Martin Fone's Blog, page 315

The Streets Of London – Part Forty Eight

Lamb’s Conduit Street, WC1

One of my favourite London boozers, the Lamb, is to be found on Lamb’s Conduit Street which runs between Guildford Street at the north end and Theobald’s Road at the south. The street owes its name to a piece of philanthropy by one William Lamb in 1577.

The maintenance of an abundant supply of water, whether fresh enough to drink by our exalted standards or not, was always a bit of a struggle for a burgeoning city like London. London had a plentiful supply of rivers – part of the reason why the city was built where it was in the first place – like the Walbrook, Tyburn and Fleet, most of which nowadays chart a subterranean course. The problem was getting the water from the rivers to the inhabitants.

To solve the problem a reservoir was built at the head of the spring of the Tyburn and water was then fed via a great conduit – construction started in 1245 – a gently sloping water pipe made of lead and wood, which ran towards Charing Cross, then along the Strand and Fleet Street before making its way to the southern part of the city. The pipes were pretty inefficient, around a quarter of the water would be lost to leaks and the pipes were run above ground so that they could be easily accessed for repair and maintenance. Wardens were appointed to prevent unlawful access to the water supply and to supervise repairs and upkeep and operated from conduit houses.

Bringing a quill into the home – obtaining a personal domestic supply of water from the conduit – was hard to come by and required special permission from the authorities. Normally, water would be carried from the conduit or an adjacent cistern in a pair of 3 gallon tubs, weighing around 60 lbs when full, conveyed to the premises by a professional water carrier or cob.

The temptation to tap into the conduits illegally must have been great for some and if caught, punishment was harsh and humiliating. In 1478 an individual convicted of diverting the supply of water was put on horseback with a conduit-shaped vessel on his head and made to ride to each of the conduit houses where he confessed to his crime to the amusement of the onlookers.

From the 15th century onwards other conduits were built and this is where William Lamb comes in. In 1577 he joined several springs to form a significant head of water which was fed by gravity down a lead pipe from what is now the eponymous street to Snow Hill, south of Smithfield Market where it joined the existing, albeit dilapidated, Snow Hill conduit. Lamb is also said to have provided 120 pails to the poor women of the locality.

The Great Fire consumed most of the conduits – they were after all a mix of wood and lead – including the one at Lamb’s Conduit which was rebuilt in 1667 from a design by Sir Christopher Wren and continued to operate until mechanised water supply companies replaced the conduit system in the early 19th century.

Hard as it is to believe, the area around Lamb’s Conduit Street was fields and herbs and cresses grew in abundance near the spring created by Lamb. They were used by local apothecaries. Today, the street is in the centre of the metropolis and as well as pubs, the Lamb and the Perseverance which used to be the Sun, there are a lot of independent shops jostling for the visitor’s attention. Unusually for a street in the middle of London, there is a funeral directors, A France & Son, which set up there in 1898, although the France family had been undertaking from Pall Mall since 1780.

Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: A France & Son, bringing a quill into the home, Lamb's Conduit Street, the great conduit of London, the Lamb and Perseverance pubs, William Lamb

Advice Of The Week (3)

Here’s a useful piece of advice I gleaned this week courtesy of Jan Fallingborg, a gastroenterologist at Aarhus University Hospital who has 33 years’ experience of constipation – you would have thought he would have got it treated by now.

Apparently, a third of Danes grunt when they are doing a number two – it may be a Viking thing. Far from aiding the speedy evacuation of your bowels, it has the opposite effect. It is all about pressure, you see. The pressure required to expel faeces decreases if we let air and sound out of our mouths.

Whilst there may be some psychological benefit in having a good grunt, it is counterproductive to speeding up the job in hand.

If we end up with silent cubicles, Jan will have made a major contribution. Glad to be able to pass this on.

Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Aarhus University Hospital, grunting does not aid passing of faeces, Jan Fallingborg, third of Danes grunt when having a poo

Pumpkin Of The Week

Regular readers will be painfully aware of my attempts this year to get my pumpkins to grow. Although by English standards we have experienced a prolonged period of good weather, the nights are getting colder and there is little sun and so I had to take the decision to give up. I did end up with one pumpkin but it is the size of an anorexic melon.

