. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Christina-Rossetti/Humphries/p/book/9780415556132">According to</a> scholar Simon Humphries, in 1868 Rossetti sent “A Christmas Carol” to the British magazine, which had previously published her poetry. In what might now be regarded as one of the worst editorial decisions of the century, Grove rejected her submission.</p>
<p>Rossetti eventually placed “A Christmas Carol” in another British journal, The People’s Magazine, in December 1873. But as luck would have it, that was the very last issue, and the poem was relegated to half a page, sandwiched between an essay on “The Life and Habits of Wild Animals” and a now-forgotten poem titled “The Red Cross Knight.” “A Christmas Carol” was all but ignored in the U.K. for over a decade.</p>
<h2>The American reception</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, a very different scenario was playing out in the U.S. In November 1871, Scribner’s Monthly <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015035822348&view=1up&seq=251&q1=Rossetti">dropped a hint</a> about its Christmas issue, which would include a “little poem … sweet and clear and musical.” “A Christmas Carol” debuted two months later.</p>
<p>Founded in 1870, Scribner’s Monthly <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.425643/page/n527/mode/2up?q=scribner">sought to publish “the best authors</a>,” making their work accessible and attractive to a mass audience through illustrations. The magazine paired Rossetti’s poem with a striking half-page illustration of the nativity by the well-known British <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000010433476&view=1up&seq=291&q1=bleak%20mid-winter">illustrator John Leighton</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white page of a magazine shows a poem below an illustration of the Nativity." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501794/original/file-20221219-18-jsen55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501794/original/file-20221219-18-jsen55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501794/original/file-20221219-18-jsen55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501794/original/file-20221219-18-jsen55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501794/original/file-20221219-18-jsen55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501794/original/file-20221219-18-jsen55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501794/original/file-20221219-18-jsen55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘A Christmas Carol’ by Christina Rossetti, as first published in Scribner’s Monthly
in January 1872.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:In_the_bleak_midwinter_1872.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scribner’s dramatic presentation of Rossetti’s poem ensured that it would be noticed. It was reprinted in anthologies and newspapers, ultimately making The New York Times <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1892/12/25/issue.html">on Dec. 25, 1892</a>.</p>
<p>The first mass merchandising of Rossetti’s poem also occurred in America. In 1880, an artist named Anne Morse incorporated its first and last stanzas into her prize-winning design for a <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/winning-design">Christmas card contest</a> held by publisher Louis Prang, <a href="https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/prang">who popularized</a> the tradition of sending Christmas cards in the U.S. The company published Morse’s card, distributing Rossetti’s words to homes across the country.</p>
<h2>A mystery solved</h2>
<p>By the mid-1880s, however, “A Christmas Carol” was finally gaining traction in Britain. In 1885, it was included in a holiday-themed anthology titled “<a href="https://archive.org/details/christmasgarland00bulluoft/page/n9/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater">A Christmas Garland</a>.” The Illustrated London News <a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_illustrated-london-news_1885-01-03_86_2385/page/11/mode/1up">named Rosetti’s poem</a> the best modern carol in the collection. Even more visibility came when “A Christmas Carol” was chosen for <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=T509AAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=palgrave%20%22treasury%20of%20sacred%20song%22&pg=PA272#v=onepage&q=Rossetti&f=false">a collection of religious poetry</a> compiled by <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781509888764">influential editor</a> Francis Palgrave in 1889.</p>
<p>In 2006, I discovered <a href="http://jprs.apps01.yorku.ca/journal/volume-15-spring-2006/">a letter in which Rossetti</a> claimed not to have known about Scribner’s publication of “A Christmas Carol”: “I do not know how it happened,” she wrote, remembering only that the poem had come out in The People’s Magazine. At the time, I was unable to locate “A Christmas Carol” in The People’s Magazine, and assumed Rossetti’s memory was faulty. It wasn’t, as the long-sought copy of the 1873 issue now perched on my desk proves. </p>
<p>But Rossetti’s forgetting about Scribner’s Monthly – unaware of the role it played in bringing her work to American readers, and ultimately British ones too – is perhaps the strangest twist in the story of the “little poem” that, unbeknownst to her, would become her most popular work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195639/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maura Ives does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is now a treasured Christmas classic, but it didn’t start life that way – not in the UK, at least.
Maura Ives, Professor of English, Texas A&M University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154297
2021-12-23T08:28:24Z
2021-12-23T08:28:24Z
Before the Ouija board: William Rossetti’s diary gives an insight into Victorian séances
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382022/original/file-20210202-17-4pkajv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=84%2C214%2C2035%2C2623&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rossetti Beata Beatrix</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Death and disease are no strangers to the streets of Britain. By the late 19th century, <a href="https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/content/100519">tens of thousands</a> of people had contracted fatal infections, such as cholera, smallpox and scarlatina, beginning with the first cholera epidemic of 1832, when detailed records first started being kept.</p>
<p>Wave after wave of typhoid also swept over the population where cause, diagnosis and cure were all equally uncertain – and social class provided no protection. In his novel <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Bleak_House.html?id=WaaTPSm5suUC&redir_esc=y">Bleak House</a>, Charles Dickens recorded “fever” deaths in the slums of London. But the most prominent flesh-and-bone victim was Queen Victoria’s own husband, Prince Albert. He was diagnosed with typhoid and died in December 1861.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a bizarre form of comfort was at hand. In 1848 in Rochester, New York, two sisters claimed to have received messages from the spirit of a long-dead inhabitant of their house, and their conversation with him fired the imagination of America. Soon “table-rapping” swept the American continent, modern spiritualism was born and in the early 1850s it crossed the Atlantic. Séances began to take place in the parlours and dining rooms of France, Germany, Italy and Britain. All communication with the spirits was done through letters of the alphabet, similar to ouija boards.</p>
<p>The fashion for spiritualist séances was fuelled by those who longed for communication with lost loved ones or friends. The pre-Raphaelite poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, for example, started holding spiritualist séances after the death of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, in 1862. Many of these took place in his home in Chelsea, attended by friends and acquaintances. The most regular participant was his brother, William Michael Rossetti.</p>
<p>Pursuing William Rossetti’s stray memories led me and my colleagues Rosalind White and Lenore Beaky to the Special Collection of the Library of the University of British Columbia where a small notebook by William Rossetti (labelled “Séance Diary”) is kept. We have co-edited this meticulous record of 20 séances that William attended between 1865 and 1868, published for the first time this year as a volume titled Pre-Raphaelites in the Spirit World – <a href="https://www.peterlang.com/document/1160455">The Séance Diary of William Michael Rossetti</a>. </p>
<p>Many of the séances feature conversations he and his brother had with Elizabeth Siddal, whose presence punctuates the three recorded years. Many others feature dead friends and relatives. According to William, on one occasion their uncle, Gaetano Polidori, once Lord Byron’s doctor, correctly confessed that he had died by suicide. On another, their Italian father, Gabriele Rossetti, was reportedly summoned and addressed the brothers in his native Italian. </p>
<p>Many of the spirits that Rossetti said rose from the dark were artists, often responding accurately to being asked about when, where and how their deaths had occurred. Some of the most remarkable manifestations involve figures of whom there is no evidence yet whose accounts have been confirmed recently through the archival research of the editors of this volume. And so, like many people curious about spiritualism we remain mystified by the bizarre accuracy of some of the messages coming from the spirit world through these diaries.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This story is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>William Rossetti was a diligent civil servant with a strong sense of probity and an eye for detail, and what he gave us in this little notebook was an unparalleled insight into the Victorian spirit world.</p>
<h2>Victorian séances</h2>
<p>The Rossettis were by no means the only Victorians committed to a belief in the occult. The poet <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Barrett-Browning">Elizabeth Barrett Browning</a>, the social reformer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Owen">Robert Owen</a>, the evolutionary biologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Russel-Wallace">Alfred Russel Wallace</a> and the novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Conan-Doyle">Arthur Conan Doyle</a> were just a few more passionate believers in the power of séances. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Ewart-Gladstone">William Ewart Gladstone</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Lord-Tennyson">Alfred Tennyson</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Ruskin">John Ruskin</a> and the painter <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Frederick-Watts">G.F. Watts</a> were all members of the <a href="https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/archives-modern-and-medieval-manuscripts-and-university-archives-0">Society for Psychical Research</a>, a badge of belief in spirit activity, and it was even rumoured that Queen Victoria received messages from Prince Albert via a psychic teenage boy named Robert James Lees. </p>
<p>Mediums became celebrities. The most famous, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dunglas_Home">D.D. Home</a>, came to Britain from America in 1855. In 1853 the novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Makepeace-Thackeray">William Makepeace Thackeray</a> met him in America and, convinced of his authenticity, used the pages of his journal, <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=cornhill">The Cornhill Magazine</a>, to promote Home’s career. In Britain, one of the most famous mediums was <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/marshall-mary-1842-1884">Mary Marshall</a>, who had risen to prominence in the late 1850s and who presided over a number of séances recorded by William Rossetti.</p>
<p>But dealing with the dead created as many sceptics as it did fans. The novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Eliot">George Eliot</a> and her partner G.H. Lewis turned to the press to denounce spiritualism as a sham. Meanwhile the journal Once A Week described the aforementioned Mary Marshall as “poor”, “vulgar”, but hugely eminent as the “washerwoman medium”, describing “the abominable profanity and wickedness” of her séances. </p>
<p>The satirical journal <a href="https://www.punch.co.uk/index/G0000Uiv3S1UFh5o">Punch</a> was quick to seize on the comic potential of the new vogue. Weekly cartoons depicting humorous dialogues with the dead appeared. Like this piece of doggerel in which Mr Punch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wanted to know what on earth are the merits<br>
That make Mrs. Marshall affected by ‘sperrits!<br>
Wanted to know why respectable dead<br>
Come back to life at five shillings a head.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The most consistent war on spiritualism, however, was waged by the powerful voice of Dickens. He was outraged by D.D. Home. In 1860, he denounced Home’s autobiography as “odious”, written by a “ruffian” and a “scoundrel” and agreed with George Eliot that Home was “an object of moral disgust”. As for Mary Marshall and her daughter, he said they possessed the “duplicity and legerdemain of … two illiterate conjurors” playing on “the holiest and deepest feelings of their audience”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustration of a duck dressed in woman clothes next to poem" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438026/original/file-20211216-25-ebez7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438026/original/file-20211216-25-ebez7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438026/original/file-20211216-25-ebez7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438026/original/file-20211216-25-ebez7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438026/original/file-20211216-25-ebez7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438026/original/file-20211216-25-ebez7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438026/original/file-20211216-25-ebez7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Punch was a weekly satirical magazine published between 1871 and 2002. Among its most influential contributors was Sir John Tenniel, best known for illustrating the Alice in Wonderland books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bodleian Library, Oxford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the debate about authenticity raged, séances – both in public and in private – took place throughout the country. Some were spectacular displays of showmanship involving large audiences; some were intimate, devout gatherings, while others took the form of after-dinner entertainment. </p>
<p>The social, anthropological and religious role of spiritualism in Victorian culture has been much debated, but one important factor drove people to the darkened room of the medium: the need to contact a dead loved one. It was this motive that lay behind Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s desire to communicate with her brothers, both of whom died in 1840 – in February Samuel died of a fever in Jamaica, and shortly afterwards her favourite brother Edward was drowned in a sailing accident in Torquay in July.</p>
<p>Indeed, the biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, started a career of his own in spiritualism after the death his brother in 1845. And the death of Conan Doyle’s son, Kingsley, strengthened the crime-writer’s lifelong belief in the occult. Death also lay behind the séances in William Rossetti’s diary, since many of them were driven by his brother’s desire to reach out to the spirit of his dead wife. </p>
<p>Though there are many records of spiritualist experiences in the 19th century, what makes William Rossetti’s diary so valuable is its detail. Every moment in the 20 séances is meticulously recorded, every participant and his or her reaction to the events is noted down, and the presence of so many prominent artists from the Pre-Raphaelite movement casts each of their personal beliefs and prejudices in a new light.</p>
<h2>The spirit world</h2>
<p>The lights are dimmed. The candles flicker. William Michael Rossetti asks some questions of the spirit of Elizabeth Siddal, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife. His questions involve a picture that he has just sent to a wealthy patron in Birkenhead called George Rae. The questions are strange, the responses reported by the diary monosyllabic but accurate.</p>
<p>William: Did you consider that picture which Gabriel sent away the other day one of his very best?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes.<br>
William: Do you know to whom it has gone?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes.<br>
William: Give initial of surname?<br>
Elizabeth: R [correct for Rae]<br>
William: Do you know in what room of Rae’s house that picture is now placed?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes.<br>
William: Dining room?<br>
Elizabeth: No.<br>
William: Drawing room?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes.<br>
William: How many in the whole house?</p>
<p>At this point, a pause of some 15 minutes ensues, within which no answers are reported.</p>
<p>William: During that pause were you absent looking into Rae’s house?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes.<br>
William: Can you give me any idea of the process by which you pass from one place to another?<br>
Elizabeth: No. </p>
<p>Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s fascination with the occult went back to his early experiences of the poetry of Dante Alighieri in the scholarly work of his father Gabriele. In the course of his work, Gabriele frequently invoked the authority of the Swedish mystic, Emmanuel Swedenborg who, around 1744, began to have visionary experiences of the afterlife. He had become a “seer”, he said, by God’s command to explain the correspondences between life on earth and life in heaven. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of people posing for a picture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436713/original/file-20211209-133881-94834w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436713/original/file-20211209-133881-94834w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436713/original/file-20211209-133881-94834w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436713/original/file-20211209-133881-94834w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436713/original/file-20211209-133881-94834w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436713/original/file-20211209-133881-94834w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436713/original/file-20211209-133881-94834w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All four Rossetti siblings – two sisters and two brothers – became famous in the arts during the era of Romanticism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=rossetti+brothers&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He claimed not only communication with angels and demons, but spoke of how he had been admitted into the spirit world and how he had returned to the terrestrial sphere to tell the story. Consequently, Rossetti’s poems and pictures are filled with spiritual experiences; with stories of hauntings and uncanny events. In the late 1850s he began to participate in séances, but it was the death of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, that lent his participation a new urgency. </p>
<p>Prior her death, Siddal had been suffering from post-natal depression caused by a still birth. Driven to despair by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s long-term infidelity and neglect of her, she took an overdose of laudanum. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was consumed by guilt and filled with remorse and, as some kind of compensation, he buried the whole manuscript of his unpublished poems in her coffin. But no sooner had she been placed in the earth than he began to have nightly visions of her in his bedroom. At that point he decided to try and look for her in the afterlife. </p>
<p>In October 1862, abandoning the house which they had shared, he took up residence beside the River Thames, where he began holding séances with his new friend, the American painter James McNeill Whistler. Many years later, Whistler spoke of the “strange things that happened when he went to séances at Rossetti’s” since, according to William Michael’s daughter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was “anxious to get some message” from Elizabeth.</p>
<h2>William Rossetti’s séance diary</h2>
<p>By the time William Rossetti began his séance diary in 1865, he was already a firm believer in spiritualist communications. Some of the séances he recorded came under the auspices of amateur mediums.</p>
<p>The richest and most dynamic ones took place under the mediumship of two professionals, Mary Marshall and Elizabeth Guppy, and the very first one he recorded took place in Marshall’s house. William Rossetti was accompanied by his artist friend, William Bell Scott. The two men, who were certain that the Marshalls had no personal knowledge of them, wanted to make contact with the recently deceased brother of Scott’s mistress, Spencer Boyd.</p>
<p>The information that emerged from this séance was striking. The spirit of Spencer Boyd was reportedly summoned, and stated, correctly, that he had died in Scott’s home, providing the address together with the date on which he had passed away. He is also reported as correctly telling the group that he had heard of, but never met, William Scott in person. </p>
<p>More startlingly, however, was a communication with people of whom there is no evidence that anyone present had any knowledge of – yet whose accounts have been subsequently confirmed by our own archival research. In February 1866, for example, a New Zealand Maori chief calling himself “Hemi” is reported to have appeared out of the dark. Sources show that he claimed to have met William Rossetti three years previously in Newcastle, when the chief was touring Britain exhibiting Maori dances.</p>
<p>Information gathered from historians in New Zealand, and our own research in the archives of local newspaper, the Newcastle Chronicle, confirmed that in the week beginning September 14, 1863, a group of “Maori chiefs” had indeed performed to audiences in Newcastle. On that same day, Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote a letter to a friend saying, in passing, that his brother was about to leave on a visit to Newcastle.</p>
<p>On other occasions, what were called “aports” were allegedly materialised. Eau-de-cologne and water were described showering out of nowhere, books thrown from the bookcases and, in one incident, the medium asked the participants if they would like to receive flowers. In response, roses, ferns and jonquils were requested and, to their amazement, appear to have dropped out of the darkness onto the table in front of them or onto their laps. Dante Gabriel Rossetti invited Jane Morris, the wife of William Morris, to two of these séances, where she claimed to have seen unexpected lights and cold draughts of air passed over her hands. </p>
<p>The most moving and dramatic séances, however, are those that featured the spirit of Elizabeth Siddal. In the second séance recorded by William Rossetti, his brother spoke to her with clear reference to the past. “You used to give me clear [and] significant answers,” he said, “but of late the reverse: can you tell me why?” He writes that she had no answer. In a later séance, the spirit reportedly confessed that she knew William Bell Scott, and thought that William Rossetti had been a very affectionate brother to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Later, at the home of Thomas Keightley, historian and folklorist, the diary describes her as telling the participants that she knew William Morris, and correctly told them his London address. </p>
<p>The most intensive cross-questioning of Elizabeth’s spirit took place in the very last séance at 2am on Friday August 14 1868. In this, the spirit was asked about the Rossetti’s father Gabriele in the afterlife, about the nature of Christ, and about the nature of the manifestations that they had recently witnessed at another séance. The most touching exchange is described as occurring between Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth. </p>
<p>Gabriel: Are you my wife?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes<br>
Gabriel: Are you now happy?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes<br>
Gabriel: Happier than on earth?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes<br>
Gabriel: If I were now to join you, should I be happy?<br>
Elizabeth: Yes<br>
Gabriel: Should I see you at once?<br>
Elizabeth: No<br>
Gabriel: Quite soon?<br>
Elizabeth: No </p>
<h2>“Bogie pictures”</h2>
<p>Though they are not usually linked, during this period, both Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Whistler created pictures with an occult significance. Dante Gabriel’s drawing How They Met Themselves (1860-64) is a ghostly double in a dense wood. It was completed in its first version during his honeymoon in 1860, and reworked as a coloured version in 1864. Dante Gabriel Rossetti called it his “bogie picture”.</p>
<p>William Rossetti said of it: “To meet one’s wraith is ominous of death, and to figure Elizabeth as meeting her wraith might well have struck her bridegroom as uncanny in a high degree. In less than two years the weird was woefully fulfilled”. Then, in 1863, both Whistler and Rossetti embarked on paintings with links to other spiritualist experiences. </p>
<p>Whistler’s Symphony in White No. 2: The Little White Girl (1864) has a contemporary setting and, like Dante’s drawing How They Met Themselves, it is also a doppelganger work: in it, Jo Hiffernan, Whistler’s mistress and her reflected image gaze down towards a lacquered Japanese box which Whistler employed in séances. Attached to the frame were Swinburne’s lines: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Art thou the ghost, my sister,<br>
White sister there,<br>
Am I the ghost, who knows?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix (1864-79), was begun at about the same time. Its original title was “Beatrice in a Death Trance”, a Dantean image which linked the death of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Beatrice-Italian-noble">Beatrice Portinari</a>, the woman believed to be the muse for Dante’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/La-Vita-nuova">Vita Nuova</a>, beside the Arno with Elizabeth Siddal’s death beside the Thames. The painting was based on an unfinished portrait of Elizabeth and depicts the moment of her passage from life into death. The picture came to the notice of the prominent spiritualists William and Georgina Cowper-Temple. </p>
<p>William Cowper-Temple was president of the Board of Trade, and he and Georgina presided over séances in their family home with the most famous mediums of the day. In September 1865 they began to take an interest in Dante Rossetti’s work. They frequently visited his studio where he was working on the painting and offered to buy it as a genuine spiritualist work. It was beneath this picture and in the same studio that Rossetti was trying to conjure up the spirit of Elizabeth Siddal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting showing three men converse with each other" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436712/original/file-20211209-21-x39n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436712/original/file-20211209-21-x39n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436712/original/file-20211209-21-x39n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436712/original/file-20211209-21-x39n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436712/original/file-20211209-21-x39n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436712/original/file-20211209-21-x39n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436712/original/file-20211209-21-x39n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How They Met Themselves, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1864)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=rossetti+how+they+met+themselves&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Rossetti brothers have long been known for their contribution to writing and painting in the 19th century, but the record of their séances connects them to the widespread Victorian preoccupation with the occult. </p>
<p>The huge mortality rate in Victorian Britain encouraged large numbers to seek the support of mediums. Similarly, around 1918 <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-slow-recovery-after-the-combined-shock-of-spanish-flu-and-the-first-world-war-recovery-podcast-part-three-140877">the carnage of the first world war and the waves of Spanish flu</a> created a new interest in spiritualism. Perhaps in this context, it’s unsurprising that the COVID-19 pandemic is reportedly <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-the-covid-19-pandemic-is-driving-a-revival-in-spiritualism-vqw73hwqc">driving</a> a revival of the ouija board. </p>
<p>Though spiritualism is still surrounded with an air of suspicion and mystery, William Rossetti’s diary shows that believing one has made contact with the next world is usually a source of consolation and reassurance. For some, spiritualism was as precious as fiction: a place to go to when needing to step away from too harsh a reality.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/witchtok-the-rise-of-the-occult-on-social-media-has-eerie-parallels-with-the-16th-century-168322?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">WitchTok: the rise of the occult on social media has eerie parallels with the 16th century</a></em></p></li>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barrie Bullen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The journal of a Pre-Raphaelite writer might help explain today’s turn to spiritualism.
