The Fires of October 1871

Chicago Fire 1871

Loretta reports:

Nearly every major city in the world has endured a catastrophic fire. Some happen during wartime, sometimes it's arson, but in the majority of cases, an act of nature or an accident sets things off.

Two of the most well-known U.S. fires are those in Chicago (1871) and San Francisco (1906), the latter resulting from earthquake damage. The former supposedly started when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over an oil lamp in the barn, but that’s only one of several versions of what happened.

An article in the Library of Congress’s Today in History (please scroll down) taught me something I didn’t know: On the same day as the Chicago blaze, large parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, including several cities, burnt to the ground. The fires left at least 1,200 people—possibly twice that number—dead. The summer and early autumn had been unusually dry and October was unusually warm. Fierce winds spread the fires far and quickly. In other words, the Midwest was a tinderbox in October 1871.

Chicago after the Fire

Chicago, like London at the time of the Great Fire a couple of centuries earlier, was built mostly of wood. So were other cities. Regulating Mother Nature is a challenge, but given London's experience, you’d suppose cities would take precautions, establishing building codes to reduce risk, as London did back in the 1600s. But usually what happens is that only a catastrophe brings about change, and cities had to work it out for themselves. From what I can ascertain, they usually did so, establishing building codes and other regulations as well as strengthening their firefighting organizations.

For some perspective on how much of the world has burned down over the centuries, you might want to take a look at Wikipedia’s List of Town and City Fires. It provides some fascinating information and food for thought.

Images: The Great Fire at Chicago Oct. 9th 1871. View from the West Side; Chicago after the Fire, courtesyLibrary of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540


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Ladies' Facilities in the 1700s to 1900s

Loretta reports:

In the course of trying to get a bit more information about this Victorian era public urinal, at the Museum of London, I wound up in a dead end. All I know about it is more or less what I’d learned about the public facilities in Paris.

However, I did discover more about how and where ladies answered Nature’s call during the 18th and 19th centuries. The short answer: It wasn't easy.

These days, we are frustrated by the long lines outside ladies’ lavatories: Why don’t they install more stalls? But at least we can find rather nice facilities. In London, for instance, I found such interesting and elegant ones that I started photographing them.

In the time of my stories, ladies’ public facilities were not so elegant, to the extent that they existed at all.

According to the Museum of London’s feature on Vauxhall Gardens:

“Respectable’ women, in particular, were suddenly in a situation where access to a discreet and reasonably hygienic toilet facility could not be taken for granted. In Vauxhall, a communal women’s privy appears to have existed, and was illustrated in a satirical print by the artist Thomas Rowlandson, although this may be an exaggerated representation – Rowlandson was known for his scatological and titillating images of women. Still, many women – and men – must have taken advantage of the garden’s dark corners and convenient plants.”

The Inside of Lady's Garden at Vauxhall (1788)

Susan has discussed this Rowlandson illustration in detail here. You can read the full Museum of London article here.

It's rather shocking to discover that it wasn’t until the 1920s that busineses began providing accommodations for women . This was also, I notice, about the time that women got the vote.

Rowlandson, Sympathy, or A Family On A Journey Laying The Dust (1784),

Images: Victorian urinal at Museum of London photograph by me; Rowlandson, The Inside of Lady's Garden at Vauxhall (1788), courtesy Yale University Library; Thomas Rowlandson, Sympathy, or A Family On A Journey Laying The Dust (1784), courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Newgate Prison and the Old Old Bailey

Loretta reports:

In June 2017, I sat in two different visitors’ galleries, in two different courtrooms of the Old Bailey,  the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, and watched the proceedings. This is not the same Old Bailey I wrote about in Dukes Prefer Blondes, though I noticed similarities in the way the courtroom was laid out, which will be useful the next time I bring criminals into my fiction.

Part of the present building stands where Newgate Prison once did, on the street named Old Bailey. Not many traces of the old building remain. There's a door in the Museum of London, and other bits in the U.S. Since the previous building wasn’t demolished until 1902, though, quite a few photographs are available, along with the Regency-era images by George Shepherd, Thomas Rowlandson, and the like. It took a bit of puzzling to determine from pictures, descriptions, and maps, which was the prison and which was the courtroom, but that might just be my brain malfunction. If you’re looking at an old map, the latter appears as “Session House,” and it ought to be perfectly clear to normal people.

I knew a gloomy walkway connected them. I’d read descriptions, which helped me visualize scenes in the book. But at the time I was writing the story, I couldn’t find images of this passageway. Recently, though, my trusty tome, The Queen’s London, provided the image you see below.

In case one doesn't already feel sufficiently low-spirited at the prospect of being hanged, the passageway will do the trick. It’s the English version of the Bridge of Sighs—that last walk from freedom, possibly from life. Please do read the cheery description under the photo.

You can read the description that accompanies the Ackermann plate (above left) here. Note that this image was done from the other end of Old Bailey, with the Sessions House in front.

Black & white photographs are from my copy of The Queen's London.



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Friday Video: The Last of the Dukes

1st Duke of Wellington-married

Loretta reports:

In Romancelandia, we create gorgeous young dukes by the thousands. In real life, as I and others have noted, there were fewer than two dozen, more or less, depending on the time period. And of those few, as I discuss here at RT Reviews, the number who were young, handsome, and single was very small, depending on the year. In the time of my recent stories (1833 & 1835), there were two single dukes, and it was clear they would never marry. Also, they were not young.

6th Duke of Devonshire-lifelong bachelor

The video—thank you, Susan, for sending me the link & letting me do the honors!—is an hour long, but it’s very well done, and if you can set aside some time, I think you’ll find it fascinating.

