The plague is a massive subject and impossible to deal with in one post, but two distinct and opposite images came to mind: Hannah Glasse's recipt for 'plague-water', a no-holds-barred treatment for the infected, and the curious case of Buckingham.  Hannah's receipt involves 24 roots, 16 flowers and 13 seeds and 2 types of berries, plus copious boiling and 'stilling' in an alembic.  This massive herbal overkill shows the desperation a carer might feel for a patient or family member with plague, willing to try anything and everything to save them (and there is no doubt that making up this receipt would have provided work for worried hands), and probably provided a sweet-smelling send off rather than a cure.  A shortened version, boiled in vinegar and poured onto handkerchiefs was supposedly a preventative. 

Buckingham is an altogether different matter, and at the other end of the care spectrum.  Buckingham was one of the collectors of the deceased, working the streets with his 'dead cart'.  During the Great Plague, as his cart clattered through the City he would cry, 'Faggots, faggots, five for sixpence, and take up a child by the leg'.  His behaviour was too much to be endured, and he was arrested, 'whipt' and sent to gaol by Lord Craven for offending public sensibilities.

These examples are extremes and by the time Hannah's receipt was published plague was dying out, if not gone.  There is now talk of genetic resistance amongst survivors (it is estimated just under a third of the infected survived) but no one really knows why.  From the red ring of the first plague swellings, to Hannah and her predecessors' sweet pocketfuls of posies, to the feverish symptoms, to the unknown outcome after 'we all fall down', plague and all such other 'summer-fevers' were a dreaded annual occurence.  Curious to think how diseases that were a deadly spectre on London's hot and airless streets are now little more than a jaunty (if slightly sinister) rhyme still sung by children in playgrounds, the meaning long forgotten.

In 1766 Henry Cavendish's new work on hydrogen led to scientists and madcaps all over Europe experimenting with balloon flight.  The concept of little hydrogen balloons for amusement or communication purposes wasn't new, but it took a series of adventurers to take man into their air.  The most famous of all of these are the Montgolfier brothers with their balloon which ascended in Paris in 1783 and flew over five miles (they weren't the pilots) and in the autumn of the following year, the ballooning bug would hit London.

Vincenzo, or Vincent Lunardi came to England as a diplomat, but was more interested in flying.  He was 22 and dashing and determined to gain Royal permission to 'demonstrate' a manned balloon flight with the help of his 'partner' George Biggin, which was to take place on the Artillery Ground near Moorfields in September 1784.  It is recorded that more than 200,000 people turned out to see this demonstration - an almost impossible number, but safe to say the open ground was packed, and included Royals, a healthy chunk of the nobility and apparently a quarter of London.  Lunardi, a great showman made everything very dramatic, and also packed his cat and dog into the basket with him for company before releasing the tethers, whereupon the balloon rose 'with slow and gradual majesty into the air' to the disappointment of 'the splenetic' suggesting Lunardi had his detractors.  'He appeared composed, and as the balloon went up, bowed most gracefully, and calmly waved his flag to the admiring and wonder-struck spectators'.  It is hard to imagine the impact this flight had upon those who saw it.  It was regarded as a 'novelty' to the 'untutored mind' and to 'the man of letters it was an occasion of the most rational delight - thus to see a new element subdued by the talents of man'.  It wasn't all glamour though: the cat got sick and was let out when the balloon touched down briefly in North London before Lunardi finally landed near Ware, to a very surprised reception.

Lunardi bonnets, fans and garters became all the rage and the charming Italian had quite a fan club.  One of his admirers was Letitia Ann Sage, and it appears the feeling was mutual for he offered her a trip in his next balloon attempt, in June 1785.  This one left from St George's Fields on the south side of the Thames, in a balloon painted with an enormous Union Jack.  George Biggin and a Colonel Hastings were supposed to joint the flight also, but the balloon was overweight and wouldn't take off.  Lunardi and Hastings gallantly stepped down and the balloon went up, leaving Miss Sage and Biggin to a fine lunch as they sailed North-West.  The balloon dropped into a field near Harrow, where Miss Sage and the Colonel were abused 'to a savage degree' by the farmer whose crops they crushed and they had to be rescued by a gang of boys from Harrow school who had come to see the balloon.