Barrie Bullen, Visiting Professor, Kellogg College, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169239
2021-10-26T19:48:36Z
2021-10-26T19:48:36Z
Spirit photography captured love, loss and longing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428561/original/file-20211026-23-16vp1mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C82%2C988%2C713&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Spirit photograph by William Hope, taken around 1920.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Media Museum Collection/Flickr)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/spirit-photography-captured-love--loss-and-longing" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/cinematic-ghosts-haunting-and-spectrality-from-silent-cinema-to-the-digital-era/ch1-phantom-images-and-modern-manifestations-spirit-photography-magic-theater-trick-films-and-photography-s-uncanny">Photography has always had a relationship to haunting</a> as it shows not what is, but what once was. </p>
<p>The process whereby light must bounce off the subject and back towards the camera suggests that photographs have touched and carry a trace of what is shown. Scholars of fields from anthropology to art history have explored the <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/nature-exposed">association between</a> photographs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08949460802156292">and ghosts</a>. </p>
<p>This association is exaggerated by spirit photography, which are portraits that visually reunite the bereaved with their loved ones — a phenomenon I attribute <a href="https://theconversation.com/spirit-photography-19th-century-innovation-in-bereavement-rituals-was-likely-invented-by-a-woman-164033">to the creative innovation of a Boston woman in 1861</a>. </p>
<p>Modern readers may be <a href="https://www.history.com/news/spirit-photography-civil-war-william-mumler">preoccupied by the motives and methods of spirit photographers</a> — their use of double exposure, combination printing or contemporary digital manipulation to produce semi-translucent “apparitions.” But far more interesting is the impact the resulting photographs had on the bereaved who commissioned the portraits. At heart, the Victorian interest in spirit photography is a tale of love, loss and longing.</p>
<h2>Spirit of the age</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of a woman seated next to a semi-translucent child." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428568/original/file-20211026-13-c04axm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428568/original/file-20211026-13-c04axm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428568/original/file-20211026-13-c04axm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428568/original/file-20211026-13-c04axm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428568/original/file-20211026-13-c04axm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1241&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428568/original/file-20211026-13-c04axm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1241&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428568/original/file-20211026-13-c04axm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1241&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spirit photograph taken between 1862–1875.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/95744/william-h-mumler-mrs-tinkham-american-1862-1875/">(The Paul J. Getty Museum)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Spirit photography developed within the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/spiritualism-religion">context of spiritualism</a>, a 19th-century religious movement. Spiritualists believed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/20/seances-and-science">in the soul’s persistence after death</a> and of the potential for continued bonds and communication between the dead and the living.</p>
<p>In 1848, when two young women of Hydesville, N.Y., <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-fox-sisters-and-the-rap-on-spiritualism-99663697/">claimed the ability to hear and interpret the knocking of a deceased peddler in their home</a>, <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253215024/radical-spirits-second-edition/">spiritualist ideas were already in the air</a>.</p>
<p>Some 19th-century spiritualist artists saw their work as being inspired by an unseen presence. For example, British artist and medium Georgianna Houghton produced <a href="https://georgianahoughton.com/">abstract watercolours she dubbed her “spirit drawings.”</a> Similarly, about 20 years after photography as a medium emerged, spirit photographers began attributing <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191001-how-spiritualism-influenced-modern-art">their work to an external force, a presence that temporarily overcame or possessed them</a>. The spiritual “extra” that appeared alongside the bereaved in spirit photographs — sometimes clearly a face, at other times a shape or object — was meant to be understood as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2010.00139.x">not having been made by humans</a>. </p>
<p>Paired with the longing of the bereaved, spirit photographs had the potential to become intensely personal, enchanted memory objects.</p>
<h2>Sustained bonds</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Photograph of a seated man with a semi-translucent female figure standing next to him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428569/original/file-20211026-17-vyezlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428569/original/file-20211026-17-vyezlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428569/original/file-20211026-17-vyezlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428569/original/file-20211026-17-vyezlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428569/original/file-20211026-17-vyezlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428569/original/file-20211026-17-vyezlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428569/original/file-20211026-17-vyezlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spirit photograph believed to be taken in the 1870s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unlike <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781861897916">postmortem photography — the 19th-century practice of photographing the deceased, typically as though sleeping</a> — spirit photographs did not lock the loved one in a moment after separation has occurred through death. Instead, they suggested a moment beyond death and therefore the potential for future moments shared.</p>
<p>Spirit photography <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/439624">encouraged and then mediated the resurgence of the deceased’s animated likeness</a>. At a time when many <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/haunted-media">available technologies</a> — <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801448010/the-sympathetic-medium/#bookTabs=1">such as the telegraph, telephone and typewriter</a> — were being applied towards communication with the dead, spirit photography offered a visual record of communication. </p>
<p>But in spirit photographs, the beloved seldom appeared at full opacity. Using the technique of semi-translucence, spirit photographers depict spirits as animated and “still with us.” That they are only <em>half</em> there is also indicated. In this way, spirit photographs illustrate the lingering presence of the absent loved one, just as it is felt by the bereaved.</p>
<p>Spirit photographs <a href="https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/09/27/stories-in-stereo/">were not the first photographs to depict ghostly apparitions</a>. But they do mark the first instance wherein these semi-translucent “extras” were marketed as evidence of continued connection to the deceased.</p>
<p>As a service rendered within the bereavement industry, spirit photographs were meant to be understood as the grief of separation, captured by the camera — and not constructed through some form of trickery.</p>
<h2>Spirits in the world</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Oil painting of a veil with a translucent face." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428574/original/file-20211026-15-1m5qlz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428574/original/file-20211026-15-1m5qlz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428574/original/file-20211026-15-1m5qlz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428574/original/file-20211026-15-1m5qlz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428574/original/file-20211026-15-1m5qlz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428574/original/file-20211026-15-1m5qlz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428574/original/file-20211026-15-1m5qlz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Veil of Saint Veronica,’ oil painting by Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), photo taken at National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Ninara/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Belief in the appearance of miraculous impressions of forms and faces may appear novel in the emerging medium and technology of photography. But a longer tradition of finding meaning and solace in the apparition of faces can be seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/belief-in-touch-as-salvation-was-stronger-than-fear-of-contagion-in-the-italian-renaissance-157135">in Christian traditions of venerating relics</a> such as <em><a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Veil_of_Veronica">The Veil of Veronica</a></em> which, according to Catholic popular belief and legend, bears the likeness of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Veronica">Christ’s face imprinted on it before his crucifixion</a>.</p>
<p>Even <a href="https://www.unz.com/print/AtlanticMonthly-1863jul-00001/">in the 19th century</a>, recognition of the beloved in spirit photographs was occasionally equated <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140730-why-do-we-see-faces-in-objects">with pareidolia</a> — the powerful human tendency to perceive patterns, objects or faces, such as in relics or random objects. </p>
<p>In 1863, physician and poet O.W. Holmes <a href="https://www.unz.com/print/AtlanticMonthly-1863jul-00001/">noted in <em>Atlantic Monthly</em></a> that for the bereaved who commissioned spirit photography, what the resulting photograph showed was inconsequential: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It is enough for the poor mother, whose eyes are blinded with tears, that she sees a print of drapery like an infant’s dress, and a rounded something, like a foggy dumpling, which will stand for a face: she accepts the spirit-portrait as a revelation from the world of shadows.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the photographer’s methods were exposed, the bereaved still maintained their spirit photograph was authentic. The ambiguity of the figures that appeared seldom deterred the bereaved from seeing what they hoped for. Indeed, it was this very leap of faith that incited the imaginative input required to transform these otherwise unbelievable photographs into potent and intensely personal objects.</p>
<p>In 1962, a woman who had commissioned a photograph of her late husband shared with the spirit photographer: “It is recognized by all that have seen it, who knew him when upon Earth, <a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/banner_of_light/banner_of_light_v12_n12_13_dec_1862.pdf">as a perfect likeness, and I am myself satisfied, that his spirit was present, although invisible to mortals</a>.” </p>
<h2>Haunting refrains</h2>
<p>Spirit photographs were often proven to have been produced through double exposure or by way of combination printing. Thus, it would have been equally possible to produce photographs wherein the deceased appeared at full opacity alongside the bereaved — seamlessly reunited. And yet the tendency to present the absent individual at a lesser opacity has persisted — even within contemporary, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/us/a-dead-child-a-ghostly-photo-and-a-mother-charged-with-murder.html">digitally produced composite portraits</a>.</p>
<p>The use of semi-translucence in depicting the remembered individual, is a deliberate indication of a presence that is felt but not seen, except by those attuned to it. </p>
<p>While spirit photographs were cherished as messages of love from beyond the grave, surely they were also messages of love to the departed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Felicity T. C. Hamer has received funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC).</span></em></p>
Today viewers may be preoccupied by the methods used by spirit photographers, but spirit photographs had a notable impact on the bereaved who commissioned the portraits.
Felicity T. C. Hamer, PhD Candidate and Public Scholar, Communication Studies, Concordia University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165707
2021-10-14T08:06:18Z
2021-10-14T08:06:18Z
The Prestige: the real-life warring Victorian magicians who inspired the film
<p><em>Warning: containers spoilers for The Prestige</em></p>
<p>After years of a cat and mouse chase across Europe, two magicians are ready to declare war on one another. One, bitter over the loss of his son after a bullet-catch gone wrong at his own hand, steals the other’s programme of tricks. The subsequent change in his act begins to gain traction with audiences.</p>
<p>The enemies talk of a “battlefield” where they can settle all the imagined slights, and perhaps even obtain the revenge they have longed for over the course of their professional rivalry – at one point going so far as to involve the pope in their competitive European tours. One monologues to himself about how “exquisite” his vengeance will be, then announces publicly that his sole purpose in life is to “challenge” the other to “mortal combat”.</p>
<p>You could be forgiven for thinking these were scenes from Christopher Nolan’s classic film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/">The Prestige</a>, released in 2006 and the recipient of two Academy Awards. But the dispute described isn’t between Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman’s onscreen characters; it is one that actually happened in France in the early 19th century. And as with any good tale of magic, all is not as it seems – although I don’t want to reveal the secret just yet. </p>
<p>This year is the 15th anniversary of The Prestige’s release, a film which continues to epitomise magic in the Victorian period for many fans. When people heard I was completing a PhD on Victorian magicians, it became very common for them to gasp: “Oh! Just like in The Prestige?”. Initially I resisted this comparison – even though watching The Prestige at an early age probably inspired my interest in this topic too. </p>
<p>My research explores the impact of conjuring upon <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08905495.2021.1960017?journalCode=gncc20">literature</a> and other <a href="https://victorianpopularfiction.org/publications/1200-2/victorian-popular-fictions-journal-volume-2-issue-1-spring-2020/victorian-popular-fictions-journal-volume-2-issue-1-article-5-ashton-lelliott/">media</a> during the Victorian period. There has been quite a lot of research into the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pxYVlgSzCg">psychology of magic</a> and its <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674013711">theoretical implications</a>, such as links to the history of advertising. And The Prestige itself has been the subject of <a href="https://nevt.org/les.pdf">academic interest</a>, due to the rise of neo-Victorianism as a field of study. But the experiences of the magicians themselves have not been as widely explored. </p>
<p>As my research continued I began to see that, in many ways, the real history of stage magic in the 19th century was as hectic and violent as Nolan portrays (albeit without the clones). The popularity and public recognition of the film also continues to interest me: what had Nolan captured which resonated in people’s imaginations? And why was this film the basis of most people’s knowledge of magic history – particularly when the reality of Victorian stage magic was in many ways even stranger than fiction?</p>
<p>Another slightly less popular magician film released in the same year as The Prestige was Neil Burger’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443543/">The Illusionist</a>, featuring Edward Norton and Jessica Biel. Both movies are adaptations of books, The Prestige (1995) by Christopher Priest and The Barnum Museum (1990) by Steven Millhauser. Priest’s book is much more ingrained in the real history of 19th century stage magic, name-checking well-known magicians such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Nevil-Maskelyne">John Nevil Maskelyne</a> and “The Wizard of the North”, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Henry-Anderson">John Henry Anderson</a>, who both engaged in dramatic rivalries of their own. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This story is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>The Prestige follows two stage magicians at the close of the Victorian era, Alfred Borden (Bale) and Robert Angier (Jackman), who engage in increasingly dangerous one-upmanship and competition, particularly over Borden’s trick “The Transported Man”, in which he vanishes behind one door while almost simultaneously emerging from another on the opposite side of the stage.</p>
<p>Borden achieves this by having an identical twin. But Angier is unable to accept this banal explanation and becomes obsessed with both the truth behind the trick and improving it further by employing the help of the inventor <a href="https://theconversation.com/nikola-tesla-the-extraordinary-life-of-a-modern-prometheus-89479">Nikola Tesla</a>. Tesla (best known for designing the alternating-current electric system) creates for Angier a machine that will generate a clone of him nearby, reproducing the effect of Borden’s trick. But the version of Angier left onstage as a result of the cloning must be drowned under the stage each night – a literal representation of the “cost of a good trick”, one of the film’s central motifs.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DA8Iv0TlrI4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Angier is also, initially in any case, haunted by his wife’s death by drowning after a water escape trick goes wrong, and he blames Borden’s poor knot-tying skills for her demise. There are other themes at play: Angier is American, and later becomes very wealthy, whereas Borden is presented as more explicitly working-class. Borden is passionate about the techniques of magic; Angier is more concerned with fame.</p>
<p>So rivalry is a central theme in The Prestige. In one scene, Tesla’s assistant asks Angier why he would want the same clone-making device as Borden. His response: “Call it a professional rivalry”. And as I carried out my own research, I couldn’t help but notice that rivalry is also an overriding motif of real-life Victorian magic. In fact, the magicians of this time used public rivalries as advertising tools to build a sense of drama around their already mysterious profession. </p>
<h2>Pinetti vs Torrini</h2>
<p>The most famous magician of the Victorian period was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Eugene-Robert-Houdin">Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin</a> – the man who inspired Houdini’s stage name. Robert-Houdin’s memoirs are one of the key magician autobiographies of this period. Robert-Houdin credits his initial interest in magic to a travelling performer who used the pseudonym of Torrini and whose dramatic life story was adopted by many other magic historians in this period.</p>
<p>Robert-Houdin (1805-1871) originally worked as a watchmaker and this knowledge of mechanics proved useful in his magic career when building his famous automata, or self-operating machines. The best known of these, <a href="https://illusionrepository.com/repository/the-marvelous-orange-tree/">The Marvelous Orange Tree</a>, features in the film The Illusionist. Apparently reacting to a loud noise, such as a gunshot, the <a href="https://youtu.be/OLtSEAttBYU">Orange Tree</a> produces orange blossoms and fruit from within its leaves. Robert-Houdin was also known for the <a href="https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1903&context=ocj">“second sight”</a> trick and “ethereal suspension”, often suspending his son onstage. The latter trick makes it appear as though the performer is floating without assistance or with just a thin pole.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SZb4nw7_hGY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The story goes that Torrini, who was travelling around France, meets a young Robert-Houdin and the pair become friends and travel around the country for a while. Torrini teaches his young apprentice the ways of conjuring, all the while lamenting his many professional and personal misfortunes, such as the death of his son and having to flee from his previously aristocratic past.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A black and white portrait of a man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418621/original/file-20210831-27-1ah5hfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418621/original/file-20210831-27-1ah5hfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418621/original/file-20210831-27-1ah5hfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418621/original/file-20210831-27-1ah5hfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418621/original/file-20210831-27-1ah5hfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418621/original/file-20210831-27-1ah5hfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418621/original/file-20210831-27-1ah5hfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert-Houdin in later life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.onthisday.com/people/jean-eugene-robert-houdin">Onthisday.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to Robert-Houdin’s memoirs, Torrini was regularly at war with other magicians. The most violent incident he records was with Joseph Pinetti, who acted as Torrini’s foil throughout Robert-Houdin’s narrative and who had died by the time of the memoirs’ publication. Robert-Houdin’s descriptions of Torrini and his vicious rivalry with Pinetti are often riddled with references to weapons, revenge, war and duelling.</p>
<p>At one point, Torrini performs in front of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pius-VII">Pope Pius VII</a>. He notes that Pinetti is too scared to enter Rome for fears of being accused of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/necromancy">necromancy</a> (black magic). Robert-Houdin writes about the lead-up to their rivalry from Torrini’s perspective:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then, when quite confident in myself – when I had added many new tricks to Pinetti’s repertoire – I would pursue my enemy, enter every town before him and continually crush him by my superiority… I, therefore, ordered apparatus of unknown brilliancy in those days, spending in this every farthing I possessed. With what delight did I regard these glittering instruments, each of which seemed to me a weapon capable of inflicting mortal wounds on my adversary’s vanity. How proudly my heart beat at the thought of the contest I would commence with him! Henceforth, it would be a duel of skill between Pinetti and myself, but a mortal duel; one of us must remain on the ground, and I had reason to hope that I should be the victor in the struggle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This monologue would not be out of place in Nolan’s film, and indeed using war-like imagery when describing their professional rivalries – whether real or imagined – was very common in writings by magicians during this period. </p>
<p>Part of Torrini’s volatility is implied to be the result of his own tragic past, in which he accidentally shot and killed his own son as part of a gun trick. </p>
<p>The bullet-catch, a catch-all name for many variations of the trick, features heavily in The Prestige. Borden notes that “people still get killed doing this” and indeed people have been killed in misadventures involving the bullet-catch or wounded in its performance <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/bullet-catch-snap-525/">as recently as 2012</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Victorian poster for a magic show." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415634/original/file-20210811-27-o35jiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415634/original/file-20210811-27-o35jiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415634/original/file-20210811-27-o35jiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415634/original/file-20210811-27-o35jiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415634/original/file-20210811-27-o35jiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415634/original/file-20210811-27-o35jiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415634/original/file-20210811-27-o35jiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A poster for Robert-Houdin’s ‘incredible’ magic show from the late 1800s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll5/id/130/rec/68">Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Alas for my golden dreams!</h2>
<p>Torrini was such a vivid and colourful character that many began questioning the truth behind his story. Then, in the 1960s, it was discovered by a Robert-Houdin biographer, Jean Chavigny, that Torrini had never existed and had always been completely fictitious. Robert-Houdin had, in fact, invented Torrini to add some dramatic flair to his own origin story and create a dramatic legacy for his own magic tricks.</p>
<p>Falsehoods such as these led to Robert-Houdin acquiring his own rival from beyond the grave. Because, while he initially inspired a young Houdini, this relationship turned sour when Houdini realised his former idol was a charlatan. Houdini wrote an entire book in 1908 titled, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42723/42723-h/42723-h.htm">The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin</a>, exposing what he saw as Robert-Houdin’s lies. In his introduction, Houdini writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Alas for my golden dreams! My investigations brought forth only bitterest disappointment and saddest of disillusionment. Stripped of his self-woven veil of romance, Robert-Houdin stood forth, in the uncompromising light of cold historical facts, a mere pretender, a man who waxed great on the brainwork of others, a mechanician who had boldly filched the inventions of the master craftsmen among his predecessors.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A book cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417606/original/file-20210824-23-891tgx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417606/original/file-20210824-23-891tgx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417606/original/file-20210824-23-891tgx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417606/original/file-20210824-23-891tgx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417606/original/file-20210824-23-891tgx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417606/original/file-20210824-23-891tgx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417606/original/file-20210824-23-891tgx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The book cover of The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, by Harry Houdini.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.gutenberg.org">Project Gutenberg</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Houdini believed that Robert-Houdin had stolen all of his tricks from others and neglected to credit any of his predecessors. Whatever the truth, Robert-Houdin was himself very familiar with having his own tricks stolen in the cut-throat world of the Victorian magic circuit.</p>
<h2>Robert-Houdin vs Anderson</h2>
<p>Plagiarism led to the most disagreements in the magic trade. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia photograph of a woman and her father." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424982/original/file-20211006-15-6kpbho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph of John Henry Anderson and his daughter Louie (1814-1874), possibly posing as if they were to perform a mind reading.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O234530/john-henry-anderson-the-wizard-photograph-london-stereoscopic-and/">V&A</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Henry-Anderson">John Henry Anderson</a>, a Scottish magician of global renown during this period, is often credited with first popularising guns as part of a magic act, pioneering several gun tricks which inspired many imitators. </p>
<p>He was in many ways the main competitor of Robert-Houdin, although the French magician often downplayed this relationship in his subtle dismissals of Anderson’s skills.</p>
<p>Anderson, for his part, would leave a city if he knew Robert-Houdin was coming. When both were on the listings of London theatres at the same time, Robert-Houdin appeared unconcerned, describing Anderson as a “puffer” in his memoirs. </p>
<p>Anderson swiftly fled from London after the first arrival of Robert-Houdin in 1848, but returned using a programme full of Robert-Houdin’s best known tricks by the Christmas of that year. </p>
<p>Robert-Houdin’s own interest in Anderson, however, mainly came from his dismay at the latter’s style of advertising. He noted that, as part of Anderson’s famously extreme publicity campaigns, he sent moulds bearing his name, title and the hour of his performance to “all the buttermen in the town…”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…begging them to imprint his stamp on their butter-pats… As every family in England eats butter at breakfast, it follows that each receives, at no expense to the conjurer, an invitation to pay a visit to the illustrious Wizard of the North.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is but one of Anderson’s audacious publicity stunts – all documented with disdain in Robert-Houdin’s memoirs where he sarcastically remarks that he believes Anderson must secretly be modest, as his conjuring skill is not at the same level as his advertising abilities. </p>
<p>Anderson was also, ironically, one of the most overt in publicly criticising his own imposters. George Barnardo Eagle, who also performed under a “Wizard” title, was often the subject of his disapproval, with Anderson once issuing large window posters with a cartoon illustrating Eagle’s plagiarism.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white cartoon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415632/original/file-20210811-13-17yp4g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415632/original/file-20210811-13-17yp4g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415632/original/file-20210811-13-17yp4g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415632/original/file-20210811-13-17yp4g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415632/original/file-20210811-13-17yp4g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415632/original/file-20210811-13-17yp4g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415632/original/file-20210811-13-17yp4g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anderson’s satirical cartoon of Eagle, belittling his imitator.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42723/42723-h/42723-h.htm">Harry Houdini Collection.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prior to a performance in Birmingham, Anderson issued a playbill (an often illustrated advert outlining and promoting a performer’s upcoming shows) to Eagle with a direct threat, writing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>BARNEY, when we last met, I merely ruffled your feathers, this time I’ll pluck you clean, not one shall be left thee to spread thy (Eagle) wings of imposition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although we don’t know if Eagle and Anderson ever came to blows, there was certainly an atmosphere of tension as they toured Britain, this time with Anderson in pursuit of his own imposter.</p>
<h2>Maskelyne vs… everyone?</h2>
<p>Another magician who made many enemies both inside and outside magic circles was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Nevil-Maskelyne">John Nevil Maskelyne</a>. He was famously guarded about his methods and was never afraid to sue rivals who he felt were stealing his tricks. His dispute with the American magician Harry Kellar, who openly copied one of his levitation tricks in the early 1900s, is cited as one of the key rivalries in The Prestige. The trick involved levitating a female assistant and passing a ring around her entire body to demonstrate a lack of wires.</p>
<p>Originally from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, England, Maskelyne entered the magic profession in dramatic style by teaming up with his later long-time partner George Alfred Cooke to expose the tricks of the divisive spiritualist duo, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/96519151/">The Davenport Brothers</a>, in 1865. Like Robert-Houdin, Maskelyne was a former watchmaker and master of automata, and his most famous creation, Psycho, can still be seen in the Museum of London today. Psycho is the archetypal card-playing automaton, who can carry on a game of whist with a human participant.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418630/original/file-20210831-15-k2cod0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418630/original/file-20210831-15-k2cod0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418630/original/file-20210831-15-k2cod0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418630/original/file-20210831-15-k2cod0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418630/original/file-20210831-15-k2cod0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418630/original/file-20210831-15-k2cod0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418630/original/file-20210831-15-k2cod0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph of John Nevil Maskelyne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some versions of the story hold that Kellar once stormed Maskelyne’s stage in order to get a better look at the technique of the levitation trick; others state that Kellar hired a spy to infiltrate Maskelyne’s inner circle (as Angier does when he sends his assistant to find out the truth behind The Transported Man). As with many such stories of professional magician rivalries, it is difficult to track down the truth of the incident – if a real truth, in fact, exists. Kellar’s estate went on to sell his version of <a href="https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/potter-potter/blackstone-s-bill-of-sale-for-the-levitation-of-princess-karnack-906169">the trick</a>, having no such qualms about distributing secrets.</p>
<h2>The trick is everything</h2>
<p>The Prestige isn’t perfect and has its historical inaccuracies, made easier to overlook by its nebulous time setting (although, at one point, the film is firmly centred in 1899). But issues – such as the narrative reliance on water escapes, which were not especially in use until Harry Houdini made them famous in the <a href="https://youtu.be/mbBF_3WbrRk">20th century</a> and mentions of the “sawing-a-woman-in-half” trick (which was not debuted under this title until 1921 by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jan/10/magic-circle-100-years-sawing-people-in-half">P.T. Selbit</a>) – are admittedly unlikely to bother the average viewer.</p>
<p>So the continuing popularity of The Prestige perhaps illustrates
how we still enjoy Victorian conjuring in modern society. But why do we have such a strong cultural memory of stage magic as a specifically Victorian concept? And why do we continue to create neo-Victorian films and books, such as The Prestige and The Illusionist, exploring this?</p>
<p>Magic and the wonders of illusion have been keeping humans entertained for thousands of years. I would argue that this perennial thirst for magic – especially when fiction and cinema allow a trick to appear so real – is part of the fantasy we project onto historical eras, such as the Victorian period: an era rife with popular entertainment, similar to our own. In the Victorian era, we see a recognisable yet different form of our current society, in the same way that magic tricks often take the familiar and twist it slightly to subvert the audience’s expectations. In this way, the past and conjuring seem inevitably linked.</p>
<p>This was the “golden age” of magic, before health and safety laws barred most performers from actually putting their lives on the line for a good trick. The mystery of magic is naturally suited to the foggy London streets we continue to be drawn to, and Nolan’s skill as a filmmaker portrays the social anxieties, such as concerns over individuality and urban expansion, of this era brilliantly. Such paranoia and desire for authenticity continue today, but are especially slippery in a profession still dominated by pretence.</p>
<p>As Borden tells his wife’s son in their first encounter: “The secret impresses no one – the trick you use it for is everything.” We continually search for wonder in the world, which some feel is increasingly rare, and today, as in the 19th century, a good magic trick is capable of suspending reality and providing an escape from the mundane and the predictable. Magicians of the Victorian period undoubtedly took their rivalries too far and risked their lives for their acts, but only because they knew the real secret of stage magic: that a good trick is worth any cost.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction when it comes to the magicians of the Victorian era.
Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott, Postdoctoral fellow, Victorian literature and magic, University of Portsmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164033
2021-09-29T16:02:00Z
2021-09-29T16:02:00Z
Spirit photography: 19th-century innovation in bereavement rituals was likely invented by a woman
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423379/original/file-20210927-27-th2vd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C60%2C547%2C346&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Spirit photograph from 1901.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lccn.loc.gov/91732576">(Library of Congress/John K. Hallowell; S.W. Fallis, photographer)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Spirit photography was an <a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/herald_of_progress_us/herald_of_progress_v3_n37_nov_1_1862.pdf">important development</a> within bereavement rituals of the early 1860s. </p>
<p>Spirit photographs are portraits that visually reunite the bereaved with the wispy reappearance of their loved ones. Some people perceived these photographs <a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/banner_of_light/banner_of_light_v12_n12_13_dec_1862.pdf">as evidence</a> in support of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/spiritualism-religion">core “spiritualist” beliefs</a>. Spiritualists held that the soul persists after death and the potential exists for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/20/seances-and-science">continued bonds and communication between the dead and the living</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801448010/the-sympathetic-medium/#bookTabs=1%20%22%22%20">Mediums</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt7z8f3">largely women</a>, worked alongside spirit photographers to enable the “spiritual” reappearance of the deceased. My research shows women to have been integral participants in this development: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2018.1498491">I name a woman</a> as the likely inventor of spirit photography.</p>
<h2>Appealed to women</h2>
<p>The emergence of spirit photography in Boston was an exciting and highly publicized moment that continues <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150629-the-intriguing-history-of-ghost-photography">to captivate people today</a>.</p>
<p>Contemporary viewers sometimes see spirit photographs as amusing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No9shmys4Qc">historical artifacts</a>. Some Victorian viewers were also accustomed to the use of translucence in photographs produced <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20442752">for entertainment</a> <a href="https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/09/27/stories-in-stereo/">or popular storytelling</a>.
For example, some people collected and shared images generated by cameras that produced differing views of the same scene <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sterographs-original-virtual-reality-180964771">to produce the illusion of three dimensionality</a>. Nonetheless, for the bereaved who commissioned spirit photographs, these objects had worth as personal mementoes.</p>
<p>The afterlife envisioned by spiritualism <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253215024/radical-spirits-second-edition/">appealed to women</a> who rejected the idea that their unbaptized children could be damned to hell. All who had died young — soldiers, children and the many women who did not survive childbirth — were cared for in this realm, and <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/1256">emotional bonds with them were sustained</a>. </p>
<p>Beheld by sympathetic eyes, spirit photographs were evidence of undying love. Nonetheless, even within some spiritualist communities, they attracted a great <a href="http://iapsop.com/spirithistory/spiritualist_skepticism_about_spirit_photography.html">deal of criticism</a>. </p>
<h2>Charges of fraud</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsdrr">William H. Mumler</a>, credited in his day as the originator of spirit photography, was <a href="http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100036301494.0x000001#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1643%2C-151%2C5043%2C3001">charged with “obtaining money by pretended ‘spirit’ photographs</a>.” After a lengthy and public pre-trial, Mumler was acquitted of all charges and continued his work. </p>
<p>During Mumler’s pre-trial, press reported on “Mrs. Stuart” as the woman who ran the studios where Mumler’s first spirit photographs originated. Stuart never appeared in court. Unlike many spirit photographers that followed, the methods of Mumler and his associate, Stuart, were never proven.</p>
<p>My research has documented Stuart as one of <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=5UH2swEACAAJ&dq=Fields+of+vision+:+women+in+photography+:+from+the+photography+collections,+Special+Collections+Department&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y">Boston’s most prolific photographers</a>,
the first <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.101956564&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=422&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=stuart">photographer to be clearly listed as a woman in local directories</a>. More importantly, my findings suggest that the name “Mrs. Stuart” was likely an alias. </p>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-strange-case-of-william-mumler-spirit">important accounts</a> of <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/1256">spirit photography</a> have indicated the need to further investigate the role of Mrs. Stuart and Hannah Mumler, William’s wife. </p>
<h2>Commemorative hair jeweller</h2>
<p>Hannah Frances Green was born in Marblehead, Mass., in 1832, and married Thomas Miller Turner 20 years later, bearing two children with him. Divorce <a href="https://newspaperarchive.com/boston-post-oct-08-1864-p-4/">records state</a> that Green and the children were deserted by 1859. </p>
<p>The same year Green was adjusting to life as a single mother of two, a Mrs. A. M. Stuart appeared in Boston directories as <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.14813064&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=393&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=stuart">an artist in hair</a> at 191 Washington St., and also as a “<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.14813064&view=1up&seq=467&skin=2021&q1=stuart">hair work manufacturer</a>” at the same address.
Hair work manufacturing was the <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-curious-victorian-tradition-making-art-human-hair">Victorian art of weaving hair into art, jewellery or ornaments for commemorative purposes</a>. The following year, she lists again as a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.14815759&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=415&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=stuart">hair artist</a>. </p>
<p>In 1861, Mrs. <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044082518507&view=1up&seq=432&skin=2021&q1=stuart">H.F. Stuart lists as a hair jewellery manufacturer</a> at 221 Washington St.
By 1862, H.F. Stuart expanded to establish her <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.101956564&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=422&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=stuart">professional photography</a> studios at <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092997923&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=495&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=stuart">258 Washington St.</a>, the address associated with the first spirit photograph. Her continued production of <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wcl1ic/x-7923/WCL007989?lasttype=boolean;lastview=reslist;med=1;resnum=3;size=50;sort=relevance;start=1;subview=detail;view=entry;rgn1=wcl1ic_su;select1=phrase;q1=Women%2520photographers.">hair jewellery is</a> <a href="http://www.luminous-lint.com/__phv_app.php?/p/Mrs_Stuart">verifiable by the stamp</a> on the back of her many commissioned <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/carte-de-visite"><em>carte-de-visite</em></a> portraits.</p>
<p>Helen F. Stuart’s business listings place her within the years 1859-67, but I could not locate any census records for her. There are no verifiable birth, death or marriage records associated with this name. </p>
<h2>‘Clairvoyant physician’</h2>
<p>Early in this time frame, Hannah Green(e) listed her services as <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.14815759&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=198&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=hannah%20greene">clairvoyant physician</a>. (Some women in spiritualist movements promoted their <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/why-did-so-many-victorians-try-to-speak-with-the-dead">gifts of “clairvoyance”</a> as allowing them to diagnose problems and <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3623876.html">facilitate healing</a> by channelling a spirit.)</p>
<p>As a producer of hair jewellery, photographer and clairvoyant physician well into <a href="https://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/?a=d&d=Chronicle18940210-01.2.100.1&dliv=none&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------">her 80s</a>, Hannah Green (Stuart) was uniquely positioned to envision the innovation within bereavement rituals that spirit photography represents. Women’s expertise has, after all, been long recognized as integral to <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198201885.001.0001/acprof-9780198201885">commemorative practices</a> <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195104677.001.0001/acprof-9780195104677">surrounding death</a> in the Victorian period and earlier.</p>
<p>I have thus far located four spirit photographs that are <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wcl1ic/x-7923/WCL007989?lasttype=boolean;lastview=reslist;med=1;resnum=3;size=50;sort=relevance;start=1;subview=detail;view=entry;rgn1=wcl1ic_su;select1=phrase;q1=Women%2520photographers.">positively attributed to Helen F. Stuart</a>, a woman who exists in business listings only in the approximate time period that Hannah Green(e) is missing from public census records.</p>
<h2>‘Magnetic powers’</h2>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-strange-case-of-william-mumler-spirit">1869 court statement</a> following his investigation and indictment, Mumler claimed he was alone when he produced his first spirit photograph. He said he relied solely on what he had surmised by watching an unnamed male friend, yet there are no other references to this friend. </p>
<p>In 1861, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044082518507&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=332&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=mumler">Mumler, the engraver</a>, and <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044082518507&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=528&amp;skin=2021&amp;q1=stuart">Stuart, the jewellery manufacturer</a>, are both listed at 221 Washington St., in Boston.</p>
<p>The “male friend” was likely concocted to conceal that Mumler sought instruction from a woman (Stuart). Perhaps he avoided expressly admitting that Hannah Green had been there, as she was still married to Turner. Or perhaps he wished to protect her and the children from scrutiny as the four relocated to New York. As official records show, Mumler and Green married in 1864, months after her divorce from Turner was finalized. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-strange-case-of-william-mumler-spirit">Witnesses at Mumler’s pre-trial</a> testified that a woman known as Mrs. Mumler prepped clients for spiritual encounter and guided them towards a positive identification of the ghostly apparitions.</p>
<p>Later, in his published memoirs, Mumler notes that on the occasion of his “first development,” a woman was present — someone he praises for her “<a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/banner_of_light/banner_of_light_v36_n22_feb_27_1875.pdf">wonderful magnetic powers</a>,” that he believed were connected to apparitions. Though Mumler’s wife was spared the courtroom and seldom plays an important role in accounts — Mumler did find space to credit her.</p>
<h2>Professional with extraordinary skills</h2>
<p>Hannah Green’s capacity for survival as a professional <a href="https://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/?a=d&d=Chronicle18931118-01.2.77&dliv=none&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------">with extraordinary skills at self-promotion are verifiable</a> long after she separated from William Mumler, her second husband, in the late 1870s — and after his death in 1884. </p>
<p>Mediumship as it was understood in the Victorian era <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3623876.html">implied a kind of passivity, which was why women were believed to be suited</a> to this role. By contrast, in the latter half of the 19th century, photography became increasingly associated <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/nature-exposed">with men’s work and scientific method</a>. It would have been difficult for a woman to present herself as the inventor of spirit photography. I believe Hannah Green involved a man with complementary skills in an effort to move her vision and business forward. </p>
<p>In considering Green’s contribution to spirit photography, we are led to revisit how women’s roles have been overlooked at a significant moment in photographic history — and to recover an understanding of spirit photography as an innovation within personal bereavement rituals.</p>
<p>Why believe this counter-narrative? There is more evidence that points to this scenario than not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164033/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Felicity T. C. Hamer has received funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC).</span></em></p>
The afterlife envisioned by spiritualism appealed to women who rejected the idea that their unbaptized children could be damned to hell.
Felicity T. C. Hamer, PhD Candidate and Public Scholar, Communication Studies, Concordia University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164458
2021-07-15T14:17:35Z
2021-07-15T14:17:35Z
Why are water companies dumping raw sewage in Britain’s rivers and coastal seas?
<p>There were more than <a href="https://waterbriefing.org/home/company-news/item/18213-water-companies-discharge-raw-sewage-into-rivers-400000%20-times-over-3m-hours-in-2020">400,000 discharges of raw sewage</a> in 2020, together lasting more than three million hours, from water companies into rivers in England and Wales. One company, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/09/southern-water-fined-90m-for-deliberately-pouring-sewage-into-sea">Southern Water</a>, was recently fined a record £90 million for dumping up to 21 billion litres of untreated sewage over six years in protected seas off England’s southern coast.</p>
<p>To understand why this is happening, we need to understand the history of our sewer systems.</p>
<p>For most of human civilisation, sanitation was managed in a dry form. When people visited a latrine, their waste ended up in a drainage pit below or a cesspit nearby. Liquids were allowed to seep into the ground where nature would (hopefully) deal with any contaminants. The solids left over were often recycled directly to agriculture, providing nutrients for farmlands. This all changed, about 150 years ago, in the Victorian era.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A stone sill overhanging a straight ditch with holes at regular intervals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411450/original/file-20210715-27-16z0kle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411450/original/file-20210715-27-16z0kle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411450/original/file-20210715-27-16z0kle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411450/original/file-20210715-27-16z0kle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411450/original/file-20210715-27-16z0kle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411450/original/file-20210715-27-16z0kle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411450/original/file-20210715-27-16z0kle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The remains of an ancient Roman latrine, excavated in Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/remains-public-roman-latrines-archeological-excavation-1575106414">Kristof Lauwers/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People migrating from the countryside to Britain’s crowded industrial cities meant more waste and longer distances to transport it to farms. International trade brought higher quality fertilisers to the UK too, destroying the market for London’s cesspool waste, as farmers preferred South American guano (bird droppings).</p>
<p>Then, the water closet arrived. Toilet waste no longer filled a pit that someone had to empty, it magically disappeared with the pull of a chain. London’s water use in 1850 nearly <a href="https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-great-stink-of-london/9780750925808/">doubled in six years</a>, as waste was carried through rudimentary sewers and open drains into the Thames. Two years later, in 1858, the effect of these raw sewage discharges was fully felt during “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/04/story-cities-14-london-great-stink-river-thames-joseph-bazalgette-sewage-system">the Great Stink</a>”, when the Thames was so odorous it forced Parliament to stop meeting due to the smell.</p>
<p>The solution came from the engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who designed an integrated sewer system to carry untreated waste and rain water from across London further down the Thames where it was dumped via two outfalls. This was one of the largest engineering works of the time, with over 1,100 miles of street sewers, 82 miles of mains sewers, and four pumping stations installed. </p>
<p>After creating his initial design, Bazalgette doubled the diameters of the pipes, <a href="https://www.ice.org.uk/what-is-civil-engineering/what-do-civil-engineers-do/london-sewer-system">stating</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re only going to do this once and there’s always the unforeseen.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Direct river outfalls were later replaced by sewage treatment plants, but the sewer capacity, even after Bazalgette doubled the size of the pipes, was exceeded within his own lifetime. He may have been right, that such an enormous undertaking, at such huge public expense, could only be done once. But ever since we have been trying to patch and alter a system that continues to age and be overwhelmed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An aerial view of purification tanks and ponds at a waste water treatment works." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411454/original/file-20210715-15-1fadh97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411454/original/file-20210715-15-1fadh97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411454/original/file-20210715-15-1fadh97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411454/original/file-20210715-15-1fadh97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411454/original/file-20210715-15-1fadh97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411454/original/file-20210715-15-1fadh97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411454/original/file-20210715-15-1fadh97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A modern sewage treatment plant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sewage-farm-aerial-drone-photo-looking-619248512">Pxl.store/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sewer systems in the 21st century</h2>
<p>After the construction of London’s sewers, local authorities began installing their own across the country. In 1945 there were <a href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20150604030852/http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/publications/commissioned/rpt_com_devwatindust270106.pdf">over 1,400 sewerage companies</a> throughout England and Wales. These were merged in the Water Act of 1973, simplifying the structure to just ten regional water authorities.</p>
<p>Investment fell from £3.5 billion in 1974 to just <a href="https://www.waternz.org.nz/Attachment?Action=Download&Attachment_id=352">£1.8 billion in 1985</a>. The sector was privatised under the Water Act of 1989, and now 32 privately owned <a href="https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/regulated-companies/ofwat-industry-overview/">water and sewerage companies</a> operate in the UK today.</p>
<p>Privatisation has led to a balancing act, where water companies seek sufficient profit to attract investment, while also keeping water bills low enough to provide a public service. Both the bills water companies can charge their customers, and the performance measures they must meet, are agreed with government regulators. As the UK’s population grows, water usage increases, and climate change brings more rainfall in more intense bursts into sewers. This balancing act is becoming harder to maintain. </p>
<p>Water companies are allowed to release untreated waste water in rare circumstances when the system becomes overwhelmed, preventing damage to equipment and properties. This is often due to very heavy rainfall, blockages and unexpected equipment failures. Increasing sewage and rainwater flows mean these events are likely to become more frequent. </p>
<p>The amount of sewage companies are permitted to release is set by the regulators, but when companies fail to manage increased flows they may exceed the permits and be penalised with fines. If they try to hide or under-report these releases, the penalties are significantly larger. But the damage to the environment is often already done.</p>
<p>To reduce untreated releases and the environmental damage they cause, water companies are making efforts to address it. Thames Water recently spent £3.8 billion on a <a href="https://www.thameswater.co.uk/about-us/investing-in-our-region/thames-tideway-tunnel">new “supersewer” for London</a>, while not paying investors for the <a href="https://www.thameswater.co.uk/media-library/home/about-us/investors/our-finances-explained.pdf">last three financial years</a>. A bold move, but not one that will see future investors rush to provide capital for upgrades. Sewer systems are expensive and technically difficult to expand or change, and so it will be a slow and expensive process.</p>
<p>One way to ease pressure on the system – and save some of the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eus-ideal-standard-for-lavatory-flushing-8x0fvj7ck9s">1.1 billion litres of water</a> homes flush down the toilet each year – might be to resurrect elements of waste treatment from before the Victorian era.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/eco-friendly-composting-toilets-already-bring-relief-to-big-cities-just-ask-londons-canal-boaters-96066">Eco-friendly composting toilets already bring relief to big cities – just ask London's canal boaters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="http://www.bluediversiontoilet.com/">Prototype</a> <a href="http://www.nanomembranetoilet.org/">flushless toilets</a> can treat waste without water and sewer connections, by filtering waste through special membranes and sterilising it with heat. This could keep a lot of sewage out of the sewer system and prevent waste entering rivers, without needing expensive technologies. These systems can even recover energy – in the form of biogas fuel – <a href="https://www.thenexusnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/MartinCruddasandHutchings_SewerlessSocietyNexusThinkpiece2015.pdf">and nutrients</a> from waste, to provide farms with fertiliser and homes with power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Cruddas received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for work on "Imagining a Sewerless Society". </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keiron Roberts has previously received research funding from Southern Water to investigate incorporating the circular economy into their wastewater practices (2016-2017). He has also received funding from EPSRC and FP7 to research biofuels from wastewater.</span></em></p>
Victorian-era engineering is struggling under decades of underinvestment.
