Martin Fone's Blog, page 251
August 27, 2018
The Streets Of London – Part Seventy Seven
Haymarket, SW1
Connecting Pall Mall at its south end with Coventry Street at the north is Haymarket, which today is synonymous with London’s theatre land. But for those who are interested in the development of the great metropolis, its origins shine a light on a very different and more bucolic spot.
Ralph Aggas’ Map of London, published in 1560, shows Haymarket in its present position but it was a lane with hedgerows either side and very little evidence of habitation save for the nearby village of Charing. Indeed, the air was so fresh and clean – can you imagine it? – that Aggas shows a washerwoman spreading out her washing on the grass of a field, roughly on the spot where Her Majesty’s Theatre now stands.
As for its name, it was the place where hay and straw were sold, a tradition that dates back to at least the mid 16th century. Markets were held three times a week.In 1692 the thoroughfare was paved and a toll system was introduced. Carts loaded with hay had to pay 3d while loads of straw cost 2d. The responsibility for collecting the tolls was contracted out for a period of 99 years at the beginning of the 18th century to one Derick Stork. The market was eventually moved in 1830 to Cumberland Market near Regent’s Park, by Act of Parliament.
Selling hay wasn’t the only business conducted on Haymarket. A token to the value of a halfpenny has been found, dating to 1666, issued by Nathanil Robins, described as a “seacole seller” located at “Hay Markett, in Piccadilla.” The area began to be gentrified and one building in particular was frequently visited by Charles II and the Duke of York. Its attraction? It had a tennis court at the back.
Edward Hatton, in his New View of London, published in 1708, described Haymarket as “a very spacious and public street, in length 340 yards, where is a great market for hay and straw” and a century later James Malcolm noted that it was “an excellent street, 1,020 feet in length, of considerable breadth, and remarkably dry, occasioned by the descent from Piccadilly.” Apart from the inconvenience caused by the traffic of carts, Malcolm thought it a “pleasant promenade.”
It was not quite so during the riots which followed the accession of William and Mary to the throne in 1688. The house occupied by the Duke of Florence’s ambassador was attacked and destroyed by a mob, described by Macaulay as “infuriated..who paraded the streets, almost unchecked, with oranges on top of their drawn swords and naked pikes.”
But during the 19th century the place went down hill fast. Old and New London, published in 1878, reported that “Haymarket is a great place for hotels, supper-houses, and foreign cafés; and it need hardly be added here, that so many of its taverns became the resort of the loosest characters, after the closing of the theatres, who turned night into day, and who were so constantly appearing before the sitting magistrates in consequence of drunken riots and street rows, that the Legislature interfered, and an Act of Parliament was passed, compelling the closing of such houses of refreshment at twelve o’clock.”
The Haymarket association with the theatre began in the 17th century. The first substantive theatre was built by John Vanburgh in 1705, the Queen’s, but its acoustics rendered it more suitable for operatic performances. After Queen Anne’s death in 1714 it was renamed the King’s where it remained until it was burnt down in 1790. A new King’s theatre was built on the site but it too burnt down. The present theatre, Her Majesty’s, stands on the same site and was opened in 1897. The Theatre Royal, was built in 1820 on the site of a former theatre built a century earlier.
Standing on the busy thoroughfare it is barely credible that it once was a quiet country lane.
August 26, 2018
It’s The Way I Tell ‘Em (31)
The best jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe 2018, apparently
“Working at the JobCentre has to be a tense job – knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the next day” – Adam Rowe
“I had a job drilling holes for water – it was well boring” – Leo Kearse
“I took out a loan to pay for an exorcism. If I don’t pay it back, I’m going to get repossessed” – Olaf Falafel
“In my last relationship, I hated being treated like a piece of meat. She was a vegan and refused to touch me” – Daniel Audritt
“What do colour blind people do when they are told to eat their greens?” – Flo and Joan
“I’ve got a new job collecting all the jumpers left in the park at the weekends, but it’s not easy. They keep moving the goalposts” – Darren Walsh
“Trump said he’d build a wall but he hasn’t even picked up a brick. He’s just another middle-aged man failing on a DIY project” – Justin Moorhouse
“I lost a friend after we had an argument about the Tardis. I thought it was a little thing, but it seemed much bigger once we got into it” – Adele Cliff
“Why are they calling it Brexit and not The Great British Break Off?” – Alex Edelman
“I think love is like central heating. You turn it on before guests arrive and pretend it’s like this all the time” – Laura Lexx
Sheep Of The Week
You’re not safe anywhere.