The balloon went on show in the Pantheon in Oxford Street, and aerostatic science became the wonder of the age. It is unlikely there will ever be another moment of human invention that will produce the sense of astonishment these first balloon ascents engendered in the watching population.  Even to those who would never grasp the new and constant scientific discoveries of the age these balloons were visible, exciting proof that the world was changing and almost anything was possible.

Attitudes to the strange or 'other' is a fascinating subject, particularly as it pertains to the English nation and our island identity.  Perhaps that is also what makes the diaries of tourists to England and especially London so fascinating; they record many of the things Londoners took for granted.

César de Saussure is one of the better known visitors to London during the 1725-30 period, when he visited the city and recorded his observations.  His letters are fascinating as he recorded the minutiae of London life, but one of the more unusual details is the tale of Peter the Wild Boy.  According to César, Peter was found by George Ist's huntsmen near Hamelin (the Pied Piper's sinister little town) in 1725.  He was estimated to be between fifteen and sixteen, and could 'not articulate a single word'.  His appearance was completely wild, with long, broken fingernails and he was apparently very hairy, which seems to be a theme with 'feral' children. 

George I ordered 'Peter' as he was named, returned to England as some sort of pet, with ideas of transforming him into the perfect human.  It was in London, in St James's Park, where César (who would watch thirteen men hanged without flinching) saw him soon afterwards and was moved to write about the boy, 'whose clothes seemed to hinder his movements', and who would not keep his hat upon his head, but continually threw it upon the ground. 

This is not the first summer London has experienced the effects of a distant volcano.  In April 1816, Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia erupted in one of the largest volcanic events of the past ten thousand years.  Clouds of gas, dust and ash were launched into the upper atmosphere and over the next eighteen months, spread out across the globe. 

The result was massive devastation across North America and Europe during the summer of 1816.  Freak snows, crop failure and bizarre heatwaves coupled with falling ash caused riots, fatalities and famine.  The West of England and Ireland experienced heavy rainfall throughout the summer, recording rain on 142 days out of 153.  The average temperature in London was just over 13 degrees C.  The city was subject to rioting by people who could not afford the food being sold at inflated prices.  Ships arrived in June with stories of sea-ice near the Faroes.  The Lake District had snow in July and in September, London's lakes froze. 

From tragedy, came some of the best-known art of the Romantic period.  The spectacular sunsets recorded by Turner at this time are not the work of his imagination: they are the work of the airborne ash.  Byron, in his alpine phase was inspired to write some of his darkest and most heroic poetry, and in deepest Switzerland during endless dark, frozen days and a state of national panic, a young woman named Mary Shelley began to write the story of a creature who could not understand the world around him: Frankenstein.

Before there was a police force, it is easy to imagine victims of crime or misfortune as without resources to redress the balance.  For serious fraud, murder and crimes against the body, there were the courts, but what if you were burgled, had your pocket picked, or were just a bit careless and had lost your engagement ring?  Then you needed a warning-carrier.

Warning-carriers operated as part of the Goldsmiths' Livery Company.  Livery Companies were essentially large, regulatory bodies for their own members.  They policed and protected every part of London's trade (salters, drapers, tanners, fishmongers, butchers and many more all have a company).  As such, some of them, like the Goldsmiths', became rich and grand, but their purpose remained the same: protection of their members' commercial activities.  Their effectiveness during the Georgian period is for another post, but in the context of the warning-carriers, they provided an intriguing and valuable service.

For a set fee (not cheap at a fraction over 11 shillings), Goldsmiths' Hall would print and distribute details of what you had lost and where, any pertinent facts, instructions on what to do should the goods be discovered and any reward offered.  These notices would then be distributed to beadles who visited every banker, goldsmith, jeweller, pawnbroker and 'toyman' (trinket shop) in London within three hours.  Three hours!  This was all done on foot, by goldsmiths who had fallen upon hard times and were employed as beadles.  The fliers were also pinned up at Goldsmiths' Hall where anyone who had found something could go along and see how they might claim a reward.  Most of the notices are for bank notes ('stop'd at bank' interestingly enough), and jewellery that has been either lost or stolen.  The amount of lost and really rather large diamonds sculling about London is astonishing.

Two very interesting conclusions can be drawn from these little fliers: they were effective, it couldn't be otherwise judging by the amount of warnings carried; the original owner of the goods nine out of ten times preferred to remain anonymous and brokered the retrieval of their goods through a banker or a coffee house.  The valuable sentence 'No questions ask'd' is included at the tail of almost every notice.