Peter Cruddas, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Engineering, University of Portsmouth
Keiron Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Sustainability and the Built Environment, University of Portsmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156085
2021-03-04T19:49:33Z
2021-03-04T19:49:33Z
The first bomb disposal expert: Colonel Vivian Majendie and the original ‘war on terror’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386509/original/file-20210225-13-1mm38lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C68%2C687%2C518&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A man of his time: Colonel Vivian Majendie -- the first recognised bomb disposal expert in Britain</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Spy Magazine (1882) via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the last day of February 1884, the then home secretary Sir William Harcourt rose in the UK parliament to <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1884/feb/28/dynamite-outrages-the-explosion-at">answer a question</a> about a series of bomb attacks on two of London’s major railway stations. He read out details of an initial investigation of two bombs, one which had detonated at Victoria Station and another which had been discovered, unexploded, at Charing Cross.</p>
<p>The bombs, which had been deposited in the stations’ left luggage offices, were of a similar design, and resembled the remains of bombs that had detonated, Harcourt said, in Glasgow, Liverpool and elsewhere in London. The unexploded device, discovered by a vigilant ticket clerk at Charing Cross, and the remains of the bomb that had detonated at Victoria were rushed to the Woolwich Arsenal. </p>
<p>According to Harcourt, the Charing Cross device comprised a “shabby black American-leather portmanteau, two feet by twelve inches”. But what it contained was of particular interest. As reported in The Telegraph, it was an “infernal machine” comprised of a clock, a pistol trigger mechanism, moving cogs and bars of a soft, chemical-smelling material. </p>
<p>An expert was called: Colonel Vivian Dering Majendie, a man whom, The Times reported, was renowned for being “most painstaking in his investigations” into explosive devices and the people who built them.</p>
<p>Majendie, according to the news report, had only to pick up and make a cursory examination of the chemical bars, in order conclude that they were – as all suspected – slabs of dynamite. He next turned his attention to the clock to which the extracted bars were attached, noting that its manufacturer’s stamp indicated an American origin. Finally, he examined the trigger mechanism, quickly determining that it had misfired, which was why the bomb had been a dud.</p>
<p>Dangerous as the examination had been, the act of coming face-to-face with devices designed to kill and capable of doing so at any moment was just another day for Her Majesty’s Inspector of Explosives. This was a title that had been bestowed on Majendie in 1871, reflecting both the esteem in which Majendie was held and the societal fears of terrorism that were gripping Britain in that era. </p>
<h2>Forensics expert</h2>
<p>Born in 1836, Majendie had served as an artillery officer in the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Indian Rebellion (1857), before becoming an instructor at Woolwich Arsenal in the 1860s. In this capacity, he developed a <a href="https://www.greenwichheritage.org/blog/post/making-woolwich-their-stories-colonel-sir-vivian-dering-majendie-kcb-1836-1">reputation for expertise</a> in the composition and assembly of explosive devices. </p>
<p>This led, in 1875, to him being appointed to advise the government on the wording of the first <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/38-39/17/contents">Explosives Act</a>. The Act regulated the sale and production of gunpowder and dynamite – a substance invented in the 1860s for the purposes of mining. It had also quickly become the favoured weapon of <a href="https://www.theirishstory.com/2017/03/07/the-fenians-an-overview/#.YEEYO2SmNz8">Fenians</a> (Irish republicans), anarchists, nihilists and other <a href="https://www.standingwellback.com/the-ied-technology-of-propaganda-of-the-deed-1884/">terrorists</a>.</p>
<p>Majendie was also adept in the <a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/explosive-chemistry/8187.article">burgeoning discipline of forensics</a> – he is regarded as the founder of today’s <a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/explosive-chemistry/8187.article">Forensics Explosives Lab (FEL)</a> which – among other tasks – was at the forefront of the <a href="https://quarterly.blog.gov.uk/2018/01/17/from-crime-scene-to-court-the-science-of-explosives/">investigations</a> into the Manchester bombing of 2017. </p>
<p>Nearly 140 years earlier, the man who laid the foundations for the FEL was tackling a different terrorist threat, namely the so-called <a href="https://www.theirishstory.com/2012/02/13/one-skilled-scientist-is-worth-an-army-the-fenian-dynamite-campaign-1881-85/#.YDjpTmj7Q2w">“Fenian dynamite campaign”</a> of 1881-1885, which involved bombs being placed in public and police buildings, tube stations and barracks, as well as onboard ships in London, Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white cartoon of people running from an explosion, with the Tower of London inset." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387782/original/file-20210304-19-rh5kyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387782/original/file-20210304-19-rh5kyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387782/original/file-20210304-19-rh5kyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387782/original/file-20210304-19-rh5kyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387782/original/file-20210304-19-rh5kyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387782/original/file-20210304-19-rh5kyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387782/original/file-20210304-19-rh5kyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The so-called ‘Fenian Bombing Campaign’ caused terror, but also anti-Irish sentiment in Britain in the late Victorian period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">TheIrishstory.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Majendie served as both explosives analyst and detective in this original “war on terror”. His investigations into the bomb plots of February 1884 revealed that not only were the clock parts and explosives used similar in both the bomb that went off and the unexploded device, but that they were of American make. This led Majendie to the further conclusion that the origin of the attacks could be found on the other side of <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/602/the-fenian-dynamite-campaign-and-the-irish-american-impetus-for-dynamite-terror-1881-1885">the Atlantic</a>.</p>
<h2>Security consultant</h2>
<p>Beyond unravelling the transatlantic plots of those he called “<a href="http://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000535054?ui=standard">dynamite rascals</a>”, Majendie also advised the government on all manner of security issues, from how to <a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C2697771">remodel the Tower of London</a> so as to protect it from insurgencies, to measures for securing the proposed Channel tunnel in the event of a <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1882/feb/28/england-and-france-the-channel-tunnel">continental invasion</a>. In this sense, Majendie was more than just a bomb disposal expert – even if he was the first person in history to be recognised as such. He was also what might today be loosely termed a “security consultant”. </p>
<p>Despite these forays into planning the bricks and mortar of national security, Majendie’s stock in trade remained forensic explosive investigation. As such, in 1894, he crowned his career by investigating the French anarchist Martial Bourdin’s attempt to <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/astronomers-anarchist-bomber">detonate a bomb</a> at Greenwich Observatory. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Head and shoulders picture of author Joseph Conrad." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387781/original/file-20210304-17-i39p6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387781/original/file-20210304-17-i39p6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387781/original/file-20210304-17-i39p6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387781/original/file-20210304-17-i39p6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387781/original/file-20210304-17-i39p6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387781/original/file-20210304-17-i39p6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387781/original/file-20210304-17-i39p6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent echoed the fear of terrorism that was rife in late Victorian Britain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The sensation this created in the UK national press would later lead the novelist Joseph Conrad to pen his infamous 1907 tale of anarchist terrorism, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/aug/05/secret-agent-greenwich-observatory-bombing-of-1894">The Secret Agent</a>.</p>
<p>As always, Majendie provided a sober reality to the <a href="https://londonnewsonline.co.uk/south-london-memories-anarchists-left-hand-blown-off/">sensationalism</a> that surrounded the bombing. Having examined Bourdin’s wounds and his “infernal machine”, Majendie concluded that the explosion had not been caused by the bomber tripping over his own feet (the buffoonish cause of the explosion provided by Conrad) and instead <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/512063?seq=1">had simply mishandled the chemical components of the weapon.</a></p>
<p>Majendie’s investigation of the Greenwich bombing was one of the last triumphs of his storied career – he died of a heart attack in 1898. He was both an empirical investigator with a passion for science and, through his security consultancy, a participant in the panics over anarchist terrorism and foreign invasion that ran <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-fear-of-invasion">rampant in Britain</a> at the end of the 19th century. Majendie embodied the contradictions of an age in which progress and rationality competed with societal fears in the midst of the first “war on terror” – a man both for and of his time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Crossland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Colonel Majendie was also a pioneer in forensic investigations.
James Crossland, Reader in International History, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155197
2021-02-23T17:52:04Z
2021-02-23T17:52:04Z
How New York’s 19th-century Jews turned Purim into an American party
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385888/original/file-20210223-22-4dt0wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C0%2C2959%2C1989&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Jewish Museum's Purim Ball at the Park Avenue Armory in 2015 in New York City.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-atmosphere-during-the-jewish-museums-purim-news-photo/464419164?adppopup=true">Andrew Toth/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Purim, which falls this year on Feb. 26, ranks among Judaism’s most joyous holidays. </p>
<p>In synagogues, Jews read the Scroll of Esther, a book in the Hebrew Bible that explains how Purim came to be. Jewish people dress up in costumes and host carnivals. At home, they indulge in festive dinners with ample wine. It’s a time of togetherness. Jews deliver treats to one another and make sure to provide charity for their most needy. </p>
<p>As a historian of <a href="https://touro.academia.edu/ZevEleff">American Judaism</a>, I point to Purim as an important holiday that did much to increase Jews’ visibility in the United States in the 19th century.</p>
<p>During that period, Purim put a social spotlight on New York’s Jews and their up-and-coming relationship to the city’s most elite class. </p>
<h2>The story of Purim</h2>
<p>Purim tells the tale of Esther, an orphaned girl-turned-queen, how she married King Achashverosh, then saved the entire Jewish community in the ancient Persian city of Shushan, through her bravery and wit. </p>
<p>The story, going back to the fourth century, describes the plot of Haman, a top advisor to King Achashverosh, to exterminate the local Jewish community. Haman was jealous of the local Jewish leader Mordecai, who enjoyed high standing in Achashverosh’s court. </p>
<p>Mordecai was also Esther’s uncle, a fact unknown to Achashverosh, so that Esther’s Jewish identity could remain concealed. When Queen Esther learns about Haman’s plan, she risks her life and discloses her Jewishness to her husband. The king sides with his bride over his doomed advisor. Purim became a celebration of the victory of Shushan’s Jews over the evil Haman.</p>
<p>The Purim story resonates with today’s American Jews. It’s packed with contemporary themes such as charges of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/politics/jews-disloyal-trump.html">dual loyalty</a>, that Jews cannot be trusted as Americans when they remain tied to Israel. With many Jews marrying outside of their religion, Purim rings relevant on the issue of intermarriage as well.</p>
<p>Yet, Esther’s tale was perhaps less useful in the 19th century when America’s Jews were not so visible and they weren’t <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/ebook/9780520943704/speaking-of-jews">as concerned</a> about assimilation. When a group of New York Jewish socialites invented the Purim Ball in the 1860s, their intention was to downplay Purim’s Persian legend. </p>
<p>Their goal was to be the same, not different. They wanted to be counted in Manhattan’s upper crust.</p>
<h2>The start of a fancy Purim Ball</h2>
<p>In January 1860, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23600500?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Myer Isaacs</a>, a lawyer and political activist, issued a proposal in the pages of the Jewish Messenger, a weekly published in his native New York by his father, Samuel Myer Isaacs. The younger Isaacs <a href="https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/resources/5653">suggested</a> “Purim night should be selected as the occasion of a good fancy dress ball, the proceeds to be devoted to charity.” </p>
<p>Isaacs’s assumptions about the linkage between a classy event and fundraising was typical of the “charity market” among Victorian Era elites. <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-charity-market-and-humanitarianism-in-britain-1870-1912-9781350057982/">Philanthropy was an exchange</a>: The donor obtained an “experience” — musical concerts, theater, for example — for his or her generous contribution. </p>
<p>It was a period when charity provided the affluent with an opportunity to solidify their place atop the social ladder. </p>
<p>Purim was an ideal candidate for this sort of ritual enhancement for New York’s Jewish elite. One of its traditions was charity-giving; the Purim Ball over time would become a reliable source of income for the Jewish orphanages and welfare societies in New York.</p>
<h2>Purim in New York</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The feast of Purim" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385147/original/file-20210218-16-15snx3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Feast of Purim – Reception at the Home for Aged and Infirm Jews, at No. 328 West 32nd Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-york-city-the-feast-of-purim-reception-at-the-home-for-news-photo/615226106?adppopup=true">Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No one was quick to pick up on Isaacs’s recommendation, however. Isaacs tried again the following year, always in the pages of his father’s newspaper. </p>
<p>In 1862, he took more concrete steps. The 20-year-old gathered a small group of first-generation American Jews with aspirations to appear on a routine basis in the New York society columns. They organized the <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/the-purim-association/2016/03/23/">first Purim ball at Irving Hall</a>, a prominent theater space in Manhattan, decorating the space with ornaments and plenty of pageantry such as entertainment and plays. </p>
<p>New York statute forbade masquerades, so Isaacs and his friends <a href="https://archives.cjh.org//repositories/3/resources/5653">publicized</a> it to wealthy New Yorkers as a “Fancy Dress Ball.” The guests, Jews and non-Jews, intuited the meaning and appeared dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and Shakespearean figures such as Romeo and Hamlet. Even though it was a Purim event, there was no mention that anyone was expected to dress up as Queen Esther.</p>
<p>The affair was very well received by attendees, compelling Isaacs to formalize the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43058700">Purim Association of the City of New York</a> to help ensure the newfound tradition persisted. </p>
<p>The Purim Ball <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43058700">straddled the line</a> between a Jewish ritual and a New York society event. Yet, it hewed in the direction of the latter, attracting the leading women and men of New York. The mayor, police chief and leading figures of Tammany Hall frequented the balls. The Purim Association did not hold the gala on the actual date of Purim — usually it was held the day after or in the subsequent week — allowing New York’s Jews to observe Purim with its more traditional and less extravagant trappings. </p>
<p>The Purim Ball’s second installment was upgraded to the grander and more capacious Academy of Music. Its organizers distributed 800 invitations, which turned out to be quite insufficient. In all, 3,000 women and men attended the ball in March 1863. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1863/03/07/archives/local-intelligence-the-purim-ball-a-jewish-festivala-great-success.html">A report published in the New York Times</a> declared that a “more brilliant affair has never been witnessed at the Academy.” </p>
<p>The Times article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1863/03/07/archives/local-intelligence-the-purim-ball-a-jewish-festivala-great-success.html">stated</a>, “Very many exquisite evening toilettes set off the charms of the black-eyed belles in the boxes, and the universal masculine verdict is, that so many pretty faces have never before been seen at any one occasion, within the walls of the Academy.”</p>
<h2>A Manhattan ‘institution’</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Persian food for Purim, Hamantaschen" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385606/original/file-20210222-15-1ekxuu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Persian food for Purim – Pistachio Rosewater Hamantaschen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/persian-food-for-purim-pistachio-rosewater-hamantaschen-news-photo/1129318528?adppopup=true">Tom McCorkle for The Washington Post via Getty Images; food styling by Lisa Cherkasky for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The masquerade theme might have fit into Purim tradition, but Isaacs intended for it to accommodate all New Yorkers. As Isaac then wrote in the Jewish Messenger, he wanted it to “come off in such a way as to justify the suggestion that all New York is celebrating Purim.”</p>
<p>The favorable reviews were sufficient for Isaacs to declare that the Purim Ball had emerged, by its second iteration, as a Manhattan “institution,” an affair “naturalized in New York.”</p>
<p>The archives at the American Jewish Historical Society reveal that the top-priced seating boxes went to couples with Jewish surnames such as Seligman, Rosenwald, Schiff and Guggenheim. The Purim Association spared no expense on the music. </p>
<p>New York socialites and leading politicians continued to gravitate to the event, looking forward to the Purim Ball. Tickets for the event, sold at auction, did not last long on the open market, especially the preferred theater boxes.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>By the 1890s, the <a href="https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/resources/5653">Purim Association</a> rented a larger space in Madison Square Garden and held bidding for the choicest seats in the vestry room of one of New York’s most well-heeled synagogue, Temple Emanu-El. </p>
<h2>Beyond New York</h2>
<p>The success of New York’s Purim Ball inspired others to organize similar events. By the 1880s, it was replicated in dozens of communities. </p>
<p>St. Louis’s Jews were very proud of their “well-regulated” masquerade ball which, <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/569239647/?terms=%22The%20Purim%20Ball%20of%20the%20Ladies%27%20Hebrew%20Relief%20Society%22&match=1">they claimed</a> was “one of the most enjoyable affairs in the society world.”</p>
<p>In 1891, the Purim program held in Philadelphia, much influenced by a local aristocratic spirit, was fashioned <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/168332711/?terms=%22Hebrew%20Assembly%22%20Philadelphia%20Inquirer&match=1">more like a debutante ball</a>, a coming-of-age event for upper-class young ladies.</p>
<p>The Purim Ball, then, was a cultural transaction. Jews believed it led them to acquire status and America obtained a curious and swanky incarnation of Purim, in New York and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zev Eleff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In the 19th century, Purim became an occasion to hold fancy dress parties, the proceeds from which were given to charities. These parties helped American Jews gain a standing among the elite.
