History Without the Boring Bits, page 19
1834
Fracas at Royal Academy Narrowly Avoided
While being guided around an exhibition at the Royal Academy by the president, King William IV stopped in front of a portrait of Admiral Napier—with whom he was furious for intervening on the liberal side in the civil war in Portugal—and exclaimed, “Captain Napier may be damned, sir. And you may be damned, sir, and if the Queen was not here, sir, I would kick you downstairs.”
1836
Madam’s Legacy Spurned
Theresa Berkeley left her not inconsiderable fortune to her brother, a missionary in Australia. However, when he learned that she had made her money as the proprietor of a brothel in Hallam Street, London, that specialized in flagellation, he declined to accept the legacy.
Spontaneous Generation by Means of Electricity
Andrew Crosse, an amateur scientist and member of Parliament, was surprised to find that out of some chemicals through which he had been passing an electrical current there had appeared first one, then several, then hundreds of insects, identified as belonging to the genus Acarus. Word got out, and a furor resulted. Some maintained that this was evidence of spontaneous generation, while others denounced Crosse for usurping the role of God in creating life. He even received death threats, and the local farmers in his native Somerset blamed him for the failure of the wheat harvest, going so far as to commission a priest to perform an exorcism. Crosse himself drew no conclusions, simply reporting what he had observed. He and others repeated the experiment, taking every measure to try to ensure that any insect eggs that might be present would be destroyed—but still the insects emerged. It is now thought that the “insects” were probably some kind of mite, whose eggs were resistant to decontamination.
1837
A Custard Without Eggs
Alfred Bird invented custard powder. As his wife was allergic to eggs, his powder did without them.
Spring-Heeled Jack
(Autumn) Sightings began in London and its environs of a creature soon dubbed “Spring-Heeled Jack.” Witnesses described a muscular man in a tight-fitting garb, with pointed nose, ears and chin, and glowing eyes. He was capable of great leaps and bounds, breathed blue flames, and had a habit of grabbing at the clothing of young women with steel-like claws. By January 1838 the lord mayor of London, although skeptical that any devil’s work was afoot, asked the police to investigate, suspecting one or more pranksters were at play (among the chief suspects was the hell-raising, misogynistic marquess of Waterford, who was known to jump upon passers-by for fun). Sightings continued through that year, then died away. Further clusters of sightings occurred in 1843, and again in the 1870s. In this latter period, Spring-Heeled Jack was transformed into a hero of popular fiction, in which he was portrayed as a nobleman cheated of his inheritance, who used his powers for good. A century later, on June 18, 1953, Spring-Heeled Jack was spotted up a tree in Houston, Texas. He had apparently leapt across the Atlantic.
The first sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack were reported in the autumn of 1837. He continued to elude the authorities for many years, and in due course became a hero of the “penny dreadfuls.”
1838
Leg Buried with Military Honors
At the siege of French-occupied Veracruz, the Mexican general Santa Anna lost a leg to cannon fire. The severed limb was buried with full military honors.
The Last Battle in England
(May 31) At Bossenden Wood in Kent there took place “the last battle in England.” On one side was a 30- or 40-strong group of agricultural workers protesting about their conditions, on the other armed soldiers sent by the government. The workers were led by John Thom, a former wine merchant from Truro who had adopted the name Sir William de Courtenay and who claimed to be the Messiah. Thom told his followers that he could kill 10,000 men by clapping his hands, and that if he was killed, he would rise on the third day. Prior to the battle, a warrant had been put out for Thom, following a complaint by a farmer that he had lured away his workers. Thom shot a constable sent to arrest him, prompting the intervention of the 45th Regiment of Foot. Thom shot an officer, Lieutenant Bennett, and was himself mown down, along with nine of his followers. The survivors were quickly rounded up and later sentenced to transportation or hard labor.
1839
Slaughter Forbidden in Streets of London
The Metropolitan Police Act made it illegal to slaughter cattle in the streets of London, unless the slaughtered animal had previously been run over by the slaughterer. The act also banned children from sliding on snow or ice, setting off fireworks or ringing doorbells “without lawful excuse.”