Naturally, I withdrew my entry to the annual autumn pumpkin festival which was held in Southampton last Saturday. A good job too as my pathetic pumpkin would have been put in the shade by that grown by Matthew Oliver at the RHS garden at Hyde Hall in Chelmsford. It smashed the UK record for the largest grown outdoors, weighing in at a whopping 1,333.8 lbs.

The seed from which this monster grew was taken from a pumpkin grown in Switzerland which weighed in at 2,323 lbs in 2014. Mind you, it cost £1,250 in an auction. A bit different from a £1 packet from Wilkinson’s. You get what you pays for, I suppose.

Filed under: News Tagged: autumn pumpkin festival in Southampton, growing pumpkins, Hyde Hall Chelmsford, Matthew Oliver, troubles growing pumpkins, UK record for pumpkin grown outdoors smashed

What Is The Origin Of (101)?…

Rub of the green

This phrase is often deployed to explain some piece of bad luck, often in the game of golf, where the player has managed to miss what seemed to the bystander a regulation put. The ball hit an unseen obstacle or took a diversion but, hey, that’s the rub of the green, they might say phlegmatically.

The key to our understanding the origin of this phrase lies in the word, rub. Rub, as a verb, appeared in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale with the meaning that we attribute to it today, smoothing, “He rubbed her upon her tender face”. In Middle English a rubstone was a synonym for a whetstone, presumably because its purpose was to smooth a surface.

But rub makes an appearance as a noun in the late 16th century in the gloriously titled The Paine of Pleasure published in 1580 and attributed to Anthony Munday. In describing the delights and tribulation of playing a game of bowls, the fourteenth pleasure, he wrote, “How some delight to see a round bowl run/ smoothly away, until he catch a rub:/ then hold thy bias, if that cast were won/ the game were up as sure then as a club”.  Rub is clearly being used as some kind of imperfection in the bowling green, an obstacle or impediment to a true lie.

Shortly afterwards, in 1586 to be precise, it made another appearance, this time in Hooker’s History of Ireland and its usage is metaphorical, “whereby appeareth how dangerous it is to be a rub, when a king is disposed to sweep an alley”. Perhaps the most famous usage of rub in a metaphorical sense is to be found in Shakepeare’s famous to be or not to be soliloquy in Hamlet. “To die – to sleep/ to sleep – perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!/ For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/ must give us pause”.

Interestingly, the expression ay, there’s the rub did not appear in the First Quarto of 1603, although some scholars view the text as unreliable, but it made an appearance in the Second Quarto (1604) and the First Folio (1624). Ay, though, was written as I and appeared in this format well into the 17th century, probably owing its origin to the use of the first person pronoun as a form of assent. Be that as it may, Shakespeare uses rub to mean an obstacle or a form of hindrance.

The long walk ruined, to echo Mark Twain’s glorious description of golf, is particularly prone to be subject to the lie of the land or the rub of the green. We find it used in a golfing context in 1812 in the rule book of the game issued by the Royal and Ancient club in St Andrews, “whatever happens to a Ball by accident must be reckoned a Rub of the green”. The phrase can be used to describe a piece of good fortune – a lucky in-off or a wayward shot being diverted back on course by an imperfection in the topography – as well as ill fortune.

In a sporting context, its origin is from the game of bowls, not golf. Nowadays we use the term in a general context as well as in a narrow sporting context, to explain an unexpected or unanticipated outcome.

So now we know!

Filed under: Culture, History, Sport Tagged: ay there's the rub, Hamlet, Mark Twain, origin of rub of the green, origin of there's the rub, rubstone, The Paine of Pleasure, what is a rub

Double Your Money – Part Nine

Alexander Fordyce

One of the reasons always cited for the Bostonians getting a bit uppity and for our losing the 13 colonies is the introduction of the Tea Act with its infamous levy on our national drink. If that is the case, then much of the opprobrium can be heaped upon the head of Alexander Fordyce, a stock jobber and partner in Neal, James, Fordyce and Neal.

Our Alexander was no stranger to the riches that can be untapped from a successful career in what we now know as the financial services. He made a mint having gained early intelligence on the signing of the preliminaries to the peace of Paris in 1763 and on the substantial increase in stock prices in the East India Company in 1764-5. He was wealthy enough to build a stately pile in leafy Surrey in Roehampton and an estate in Scotland, the land of his birth. He ran, unsuccessfully, for parliament for the borough of Colchester spending £14,000 on his campaign, only to lose by twenty-four votes.