Zev Eleff, Associate Professor of Jewish History, Touro University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148944
2020-11-12T15:45:59Z
2020-11-12T15:45:59Z
Electrophone: the Victorian-era gadget that was a precursor to live-streaming
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369133/original/file-20201112-23-a2dbsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C28%2C940%2C709&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Electrophone listening salon in the London headquarters, Pelicon House on Gerrard Street (approximately 1903).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">George R. Sims (1847-1922)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the battle against COVID-19 continues to rage, the plight of Britain’s theatres, which have suffered catastrophic financial strain thanks to lockdown, continues to rumble through the arts world. Theatres were forced to <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-theatres-are-already-closing-the-uk-government-needs-to-act-now-141796">close</a> at the end of March and, with few exceptions, have remained closed since. These venues must decide whether reopening when the latest lockdown eases will be viable, thanks to the very real prospect of continuing social distancing measures which make live performance almost impossible.</p>
<p>Even after the UK came all too briefly out of lockdown in the summer, ticket sales were limited and profits down. Now, with a second lockdown in force and Christmas shows threatened, the future of British theatre remains highly questionable. </p>
<p>One source of hope has been live-streaming shows – and a number of theatre companies, including <a href="https://www.ntlive.com/">National Theatre Live</a> had had some success with this format. And, interestingly, the idea of streaming live theatre into people’s homes goes back to the Victorian era.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368914/original/file-20201111-23-1szb58p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368914/original/file-20201111-23-1szb58p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368914/original/file-20201111-23-1szb58p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368914/original/file-20201111-23-1szb58p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368914/original/file-20201111-23-1szb58p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368914/original/file-20201111-23-1szb58p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368914/original/file-20201111-23-1szb58p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An advertisement for the London Electrophone Company.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image reproduced with permission from BT Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From 1893 to 1925 the London Electrophone Company streamed the sound of live theatre into the home using a telephone device known as an Electrophone. </p>
<p>Inventors of the time, including Alexander Graham Bell, had looked at the telephone and seen something that could be used to reach large groups of people – they understood that telephones cables could be used to deliver information from one person to many, and not just for one-to-one conversations.</p>
<p>Music concerts, scientific lectures, church services and theatre shows were “streamed” into the homes of those that could afford it across the country. For those with a smaller budget, listening salons were created. For the first time, you could experience a show without being in the theatre. This was, of course, well before the <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/features-and-news/100-years-of-radio#:%7E:text=On%20this%20day%20in%201920,Vale%20of%20Glamorgan%20in%20Wales.">first live radio broadcast in 1920</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Colour poster of a woman in an evening gown listening to Le Théâtrophone on headphones while a man in top hat and tails waits in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369080/original/file-20201112-17-1cqxlsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369080/original/file-20201112-17-1cqxlsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369080/original/file-20201112-17-1cqxlsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369080/original/file-20201112-17-1cqxlsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369080/original/file-20201112-17-1cqxlsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369080/original/file-20201112-17-1cqxlsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369080/original/file-20201112-17-1cqxlsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A French advertisement for ‘Le Théâtrophone’ (1896),</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jules Chéret</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Made possible thanks to the work of Frenchman <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-partial-history-of-headphones-4693742/">Ernest Mercadier</a> (who first patented headphones), the Electrophone used primitive headsets, copied from the <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/a-century-before-web-simulcasts-there-was-theatrophone/">French Théâtrophone</a> (although, unlike the Théâtrophone, the Electrophone did not use stereo technology). “Circular telephones”, as they were known, were being trialled across Europe in the late 19th century (the <a href="https://www.thearticle.com/how-the-worlds-only-telephone-newspaper-took-off">Telefon Hirmondo in Hungary</a> was still used as late as 1945). </p>
<p>The Electrophone was most similar to the French version because it streamed audio from theatre and music venues, while both the Hungarian and Italian versions were slightly different because they also broadcast their own news service to subscribers. </p>
<h2>Shock of the new</h2>
<p>The Electrophone worked by sending information through telephone wires into a central receiver in the home where one or more headsets could be installed (each additional headset came with an extra cost). The sound listeners heard would be from small microphones secreted behind the footlights at the front of the stage. In church services the microphones were hidden in fake wooden bibles.</p>
<p>Each Electrophone performance was a genuine live show taking place somewhere in the country – most commonly the big London theatres, such as the Adelphi Theatre or Covent Garden Opera. In 1896, the Musical Standard reported users from the time saying they could hear audience members in the theatre “rustling like leaves” during the performance, which was broadcast live as it happened. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young woman of the early 20th century listening to Electrophone through headphones" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369105/original/file-20201112-19-1sdavnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369105/original/file-20201112-19-1sdavnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369105/original/file-20201112-19-1sdavnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369105/original/file-20201112-19-1sdavnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369105/original/file-20201112-19-1sdavnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369105/original/file-20201112-19-1sdavnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369105/original/file-20201112-19-1sdavnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Promotional image used in the 1890s to market the Electrophone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">London Electrophone Company, c.1895, courtesy of BT Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Streaming genuine live shows meant that the listener at home experienced the start, end and interval of a show just as if they were there. If someone slipped up or forgot a line, this would be just as obvious to audience members listening on headphones as it was to those inside the theatre. And Electrophone listeners could enjoy the experience of finding out “whodunit” at the same time as audience members sitting in the stalls. </p>
<p>The Electrophone cost £5 a year when it was first available for subscription in the 1890s – equivalent to around £120 today – and the unobtrusive nature of the technology involved meant that there was no need to reduce the size of the theatre audience. The London Electrophone Company paid for the technology to be installed in the theatre, the National Telephone Company (later the Post Office) would pay for the upkeep of the telephone lines and the theatre would receive a share of the Electrophone Company’s profits – exact records of how profits were shared are yet to be uncovered. </p>
<p>Subscribers could pay an additional fee to be connected to a theatre for the season, such as the Covent Garden winter season. The high cost of the Electrophone (much more than a Netflix subscription today) almost certainly meant it was mainly used by the wealthy, but sets installed in hotels, public gardens and exhibitions were operated by the use of coin slots and, for a smaller fee, people could listen to snippets of live theatre and musical broadcast.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three men in Victorian England listening to the new Electrophone technology" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369106/original/file-20201112-17-xjdk42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369106/original/file-20201112-17-xjdk42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369106/original/file-20201112-17-xjdk42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369106/original/file-20201112-17-xjdk42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369106/original/file-20201112-17-xjdk42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369106/original/file-20201112-17-xjdk42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369106/original/file-20201112-17-xjdk42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two customers using Electrophone apparatus with assistance from a more experienced attendant, probably in the Electrophone salon in Gerrard Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photographer unknown, c.1900 courtesy of BT Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People unable to attend the theatre, for whatever reason, could listen at home – just as French novelist Marcel Proust did in the early 20th century when he was too sick to make it out of his house.</p>
<h2>Grand tradition</h2>
<p>Since COVID-19 hit the UK, theatres have had to reduce audiences numbers to enable social distancing. It has meant less income for theatres and all those involved in productions. But some companies have successfully <a href="https://theconversation.com/paid-for-digital-streaming-has-a-place-in-theatres-return-141821">combined the live experience with the live stream</a>, as Victorian theatres did with the Electrophone. </p>
<p>The London Electrophone Company closed its doors in 1925 because it simply did not have enough customers to survive. The idea of sitting still for an extended period and listening through headphones was bizarre for most people at that time. But these days a generation has grown up with streaming technology, so the challenge the Electrophone faced in selling its product has been less of a concern.</p>
<p>With the prospect of months of restrictions, we’re likely to see more live-streaming, especially once theatres and live performers work out how to put on socially distanced productions. But, when settling down at home to watch a screening of your favourite stage show, bear in mind that you are revisiting a tradition set by theatre lovers some 150 years ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148944/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Kitcher receives funding from the Arts and Heritage Research Council and is undertaking a collaborative PhD with BT Archive.</span></em></p>
How 19th-century audiences could experience the sound of live theatre in their living rooms.
Natasha Kitcher, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Communication and Media, Loughborough University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139245
2020-06-10T11:57:52Z
2020-06-10T11:57:52Z
Charles Dickens and the push for literacy in Victorian Britain
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340636/original/file-20200609-21201-vlm05j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dotheboys Hall, from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Illustration by 'Phiz' (Hablot K. Browne).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image scan and text Jacqueline Banerjee, Associate Editor, Victorian Web</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Such is the aura <a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-dickens-how-the-authors-life-was-fictionalised-after-his-death-139715">still surrounding Charles Dickens</a> that it is no surprise readers want to mark the 150th anniversary of his death in June 1870, even in the middle of a desperate global public health crisis. </p>
<p>While this impulse to show one’s admiration of – and gratitude to – deceased writers is fairly commonplace, it’s much rarer to consider the conditions that enable people to read at all. One of the events of 1870 that will probably not be treated to the same attention in the UK as Dickens’s death, but should be remembered alongside him, was the passing of the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/1870educationact/">Education Act</a>.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wNiFL60BtJk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Mandating new partially state-funded <a href="http://www.victorianschool.co.uk/school%20history%20board%20schools.html">board schools</a> to be built in areas where provision of elementary education was insufficient, the legislation established the principle of a statutory responsibility for schooling, and helped achieve the rapid rise in UK literacy rates seen in the latter decades of the 19th century. Between 1851 and 1900, there was a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/print-culture">rise in British male literacy</a> from 69.3% to 97.2%, while for the female part of the population, the improvement in literacy rates was even more pronounced, from 54.8% to 96.8%.</p>
<p>The legacies of the Education Act – also called the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/synopsis-of-the-forster-education-act-1870">Forster Act</a> after W. E. Forster, who drafted the bill – are multiple, given the importance of mass reading and writing to the functioning of democracy. Perhaps most visible of them is the collection of still-used school buildings dotted around Britain’s cities that date from the decade following this legislation.</p>
<p>Dickens famously used his pen throughout his career as a tool for campaigning with and writing about a huge number of topical issues, from inhumane welfare reform to parliamentary corruption, but education was one of his most consistent concerns. In <a href="https://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/novels/nicholas-nickleby/">Nicholas Nickleby</a>, his depiction of the abusive Dotheboys Hall exposed the Yorkshire boarding school industry as a national disgrace. Later, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/23/charles-dickens-favourite-hard-times">Hard Times</a>, Dickens raised the problem of an overly utilitarian curriculum – with no space for imaginative learning or play.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340625/original/file-20200609-21208-1msy0o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C1%2C715%2C491&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340625/original/file-20200609-21208-1msy0o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340625/original/file-20200609-21208-1msy0o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340625/original/file-20200609-21208-1msy0o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340625/original/file-20200609-21208-1msy0o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340625/original/file-20200609-21208-1msy0o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340625/original/file-20200609-21208-1msy0o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/french/4.html">Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham/Victorian Web</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The author gave speeches for working-class adult education facilities, such as the Manchester Athenaeum, and <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/ragged-schools#:%7E:text=In%201846%2C%20eight%20years%20after,of%2C%20'two%20or%20three%20%E2%80%A6">visited Ragged Schools</a> – charities that taught the poor before the government assumed responsibility for their education.</p>
<p>While Dickens had some anxieties about the overly religious syllabus in some of these philanthropic schools, he <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/letter-from-charles-dickens-on-ragged-schools-from-the-daily-news">wrote articles</a> exhorting his readership to support them nonetheless, while making it clear that their existence was a marker of the state’s “frightful neglect” of “those … whom it might, as easily and less expensively, instruct”.</p>
<h2>Literacy as theme</h2>
<p>Dickens also made the problem of illiteracy a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efs002">major theme of his fiction</a>. Many of his characters are semi-literate, while others have no reading ability at all. <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/charles-dickens/9052426/Jo-the-crossing-sweeper-My-favourite-Charles-Dickens-character.html">Jo the crossing sweeper</a> from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/23/charles-dickens-favourite-bleak-house">Bleak House</a>, who dies from the same infectious disease that the heroine Esther Summerson survives, is one of Dickens’s completely illiterate characters. His inability to decipher the signs that saturate the city in which he lives makes him especially vulnerable to exploitation.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340641/original/file-20200609-21230-q2ohz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jo the Crossing Sweeper, from Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Illustration by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/phiz/bleakhouse/11b.html">Scanned image and text by George P. Landow/Victorian Web</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Dickens’s non-reading characters get the chance to correct their disadvantage, they often take it. In Our Mutual Friend, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44372198?seq=1">illiterate servant Mr Boffin</a> suddenly becomes wealthy and swiftly hires someone to teach him how to read.</p>
<p>Dickens did not see literacy as a panacea for all the ills of his unequal society – and he warned against the dangers of teaching some but leaving others uneducated. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/23/charles-dickens-favourite-mutual-friend">Our Mutual Friend</a>, literacy drives a wedge between the non-reader Lizzie Hexam and her brother, Charlie, whose personality is clearly tainted rather than enhanced by his encounter with the education system.</p>
<p>A similar estrangement happens between Pip and his brother-in-law, Joe Gargery, in <a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-dickens-how-two-novelists-gave-great-expectations-a-second-life-in-the-pacific-139244">Great Expectations</a>. In both cases, it is the non-schooled characters who retain their moral compass, while their literate loved ones become prey to the seductions of social prestige and a concomitant self-disgust for their roots.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-dickens-how-two-novelists-gave-great-expectations-a-second-life-in-the-pacific-139244">Charles Dickens: how two novelists gave Great Expectations a second life in the Pacific</a>
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<p>Great Expectations includes an episode that looks back to the very start of the narrator Pip’s literacy, in which he composes his first, orthographically unorthodox letter:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340940/original/file-20200610-34688-1p8c8fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340940/original/file-20200610-34688-1p8c8fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340940/original/file-20200610-34688-1p8c8fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340940/original/file-20200610-34688-1p8c8fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340940/original/file-20200610-34688-1p8c8fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340940/original/file-20200610-34688-1p8c8fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340940/original/file-20200610-34688-1p8c8fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pip’s letter to Jo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alex Brenchley</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pip’s coming to literacy is not merely ornamental to Great Expectations, and his early bad prose isn’t exhibited among the refined words of the narrator’s mature self just for the sake of comic value. After all, if Pip hadn’t learned to read and write we would never hear his story.</p>
<h2>Radical reading</h2>
<p>Unlike many in his time, Dickens saw that improving literacy had nothing to do with teaching the poor morals and everything to do with empowering them. His continual emphasis on learning to read was a key part of that democratic radicalism which made him popularly loved but <a href="https://19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/1608/">drew criticism from conservatives</a> such as Anthony Trollope, who satirised his rival as “Mr Popular Sentiment”.</p>
<p>It is because Dickens implicitly recognised literacy as a political issue that the revolutionary Marxist William Morris included a lover of Dickens’s novels nicknamed Boffin in his <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/from-socialist-news-to-fine-art-printing-william-morriss-news-from-nowhere">News from Nowhere</a>, a novel that imagines a 22nd-century London after its transformation into utopia.</p>
<p>Real-life working-class readers paid homage to Dickens too, in the decades following the Education Act. As Jonathan Rose, a historian of reading, <a href="https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/303">insists</a>, Dickens was the most popular author in typical working-class communities – and may have even been a source of political radicalisation for working-class readers, when other kinds of reading were less accessible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139245/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ingleby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Dickens’s novels highlighted the poverty of education for the working classes. The all-important Education Act was finally passed in the year of his death.
Matthew Ingleby, Lecturer in Victorian Literature, Queen Mary University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139715
2020-06-09T11:40:31Z
2020-06-09T11:40:31Z
Charles Dickens: how the author’s life was fictionalised after his death
<p>When Charles Dickens died on June 9 1870, newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic framed his loss as an event of national and international mourning. <a href="https://catalog.huntington.org/record=b1447955">They pointed</a> to the fictional characters Dickens had created as a key part of his artistic legacy, writing how “we have laughed with Sam Weller, with Mrs. Nickleby, with Sairey Gamp, with Micawber”. Dickens himself had already featured as the subject of one piece of short <a href="http://explore.bl.uk/BLVU1:LSCOP-ALL:BLL01002552947">biographical fiction</a> published during his lifetime. Yet, in the years following his death, he would be increasingly appropriated as a fictional character by the Victorians, both in published texts and in privately circulated fan works.</p>
<p>Dickens’s <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/charles-dickens">private family funeral at Westminster Abbey</a> created a gap in knowledge which some journalists chose to fill with a fictional scene they considered more emotionally satisfying. The London Penny Illustrated Paper visually re-imagined the funeral, publishing a large illustration depicting a crowded public event.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340082/original/file-20200605-176538-q5ah90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340082/original/file-20200605-176538-q5ah90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340082/original/file-20200605-176538-q5ah90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340082/original/file-20200605-176538-q5ah90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340082/original/file-20200605-176538-q5ah90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340082/original/file-20200605-176538-q5ah90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340082/original/file-20200605-176538-q5ah90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dickens’s funeral re-imagined in The Penny Illustrated Paper, 18 June 1870.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">‘© British Library Board (Dex.316 vol. III part V). This image/content is not covered by the terms of the Creative Commons licence of this publication. For permission to reuse, please contact the rights holder. </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under the sub-heading: “A National Honour Due to Charles Dickens”, the accompanying text acknowledges that the image is fictional, but argues that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A ceremony such as is depicted in our Engraving would unquestionably have best represented the national feeling of mourning occasioned by the lamented death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was the publication of John Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens in 1872–74, though, that marked a watershed in fictionalisations of Dickens. Victorian readers now had a full-length birth-to-death Dickens biography to draw on, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14484528.2011.578337">written by a friend</a> who had known him for his entire adulthood. Dickens’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZXS25VMXgsEC&lpg=PP1&dq=david%20copperfield%20oxford%20world's%20classics&pg=PR27#v=onepage&q=david%20copperfield%20oxford%20world's%20classics&f=false">Preface</a> to his 1849–50 novel <a href="https://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/novels/david-copperfield/">David Copperfield</a> had encouraged readers to interpret it as semi-autobiographical. However, it was only with Forster’s biography that the <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924013473768/page/n51/mode/2up">full extent</a> of the similarities between Dickens and the fictional Copperfield was made public.</p>
<p>The revelation that Dickens had performed child labour in a blacking warehouse when his father was imprisoned for debt, before rising to international fame in his twenties, gave him a life story that <a href="https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1206733/1/1206733_redacted.pdf">the press described as</a> rivalling Dickens’s “most popular novel”.</p>
<h2>Rags to riches</h2>
<p>The Household Edition of Forster’s Life, published by Chapman & Hall in 1879, included <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/barnard/life/index.html">28 new illustrations</a> of the biography by Fred Barnard. Among them was an emotive image of Dickens as a young boy in the blacking warehouse.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340115/original/file-20200605-176585-1o929t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340115/original/file-20200605-176585-1o929t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340115/original/file-20200605-176585-1o929t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340115/original/file-20200605-176585-1o929t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340115/original/file-20200605-176585-1o929t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340115/original/file-20200605-176585-1o929t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340115/original/file-20200605-176585-1o929t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dickens depicted as a young boy working in a blacking factory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/barnard/life/1.html">Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham (http://www.victorianweb.org)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dickens wrote a private account of this time, for which <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924013473768/page/n55/mode/2up">Forster’s biography</a> is our only remaining source. In this autobiographical fragment, Dickens describes how he was brought down to work among other boys in the warehouse. He was careful not to let them see his suffering, and to make sure that he worked as hard as them. Yet what Barnard pictures is a scene of solitude, visible despair or perhaps exhaustion at the warehouse that is not described in this fragment. The image bears a closer resemblance to Dickens’s fictionalisation of the first day at the warehouse in David Copperfield. </p>
<p>In the novel, the young Copperfield writes that: “I mingled my tears with the water in which I was washing the [blacking] bottles.” Barnard heightens and externalises the private emotion that Dickens wrote about in the autobiographical fragment to create a fictional scene. In doing so, he further blurs the boundaries between Dickens and the fictional Copperfield.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/grangerization-made-beautiful-books-even-better/">practice of Grangerization</a> – the art of extending and customising a published book with inserted material – was popular among Victorian readers. Additional fictionalised illustrations of Dickens’s life, created by the Dickens illustrator Frederick W. Pailthorpe, are revealed in a 14-volume <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/24/4/469/5601189#186854962">Grangerization of Forster’s Life</a>, held in the British Library. </p>
<p>Some of these seem to have been created for personal interest and private circulation among fellow Dickens enthusiasts, rather than for publication. One sketch shows Dickens as a boy making a low bow to a friend of his father’s.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340083/original/file-20200605-176550-1fk6l1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340083/original/file-20200605-176550-1fk6l1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340083/original/file-20200605-176550-1fk6l1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340083/original/file-20200605-176550-1fk6l1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340083/original/file-20200605-176550-1fk6l1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340083/original/file-20200605-176550-1fk6l1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340083/original/file-20200605-176550-1fk6l1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fictionalised episode from the life of the young Charles Dickens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dexter Grangerization, 14 vols, John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens © British Library Board (Dex.316 vol. I part I). This image/content is not covered by the terms of the Creative Commons licence of this publication. For permission to reuse, please contact the rights holder.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This image is based on an incident which Forster describes as taking place at the blacking warehouse where Dickens worked. Yet Pailthorpe’s illustration fictionalises the location of the event, transposing the young Dickens to the front of the house of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dryden">John Dryden</a>, the former poet laureate <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924064974755/page/n529/mode/2up">next to whom</a> Dickens would eventually be buried in Westminster Abbey. In doing so, Pailthorpe creates a narrative in which Dickens was always destined for literary greatness.</p>
<h2>Biographical fiction and ‘real-person fiction’</h2>
<p>In the 21st century, readers <a href="https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2011/may/the-bronts-secret-science-fiction-stories">have commented on</a> the resemblances between the fictional stories which the young Brontë siblings wrote about real-life contemporary figures such as the Duke of Wellington, and 20th and 21st-century forms of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fan-Fiction-TV-Viewers-Have-It-Their-Way-1518184">fan fiction</a>. Oscar Wilde’s 1889 story, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-portrait-of-mr-w-h-by-oscar-wilde-1889">The Portrait of Mr W.H.</a>, focuses on a series of men whose biographical speculations about the life of Shakespeare verge on fictionalisation.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/biographical-fiction-9781501318030/#:%7E:text=In%20Biographical%20Fiction%3A%20A%20Reader,is%20uniquely%20capable%20of%20doing.">recent scholarly work on biographical fiction</a> has described it as coming into being “mainly in the 20th century”. <a href="https://entertainment.time.com/2013/08/26/inside-the-wild-and-addictive-world-of-celebrity-fan-fiction/">Press articles</a> on the form of fan fiction known as “real person fiction” have largely focused on it as a product of internet culture (while noting briefly that many of Shakespeare’s plays also fictionalise real-life figures).</p>
<p>Archival work on the Victorian press, and on semi-private forms of reader response such as Grangerized books, can flesh out our understanding of the role that biographical fictionalisation played in Victorian culture. It demonstrates a longer and more varied history of the human desire to appropriate and imaginatively recreate famous contemporary figures. And it shows that part of Dickens’s creative legacy, as well as his own works, was the fictional forms that his life inspired others to create.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Whitehead's doctoral research is funded by the AHRC's South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership</span></em></p>
Almost as soon as Dickens died in 1870, writers and illustrators began to take liberties with his life and career.