A Mathematical Prodigy
(July 3) A group of members of the Academy of Sciences in Paris met to examine a mathematical prodigy called Vito Mangiamele, the son of a Sicilian shepherd. The boy, who was about 11 years old, found the cube root of 3,796,416 in some 30 seconds. The tenth root of 282,475,249 took him a little longer—three minutes. Then his questioners put to him this: “What number has the following proportions, that if its cube is added to 5 times its square, and then 42 times the number, and the number 40 be subtracted from the result, the remainder is equal to 0?” As the questioner, a M. Arago, was repeating the question, young Vito interrupted him with the answer: 5.
1840
A Poem on Dentistry
Publication of Dentologia, a “poem on the diseases of teeth and their proper remedies” by the US dentist Solyman Brown.
Good Manners
An authority on etiquette offered the following advice: “Ladies may wipe their lips on the tablecloth, but not blow their noses on it.”
An Enthusiastic Couple
(February 10) Queen Victoria married Prince Albert. Victoria recorded of her wedding night: “We did not sleep much.”
Fanny’s Fervent Following
The Austrian ballerina Fanny Essler began her tour of the USA, where her sensual dancing, involving the exposure of much thigh, caused a sensation. On one occasion, so many senators went to see her dance that Congress lacked a quorum and had to abandon its session.
1841
Fish Fall from Sky
(June 30) During a thunderstorm in northern Germany many fish, including pike, perch and roach, fell from the sky, some of them still alive.
The First Package Holiday
(July 5) Thomas Cook, the travel agent, organized his first excursion: a day trip for temperance campaigners from Leicester to Loughborough.
1842
A Traffic Accident
A “gentleman” was fined five shillings in Glasgow after the vehicle he was driving, which “moved on wheels turned by the hand by means of a crank,” knocked down a girl while traveling at 13 kph (8 mph).
An Experiment on Public Credulity
(March 17) The newspapers carried a story about a prophecy from 1203 predicting that on this day London would be destroyed by an earthquake. It was reported that “a great number of timid persons left the metropolis,” until it was revealed the prophecy was the work of a hoaxer, who described it as “an experiment on public credulity.”
1843
Siamese Twins Marry
(April 13) Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, married two sisters, Sarah and Adelaide Yeates, of Wilkes County, North Carolina, where the twins had set up as planters, having originally been brought to America in 1829 by a Captain Coffin. The twins, who were conjoined at the chest and never separated, proceeded to father a total of 21 children.
An Elevated Organ
Charles Dickens began the serial publication of Martin Chuzzlewit, which in chapter 24 has the following:
She touched his organ, and from that bright epoch, even it, the old companion of his happiest hours, incapable as he had thought of elevation, began a new and deified existence.
1844
Industrious Fleas and Other Entertainments
(February 24) The following advertisement appeared in the Caledonian Mercury:
Now Exhibiting at No 63 Princes Street, Edinburgh
ALLART’s HAPPY FAMILY
consisting of upward of 100 ANIMALS, of an Opposite Nature, All Living and Feeding in One Apartment. The following are a few of the Collection, namely Rats, Cats, Ferret, Coatimundi, Squirrel, Hawks, Owls, Pigeons, Crows, Jackdaws, Magpies, Starlings, Blackbirds, Chickens, Monkeys, Hedgehog, Sea-Gull, Guinea Pigs, Goose, Parrots, &c, &c too numerous to mention. Most wonderful to see how they all agree in one large cage.
Also, the INDUSTRIOUS FLEAS will
Perform a Variety of Feats too numerous to mention.
This last is thought to be a reference to Signor Bertolotto’s Extraordinary Exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, one of the earliest known flea circuses. However, the history and true nature of flea circuses is shrouded in lore and legend, and whether there were actually any performing fleas in Signor Bertolotto’s entertainment, or whether it was all an illusion, is unknown.