At first glance this seems to be a shaggy sheep story – ewe can never be too careful these days – but it is perfectly true.
A group of teenagers were walking on Slieve Bearnagh in Northern Ireland’s Mourne Mountains when a strange thing happened. One of their number was hit by a falling sheep which had attempted to jump between crags.
Emergency services were summoned – a team of 17, would you believe – and the youth was treated and patched up and then transferred to Ulster Hospital emergency’s department. Fortunately, he sustained no serious injuries and must have been a bit sheepish in recounting what happened.
The sheep, meanwhile, did what any self-respecting mountain sheep would do in the circumstances. It brushed itself off and walked away, none the worse for its ordeal. After all, it had had a soft landing!
August 25, 2018
Toilet Of The Week (16)
Four new facilities have recently popped up on the streets of Paris for the convenience of upstanding members of the city, residents and visitors alike.
The uritrottoirs are open-air urinals, painted red, fully exposed on street corners – rather like the British phone box of blessed memory – and are signed with a helpful illustration as to how to use them. The Parisians think of everything!
Advocates claim they are eco-friendly, with flower boxes on top of them and a straw layer which eliminates those stale odours. The waste will be dumped in parks and gardens.
The French seem to have a thing about pissoirs, just think of Clochemerle, and their introduction in areas popular with tourists has caused a bit of a stink. We will follow this with interest.
Meanwhile, in Blighty we seem to be going out of our way to encourage urination in the streets.
Public carseys are almost as rare as a sane commentator on Brexit. According to a recent survey, Councils have pulled the chain on around 13% of these worthy institutions since 2010 and Cornwall, that tourist magnet which the Chairman of Visit Cornwall has urged tourists to avoid, has stopped maintaining 94% of their facilities. The best place to go to ensure a visit to a public toilet that is open is the Highlands where there are 92 of them.
Interestingly, 233 councils and police force areas don’t have any by-laws prohibiting public urination and of the 180 that do, 112 don’t enforce them. The number of incidents that the police responded to has halved since 2010 and fewer than ten result in public order offences.
It makes you think. Vive la difference!
August 24, 2018
What Is The Origin Of (194)?…
Curmudgeon
Are all old men curmudgeons? I mentioned this word en passant last time out as the only example of a word in the English language ending in -mudgeon.
It is a wonderful word and is used today to describe someone who is gruff, grumpy, cantankerous, stubborn, set in their ways, and generally old. Curmudgeons, as is the modern way, even have their own day – 29th January which marks the birth of that self-confessed practitioner of the art of curmudgeonry, W C Fields.
But the commonly accepted usage of a curmudgeon is a fairly recent Americanism, I regret to say. On this side of the pond its primary sense was that of a miser rather than someone lacking in social graces. A churlish miser was described as “a clownish curmudgeon” in the late 16th century and the word was sufficiently well-known, in certain circles at least, for Philemon Holland in his translation of Livy’s history, published in 1600, to attempt a rather lame play on words. He described someone who hid or hoarded corn as a “cornmudgin.” Collapse of stout parties, indeed.
The Right Honourable Henry, Earl of Monmouth, found the time to translate I ragguagli di Parnaso by the Italian satirist, Trajano Boccalini, into English in 1656. In it we find the passage, “certain greedy curmuggions, who value not the leaving of a good name behind them to posterity.” Avarice is their principal character trait. By the time Samuel Johnson set about compiling his eccentric and entertaining Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, cantankerous was used to describe an “avaricious churlish fellow; a miser; a niggard; a churl; a griper.” Clearly in his mind the love of money was the foremost characteristic.
Johnson, though, can be a little unreliable when it comes to matter etymological. He took at face value a suggestion from an unnamed correspondent that the origin of the word was “a vitious manner of pronouncing cœur méchant,” another case of the English mangling a French phrase, perhaps. A coeur méchant was a bad or evil heart and vitious was an archaic spelling of vicious. Most etymologists these days think that Johnson was sorely misled but the entry did have one amusing consequence.