Lucy Whitehead, PhD researcher, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/140271
2020-06-08T15:34:22Z
2020-06-08T15:34:22Z
Edward Colston statue toppled: how Bristol came to see the slave trader as a hero and philanthropist
<p>Opponents to the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-52962356">felling of the statue of Edward Colston</a> argue that it was vandalism and represents an attempt to erase history. But the statue has its own peculiar story – and it is far removed from the Colston who lived from 1636-1721. </p>
<p>The statue was erected in 1895, more than 170 years after his death. Colston’s reputation was cemented and writ large over the 19th century of Bristol in south-west England because influential men in the city wanted to create a paternalist local idol.</p>
<p>Colston was a slave trader whose work as an official in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Royal-African-Company">Royal African Company</a> directly involved him in the enslavement of 84,000 Africans – 19,000 of whom died in the “middle passage” across the Atlantic. But the Victorian elite ignored this. For them, he was simply a philanthropist and a paternalist – a respectable figure.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1269949806463668224"}"></div></p>
<p>The late-Victorian period saw a mass of statues going up across Europe in part of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm has called an “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/invention-of-tradition/introduction-inventing-traditions/05B9EDFC0304BE3F5D704BB66B286710">invention of tradition</a>”. Figures were sought who embodied certain virtues. In Bristol, the Colston statue was part of a late-Victorian attempt to re-imagine the civic space around “great men” and “benign paternalism”. </p>
<p>A column entitled the “Talk of Bristol” in the Bristol Mercury remarked in 1895 on the continual moving of the statues within the harbourside. The statue of Edmund Burke, erected the previous year, had already been moved as the central avenue was being redesigned. St Augustine’s Bridge had just been built, and its designers wanted to give more prominence to Colston. </p>
<p>This transformation was closely tied to regional pride. Colston – a true Bristol son, born and bred in the city, and who made it his base for philanthropic works – was seen as particularly worthy of more prominent recognition.</p>
<p>The erection of the statue, and the adulation of Colston in this era, was all part of an ongoing attempt to obscure the role of Bristol in the transatlantic slave trade. As <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/madge-dresser">Madge Dresser</a>, a Bristol University historian, has written, there is, or was, no trace of “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Vx_mDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=madge+dresser+colston+his+trafficking+in+human+cargo&source=bl&ots=54c9rM6jUI&sig=ACfU3U0SaC-AImhQXd0zqXaKeGAZG75_xA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEm7z1nvLpAhUlUBUIHba4CsUQ6AEwAXoECDIQAQ#v=onepage&q=madge%20dresser%20colston%20his%20trafficking%20in%20human%20cargo&f=false">his trafficking in human cargo</a>” on the statue. </p>
<p>Colston appears as a merchant linked to the sea. The statue alludes to the dolphin who supposedly saved one of his ships by plugging a leak. The plaque on the statue insists that it was “erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340313/original/file-20200608-176580-19w0u1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340313/original/file-20200608-176580-19w0u1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340313/original/file-20200608-176580-19w0u1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340313/original/file-20200608-176580-19w0u1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340313/original/file-20200608-176580-19w0u1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340313/original/file-20200608-176580-19w0u1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340313/original/file-20200608-176580-19w0u1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The statue of Edward Colston was erected in Bristol’s Colston Avernue in 1895.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://archives.bristol.gov.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=43207%2f26%2f1%2f12&pos=4">Bristol Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Western Daily Press used the occasion of the unveiling, November 13 1895, to exhort its readers to philanthropy. This was Colston’s birthday and became an annual “Colston Day”, which for the next six years was an official local holiday. For many, this was the greatest purpose of the statue, to encourage others to emulation. In the same article, the Press called for an art gallery to add to the dignity of Bristol.</p>
<h2>Dubious honour</h2>
<p>Colston’s claim to being worthy of a statue rests on his philanthropic actions in donating to schools and churches as well as <a href="https://www.dolphin-society.org.uk/history">founding a boys’ school and almshouse</a>. <a href="http://www.colstonsgirls.org/">Colston Girls’ School</a> was also founded in 1891 from the endowments of Colston. Nevertheless, as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527259808722225?journalCode=rjhs20">British academic Sally Morgan</a> remarks, “his little kindnesses seem very little indeed”, especially when it is recognised that the boys school he founded was largely intended to <a href="http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/bristolrecordsociety/publications/bha096.pdf">supply sailors for his own ships</a>. Colston’s philanthropy was not inconsiderable, but it was not as vast as is sometimes claimed. </p>
<p>The Colston societies, the <a href="https://www.dolphin-society.org.uk/history">Dolphin, Anchor and Grateful</a>, which manage Colston’s legacies, were, in an investigation into the condition of the poor in Bristol in the 1880s, accused of <a href="https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/myths-within-myths/?fbclid=IwAR0MaOzzVqi4T9pP7NIAyCQOliE4cqmTWECy-nvSI_bRyU0xeYdHFMybx5I">using the money inefficiently</a> due to its disorganised and arbitrary distribution. </p>
<p>This form of paternalist philanthropy was also increasingly seen as unsuited to the growing issue of the urban poor. The <a href="https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/the-bristol-strike-wave-1889-90/">wave of strikes in Bristol in 1889-90</a> – and increasing socialist agitation for municipal intervention in living conditions – made aristocratic and independent philanthropy seem an inadequate solution. The investigation from the 1880s had already made clear that this philanthropy was insufficient to aid the expanding and restless population. The erection of the Colston statue can be seen as an attempt to reassert paternalism in the face of anxiety over working class unrest.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/public-sculpture-expert-why-i-welcome-the-decision-to-throw-bristols-edward-colston-statue-in-the-river-140285">Public sculpture expert: why I welcome the decision to throw Bristol's Edward Colston statue in the river</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The notion that the erection of the statue in 1895 was part of popular support for his philanthropy, as the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-42404825">statue’s defenders claim</a>, is hard to sustain. There were <a href="https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/myths-within-myths/?fbclid=IwAR0MaOzzVqi4T9pP7NIAyCQOliE4cqmTWECy-nvSI_bRyU0xeYdHFMybx5I">chronic struggles to find the £1,000</a> which was required for the statue. Some of this came from repeated appeals to the various Colston societies in Bristol, but the final amount was only reached after the statue had been unveiled. </p>
<p>It may be that the statue, coupled with the Burke statue of the previous year and the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/21/slave-trader-edward-colston-faces-defenestration-bristol-cathedral/">dedication of the cathedral window</a> in 1890 to Colston, had stretched the generosity of donors. The original proponent of the statue and member of the Anchor society, J Arrowsmith, eventually paid for the remainder.</p>
<p>For some in the 19th century, Colston represented the respectability of great wealth and inequality, paternalism as a bastion against socialism, and private charity. The slavery on which his fortune was built was obscured for the purposes of a certain narrative of Bristolian history. The toppling and drowning of the statue is the assertion of a new reading of history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Watts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The statue was part of a push in the Victorian era to create mercantile heroes. Colston’s slaving activities were conveniently glossed over.
James Watts, PhD researcher in history, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/134464
2020-03-26T12:12:49Z
2020-03-26T12:12:49Z
The fashionable history of social distancing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322997/original/file-20200325-168872-1heqp1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C10%2C3583%2C2350&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Crinolines, by design, made physical contact nearly impossible.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/lady-is-inconvenienced-by-her-wide-crinoline-skirts-and-her-news-photo/3097219?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the world grapples with the coronavirus outbreak, “social distancing” has become a buzzword of these strange times. </p>
<p>Instead of stockpiling food or rushing to the hospital, authorities are saying social distancing – deliberately increasing the physical space between people – is the best way ordinary people can help “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/science/coronavirus-curve-mitigation-infection.html">flatten the curve</a>” and stem the spread of the virus.</p>
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<p>Fashion might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of isolation strategies. But as a historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_Zhsg9oAAAAJ&hl=en">who writes about the political and cultural meanings of clothing</a>, I know that fashion can play an important role in the project of social distancing, whether the space created helps solve a health crisis or keep away pesky suitors.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320030/original/file-20200312-116261-a6ugi0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=90&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="Sign up to The Conversation" width="100%"></a></p>
<p>Clothing has long served as a useful way to mitigate close contact and unnecessary exposure. In this current crisis, face masks <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/style/face-mask-coronavirus.html">have become a fashion accessory</a> that signals, “stay away.”</p>
<p>Fashion also proved to be handy during past epidemics such as the bubonic plague, when doctors wore pointed, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/reference/european-history/plague-doctors-beaked-masks/">bird-like masks</a> as a way to keep their distance from sick patients. Some lepers were forced to wear a heart on their clothes and <a href="http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/objects/display?id=5273">don bells or clappers</a> to warn others of their presence.</p>
<p>However, more often than not, it doesn’t take a worldwide pandemic for people to want to keep others at arm’s length.</p>
<p>In the past, maintaining distance – especially between genders, classes and races – was an important aspect of social gatherings and public life. Social distancing didn’t have anything to do with isolation or health; it was about etiquette and class. And fashion was the perfect tool.</p>
<p>Take the Victorian-era “<a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/ensemble-charles-frederick-worth/ywF5EtUlXNXHDQ">crinoline</a>.” This large, voluminous skirt, which became fashionable in the mid-19th century, was used to create a barrier between the genders in social settings.</p>
<p>While the origins of this trend can be traced to the 15th-century Spanish court, these voluminous skirts became a marker of class in the 18th century. Only those privileged enough to avoid household chores could wear them; you needed a house with enough space to be able to comfortably move from room to room, <a href="https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.prod.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fca7e34fc-01f6-11e6-ac98-3c15a1aa2e62?fit=scale-down&source=next&width=700">along with a servant to help you put it on</a>. The bigger your skirt, the higher your status.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322992/original/file-20200325-168876-yyz0d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322992/original/file-20200325-168876-yyz0d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322992/original/file-20200325-168876-yyz0d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322992/original/file-20200325-168876-yyz0d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322992/original/file-20200325-168876-yyz0d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322992/original/file-20200325-168876-yyz0d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322992/original/file-20200325-168876-yyz0d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A satirical comic pokes fun at the ballooning crinolines of the mid-19th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/1850-g-cruikshank-crinoline-parody.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>In the 1850s and 1860s, more middle-class women started wearing the crinoline as <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/108689">caged hoop skirts</a> started being mass-produced. Soon, “<a href="https://archive.org/details/punch32a33lemouoft/page/30/mode/2up">Crinolinemania</a>” swept the fashion world.</p>
<p>Despite <a href="http://www1.assumption.edu/whw/done/horrors%20of%20hoops/horrorsofhoops.html">critiques</a> by dress reformers who saw it as another tool to oppress women’s mobility and freedom, the large hoop skirt was a sophisticated way of maintaining women’s social safety. The crinoline mandated that a potential suitor – or, worse yet, a stranger – would keep a safe distance from a woman’s body and cleavage.</p>
<p>Although these skirts probably inadvertently helped mitigate the dangers of the era’s <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-smallpox">smallpox</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cholera">cholera</a> outbreaks, crinolines could be a health hazard: Many women burned to death after their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1858/03/16/archives/the-perils-of-crinoline.html?searchResultPosition=1">skirts caught fire</a>. By the 1870s, the crinoline gave way to the <a href="https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/bustle/">bustle</a>, which only emphasized the fullness of the skirt on the posterior.</p>
<p>Women nonetheless continued to use fashion as a weapon against unwanted male attention. As skirts got narrower in the 1890s and early 1900s, large hats – and, more importantly, <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1903-05-27/ed-1/seq-3/">hat pins</a>, which were sharp metal needles used to fasten the hats – offered women the protection from harassers that crinolines once gave. </p>
<p>As for keeping healthy, <a href="http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/germtheory">germ theory</a> and a better understanding of hygiene led to the popularization of face masks – very similar to the ones we use today – during the Spanish flu. And while the need for women to keep their distance from pesky suitors remained, <a href="https://images.app.goo.gl/5QWuYhBcdUKxyhTK9">hats</a> were used more to keep masks intact than to push strangers away.</p>
<p>Today, it isn’t clear whether the coronavirus will lead to new styles and accessories. Perhaps we’ll see the rise of novel forms of protective outerwear, like the “<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90469200/this-coronavirus-suit-protects-you-inside-a-literal-bubble">wearable shield</a>” that one Chinese company developed.</p>
<p>But for now, it seems most likely that we’ll all just continue wearing pajamas.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Einav Rabinovitch-Fox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In the past, maintaining physical distance was an important aspect of public life – and clothes played a big role.
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Visiting Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131530
2020-02-19T10:55:50Z
2020-02-19T10:55:50Z
From cowpox to mumps: people have always had a problem with vaccination
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315966/original/file-20200218-11023-d7lm3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=106%2C31%2C3267%2C2540&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ctg8593a#licenseInformation">© Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent surge in mumps among young adults in the UK <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/14/young-people-england-mmr-vaccine-mumps">has been linked</a> to the 1998 MMR vaccine scare, when a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/02/lancet-retracts-mmr-paper">now-discredited medical paper</a> authored by Andrew Wakefield suggested a connection between the vaccine and the development of autism. The publication of the paper led many parents to refuse the vaccine for their child.</p>
<p>The effect of Wakefield’s paper is still deeply felt. Indeed, every week seems to bring news of an unfolding controversy about vaccination. In the UK an alarming <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/26/drop-in-vaccination-rates-in-england-alarming-experts-warn">decline</a> in childhood vaccination rates has been recorded. Vaccine scepticism seems to be increasing – a fitting testament to these troubling times, when distrust of science and expertise permeate. </p>
<p>Social media is often pinpointed as part of the problem. The ease with which ideas and information about vaccination are spread on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms is causing concern. As one medical journalist <a href="https://www.bma.org.uk/news/2019/august/anti-vaccination-a-needless-waste-of-life">observed</a> in 2019: “Lies spread through social media have helped demonise one of the safest and most effective interventions in the history of medicine.” </p>
<p>Social media has undoubtedly changed the way information about vaccination is engaged with. But the media-driven nature of the debate isn’t actually that new. When vaccination began at the end of the 18th century, it quickly became fodder for commentators. </p>
<p>In the 1790s, the surgeon Edward Jenner had confirmed through a number of experimental procedures on patients that exposure to cowpox pustules – symptoms of a disease of cows’ udders which in humans resembles mild smallpox – could confer immunity to smallpox. Following the publication of his results in 1798, vaccination came into widespread use. </p>
<p>With it came immediate unease and distrust. Satirists like James Gillray capitalised upon rumours that inserting cowpox pustules into the skin might cause one to sprout cow horns, a fear which had its roots in religious and cultural stigma surrounding the pollution of blood with animal matter.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315334/original/file-20200213-10976-hdse80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315334/original/file-20200213-10976-hdse80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315334/original/file-20200213-10976-hdse80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315334/original/file-20200213-10976-hdse80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315334/original/file-20200213-10976-hdse80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315334/original/file-20200213-10976-hdse80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315334/original/file-20200213-10976-hdse80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">James Gillray: Edward Jenner vaccinating patients against smallpox.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vhkqym77">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Images like Gillray’s were an early indicator of the ability of vaccination to capture the public imagination in a way few other medical developments would over the ensuing decades. This only intensified in the mid-19th century, when the Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853 decreed that all babies should be vaccinated. Compulsory vaccination aroused accusations that personal liberty was under threat. In its wake, resistance to vaccination ramped up considerably.</p>
<h2>Victorian vaccination</h2>
<p>Vaccine hesitancy was amplified by the tumultuous world of print which characterised the Victorian age. </p>
<p>Improved printing technologies and lower prices gave rise to a rapid increase in the number of periodicals and newspapers available. Information was democratised, as cheap papers and periodicals became accessible to women and the working classes. Medical and health issues were mined by journalists for their dramatic content, and tropes of the vaccination debate we see today were given shape by the information revolution of the late 19th century. </p>
<p>Indeed, it was during this time that the polarisation between “pro” and “anti” vaccination camps solidified. Use of the phrase “anti-vaccination” <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-vaccination&year_start=1880&year_end=1920&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Canti%20-%20vaccination%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Canti%20-%20vaccination%3B%2Cc0">rocketed</a> at the end of the 19th century. Pamphlets and magazines sprung up in opposition to its use, claiming that vaccination was a dangerous, toxic procedure that was being thrust upon society’s most vulnerable citizens: children. </p>
<p>The not so catchily named National Anti-Compulsory-Vaccination Reporter, a magazine which began in 1876, sold hundreds of copies every month. The paper revelled in its radicalism, its opening editorial announcing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As sound-hearted and enlightened Anti-Vaccinators, it is our bounden duty, and should be our steady and constant aim, to work towards the complete destruction of Medical Despotism. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, humour publications such as Punch and Moonshine skewered organisations like the Anti-Vaccination League for their zealotry and irrationality. In an of age of self-professed scientific medicine, the movement’s association with radical religious beliefs and other non-conforming lifestyle choices, such as vegetarianism and abstinence from alcohol, made it a target for lampoonery.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315336/original/file-20200213-10980-163daoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An illustration in Punch, 1872. ‘A snobbish mother resistant to her daughter’s doctor using a vaccine from their neighbour’s child.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/wwc98fhb">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>A polarised debate</h2>
<p>Anti-vaccination publications believed they were deliberately excluded from a press that was in the pocket of the state and who sought to suppress the true dangers of vaccination. Publications such as The Times had become the gatekeepers of public opinion – in 1887 the paper claimed to have suffered from “an epidemic of letters about vaccination”. But anti-vaccinators lambasted newspaper editors as “shamelessly unprincipled and venal” for refusing to publish that correspondence which was critical of vaccination. </p>
<p>This is an accusation that has its echoes in conspiracy theories that continue today. The prominent American anti-vaccine organisation Children’s Health Defense <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/countering-false-narratives/">has denounced</a> the mainstream media for being under the thumb of Big Pharma and ignoring the voices of those harmed by vaccines.</p>
<p>As this shows, there has always been a potency to the vaccination debate few other medical practices generate. The provocative issue of children’s health at the heart of it, and the tension vaccination evokes between notions of collective responsibility and the freedom to choose what we think best for our bodies has made it an emotive, highly polarised debate that has been brewing since the 19th century. This has always been galvanised by sustained media interest.</p>
<p>But there is a complexity to vaccination that polarisation does not properly unpack. What of, for example, the many people who would not identify as “anti-vax”, but instead form a <a href="https://theconversation.com/anti-vaxxer-effect-on-vaccination-rates-is-exaggerated-92630">loose group</a> who are hesitant about vaccines and may delay or choose only some vaccinations?</p>
<p>Social media may amplify division between the two camps, but it builds upon a long history of media outlets constructing it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Frampton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Anti-vaccinators today echo 200-year-old debates.