1846
The Abode of Love
In Spaxton, Somerset, the Revd. Henry Prince, formerly of the Church of England and now convinced that he was the embodiment of the Holy Ghost, established an Agapemone (a Greek word meaning “abode of love”), coyly defined by Chambers English Dictionary as “a religious community of men and women whose ‘spiritual marriages’ were in some cases not strictly spiritual.” In the Abode of Love, or so one of many rumors had it, Prince would set his female followers on a revolving stage, and after the stage had been spun, whichever woman should come to rest where Prince stood would, for that week, serve as his wife. More certainly, on one occasion Prince forcibly deflowered 16-year-old Zoe Patterson in front of his entire congregation, to the accompaniment of organ music and the singing of hymns. When she became pregnant, Prince blamed the Devil.
1847
Invention of the Ring Doughnut
The ring doughnut was invented by accident, when a baker’s apprentice called Hanson Gregory pushed out the soggy, uncooked center of a conventional doughnut that he had just pulled out of the deep fryer.
1848
I Am the Emperor, and I Want Dumplings!
During the upheavals in Vienna, the feeble-minded emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, watching the revolutionaries march past the palace, supposedly asked, “Are they allowed to do that?” He abdicated shortly afterward. On an earlier occasion, when advised that he should not eat dumplings because his digestive system could not cope, he said, “Ich bin der Kaiser und will Knödel!” (“I am the emperor, and I want dumplings!”)
Widow McCormick’s Cabbage Patch
(July 29) The Irish contribution to the year of revolutions across Europe comprised a brief skirmish near Kilkenny between a hundred Young Ireland rebels and half that number of men from the Royal Irish Constabulary. The abortive revolt was forever after known by the piece of ground upon which it was fought—Widow McCormick’s Cabbage Patch.
An Experiment in Free Love
The utopian Oneida Community was established in New York state. The community practiced “complex marriage,” in effect free love, and the women on average had “interviews” with three different partners every week. To avoid unwanted pregnancies and the “waste” of seed, the men aimed to avoid ejaculation during coitus, which could last for up to an hour. Pubescent boys trained to achieve this degree of control by engaging in intercourse with women who had just passed the menopause. Those who wished to bear children had to appear before a committee, which would determine their spiritual and moral fitness for breeding. All children were raised communally. The community’s founder, John Humphrey Noyes, was obliged to flee to Canada in 1879 when he was warned that he was about to be charged with statutory rape. He wrote to advise his followers to abandon complex marriage, and within a year many community members had contracted conventional marriages.
1849
Violent Objections to Macready’s Macbeth
At the Astor Opera House, New York, where the English actor William Charles Macready was appearing as Macbeth, a claque sponsored by Edwin Forrest, his American rival, began to pelt him on stage. The disturbance developed into a riot involving a mob of some 20,000 people. Eventually the militia were called in, resulting in 23 deaths.
A Hyperpolyglot
(March 15) Death of Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, keeper of the Vatican Library and, due to his prodigious memory, undoubtedly the greatest linguist of his age. As pilgrims came to Rome from all over the world, his services were often required as confessor, and if he found he did not know the language of those whose confession he took, he set about learning it. It was said that at the time of his death he was fluent in 38 languages (and their various dialects), and proficient in many more—not only those from Europe, but also many from Africa and Asia. The story is told how, when asked what his next project was, he answered, “To teach the Californians their own language.” When asked how he had learned Californian, he replied, “They taught me, but had no grammar. I have now created a grammar, and am going to teach them how to read and write it.”
1850
Rum Ration Slashed
The Royal Navy reduced its daily rum allowance from one-quarter to one-eighth of a pint.
1851
Sparrows, the Lower Orders, and Nasty Foreigners Talking All Kinds of Gibberish
The new Crystal Palace, home to the Great Exhibition, was infested with sparrows, which were defecating everywhere. To shoot them was impractical, because of all the glass. Distraught, Queen Victoria consulted the duke of Wellington. He tersely delivered his solution: “Sparrowhawks, ma’am.” Wellington was more worried that the exhibition would provide an occasion for the lower orders to riot, estimating that 15,000 troops would be required to restore order. Other politicians, such as Colonel Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp, MP for Lincoln, were more concerned that the exhibition would attract “nasty foreigners who live on brown bread and sauerkraut,” and, what is more, “talking all kinds of gibberish.”