John Ash drew heavily upon Johnson’s work when he was compiling his own New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language, which saw the light of day in 1775. Ash followed Johnson’s etymological theory but made a hash of it by translating Coeur as unknown and méchant as correspondent, an error which cast doubt on the reliability of his lexicon.
Perhaps the good doctor should have sought advice from his mate, James Boswell, because there is a strong suspicion that the word, or at least its last two syllables, has a Scottish origin. In Lowland Scots we find murgeon which means to mock or to grumble and mudgeon which means to grimace. If there is anything to this theory, then the first syllable, cur, would be what the grammarians call a reinforcing prefix which strengthens and emphasises the word that it precedes. Ker in kerfuffle and ca in caboodle serve this purpose and it may be that cur is a variant of this prefix. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with a dog or a rogue.
So it could be that the original curmudgeon was a big mudgeon, someone who grumbled a lot whilst sitting on his pile of cash. It was only in the middle of the 20th century that the American sense of a curmudgeon, a cantankerous old so and so, supplanted the British meaning, which, alas, sank into obscurity.
August 23, 2018
Gin o’Clock – Part Forty Five
I’m not normally much of a share picker but I seem to have chosen a winner when a few years ago I invested some of my hard-earned cash in shares in a relatively unknown drinks company called fever-Tree. The ginaissance continues apace with gin sales doubling in the last six years, reaching a heady £1.2 billion in the year ending September 2017, and as we need something to put mix in it, it didn’t seem too much of a bet to invest in a company that produces premium mixers. By July of this year the market cap of Fever-Tree stood at around £4.5 billion. I’ve bailed out but I’ve made enough to fund a few more bottles of my favourite spirit.
I’ve always been a bit suspicious of all things organic. Does the reputed improvement in taste – it may be my taste buds but I’ve never noticed a significant difference – really justify all the effort and the additional cost? If you really want to enjoy the taste of a vegetable, then there is no substitute to growing your own.
Such is the battle amongst distillers to create a market differentiator for their product that it was only a question of time before an organic gin popped up. Never one to let my prejudices and scepticism get in the way of exploring the outer reaches of the ginaissance, I picked up a bottle of Juniper Green Trophy Organic and Wild Gin from the shelves of the Aladdin’s cave that is the Constantine Stores. It claims to be, and I have no reason to doubt it, the world’s first organic gin. The label bears the Prince of Wales’ coat of arms and states it is by appointment to Charlie boy but don’t let that put you off.
The base of the spirit is made from grain, organic naturally, and the botanicals used are all organic, juniper, coriander, angelica root and summer savory. The latter, used to add a bit of sweetness to the mix, is grown and hand-picked in Somerset whilst the juniper is certified as Fair Wild which means, apparently, that it is harvested in a sustainable manner. The label on the rear of the bottle also has vegan and organic Soil Association accreditations and states that it is suitable for coeliacs, vegetarians and vegans.
All good to know and very worthy but what does it taste like?
Well, surprisingly good. It is perfectly clear and at 43% ABV has a bit of a kick to it. What I particularly liked about it was that it was a simple gin, not overwhelmed by too many botanicals, and the taste when the glass stopper was removed from the bottle was overwhelmingly of juniper with hints of citrus and spice coming through. To the taste it was smooth with a hint of spice, pepper and citrus and left a wonderful spicey, juniper-laden after taste. Did I detect the added-vim of organically produced ingredients coming through? I’m not sure and whilst it was the classic style gin that I like, there are better ones on the market.
The bottle is slightly squat and the label has a green background with the lettering primarily in a gold bordered white. Again, it was not one that would stand out in the crowd. The gin is distilled in London, by the Thames Distillery, which the company claims to be the only gin distillery which both distils and bottles gin in the capital. Such are the margins required to create a differentiator.
Until the next time, cheers!
August 22, 2018
Book Corner – August 2018 (2)
Railways and the Raj – Christian Woolmar
One of the highlights of my visit this year to India was a trip on the railway. In comparison with the scenes that TV directors love to show – people hanging out of windows or perched precariously on the roof of a carriage – it was a pretty tame and mildly civilised experience. I was in awe at the sheer engineering feat of getting a train up and down steep terrain and the journey whetted my appetite to explore the network further, although I am not sure TOWT is quite as enthusiastic.