But it was the East India Company that proved to be his undoing. He gambled astronomical sums on the expectation that the price of shares in the East India Company would take a tumble, something that didn’t happen. Rather like an eighteenth century Nick Leeson he chased his losses, using the funds of his depositors to cover his losses. But the end was inevitable.

On 9th June 1772 Fordyce returned home with a wild, deranged look in his eyes, shouting “I always told the wary ones and the wise ones, with heads of a chicken and claws of a corbie (Scottish for a crow) that I would be a man or a mouse: and this night, this very night the die is cast, and I am..am..a man. Bring champagne. And butler, Burgundy below! Let tonight live for ever. Alexander is a man”. The next day, hopefully, with a hangover, he scarpered to France to leave others to clear up the mess he had caused.

And it was quite a mess. The bank had to close and two days later three other London banking firms with Scottish connections collapsed. By the 21st June 22 significant banks and many smaller ones had stopped making payments, never to resume trading. The Bank of England was forced by the government to intervene and provide the London based banks with sufficient cash to survive the storm. But those banks north of the border were not so lucky.

The Scottish banks, especially those in Edinburgh, had been borrowing from the Ayr Bank aka Douglas, Heron & Co, one of the 22 to bite the dust, partly to fund the development of the New Town. The financial stability of Scotland was seriously undermined and many public amusements and theatrical performances were cancelled as the acting fraternity had invested heavily in Fordyce’s ventures. The architect, John Adams and his brothers, engaged in the development of the Adelphi Theatre in London, were so strapped for cash that they had to lay off 2,000 workers.

The contagion spread to Amsterdam where only the formation of a co-operative fund steadied the financial system. Ironically, the financial crisis so weakened the East India Company that they lobbied successfully the government to pass the Tea Act.

As for Fordyce, he returned to Blighty in September 1772 and with debts of around £100,000. But he was irrepressible, standing again for parliament for Colchester where he was once more unsuccessful. He died in 1789, his fall described in a sermon in 1775 as “the fall of a towering structure which overwhelms numbers with its ruin”.

Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Alexander Fordyce, Ayr Bank, corbie, East India Company, financial crash of 1772, Neal james Fordyce and Down, Tea Act 1773

Book Corner – October 2016 (1)

The Silk Roads – Peter Frankopan

Subtitled A New History Of The World, as if the world needs another one, Frankopan’s goal in this entertainingly and well-written book is to shift the focus of world history from the states bordering the Mediterranean sea to what he espouses to be the true middle of the earth, somewhat to the east, in Iran and those rather perplexing countries ending in –stan. For the pedant he has probably shifted the locus too far – in 1973 using a digital global map Andrew J Woods calculated it to be 39.00N, 34.00E, somewhere in modern Turkey. But never mind.

The Persian empire and Mesopotamia exploited their central position in the then known world by reaching out to the west and to the east, developing safe trading routes along which fabulous and exotic goods shuttled back and forth. The reach was astonishing. Some 2,000 or more years ago Carthaginian nobles were wearing Chinese silks, Provencal pots were used by wealthy Persians and Indian spices pepped up Roman and Afghan cuisine. Horses were traded from the Steppes. The silk roads, a term not invented until 1877, by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen, became a trading super-highway.

But they were a conduit for ideas just as much as for goods. The devastatingly effective military campaigns of Alexander the Great brought Greek culture as far as the Indus valley and persuaded the adherents of Buddha to give their god a human form for the first time, one heavily influenced by Hellenic sculptural forms and conventions. The most fascinating fact I picked up from the book was that the halo is a shared pictorial convention across the major religions, an astonishing example of the cross-fertilisation of ideas across philosophies which at first blush would be inimical to each other.

Frankopan argues, with some force, that the true centre of the Christian religious conversion was to be found in the East as it spread, particularly after Constantine’s conversion, with the Romans along the established trading routes. Islam travelled in the other direction. They were also a conduit for violence – the Mongols and Turks and in the other direction the Vikings who became Rus’, fervent slave traders whose victims were called Slavs. And perhaps its deadliest contribution was the spread of the Black Death which for the survivors at least prompted the growth of the middle class, slightly more equitable distribution of wealth and provided the conditions for the Renaissance to flourish.