Sally Frampton, Humanities and Healthcare Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/122487
2019-12-12T06:07:10Z
2019-12-12T06:07:10Z
How tattoos became fashionable in Victorian England
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300637/original/file-20191107-10930-9bk27j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C66%2C882%2C885&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Image from 'Criminal man, according to the classification of Cesare Lombroso' (1911).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14579361168">Internetarchivebookimages/Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=obpdef1-1604-18360613">Thomas Whitton</a> was a labourer and shoemaker from Shoreditch, east London. He was just 13 in June 1836 when he was convicted at the Old Bailey for shoplifting printed cotton. His sentence was transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). </p>
<p>When he arrived on the shores of Australia a year later, the brown haired, blue-eyed Londoner had acquired some interesting tattoos on his long voyage. On his right arm there was a tribute to a girl with the words “love to thy heart” and on his left, images of two men with a bottle and glass, a mermaid, an anchor and the initials “R.R.”</p>
<p>Whitton (who was eventually freed at the age of 20) was just one of 58,002 Victorian convicts whose tattoo descriptions we found as we data-mined the judicial archives. At the time, some commentators believed that “persons of bad repute” used tattoos to mark themselves “like savages” as a sign they belonged to a criminal gang. But <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/">our database</a> reveals that convict tattoos expressed a surprisingly wide range of positive and indeed fashionable sentiments. And convicts were by no means the only Victorians who acquired them.</p>
<p>These records allow us to see – for the first time – that historical tattooing was not restricted to sailors, soldiers and convicts, but was a growing and accepted phenomenon in Victorian England. Tattoos provide an important window into the lives of those who typically left no written records of their own. As a form of “history from below”, they give us a fleeting but intriguing understanding of the identities and emotions of ordinary people in the past.</p>
<p>To study these questions, we carried out the largest analysis of tattoos ever undertaken, examining 75,688 descriptions of tattoos, on 58,002 convicts in Britain and Australia from 1793 to 1925. We used data-mining techniques to extract information embedded within broader descriptive fields of criminal records, and we linked this information with extensive evidence about the personal characteristics and backgrounds of our subjects. Because the meanings of tattoos are often so difficult to fathom, we used visualisations to identify patterns of use and juxtapositions of particular designs.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298362/original/file-20191023-119433-gdfbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298362/original/file-20191023-119433-gdfbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298362/original/file-20191023-119433-gdfbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298362/original/file-20191023-119433-gdfbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298362/original/file-20191023-119433-gdfbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298362/original/file-20191023-119433-gdfbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298362/original/file-20191023-119433-gdfbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration of a convict’s arms from Cesare Lombroso, The Delinquent Man (1889). Lombroso was an Italian criminologist who believed that tattooing was evidence of a criminal personality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/dvcak5ae">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>A brief history of tattoos</h2>
<p>Tattooing has taken place throughout human history. Evidence from bodies preserved in ice indicates the existence of the practice <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/oldest-tattoo-ever-found-marks-on-iceman-otzi-proved-to-be-first-known-body-art-a6777476.html">as early as 4,000BC</a>. And, while it is impossible to trace a continuous history, there is evidence of tattooing in most cultures, sometimes as a form of forced stigmatisation (on slaves and criminals in the Greek and Roman empires) but in many cases as a voluntary practice used to express identity. </p>
<p>Early Christians acquired religious tattoos as a sign of devotion, and to commemorate pilgrimages. Banned by Pope Hadrian in 787, tattooing largely disappeared from recorded history in the medieval West, though we know it was present in many other cultures, notably Polynesia and Japan. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>The traditional narrative has it that the practice was resurrected in Europe after Captain Cook and his sailors encountered the tattooed inhabitants of Tahiti on his visit there in 1769. But more recently historians, including <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781861890627">Jane Caplan</a> and <a href="https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/lodde23007/matt-lodder">Matt Lodder</a>, have uncovered evidence of tattoos among soldiers, sailors and labourers in the century preceding Cook’s voyage. The convict records used in our study date from 1793 and so document a practice which was already widespread.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298365/original/file-20191023-119477-757hcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298365/original/file-20191023-119477-757hcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298365/original/file-20191023-119477-757hcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298365/original/file-20191023-119477-757hcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298365/original/file-20191023-119477-757hcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298365/original/file-20191023-119477-757hcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298365/original/file-20191023-119477-757hcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Several images of women’s heads and butterflies tattooed onto human skin once owned by a Parisian surgeon who collected and preserved hundreds of samples from the bodies of dead French soldiers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ks2vbb2s">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A written record</h2>
<p>As a practice for which typically the only record is the body itself, few systematic records survive before the advent of photography. One exception to this is the written descriptions of tattoos (and even the occasional sketch) that were kept of institutionalised people forced to submit to the recording of information about their bodies as a means of identifying them. This particularly applies to three groups – criminal convicts, soldiers and sailors. Of these, the convict records are the most voluminous and systematic. </p>
<p>Such records were first kept in large numbers for those who were transported to Australia from 1788 (since Australia was then an open prison) as the authorities needed some means of keeping track of them. </p>
<p>Similar prison records started being kept in Britain from 1816, in part so that escapees could be identified. But the record keeping became even more systematic due to growing concerns about re-offending in the 19th century. </p>
<h2>Designs and subjects</h2>
<p>Contrary to contemporary beliefs, convict tattoos included a wide range of subjects and designs and expressed some very positive emotions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296220/original/file-20191009-3880-xodo74.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296220/original/file-20191009-3880-xodo74.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296220/original/file-20191009-3880-xodo74.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296220/original/file-20191009-3880-xodo74.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296220/original/file-20191009-3880-xodo74.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296220/original/file-20191009-3880-xodo74.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296220/original/file-20191009-3880-xodo74.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ‘heatmap’ showing the changing mix of tattoo subject between the 1820s and the 1910s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found multiple records of images relating to British and American identity as well as designs centring on diverse subjects like astronomy, pleasure, religion and sex. Among the most popular were naval themes and expressions of love. But the most popular form of tattoo was written names and sets of initials, which were present in 56% of all descriptions. Dots were also very popular and were found in 30% of descriptions.</p>
<p>The distribution of subjects became more even over time, as some popular early themes – notably naval, jewellery and astronomy – declined and there was a rise in tattoos depicting religion, nature, national identity and death. </p>
<p>Up to 1850, the evidence comes primarily from convicts transported to Australia, a quarter of whom were tattooed. Although we can’t be sure, it is likely that most were acquired during the long voyage. The fact that many had their year of conviction or transportation tattooed on their skin reflects recognition of the fact that their forcible removal halfway around the world, probably never to return to Britain, was a life-changing event. </p>
<h2>Naval themes and love</h2>
<p>Naval tattoos were rich in diversity and included mermaids, ships, sailors, flags and related astronomical symbols like the Sun, Moon and stars. But the most popular design was the anchor. Sailors, such as <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=fasai57284">Thomas Prescott</a>, transported to Australia in 1819, bore an “anchor mermaid heart and darts sun moon and stars” on his right arm. Tattoos that expressed relationships with lovers, friends and family were also very popular (probably since the journey to Australia forcibly separated them from their loved ones). These were more often than not worn in visible areas of the body such as the forearms and hands.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/having-a-tattoo-of-your-lovers-name-has-been-a-bad-idea-for-hundreds-of-years-91400">Having a tattoo of your lover's name has been a bad idea for hundreds of years</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Where first names were tattooed on a convict’s arm, they were much more likely to be names of someone of the opposite sex. The initials “i.l.” (meaning “I love”) often preceded other pairs of initials. A 21-year-old <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=obpt18260914-283-defend1542">William Graham</a>, for example, was imprisoned in the new national penitentiary, Millbank, in 1826 for “grand larceny”, including the theft of a handkerchief and “pair of breeches”. He demonstrated his love for his family with their initials and those of “E.C.” (probably his lover). He also had a heart and crossed arrows on his right arm. His left arm bore his own initials together with “E.C.” and a “bird in a bush”. This design was depicted in a rare sketch from the prison register. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293025/original/file-20190918-187995-1a4uydx.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293025/original/file-20190918-187995-1a4uydx.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293025/original/file-20190918-187995-1a4uydx.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293025/original/file-20190918-187995-1a4uydx.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293025/original/file-20190918-187995-1a4uydx.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=228&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293025/original/file-20190918-187995-1a4uydx.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=228&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293025/original/file-20190918-187995-1a4uydx.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=228&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Description of William Graham’s tattoos in the prison record.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As is so often the case, we will never know precisely what William intended to express with these tattoos or who E.C. was. But undoubtedly love was involved.</p>
<h2>Five dots and criminal identity</h2>
<p>In the late 19th century, social observers, criminologists, and the press were preoccupied by the notion that tattoos were evidence of “criminal character”. Social investigator Henry Mayhew wrote in <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-criminal-prisons-of-london-by-henry-mayhew#">his 1862 book</a> on London prisons:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Most persons of bad repute’, said the prison warder, ‘have private marks stamped on them – mermaids, naked men and women, and the most extraordinary things you ever saw. They are marked like savages, whilst many of the regular thieves have five dots between their thumb and forefinger, as a sign that they belong to ‘the forty thieves’, as they call it.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is, however, little to suggest that the tattoos from the time frequently expressed a criminal identity. While there is some evidence of the “five dots” described by Mayhew, the data we found allowed us to debunk this historical myth. In 1828, a series of juvenile thefts in London sparked anxieties about youth crime. The Morning Post complained about:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A gang of no less than 40 juvenile delinquents … known as the ‘Forty Thieves’, on all the metropolitan roads, where they subsist by their plunder on the coaches and passengers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The “Forty Thieves” could allegedly be identified by their tattoos – five dots worn between their thumb and forefinger: “They recognised each other by five blue spots on the hand, which was made by gunpowder,” claimed The London Standard on January 3 1829.</p>
<p>Five dots was indeed a popular tattoo, but not primarily in the contexts described by Mayhew and the papers. Our data shows the presence of this tattoo in the 1820s, where it was found on 23 convicts. But while five dots grew in popularity into the 1870s, it was found not only on imprisoned male convicts, but also on those who were transported – especially women. And while convicts were often imprisoned before they were transported, the widespread use of the five dots tattoo (378 convicts between 1820 and 1880) suggests that any “gang” could not have been easily identified by this tattoo alone. </p>
<h2>Working-class jewellery</h2>
<p>As the simplest tattoo to create, dots were hugely popular: over 20,000 convicts wore one or more dots on their arms, hands and even faces. The left side of the body was dominant, suggesting that dots were often self-administered. But the collocations (designs located alongside the dots on the same part of the body) demonstrate that dots, including five and seven dots, were rarely aligned with expressions of criminality or defiance – such as skull and crossbones – but were often used for purely decorative purposes, like rings and bracelets.</p>
<p>Such tattoos were a form of working class jewellery that was cheap and easy to administer. <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=fas7977">Sarah Phillips</a>, for example, transported in 1838 for stealing boots, wore a “seven dots ring” and “three dots” on her fingers. Other collocations for the seven dot tattoo included the Sun, Moon and stars, which likely meant that dots were used to represent constellations, such as the seven-star Pleiades cluster. They could also represent love. <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=fas2440">Elizabeth Morgan’s</a> recorded marks in the transportation records suggest that she used her five dot tattoo as part of an expression of love for a Joseph Bayles.</p>
<h2>Pleasures and censorship</h2>
<p>Rather than expressing a criminal identity, convicts inscribed their bodies in much the same way as today – commemorating their lovers and family, coming-of-age and the pleasures of working class life. Some 5% of convicts wore tattoos relating to pleasure. Sixteenth birthdays, for example, were commemorated by tattoos of bottles.</p>
<p>Alcohol, smoking, dancing and cards were the subjects of a range of tattoos. <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=fasai00644">James Allen</a> wore a tattoo of a glass and a man smoking a pipe. Among <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=fas2474">Marion Telford’s nine tattoos</a> was a man and woman dancing on her right arm. Sports were also celebrated. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=cin80736">William Lindsay</a> arrived in Australia in 1854 his body was decorated with a full boxing match on his chest as well as several other distinctive images, including “brig in full sail”, “whale spouting”, “mermaid”, “woman on right arm”, “sailor and flag, snake and three rings”.</p>
<p>Sex was also a theme but Victorian clerks often obscured the level of obscenity from the records, as when part of <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=fasai20275">Robert Dudlow’s</a> tattoo was described as an “indecent word”. But images of <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=rhc14885">naked men</a> and <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=rhc12002">women</a> were tattooed commonly on visible parts of the body. </p>
<p>Convicts also expressed an interest in nature. There were many animals, including birds, butterflies, horses, dogs, snakes and scorpions. Flowers were often worn with animals (especially birds) or were wrapped around the wrist or neck to replicate jewellery. <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=obpdef1-370-18890408">Frederick Ash</a>, convicted in 1889 at the Old Bailey of the rape of a 13-year-old girl, was recorded in the Register of Habitual Criminals in 1893 as having 25 designs on his body. The designs included an elephant, mermaid, “girl on a donkey”, snake, lion and a unicorn (apparently as part of a coat of arms), chameleon, scorpion, another lion and a tree centipede. </p>
<h2>A fashion spreads</h2>
<p>It is not clear how the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25330947">fashion for tattooing</a> spread but the evidence suggests that increasing numbers of men and women – not just soldiers, sailors and convicts – acquired tattoos over the course of the 19th century. The birth dates of convicts with and without tattoos in the Register of Habitual Criminals shows a clear increase in the proportion of convicts with tattoos; half of the convicts documented possessed tattoos by the end of the century.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296233/original/file-20191009-3935-cbmyek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296233/original/file-20191009-3935-cbmyek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296233/original/file-20191009-3935-cbmyek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296233/original/file-20191009-3935-cbmyek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296233/original/file-20191009-3935-cbmyek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296233/original/file-20191009-3935-cbmyek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296233/original/file-20191009-3935-cbmyek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Birth Years of Tattooed Convicts.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Evidence of tattooing outside the convict record is sparse but there are tantalising suggestions that people from a wide range of social backgrounds acquired tattoos. Alongside the thousands of labourers and unskilled workers with tattoos in our records were 60 clerks, 49 dealers, 22 agents, and 20 engineers. Knowledge of tattooing was spread by the <a href="https://vintagenewsdaily.com/the-original-tattooed-lady-portraits-of-irene-woodward-aka-la-belle-irene-in-the-late-19th-and-early-20-centuries/">tattooed “freaks”</a> on display in circuses and fairs, and returning sailors and officers from Pacific voyages. There was also the growing publicity accorded to tattoos in print towards the end of the century.</p>
<p>Public awareness of tattooing in the 1870s was spread by the widely publicised court case of the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-tichborne-claimant-9780826442574/">Tichborne Claimant</a>, when an imposter (variously referred to as Thomas Castro or Arthur Orton) claimed to be Roger Tichborne, the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy. His claim collapsed in 1872 when it was revealed that Roger possessed distinctive tattoos, while Castro/Orton – as <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/search?e0.type.t.t=root&e0.given.s.s=thomas&e0.surname.s.s=castro&e0.__all.s.s=">our records confirm</a> – had none. </p>
<p>And in the 1880s, a tattooing craze developed in elite society after it became known that various members of the nobility and royalty, both male and female, had acquired tattoos, including <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35400010">Edward, Prince of Wales and Prince Albert Victor</a>, his
eldest son.</p>
<p>This craze was facilitated by the development of professional tattooists who set up shops, and by the invention of an electric tattooing machine in 1891, by an American, Samuel O’Reilly. By 1900 tattooing had permeated many parts of British society. </p>
<h2>Buffalo Bill</h2>
<p>Emblematic of the popularity of tattooing at the end of the century are the 392 convicts in the database (all male) who had a tattoo of the American showman, Buffalo Bill. The first tour of his Wild West show in Britain took place in 1887 when he performed <a href="https://www.oupress.com/books/9783452/the-lives-and-legends-of-buffalo-bill">for Queen Victoria</a>. His London shows alone attracted 2.5 million customers and he returned for further tours over the next 15 years. It appears that tattooists took advantage of his popularity by developing templates of his image and offering the tattoo as part of the experience of going to the exhibition. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297353/original/file-20191016-98653-12hi2qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297353/original/file-20191016-98653-12hi2qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297353/original/file-20191016-98653-12hi2qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297353/original/file-20191016-98653-12hi2qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297353/original/file-20191016-98653-12hi2qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297353/original/file-20191016-98653-12hi2qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297353/original/file-20191016-98653-12hi2qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chief Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill in 1885.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chief-sitting-bull-buffalo-bill-1885-787304002?src=YpQABalPF1-P5VA4_q5xgw-1-1">Shutterstock/EverettHistorical</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tattoos of a bust of Buffalo Bill were frequently found on convicts with tattoos of women, a woman’s head and clasped hands – as in <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=rhc75758">Charles Wilson’s tattoos</a>, which included “two hearts (one pierced), clasped hands and an anchor” on his right forearm and a bust of Buffalo Bill and the word MAGGIE in capital letters in a scroll on his left forearm. </p>
<p>The frequent expressions of love associated with Buffalo Bill tattoos suggest that men often went to see the show with their lovers and obtained tattoos to commemorate both the visit and their love for each other. The men who had a Buffalo Bill tattoo included a blacksmith, a postman, a shoemaker, a painter and glazier.</p>
<h2>A setting sun</h2>
<p>Tattoos became more sophisticated around the turn of the 20th century. <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=rhc81551">William Henry Greenway</a>, a “habitual criminal” who was tried in 1907, worked as a Liverpool photographer. He celebrated his occupation with a tattoo of a camera on his forearm. In 1910, <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=obpdef1-27-19100426">William Parfitt</a> was described as having a tattoo of a propeller on his forearm, as did one of the latest convicts in our dataset, <a href="https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=rhc133886">John Miller</a>, who was imprisoned for “housebreaking” in 1924. Combining both traditional designs and modern inventions to commemorate his lost brother, Miller wore a propeller alongside “a setting sun, sinking ship, sailor’s grave, tombstone, in memory of dear brother RT and a pierced heart”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298747/original/file-20191025-173558-18xq7v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298747/original/file-20191025-173558-18xq7v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298747/original/file-20191025-173558-18xq7v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298747/original/file-20191025-173558-18xq7v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298747/original/file-20191025-173558-18xq7v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298747/original/file-20191025-173558-18xq7v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298747/original/file-20191025-173558-18xq7v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tattooed sailor aboard the USS New Jersey, 1944.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tattooed_sailor_aboard_the_USS_New_Jersey.jpg">US Department of Navy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Convict tattooing was an expressive activity, rarely specifically linked to their crimes and punishments. In their images of vice and pleasure some convicts may have signalled an alternative morality but for most, tattoos simply reflected their personal identities and affinities – their loves and interests. As tattooing became more popular and proficient, it became more inventive and creative, reflecting wider cultural trends and fashions. </p>
<p>But in the early 20th century, as a result of its criminal associations and increasing concerns about hygiene, tattooing lost some of its popularity and became a marginal, though still significant, activity (in particular among sailors and soldiers during wartime). And then from the 1950s, according to sociologist <a href="https://www.wlv.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/michael-rees/">Michael Rees</a>, tattooing started to regain popularity, first among marginal groups including gang members, bikers and punks and rockers as symbols of both group allegiance and defiance of conventional society.</p>
<p>It was only with the recent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35400010">tattoo renaissance</a>, dating from the 1970s, that it started to become mainstream, permeating consumer culture through the media and the exposure of tattooed celebrities. It was eventually recognised as an art form. Today, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dolly-alderton-is-thinking-about-getting-a-tattoo-nd9h5t3l3">one in five</a> Britons reportedly have a tattoo. </p>
<p>And our research shows that the motivations for getting a tattoo may not have changed much since Whitton first exposed his skin to ink as he sailed for Tasmania more than 180 years ago.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/they-put-a-few-coins-in-your-hands-to-drop-a-baby-in-you-265-stories-of-haitian-children-abandoned-by-un-fathers-114854?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">‘They put a few coins in your hands to drop a baby in you’ – 265 stories of Haitian children abandoned by UN fathers</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-the-world-a-history-of-how-a-silent-cosmos-led-humans-to-fear-the-worst-120193?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">The end of the world: a history of how a silent cosmos led humans to fear the worst</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-dickens-newly-discovered-documents-reveal-truth-about-his-death-and-burial-130079?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Charles Dickens: newly discovered documents reveal truth about his death and burial</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Shoemaker receives funding from The British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoe Alker receives funding from The British Academy and Jisc. </span></em></p>
We may think tattooing is a modern phenomenon, but the reasons for its popularity are not dissimilar to those seen in the prisons and convict ships of the Victorian era.