This is a tiny example of the thousands of mechanisms running through daily life in Georgian London.  There is often an assumption that it was a lawless or chaotic place before an organised police force, but examples such as the warning-carriers show that there were established protocols in place dealing with every aspect of life in the city.  Bearing in mind how long it can take to get a response to a burglary from the 21stC police, that a private body visited every likely outlet within three hours makes this system both remarkable, and admirable.

St James Garlickhythe, the Wren church standing forlornly by the Upper Thames Street dual-carriageway, is an odd church, and very plain from the outside.  Inside however, it is a beautiful building, full of light and mystery. 

One of the greatest mysteries of the church is its mummy, Jimmy Garlick.  Jimmy has lived all over the church at various points in his non-life; starting in the vaults beneath the church where he was discovered in a state of almost perfect preservation, then moving to a cupboard in the narthex, even behind the organ, where people paid 'a bob' to see him.  He is a small, wizened character, and for many years it was assumed that due to his size and whippety slender, he was an adolescent boy from the late 17thC. 

By the 1850s, Jimmy was an established attraction for both the local parishoners and people who came from other parts of London.  For a modest fee, gawkers were taken to his cupboard and could even touch Jimmy if they wanted.  There's a lot of Victorian chat about his eyelashes and side-whiskers and good teeth, but frankly, poor Jim is very naked, and a fine example of petrified manhood, which I'm sure was of at least passing interest to those who paid their fee to have a peep.  The woodworm evidence in his special parts is quite alarming.

How Jimmy came to be present in the church, as well as his identity, are unknown, but the modern and most likely theory is that he was a sailor who fell sick and died aboard a ship bound for the Thames pool.  He was embalmed or pickled on board and brought into the church upon the ship being landed at one of the nearby wharves.  After being interred, his preservation and the conditions beneath the church meant his corpse did not degrade. 

This arrival by sea also supported the claim that Jimmy was in fact Seagrave Chamberlain, the 16yr old son of a sugar planter, who died on his way from Barbados to London in 1675.  However, recent scientific investigations have proved that Jimmy was between 5'7" and 5'8" and weighed a little over ten stone, and that he was older than poor Seagrave, due to strong beard growth (as stubble).  He had both ears pierced in life, but nothing remains with the body.  A recent radiocarbon sampling of the body placed Jimmy's lifetime between 1641 and 1804. 

It is likely Jimmy's real name will never be discovered, but the church looks after him and it is rumoured that in turn, he looks after it.  During the Second World War, a shrouded man was seen walking through the church before air raids by various parishoners.  A fireman risked his life during a bombing to 'rescue' a pale-robed man who refused to quit the church, and then faded from sight before the fireman's eyes.

Jimmy now has a fine coffin and is hidden from sight inside the body of the church, his existence as a tourist attraction mercifully ended.  Hopefully, it will also end his ghostly ramblings too.  Another ghost of St James's church which cannot be put to rest despite more than one attempt, and has been seen flitting through the congregration for centuries is that of Dick Whittington's cat. 

St James Garlickhythe (literally because it sat upon the wharf or hythe where garlic came in from France) is a beautiful little Wren church, and I recommend it to anyone who may have passed it by before.  Open Thursdays.

   

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Some time ago I noted in a blog post about Bart's Hospital that the hospital's methods of obtaining bodies for anatomical study would bear further scrutiny, ideally as a PhD thesis (not by me, I hasten to add).  Last weekend, an article appeared in the Guardian regarding Don Shelton's latest paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, where he posits that surgeons William Hunter and William Smellie had women at their full-term of pregnancy murdered or 'burked' to provide bodies to further their obstetric studies.  He's right in that the numbers don't add up, and that it is rare for a woman to die at full-term but without having begun labour, which seems to be their favoured choice of subject.  However, whilst he has made a valuable study and some very salient points, I stall at his inference of murder.  If you care what I think (and why should you?), this is why I don't agree.