The second half of the book is more of a struggle because however generous your world view, you cannot get away from the fact that the major game changers – the Industrial revolution, the Age of Enlightenment and the aggressive empire building from the 16th century onwards – were western in origin and filled the void vacated by the east. But the furies unleashed by the systematic meddlings of the British and Americans in the Middle East throughout the 20th century and the phenomenal riches generated by the minerals unlocked from beneath the earth of the –stans suggest that the focus once more is switching to the area that once was the cradle of civilization.

I wasn’t persuaded by Frankopan’s overall thesis but there were enough new insights and things to ponder on to sustain my interest in a book that runs to 646 pages. It is worth a read.

Filed under: Books, Culture, History Tagged: A New History of the World, Ferdinand von Richthofen, geographical centre of the world, Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads

Motivated By Curiosity And A Desire For The Truth – Part Twenty One

William Beaumont (1785 – 1853)

Ever wondered how the human digestive system works? For me, it is sufficient to know that if I put some food in my mouth, masticate it and swallow then somehow my stomach will extract what it needs from it and pass the rest out to be excreted. In the days before X-rays and scanners, the ability to satisfy this desire to know the inner workings of the digestive system was limited.

But for surgeon William Beaumont, now regarded as the father of gastric physiology, fate handed him on a plate a perfect opportunity to understand the workings of the human gut. On 6th June 1822 Alexis St Martin was accidentally shot in the stomach by a discharge from a shotgun and despite the ministrations of the good doctor, the fistula or hole to you and I would not heal completely. The unfortunate St Martin was deemed unfit to resume his previous duties and was employed by Beaumont as a handyman.

Sometime in August 1825 Beaumont began to conduct a series of bizarre experiments into digestion, using the stomach and unhealed fistula of his servant. He would tie a bit of food with some string and poke it through the gaping hole in his stomach and then after a few hours fish it back out to observe how well the morsel had been digested. The doctor also extracted a sample of gastric acid from St Martin’s stomach for analysis.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in September 1825 St Martin ran away, presumably without a piece of string attached to his stomach, fleeing to Canada. But skipping countries was not sufficient to enable St Martin to elude the strange attentions of Beaumont. The handyman was arrested and brought back to the doctor. Unconcerned by the elopement Beaumont continued to experiment on St Martin, this time concentrating on the gastric acid that he was able to extract from the unfortunate’s stomach. The doctor noticed that when he put food into the phial of gastric acid, it was digested.

This was a light bulb moment for Beaumont. He realised that digestion wasn’t mechanical, just the result of muscles in the stomach pounding, squeezing and mashing the food. Rather it was a chemical process in which the acids in our guts worked on the food to extract the nutrients and other forms of goodness the body required.

Revolutionary as this discovery was, Beaumont did not stop there. In early 1831 he carried out another set of experiments on St Martin’s stomach. These ranged from observations of the way the stomach digested food to the effects that temperature, exercise and emotions had on the digestive process. In 1833 Beaumont published his findings in the nattily entitled Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. It made his name.

Shortly afterwards Beaumont and St Martin parted company, the latter going back to his home in Quebec, reckoning this was far enough away from the mad scientist. Unbelievably, Beaumont made several attempts to lure him back but St Martin thought enough was enough.  Can’t blame him. You wonder why he subjected himself to Beaumont’s gruesome experiments. Perhaps he felt he owed the doctor a debt of gratitude for saving his life.

Beaumont died in 1853 from injuries sustained when he hit his head slipping on some icy steps whilst visiting a patient. St Martin outlived him by 27 years, having spent some time touring around the States in the company of a charlatan called Bunting as a sort of circus freak. When he died, his family left his body to decompose in the sun and buried it in an unmarked grave, eight feet deep with rocks in the casket, so that the curious would not exhume it.

The thirst for knowledge reveals some strange tales, to be sure.

Filed under: History, Science Tagged: Alexis St Martin, discovery that digestion is a chemical reaction, Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion, unusual experiments of William Beaumont, William Beaumont

On My Doorstep – Part Eleven

Cows, bombs and bombers

Most of us have been fortunate enough not to have to endure aerial bombing raids so can only imagine what one would have been like to experience at first hand. Some of our older relatives had tales to tell of bomb damage – my mother was bombed out twice, once when she was living in industrial Lancashire and once when she had been evacuated to the alleged safe haven that was Paignton in Devon – and of the sensations of fear and apprehension when the air raid sirens went off.