For the time being my exploration of India’s railway system will be confined to the pages of books like Woolmar’s fascinating study of the history of the system. It was Lord Dalhousie’s vision in the early 1850s to connect the major trading ports of India – Calcutta, Mumbai and Madras – by rail to facilitate the movement of goods to and fro, giving the economy a much-needed fillip and allowing an easier and swifter movement of troops, if the natives got uppity.
The first commercial railway line, just 26 miles of it, opened in 1853, connecting Mumbai with Thane, followed by a line linking Calcutta to the coal fields of Raniganj. As it was the Victorian era, the state did not finance the development of the railways. Rather it was left to private enterprise and British at that.
The development of the British railways had seen an outbreak of railway mania with many private investors anxious to clamber aboard the gravy train but very few saw any return, the majority losing everything or having to sell their shares at rock bottom prices. In order to stimulate a new appetite for railway shares, the Indian government offered a guaranteed dividend of 5%, any shortfall in operating profits being made up by the Indian taxpayers. This, of course, gave the operating companies no incentive to control costs but did produce a ready market of investors keen to work their capital.
Bizarrely, the Indian railway boom was seen as a way to stimulate British industry rather than develop a nascent Indian engineering industry. And so, all the essentials for a railway – track, meccano-like bridges, flat-pack waiting rooms and fully assembled locomotives were laboriously and expensively shipped from Blighty. The East India Railway Company had an extra-long wait for its first locomotive – a clerical error dispatched it to Australia rather than India!
Racism was endemic. As custodians of the company’s assets, drivers, guards and station masters were normally recruited from European or Indo-European stock at higher wages than would have had to be paid had Indians been employed. And most Indians travelled third-class in over-crowded, insanitary steel trucks, breeding grounds for disease. For nationalists, the railway was seen as imperialism on wheels and an obvious, and easy, target for insurgent action.
By 1902 24 private companies, four government agencies and five princely states administered the railways, a situation that could not continue. By the 1920s nationalisation by stealth crept in, producing the monolith that is now Indian Railways. Despite all its trials and tribulations, the railway system is alive and kicking, one of the few in the world to continue to expand its rail network and to steadfastly refuse to close unprofitable lines – no Beeching here.
It is an icon of modern India and Woolmar, in this fascinating history, does it proud.
August 21, 2018
A La Mode – Part Eight
The starched high detachable collar
Just to prove that women don’t have a monopoly on silly and potentially dangerous fashion accoutrements, let’s have a look at something that was a la mode in the latter half of the 19th century, the starched high detachable collar. As you might expect, the collar, usually made of cotton, was separate from the shirt to which it was attached by studs, usually made of brass. It was always white in colour and highly starched so that it had a hard, unforgiving feel about it.
It sort of made sense. The exposed parts of the shirt – the collar and cuffs – were the parts of the garment which attracted the grease and grime of everyday living. In the days when laundering garments was a performance, the body of the shirt could be worn for several days without being washed. All you had to do to maintain a pristine appearance, leaving aside body odour considerations, was to detach the collar and replace it. Simple.
The story goes that the detachable collar owes its origin to the resourcefulness of Hannah Montague. In 1820 her blacksmith husband, Orlando, complained that he didn’t have a clean white shirt to wear when he got home in the evening. Whether in a fit of pique or not, Hannah proceeded to snip off the collars from all of his shirts and sewed them back on whenever he needed to give the appearance of wearing a freshly laundered chemise.
It sounds a bit of a shaggy dog story to me but the scene of this domestic drama was Troy in New York and the community did become a major centre for the production of detachable collars, so much so that it is still known as Collar City today. Perhaps it helped to have a homely image to boost the sale and popularity of the collar. Alas, the last vestige of the industry, Cluett, Peabody & Company, moved out of Troy in 1989.
The problem with the collar was the winged tips. They were so pointed and hard from the amount of starch used that they looked positively lethal. And they were. In Germany they were known as Vatermörder or father killers.
A detachable collar was part of a well-dressed man’s dinner attire. From my experience there are two problems with attending formal dinners – the copious amounts of alcohol on offer and the interminable after dinner speeches. Either on their own are enough to make even the hardened diner feel the need to rest their eyes and therein lay the problem.