There is no argument that both Smellie and Hunter were unscrupulous when it came to acquiring subjects for study, or for Hunter's medical 'museum' of freakery.  Hunter in particular behaved appallingly over the corpses of various subjects he had his eye on, bribing family and friends to bring the body to him after the final illness, whatever the wishes of the person in question.  Most famously, he paid the friends of Irish giant Charles Byrne five hundred pounds to supply him with Byrne's body, despite the fact that Byrne hated Hunter and specifically requested that he be buried at sea to avoid the anatomist's knife <this is an error on my part - it was actually John Hunter, William's younger brother who did this>.  Being utterly ruthless and sanctioning murder are not the same.  At one point, Hunter noted against Smellie's study of twins in utero that Dr MacKenzie, Smellie's assistant had procured and dissected the body without Smellie's knowledge 'was the cause of a separation between them, as the leading steps to such discovery could not be kept secret'.  This indicated that the woman had been obtained by methods not sanctioned by Smellie and that he did not want to be associated with such methods.  Hunter and Smellie were rivals medically, and both were aware that the whole business of procuring subjects would not bear scrutiny in polite society, but it doesn't mean they were turning a blind eye to the possible murdering of pregnant women.

Shelton examines the mechanisms of burial and arrives, quite rightly, at the conclusion that most 'resurrected' bodies were obtained from the poorhouses, either pre or post burial.  He also asserts that people in a paupers' cemetery were placed in large pits and left uncovered until the pit was full.  Nowhere in any of my studies have I found this to be true.  Yes, destitute people were placed in communal graves in burial grounds throughout the city, but they were placed there with a bit of dignity and covered over with earth, even if others were later to be added to the grave.  They were also prayed over by the incumbent.  The pragmatism displayed by Georgian Londoners in the face of death and illness is not the same as being callous or unfeeling.

The rarity of death in women at full-term is a fact that cannot be argued with.  However, in this we are largely influenced by modern statistics and the success of modern obstetric medicine, but pre-eclampsia is a dangerous condition still common now, affecting up to ten percent of pregnancies.  Characterized by very high blood pressure, pain in the chest, damage to vital organs through raised blood protein levels, seizures and possible cerebral haemmorhages, there was no effective treatment for this condition in the 18thC.  Sufferers describe the attendant pains of pre-eclampsia as unbearable, and medicate accordingly which may have resulted in overdose.  If untreated, pre-eclampsia can prove fatal to both mother and child, and in Georgian London, would have meant many more mothers died when heavily pregnant, but without loss or damage to the body that would prevent an anatomist making a detailed study of the gravid uterus.

My last point is upon Shelton's light treatment of the 'resurrectionists'.  Obtaining corpses for anatomical study wasn't an obvious career choice, granted.  It would require a strong stomach, both morally and literally and a network of connections with like-minded individuals.  Nevertheless, it was a job, perhaps coupled with another part-time occupation, but one taken seriously by those who engaged in it.  They would know the poorhouses and those who supervised, they'd watch to see who came and went.  Scoliotic, palsied, deformed or otherwise 'freakish' subjects were all required, as well as pregnant women.  No doubt palms were heavily greased for word of a death.  I don't believe for a moment that resurrectionists simply disinterred corpses 'randomly'.  Most were probably never even buried.  Vultures may be abhorrent creatures, but they let nature do the killing.

From the study of Smellie and Hunter's extant works, it appears they obtained 32 full term corpses in 13 years.  I believe this number of women were available through natural death, but their bodies were obtained through fairly creepy and suspect supply chains, rather than murder.  The woman pregnant with twins was clearly too much for MacKenzie to resist, and I am sure there were indeed murders associated with the study of anatomy, but I disagree with the condemnation of Smellie and Hunter as serial-killers and the sensationalism is both unpleasant and inaccurate.  The inference that the men also worked on women rendered unconscious but still alive has no basis in fact whatsoever.<to further clarify this point: women were not 'anatomized' whilst still alive, although there are cases where C-sections were undertaken with little hope of the mother's survival.  This does not make the operating doctor a monster.>  Smellie and Hunter were at the top of the medical tree, doing valuable work.  Associated with them were a large number of 'worker bees', from the artist Jan van Rymsdyk, who produced the astonishing images in the gallery to the poorhouse supervisor who shuffled the bodies out of the back door, to the grave-digger who after dark disinterred a body he had only just covered over.  For my money, Rymsdyk is the scary one: he sat with these bodies for hours, studying them in minute detail and there is an adoring beauty to his renderings of these unfortunate women and their children: the sitting posture of the gravid woman, with her knees covered by a blanket, but her internal organs displayed by the neat flaying of the anatomist, and the baby curled snugly inside her, a stray wisp of its hair escaping the womb.  There is a liveliness and humanity to the drawings that eludes the photographer's lens in post-mortem photography.