During the course of the war Frimley Green had to endure 344 air raid warnings, the first at 8.35 in the morning on 5th September 1939. Some were fairly short in duration whilst others would last between 10 and 12 hours. At the height of the bombing raids Frimley Green was subjected to warnings on thirty-one successive days.

On Halloween, 31st October 1943, two 500 lb bombs were dropped on the village at around 10.47 in the evening, one landing behind the shops and fire station at Wharf Road and the other behind Tipper’s garage. In all 123 houses were damaged by the blasts and over 500 windows shattered, although no one was killed or injured. The bomber then proceeded towards Camberley where it was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Struggling to control his plane the pilot turned back towards Frimley Green and crash landed in the grounds of Little Ingestre at the intersection of Wharf and St Catherine’s Road, land now occupied by care homes.

Two parachutes were found, one in some bushes and the other hanging in a tree. Apart from a wallet containing Dutch currency, some scraps of German uniform and two small fragments of flesh and bone, there was nothing left of the occupants. Of particular note was the identity of the plane. It was a Messerschmitt ME 410, the first one to be shot down in England.

On August 3rd 1940 the first bombs fell on Frimley Green, mainly targeting the Basingstoke canal and the common, although one falling at Cuffley’s Farm killed a cow. It was no fun being a cow in the area. Another cow was killed and two were so severely injured that they had to be put down when a 250 kilogram bomb was dropped at 15.05 on the afternoon of August 24th 1942 about 50 yards behind Grove Farm. It left a crater 24 feet wide and 6 feet deep which became a bit of a local attraction; as a fund raising exercise the enterprising Red Cross charged a fee to view it.

The doodlebug, the missile so called because it made a strange, intermittent buzzing noise but more ominously had a device that counted the revolutions of a tiny propeller in its nose and when it reached the number calculated to bring it over its target the engine cut out, also made frequent appearances in the area. Mostly, though, the residents heard the buzz and not the pre-detonation silence. The only one I can definitively find that landed in the area did so in the Grove, about 300 hundred yards from the Cottage Hospital in July 1944, leaving a crater and providing children with the opportunity to collect shrapnel from the cornfields, now occupied by the Grove Primary School. The force of the explosion brought down the ceiling plaster in the hospital.

Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Basingstoke Canal, bomber crash lands in Frimley Green, doodlebug hits the Grove, first ME 410 to be shot down in England, Frimley Green and air raids, Little Ingestre

Toilet Of The Week (7)

This week’s featured carsey is to be found in the Shiyan Lake Ecology Park in China’s Hunan Province. The newly opened toilets, I learned this week, offer spectacular views of the forest and the lake so that even when you have to answer your personal call of nature you can continue to enjoy the scenery.

Such convenience comes at a cost, though. The walls, ceiling and floor of the cubicles are made of glass and so you can be seen going about your business, although the area between the floor and just above the toilet seat is fitted with slightly frosted glass to preserve modesty.

I understand that since they were opened in time for the Chinese National Day’s holiday they have attracted lots of interest but few punters have been brave enough to use them, citing concerns about privacy. There’s always a spot behind the trees, I suppose.

Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: all glass loos opened in Chinese Nature Park, Hunan Province, Shiyan Lake Ecology Park

Rule Of The Week

The Great British public was shocked when an arcane rule was triggered last Sunday. No, I’m not talking about Theresa May’s announcement that Article 50 will be triggered by the end of March 2017 but something more important to the welfare of the nation, Strictly Come Dancing.

Anastacia reportedly tore some internal scars from her double mastectomy operation which meant that she was unable to take part in the elimination dance off with Kiss FM DJ, Melvin Odoom (me neither). Rather than giving the injured celeb the order of the boot, the Beeb revealed a house rule that said in such circumstances the participant with the lowest public vote would be shown the door.

So Melvin’s hopes of glitterball glory were o’doomed, the 11th male to exit in the first round in 14 series, and Anastacia lives to fight another day. Can’t think these shenanigans have helped her popularity ratings. An early exit is on the cards, methinks.

Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Anastacia, House rule allows injured star to progress in Strictly, Melvin Odoom, Strictly Come Dancing