An injudicious desire to nod off could result in your neck resting against the points. If you were too firmly in the arms of Morpheus you ran the risk of cutting off the blood supply to the carotid artery. Another problem was that they were rather tight and so any swelling to the neck caused by indigestion could result in strangulation.
And there were fatalities.
In 1888 the New York Times, which seemed to have a thing about the excesses of fashion, ran an obituary of one John Creutzi with the headline; “choked by his collar.” The unfortunate Creuzi was found dead in a park. The coroner summarised his unfortunate demise; “the Coroner thought the man had been drinking, seated himself on a bench, and fell asleep. His head dropped over on his chest and then his stiff collar stopped the windpipe and checked the flow of blood through the already contracted veins, causing the death to ensue from asphyxia and apoplexy.” I hope it had been a good dinner.
Despite these unfortunate mishaps, the detachable collar is still worn today, perhaps under the mistaken impression that their erect line is a sign of virility. If you are tempted to put one on, just be careful!
August 20, 2018
Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns – Part Eight
The Beatrice church explosion, 1950
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored, well at least according to Evelyn Waugh. I always make an effort to arrive for an appointment in good time but sometimes even the best of plans can go awry. The consolation of tardiness, at least according to a friend of mine, naturally someone who was notoriously late for anything, is that you are only late when you arrive. Sometimes being late can be a blessing as this curious story shows.
On the evening of Wednesday 1st March 1950 at 7.25 an explosion ripped through the West Side Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska. The force of the blast was such that it could be heard in almost every corner of the town. The walls of the church were blown outwards, causing the heavy roof to crash down. Properties nearby had their windows blown out and the local radio station was forced off the air. Mercifully, nobody was injured.
But it so easily could have been a major tragedy.
You see, Wednesday evenings was when the fifteen strong choir assembled at the church for their choir practice. In fact, it always started at the oddly precise time of 7.20. As a rule, they would all start assembling around 7.15. Because they all had busy lives to lead, not all turned up for every session or some arrived slightly after the scheduled start. If you had to put a number, perhaps each chorister would be late once in about four times. But on this night, all of them were late and it was to their tardiness that they owed their lives. What are the odds of that happening?
As was his wont, the Reverend Walter Kempel went to the church in the afternoon to set things up for the choir. As it was a chilly day, he decided to light the boiler so the church would be nice and warm for the singers. It was thought that the blast was caused by a gas leak from a broken pipe which was then ignited by the fire in the boiler.
Having completed his preparations, Kempel went home for his dinner. At 7.10 when he was due to return to the church, this time with his wife and daughter, they noticed that their daughter’s dress was dirty. Their departure was delayed as Mrs Kempel had to run her iron over another dress for her daughter to wear.
And the other choristers were delayed by equally mundane occurrences. The diligent Ladona Vandergrift was puzzling over a tricky geometry problem and decided to forego her usual custom of arriving at the church early in order to finish off her homework. This delayed Royena Estes and her sister, Sadie. Their cars wouldn’t start and Ladona was due to pick them up.
Herbert Kipf stayed to finish off an important letter and Joyce Black decided to delay her departure as long as possible so she could enjoy the warmth of her hearth. Marilyn Paul, the pianist, nodded off and only woke up at 7.15, delaying her and her mother’s departure.
An engrossing radio programme which did not finish until 7.30 delayed Lucille Jones and Dorothy Wood, while Harvey Ahl got engrossed in conversation and lost track of time. And Mrs Schuster had to go to her mother’s house to help her get ready for a missionary meeting.
All mundane occurrences, for sure, but the cumulative effect was that no one was in the church when it blew up. Is there a God out there, after all?
August 19, 2018
Parrot Of The Week
Sometimes you just want to be left alone..
Jessie, a turquoise and yellow macaw, escaped from her owner’s house in Cuckoo Hall Lane in Edmonton, North London and spent the next three days on a neighbour’s roof, resisting all attempts to encourage her to come home. Eventually, fearing that the bird was injured, the combined forces of the local RSPCA and fire brigade were summoned to effect the rescue.
But Jessie wasn’t having any of it, resisting the blandishments of the fire crew with a volley of Anglo-Saxon expletives, according to Watch manager, Chris Swallow – you couldn’t make it up. Eventually the bird, clearly unharmed, upped sticks and flew back to her owner’s house via another roof and a tree.
It is the holiday season, after all!