The First Bloomers
(July 3) Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, the American feminist and temperance campaigner, shocked her contemporaries by appearing at a ball in the town of Lowell, Massachusetts, in a dress only extending down to midcalf. Modesty, in her eyes, was preserved by clothing the legs that would otherwise have been exposed in baggy pants gathered in at the ankle—a garment forever after known as “bloomers.” Mrs. Bloomer’s sartorial innovation was for a short time adopted in certain quarters, but in general met with derision. Writing a decade later, Robert Chambers observed, “As by a sort of reaction, the monstrosity of cumbrous skirts has since, in all countries, become more monstrous, until men are beginning to ask what over-proportion of the geographical area the ladies mean to occupy.”
Life Imitates Art
(October) Shortly after the publication in London of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, news came from the Pacific that the ship Ann Alexander had sunk after being rammed by a whale.
Provisions for an Alpine Ascent
Murray’s guidebook to the Alps averred, regarding those who had climbed Mont Blanc, “It is a somewhat remarkable fact that a large proportion of those who have made this ascent have been persons of unsound mind.” That same year the showman Albert Smith climbed the mountain with three Oxford undergraduates, each man being accompanied, as local regulations dictated, by four guides. Such a large party required the services of some 20 porters to carry the provisions, comprising:
60 bottles of vin ordinaire
6 packets of sugar
6 bottles of Bordeaux
4 packets of prunes
10 bottles of St. George
4 packets of raisins
15 bottles of St. Jean
2 packets of salt
3 bottles of Cognac
4 wax candles
1 bottle of syrup of raspberries
6 lemons
6 bottles of lemonade
4 legs of mutton
2 bottles of champagne
6 pieces of veal
20 loaves
1 piece of beef
10 small cheese
11 large fowls
6 packets of chocolate
35 small fowls
In contrast, when Professor John Tyndall, who suffered from chronic indigestion and insomnia, made the first ascent of another Alpine giant, the Weisshorn, in August 1861, he survived on a diet of 12 meat lozenges, and undertook the climb after 48 hours without sleep.
1852
Ophelia Catches Cold
Elizabeth Siddal, John Everett Millais’s model for his painting Ophelia, caught a bad chill while posing for him lying in a bath (Ophelia is depicted having drowned herself in a flower-strewn stream). Her father threatened to sue the artist until he agreed to pay her medical expenses.
Strange Discoveries in Virginia and Massachusetts
(June 5) The Scientific American (Volume 7, issue 38) reported a story in the Fairmont (Va.) True Virginian that a landslip had revealed a stretch of Macadamized (i.e. paved) road some 16 feet wide where no such road had hitherto been recorded. “When and by what race of people this road was made,” mused the True Virginian, “is unknown at the present day, but it gives evidence of the existence of a population here at some former age of the world, as far advanced in civilization, or at least in the art of road making, as ourselves.” The more skeptical Scientific American observed, “We have oftentimes seen round stones embedded in what is called ‘hard pan’ stratum, and so thick that they looked like an old Macadamized road; but they were merely hard worn water courses of the olden time, never made by mortal hands.” In the same issue, the magazine carried a report from the Boston Transcript that during blasting of puddingstone some 15 feet below the surface of Dorchester, Massachusetts, there was blown out of the ground “a curious and unknown vessel” made of some kind of metal, carrying floral decorations inlaid with silver. Those prone to credit stories of Atlantis have pointed out that the “Dorchester pot” (which has subsequently disappeared) is surely another OOPArt (out-of-place artifact) proving the existence of lost civilizations of unimaginable technological advancement. Alternatively, creationists use such tales to “prove” that the Earth is as young as is suggested in the Bible. The Scientific American suggested that the Dorchester pot was “perhaps made by Tubal Cain, the first inhabitant of Dorchester” (an ironic reference to the first metalworker, Genesis 4:22).