It is too easy to look back at history and attribute cruelty and inhumanity to people who lived in a time when death was a closer companion than it is now.  As I hope this blog has shown, the 18thC is an interesting enough place to spend time even without sensationalism. 

         

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Burking_and_Body-Snatching_The.zip (1749 KB)

This post is the first in a short series on the history of homosexuality and transgender people in 18thC London to celebrate LGBT History month.  I like to think the blog constantly celebrates every individual who contributed to making London one of the greatest European cities of the 1700s but this is my small addition to an excellent cause.  

Today Roger Federer, the most successful male tennis player ever to grace an international court raised a solid silver trophy.  It's big, handsome and just a little bit ugly; it's the Warwick Vase.

Most sporting trophies started life as the nearest big lump of cheapish and suitably gaudy silver that came to hand, but the Warwick (as it's known) is a little different.  The 18th century saw the heyday of the Grand Tour, and the English enthusiasm for the antiquities of the ancient world.  Rome was a particular focus for the young men who travelled to the Continent and whilst there they met up with various people who both showed them the sights and acted as agents for procuring a little, or a large piece of history to take home with them.

 

One of these fixers was Gavin Hamilton.  Ostensibly an artist, he was a skilled negotiator and succeeded in getting some astonishing antiquities out of Italy during the late 18thC.  The marble Warwick Vase was found in marshy ground on the site of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli in 1771, and Hamilton rapidly secured permission to excavate it.  It was in a poor state of repair and mostly smashed, but it has the diameter of a modern paddling-pool and was exceptionally rare.  Hamilton got it out of the ground and with the help of the famed artist Piranesi and a large block of Carrera marble, reconstructed its original appearance (see the image in the gallery).

 

Sir William Hamilton, husband of Emma, was the buyer of the pieces and he had it repaired, with the replacement segments hewn from a block of Carrera marble.  William Hamilton was not only a collector, he was a speculator and he wanted to sell the vase when it was restored.  He hoped to raise some interest from the recently established British Museum but they could muster neither funds nor enthusiasm for the gigantic piece.  In the meantime, Piranesi published his famous book of Classical designs in 1778, securing the reputation of the vase.  Still no buyer was found, and Sir William deemed it too large to sit in any house he could ever afford.  He sent it to his nephew, George Greville, Earl of Warwick.  George was cash-rich, but wasn't going to set the intellectual or artistic world alight.  He initially placed the vase on the lawn in front of Warwick Castle, where the fashionable set visited to see it.  He then had a faux-Gothic greenhouse built to house it, and described it as 'Grecian'.  

 

The Warwick Vase would remain at the castle for the next two centuries.  It came to symbolize the Grand Tour, early civilization and sophistication, and sheer grandeur.  The symmetry of the vase, its proportions and detail appealed to the Regency taste, and the aristocracy clamoured for George to allow them to copy it.  He finally agreed and the Royal Goldsmiths and Jewellers Rundell and Bridge were commissioned to create solid silver versions in varying sizes, to be used as ice buckets and wine coolers.  Paul Storr, the finest ever English silversmith created the most exceptional versions in the second decade of the 19thC.  The Vase was made in cast-iron, stone and also marble, for homes and also for gardens.  There are cast-concrete versions available in posh garden centres instead of gnomes.

 

During the Victorian period, many different versions, sizes and proportions of the Vase were produced, but only the most faithful and accurate are highly valued today.  In 1978, after a disastrous century for the Warwicks, the castle was sold to The Tussauds Group and many of its works of art were sold off.  The Vase was not highly valued enough for a London museum to raise the funds to buy it.  This was probably a grave mistake.  They allowed it to be sold to the Met in New York, but then the government refused to grant it an export license.  It was resold and it is now housed in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.  

 

   

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Castration has been used as a punishment, for religious purposes, and also for musical purposes.  By the 18thC, men were castrated only as a punishment for sodomy (and not in England), or to keep their voices high and sweet (and only in Italy).  Italian castrati were popular throughout Europe for the extraordinary quality of their voices, usually ranging from soprano to contralto but able to sing very high notes without the forced quality of falsetto.