Robert Shoemaker, Professor of 18th-Century British History, University of Sheffield
Zoe Alker, Lecturer, 19th-Century History and Digital Humanities, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127532
2019-11-21T11:21:21Z
2019-11-21T11:21:21Z
George Eliot: 200 years on, valuable lessons for today’s millennials and baby boomers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302878/original/file-20191121-542-14x7jgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C8%2C1339%2C1267&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George Eliot (1819-1880), aged 30.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade/National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We hear a lot right now about <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/our-work/intergenerational-fairness/">tensions between different generations</a>: <a href="http://jbristow.co.uk/from-brexit-to-the-pensions-crisis-how-did-the-baby-boomers-get-the-blame-for-everything">baby-boomers</a> versus <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/millennials-generation-y-guide-to-much-maligned-demographic">millennials</a>, for example. But <a href="https://twitter.com/Born1819">those born 200 years ago</a> combined characteristics of both these modern generations. </p>
<p>The most famous person born in 1819 is probably Queen Victoria – but she had many important contemporaries. One of these was George Eliot, a pioneering woman writer who would have turned 200 this week, and whose life and work helps us understand her world and ours.</p>
<p>The 1819 cohort was part of a <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/">post-war baby boom</a>. The previous decades had been dominated by a <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/napoleonic-wars-facts-napoleon-bonaparte-waterloo-what-happened-defeated-significance/">world war</a>, which broke out in the wake of the French Revolution and raged across Europe and parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas for more than 20 years.</p>
<p>In some ways, they were much less fortunate than 20th-century baby boomers. Their childhoods did not see the foundation of a post-war welfare state. On the contrary, the repressive government continued to forbid protests. In August 1819, working people met at St Peter’s Fields near Manchester for a political rally, but the local cavalry charged in to clear the crowd. At least ten people were killed and hundreds were injured. </p>
<p>This became known as the <a href="http://www.peterloomassacre.org/history.html">Peterloo Massacre</a>, emphasising that violence and suffering had not ended with Waterloo. 1819 was not an auspicious time to be born.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Peterloo massacre in Manchester on August 16, 1819, in which at least ten people were killed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Carlile (1790–1843)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Thoroughly modern</h2>
<p>The Victorian era saw a huge population boom and mass migration within Britain. George Eliot was <a href="https://www.georgeeliot.org/about-george-eliot/childhood.aspx">born Mary Ann Evans in the rural Midlands</a>, at a point when most people lived outside of towns. But, by the 1850s, for the first time more than half of people in Britain were urban. And Eliot became one of them – like many contemporaries <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/16/george-eliot-provincial-novels-teach-brexit-britain">she left for the big city</a>, and never went back.</p>
<p>The life she made for herself in London, however, was very unusual. She seized the chance of a career when very few Victorian women had such a thing, and took on a new identity as a translator and journalist. Then she and a married man fell in love. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eliot’s lover, George Henry Lewes (Woodcut by S. T., 1878, after Elliott & Fry).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They set up home together, and while she saw her <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/george-eliots-ugly-beauty">life-partnership with G. H. Lewes</a> as a marriage, she would always be seen by polite society as “living in sin”.</p>
<p>When she started to write novels in her late 30s, she <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b8mf/novels-that-shaped-our-world-series-1-1-a-womans-place">wrote under a male disguise</a>. She was found out before long, but the name George Eliot stuck. It enabled her to write with the kind of masculine authority often denied to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-victorian-womens-writing/victorian-women-writers-careers/38E8D853C4DCD946C779429B1589C72B/core-reader">other women writers</a> of her generation.</p>
<h2>Class of 1819</h2>
<p>Few millennials have a “job for life” – and many are by necessity juggling portfolio careers. We might think of this as a new phenomenon, but both elements would have been familiar to the generation born 200 years ago. At that time, few people had much choice over what they did for a living. They followed their parents’ or local trades, working on farms, as servants or in the new steam-powered mills and factories. </p>
<p>In all these sectors, security was minimal and many migrated to follow the work. On the other hand, if you were educated and could afford it, there was freedom to explore. </p>
<p>It was quite a cohort. Among the notable individuals turning 200 this year are several others who had enormous influence on the world around them. <a href="https://www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk/about/john-ruskin">John Ruskin</a> made his name as an art critic, but was also an impassioned social commentator who wrote on everything from geology to economics. <a href="https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/activists/ernest-jones/">Ernest Jones</a> grew up around royal courts and trained as a lawyer, but became a poet. He joined the radical Chartist movement that campaigned for the working-class vote, was imprisoned for it, and ended up a politician. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Charles Kingsley’s novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/11/the-water-babies-fairytale-social-change-richard-coles-documentary">The Water Babies</a> (1863) successfully helped stop young boys being forced to work as chimney sweeps. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (1819-1891) published in Punch magazine, December 1883.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Joseph Bazalgette was a civil engineer who <a href="https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/how-bazalgette-built-londons-first-super-sewer">rescued London from the Great Stink</a> by building a majestic sewer system, but he also enjoyed art and designed the Crossness Pumping Station to look like a medieval cathedral.</p>
<p>These people’s careers often spanned arts and sciences, invention and creativity, theory and activism, in ways few do today.</p>
<p>Today’s millennials have seen the arrival and all-encompassing spread of the internet. The 1819 generation also navigated new communication networks: their teenage years were the years of the first railways. They made the most of this new technology, and by the end of their lives train travel had become normal – it’s what enabled Queen Victoria to make <a href="http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2017/06/queen-victorias-first-railway-journey.html">regular trips to her highland home</a> at Balmoral.</p>
<p>But industrialisation and railway building also caused huge upheaval. In her masterpiece novel <a href="https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/13">Middlemarch (1871–72)</a> – set in the Midlands during her teenage years – Eliot depicts this upheaval. She initially presents the anti-railway protesters as narrow-minded yokels, but eventually acknowledges that these men “are in possession of an undeniable truth” – the fact that they wouldn’t see any of the “social benefit” from the railways. Eliot knew that technological “progress” would damage the rural communities it left behind.</p>
<p>We often think of generational identities and divides as new, but <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/24/3/277/5528143">the generation born 200 years ago</a> also often found itself in a generation gap. Millennials and baby-boomers both share experiences with the 1819 generation – which suggests that these two living groups are not opposites after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127532/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Kingstone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Born the same year as Queen Victoria, Eliot faced similar life choices to many young women today
Helen Kingstone, Surrey Research Fellow, University of Surrey
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123296
2019-09-20T14:50:26Z
2019-09-20T14:50:26Z
Breast or bottle feeding: the debate has its origins in Victorian times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293377/original/file-20190920-135113-1r807m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C99%2C1239%2C762&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Young Mother, by Charles West Cope.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BLW_%27The_Young_Mother%27_by_Charles_West_Cope,_1845.jpg#mw-jump-to-license">Wikimedia Commons.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>New mothers face an unenviable challenge when navigating advice on how to feed infants, in a world where everyone seems to have an opinion: medical practitioners, friends, relatives, strangers in the supermarket – not to mention the daunting and potentially treacherous world of online parenting forums. </p>
<p>Amid an avalanche of sometimes contradictory advice, mothers often find themselves under immense pressure, terrified of getting it “wrong” and inadvertently harming their baby. This may seem like a modern phenomenon, driven by the digital age and heavily promoted ideals of motherhood in contemporary media and culture. But during Victorian times, new mothers often faced similar pressures. </p>
<p>Though they avoided having to navigate the likes of Mumsnet, the growing popularity of advice literature in the 19th century – coupled with rigid views on a mother’s duties and a high <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality">infant mortality rate</a> – placed women under significant pressure to perform the role of “good mother”. </p>
<h2>Causing a scandal</h2>
<p>Bottle feeding grew in popularity over the course of the Victorian era, but most advice books strongly advocated maternal breastfeeding. There is some logic in this: a lack of understanding around bacteria and sterilisation meant that baby bottles were often cleaned improperly, posing a significant source of danger to infants. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293373/original/file-20190920-50946-1tdaje4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293373/original/file-20190920-50946-1tdaje4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293373/original/file-20190920-50946-1tdaje4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293373/original/file-20190920-50946-1tdaje4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293373/original/file-20190920-50946-1tdaje4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293373/original/file-20190920-50946-1tdaje4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293373/original/file-20190920-50946-1tdaje4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Beeton#/media/File:Isabella_Beeton_-_Mrs_Beeton's_Book_of_Household_Management_-_title_page.jpg">Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is evident in the advice of English writer and housekeeping aficionado <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aiMDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=beeton+the+management+of+children&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj39-WnqN_kAhWGVBUIHfsrBjIQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">Mrs Beeton</a>, who suggests that “the nipple need never be removed till replaced by a new one, which will hardly be necessary oftener than once a fortnight”. Poor hygiene was one of the reasons for the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0289.00209">higher mortality rates</a> among bottle-fed babies in the Victorian period, though by the late 19th century, bottle feeding became much safer due to improvements in hygiene practices. </p>
<p>Maternal breastfeeding was not the only alternative to so-called “artificial” feeding. Wet nursing remained a relatively common practice throughout the 19th century, particularly among the upper classes. It later fell out of favour – in part due to concerns about the fate of the wet nurses’ own children. The practice of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rcwhAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1093&dq=baby+farms&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_wZm-4tzkAhWJQUEAHcDKABAQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q&f=false">baby farming</a> – taking in babies for money - was thought to be fuelled in part by the demand for wet nurses, who were unable to keep their own infants with them while nursing those of their employers. </p>
<p>One scandal in the early 1870s, which saw <a href="http://wludh.ca/ams/crime/?p=634">Margaret Waters</a> executed for the murder of a child in her care (and suspected of murdering many more), raised ethical questions over the practice of employing wet nurses – an issue addressed by George Moore in his 1894 novel, <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8157">Esther Waters</a>. </p>
<h2>Queen Victoria’s view</h2>
<p>In the 19th century, Queen Victoria was among those who ignored advice to breastfeed, and instead employed a wet nurse. Indeed, she was fiercely opposed to maternal breastfeeding – believing it to be an unsuitable practice for aristocratic women – and was horrified when two of her daughters decided to breastfeed. She considered it an animal function, and, as <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09612029900200211&ved=2ahUKEwiAo7i8u9_kAhWIOcAKHZUUDMYQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw2bq0ms0gxlOCldnDMaIeDB">she wrote in a letter</a> to her daughter Princess Alice, believed the ideal wet nurse should be “like an animal” herself: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[A] child can never be as well nursed by a lady of rank and nervous and refined temperament – for the less feeling and more like an animal the wet nurse is, the better for the child.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293375/original/file-20190920-50941-1aau4ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293375/original/file-20190920-50941-1aau4ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293375/original/file-20190920-50941-1aau4ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293375/original/file-20190920-50941-1aau4ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293375/original/file-20190920-50941-1aau4ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293375/original/file-20190920-50941-1aau4ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293375/original/file-20190920-50941-1aau4ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen Victoria: we are not amoosed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Queen_Victoria_by_Bassano.jpg">Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Subsequently, in an act of “mummy-shaming” to rival anything today’s internet has to offer, Queen Victoria allegedly named a cow in the royal dairy after her daughter. It’s ironic, then, that the queen – who despised pregnancy and wasn’t overly fond of young babies (enquiring of her doctor how she might prevent her frequent pregnancies) – could possibly have benefited from the <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/sex-contraception-after-birth/">contraceptive effects of breastfeeding</a>, had she chosen to nurse her own children. </p>
<p>Queen Victoria’s sentiments reflected broader attitudes among upper-class women in particular, who considered themselves too genteel to breastfeed. For instance, in her parenting advice book The Way They Should Go, English writer <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-55642">Jane Ellen Panton</a> says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I myself know of no greater misery than nursing a child […] Let no mother condemn herself to be a common or ordinary “cow” unless she has a real desire to nurse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Panton’s sentiments were at odds with most Victorian advice literature – much of it written by medical men – which strongly advocated maternal breastfeeding, as a natural and even religious duty. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KzgCAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Mother’s Thorough Resource Book</a> (1860) refers to it as “the most sacred of duties”, while <a href="http://jvc.oup.com/2016/06/06/jessica-cox-the-bounden-duty-of-every-woman1-mansplaining-breastfeeding-in-victorian-advice-books/">Mother and Child</a> (1868), suggests “it was beneficently ordered by the Creator that the child for a certain period after birth should be dependent on the maternal nourishment for its support”.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, statistical evidence was employed to encourage mothers to breastfeed, as in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25196646?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Infant Feeding and its Influence on Life</a> (1860), which cites poor development outcomes for bottle feeding or spoon feeding, compared with breastfeeding. </p>
<h2>A woman’s choice</h2>
<p>While the origins of today’s debates over how best to feed infants lie in Victorian times, a notable difference between then and now is the modern emphasis on women’s choice. Whether advocating maternal breastfeeding, or (as in Queen Victoria’s case) the use of wet nurses, advice in the Victorian era was frequently insistent and prescriptive. </p>
<p>While there are some parallels to be found today – suggested by the frequent references to “lactivism” and <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/625203/myleene-klass-i-wont-be-bullied-by-breastapo/">“the breastapo”</a> in online debates – there is also a growing acceptance of women’s choices. This is evident in the <a href="https://www.rcm.org.uk/news-views/news/rcm-publishes-new-position-statement-on-infant-feeding/">2018 statement</a> on infant feeding by the Royal College of Midwives, which says that “the decision of whether or not to breastfeed is a woman’s choice and must be respected”. </p>
<p>Today’s cult of motherhood holds striking parallels with that of the Victorians. But mothers today can take some comfort in the fact that there are now much safer alternatives to breast feeding, and that they are much more empowered to choose for themselves how best to care for their babies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Cox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In an act of ‘mummy-shaming’ to rival anything today’s internet has to offer, Queen Victoria is thought to have named a cow in the royal dairy after her daughter, who had decided to breastfeed.
Jessica Cox, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112755
2019-09-11T12:17:02Z
2019-09-11T12:17:02Z
In dandelions and fireflies, artists try to make sense of climate change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291823/original/file-20190910-190016-875y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visitors walk through Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's installation 'Fireflies on the Water.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/maurizio_mwg/2985709941">maurizio mucciola/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Climate change is real, it’s accelerating and it’s terrifying. We are adding carbon to the atmosphere at a rate <a href="https://www.ametsoc.net/sotc2017/SoC2017_ExecSumm.pdf">100 times faster than any previous natural increases</a>, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age.</p>
<p>The effects are easily made visible through dramatic images of <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramatic-glacier-melt/">rapidly shrinking glaciers</a> or the <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/brazil-amazon-rainforest-fires-climate-emissions-oxygen,%20https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/08/look-no-further-than-brazils-amazon-fire-for-the-dangers-of-deregulation/">Amazon rainforest on fire</a>. </p>
<p>But pictures like these can distance us from environmental catastrophe, turning it into something spectacular, arresting – even paralyzing. They don’t communicate the everyday impact of climate change, <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-happening-in-your-garden-heres-how-to-spot-it-65730">which is also taking place in our own backyards</a>.</p>
<p>In the book I’m currently writing, I’ve made these smaller, less obvious effects my focus. I explore the work of artists and poets who help us understand how the smallest changes to the environment can signal large-scale damage. </p>
<p>They build on a crucial legacy left by Victorian observers of the natural world who emphasized the need to pay careful attention to the tiny details of our surroundings.</p>
<h2>Observant Victorians</h2>
<p>No one was more insistent on the importance of looking closely at the ordinary and the everyday than the 19th-century art critic and social thinker John Ruskin. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291638/original/file-20190909-109957-za45hz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Everett Millais’ 1853 portrait of Ruskin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Millais_Ruskin.jpg">Ashmolean Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His <a href="https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/depts/ruskinlib/Modern%20Painters">advice</a> to “go to Nature … rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing” inspired many artists of the era – British artists like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin_(painting)#/media/File:Millais_Ruskin.jpg">John Everett Millais</a> and <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/brett/paintings/25.jpg">John Brett</a>, and American painters <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/2359">John Henry Hill</a> and <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/ask/william_trost_richards">William Trost Richards</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, books and articles, such as J.G. Wood’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Be9RDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&dq=Common+Objects+of+the+Country&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjf8becyrrkAhUQZd8KHRwMCk4Q6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">Common Objects of the Country</a>” and Anne Wright’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=p6fewQEACAAJ&dq=the+observing+eye&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfm6apyrrkAhWknOAKHZLECN8Q6AEwAnoECAAQAQ">The Observing Eye</a>,” <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo5519168.html">popularized scientific observation</a> as a practice available to all, teaching people to find wonder in the world about them – in “<a href="https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/ruskinlib/eSoV/texts/vol35/vol35p37.html">the sky, the leaves and pebbles</a>,” as Ruskin wrote.</p>
<p>Many contemporary artists have picked up the baton, showing how three very ordinary species from the natural world – dandelions, fireflies and lichens – can stimulate our imagination and make us think about climate change in new ways.</p>
<h2>The resilience of dandelions</h2>
<p>Few plants are more ubiquitous than the dandelion.</p>
<p>In the 19th century, its yellow flowers and decorative fluffy seed-heads often appeared in sentimental paintings of <a href="https://arthive.com/artists/64493%7EWilliam_John_Hennessy/works/345871%7EDandelion_clock">children gathering dandelions in meadows</a> or of <a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_qzgkdqzz0/VJnHy4lIB1I/AAAAAAAEFpY/a_mFmpUp-zg/s1600/Charles%2BEdward%2BPerugini%2BTutt%27Art%40-%2B(1).jpg">young women blowing on gossamer puff-balls</a>. They flourished in <a href="https://archive.org/details/athome00sowe/page/20">nursery rhyme illustrations</a> and on decorative <a href="http://www.demorgan.org.uk/gillow-0">tiles</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291641/original/file-20190909-109923-od9hii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dandelions dotted the landscapes of 19th-century children’s picture books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archive.org/details/athome00sowe/page/20">New York Public Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The flower was useful in the kitchen, too: Victorians ate it <a href="https://convivialsupper.com/2017/04/09/dandelion-salad-recipe-victorian-food-blog-1844/">in salads</a> and drank it <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/Taraxum_officinale.htm">in teas</a>. </p>
<p>But at some point in the 19th century, its status morphed. Dandelions became a weed. </p>
<p>As all gardeners know, they are persistent. Weedkillers like sodium arsenite were introduced in the late 19th century. After World War II, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/herbicide">powerful chemicals were developed for lawn maintenance</a>, doing far more damage <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/025534_Roundup_research_toxic.htm">to people and the environment</a> than dandelion roots. Gardening websites are still full of references to “<a href="https://medium.com/@thereejackson/the-war-on-dandelions-23b0a9457ce6">the war on dandelions</a>.” </p>
<p>Today, British artist <a href="https://www.edwardchell.com/soft-estate/">Edward Chell</a> wants us to think about the damage done to these exiled weeds. He picks dandelions and other wild flowers on Britain’s motorway verges – micro-habitats choking with pollutants that nonetheless sustain diverse vegetation.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291645/original/file-20190909-109957-shqu0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Chell’s ‘Dandelion Taraxacum officinale: Road Dust M4.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.edwardchell.com/prints/nggallery/page/1">Edward Chell, 2011. Road dust on 400gsm acid free watercolour/drawing paper 135 x 105 cm.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Using a silhouette drawing technique borrowed from the late 18th century, he draws the plant in outline and fills it with a mixture of ink and dust taken from the motorway. His images show the beautiful fragility of roadside weeds. But they’re also records of toxicity, made with the residue of the internal combustion engine: unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.edwardchell.com/prints/">The jagged edges of the dandelion</a> have a starring role in his series. But for Chell, the flower no longer symbolizes sentimentality and innocence, as it did in the Victorian era; instead, it’s mutated into a chilling commentary on roadside pollution.</p>
<h2>The magic of fireflies</h2>
<p>In a threatened world, nature exerts a nostalgic pull. For many Americans, thoughts of fireflies transport them to the long, warm summer evenings of childhood. </p>
<p>Fireflies enjoy a double life: By day, they are unremarkable, dull-brown insects; by night, they are captivating sparks that dance together. </p>
<p>Victorian writers and artists saw magic in these floating dots of light, comparing them to <a href="https://fireflyforestwatcher.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/meeting-1.jpg">fairies and goblins</a>. The firefly’s grip on the imagination was so strong that it inspired scientists to search for ways <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-fireflies-glow-and-what-signals-theyre-sending-118574">to explain the mysteries of bioluminescence</a>.</p>
<p>The magic of fireflies persists. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has constructed several firefly installations that were inspired by <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/atfj/atfj46.htm">a Japanese folktale about an old man in a field who was robbed on a pilgrimage</a>. In Japanese culture, fireflies stand for the soul: In the tale, thousands of fireflies attack the man’s assailants after his death.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.phxart.org/fireflies">The Phoenix Art Museum features one of Kusama’s installations</a>. Visitors can stand in a pitch-black room of mirror-lined walls, polished black granite floor and a black plexiglass ceiling, from which 250 LED lights hang and flicker like fireflies on a continuous two-and-a-half minute loop. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qX_uV3hKsuc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Infinity Mirror Room’ at the Phoenix Art Museum.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To stand here is to experience infinity. It recalls the extraordinary beauty, yet fragility, of our natural environment. </p>
<p>And then you might wonder: When did I last see fireflies? </p>
<p>Fireflies <a href="https://www.firefly.org/why-are-fireflies-disappearing.html">have become increasingly uncommon</a> – victims of habitat loss, pesticides and light pollution. Kusama’s project, involving so many dancing electric dots of light, may be understood as a deeply ironic one. </p>
<h2>The sagacity of lichen</h2>
<p>It’s not just artists who give significance to the small and overlooked. </p>
<p>Art historians can direct our attention to something we take for granted. </p>
<p>Mid-Victorian paintings are best known for their depictions of modern life, for dramatizing the personal side of historical events and for introducing us to stunning landscapes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291646/original/file-20190909-109935-up3ck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Everett Millais’ 1852 painting ‘A Huguenot on St Bartholomew’s Day Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Sir_John_Everett_Millais._A_Huguenot%2C_on_St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_Refusing_to_Shield_Himself_from_Danger_by_Wearing_the_Roman_Catholic_Badge..jpg">Manson and Woods, Ltd.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But I suggest viewers concentrate on the apparently insignificant in these works; examine and think about the lichen that clings to rocks, tree trunks and walls in paintings like Millais’ “<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_John_Everett_Millais._A_Huguenot,_on_St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_Refusing_to_Shield_Himself_from_Danger_by_Wearing_the_Roman_Catholic_Badge..jpg">A Huguenot</a>” or Brett’s “<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Brett_Val_d%27Aosta_1858.jpg">Val d'Aosta</a>.” </p>
<p>The very lichen that was painted in the mid-19th century likely contained traces of the substances that would destroy it.</p>
<p>For lichen is – as the Victorians came to realize – <a href="https://www.anbg.gov.au/lichen/ecology-polution.html">a bellwether for a polluted climate</a>. Too much pollution near a big industrial city, and it disappears from tree trunks and stones. </p>
<p>Because of its quiet beauty and its vulnerability to environmental change, lichen has become a powerful symbol for <a href="https://www.dianerogers.co.uk/flora-flowers-lichen">fabric artists</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Extra-Hidden-among-Wesleyan-Poetry/dp/0819578053">poets</a> and <a href="https://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK101810/moss-wall">installation artists</a>.</p>
<p>Yet lichen is the consummate survivor. It appears quickly <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a18126/tiny-lichens-internalize-nuclear-fallout/">after nuclear disaster</a> or on <a href="http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=5453">newly solidified lava</a>. What’s more, lichen possesses properties – collaboration, determination, endurance – that humans will need to survive climate change.</p>
<p>“We are all lichens now,” <a href="http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/">wrote eco-scholar Donna Haraway</a>, referring to the <a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/microbiology/chapter/lichens/">symbiosis and codependence</a> that characterizes lichen – and that increasingly will come to define the human experience. </p>
<p>Looking at 19th-century depictions of nature doesn’t just lead to a nostalgic lamentation of all that’s been lost.</p>
<p>Instead, it inspires us to try to grapple with the present – and spurs us to intervene in our future.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Flint does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Images of wildfires are powerful, but can make climate catastrophe seem like something spectacular and distant. So some artists are focusing on the plants and bugs in our immediate surroundings.
Kate Flint, Provost Professor of Art History and English, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.