No doubt it will raise a great many reactions and questions. A few things I try to remember about the British aristocracy: (1) Even though we have vast economic inequality in the U.S., it’s hard for us Yanks to truly understand that class system and the way people in the UK feel about it; certainly the feelings, positive and negative and in between, exist at a depth I don’t think we can ever fully grasp. (2) Working conditions for the staff were generally hard—in some cases horrifically so—but that was the case for many working people (there and elsewhere), and those grand houses and estates employed and supported a lot of people; also, the conspicuous spending provided work to tradespeople. (3) As in every other walk of life, you have lovely people and you have the other kind.

Those are just a few comments on a big topic. I have a great many more, but I’ll leave it to you to form your own opinions, make your own observations, and so on. For starters, it will be interesting, though, to find out who’s your favorite and least favorite!

Video: The Last Dukes (British Aristocracy Documentary) - Real Stories

Images: Thomas Lawrence, 1st Duke of Wellington, c. 1815-16

Thomas Lawrence, 6th Duke of Devonshire (you can read more about him here)


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Friday Video: A Moving Panorama of the Mississippi Valley

Loretta reports:

Many of the 1830s magazines I peruse include reviews of recently installed panoramas (please scroll down for the review about Niagara Falls). The moving panorama is also a large painting, but where the panorama requires the viewer to move around a room, the moving panorama is an early "moving picture." Using spools, it scrolls across a stage, creating the illusion of traveling along a scenic route.

Before photography and movies, both the still and the moving paintings offered Londoners as well as Americans views of distant locales. Since the Londoners seem to have been especially curious about the U.S. and its wildernesses, I’m sure they would have enjoyed John J. Egan’s “Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley”—all 348 feet of it, and a very rare survivor.


Video: John J. Egan's "Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley"

Credits Animation: Paul Caro Photography: Saint Louis Art Museum © 2015 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image is a still from the video.
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The Geffrye Museum of the Home

Ornamental glass lustres c. 1880

Caughley Tea Service c. 1780

Loretta reports:

Instead of the usual Friday video, I’m offering a tour of the Geffrye Museum of the Home, which my husband and I visited during our time in London. The draw for me was the series of period rooms.

As Susan and I have often lamented, it’s much easier to find paintings and prints of exteriors than interiors. The Geffrye offers a chance to view some interiors and, especially, to notice the way home life changed over time. These aren’t the homes of aristocrats, but, with the exception of the almshouses, of well-off families of the professional classes.

With the museum closed for development until 2020, I invite you to check out the panoramas and the virtual tour offered on the website—which I supplement with these photographs from our visit.

Photographs by Walter M. Henritze
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A Duke's Household

Morris, Woburn Abbey 1866

Loretta reports:

In A Duke in Shining Armor, my heroine says, “It’s good to be a duke.”

Though dukes, by and large, are nothing like as numerous or as attractive as we paint them in romance novels (as I describe at RT Book Reviews), and any number have fallen on hard times in the past and present, things were not so bad for the 11th Duke of Bedford.

Reading Lucy Lethbridge’s Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times, I came upon this:

“At Woburn Abbey, the eleventh Duke of Bedford maintained until his death in 1940 not only a household of at least sixty indoor servants to attend solely to his wife and himself, but two separate, fully staffed residences in Belgrave Square, including four cars and eight chauffeurs; the Woburn parlourmaids were all Amazonian at over five foot ten, as had always been the Bedfords’ stipulation.”

According to the 13th Duke, (who sounds like a pip, and whose books I intend to read):

“‘Guests never travelled with your suitcase, that was not considered the thing to do. It had to come in another car, so you had a chauffeur and a footman with yourself, and a chauffeur and a footman with the suitcase, with another four to meet you. Eight people involved in moving one person from London to Woburn.’”

11th Duke of Bedford in Coronation Robes

While other noble families changed or economized as the times demanded, the Bedfords continued in the lavish late Victorian/Edwardian style until 1940. “The [11th] Duke always started meals with his own cup of beef consommé and a plate of raw vegetables served to him on a three-tiered dumb-waiter. The Duchess’s secretary-companion had her own quarters that included a cook and a maid.” The duke’s mistress had her own rooms with her own staff—on the premises, I assume?

Apparently, the 11th Duke of Bedford is also responsible for the grey squirrel invasion of England.

Images: Woburn Abbey, from Francis Orpen Morris, The County Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland 1866; 11th Duke of  Beford in Coronation Robes, Photo credit: Middlesex Guildhall Art Collection.

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Friday Video: Knole House, Kent

Loretta reports:

Rather a long time ago, at the end of the England trip that led to my writing Lord of Scoundrels, my husband and a friend and I visited Knole. By this time, we’d explored a number of stately homes, but Knole was an entirely new experience. This wasn’t simply because the early Jacobean structure was older than many of the homes we’d visited, but because so much of the centuries-old stuff inside wasn't renovated or restored, but the original stuff, fading and tattered. While conservation work is ongoing, and a great deal has been done since we visited, it’s still possible to see some these furnishings, and they do give the place a different atmosphere from that of other great houses. Then, too, there’s the sheer size of the place. I'm pretty sure the impression it made led to my fascination with Jacobean mansions, and having my characters live or get married in them.

Video:  Knole - Five centuries of showing off

The video is one from  Knole's YouTube channel where, among other things, you can watch conservation in process.

Image: Knole House, from Francis Orpen Morris, A Series of Picturesque Views of Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland: With Descriptive and Historical Letterpress, Volume 6 (1880)

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Rediscovering an American Community of Color in Worcester

Martha (Patsy) Perkins, 1901

Loretta reports:

A little over a hundred years ago, a white photographer took hundreds of pictures of people in central Massachusetts. Among these were more than 230 portraits of people of color who lived within easy walking distance of my home. I had no idea this community existed until I went to see Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard at the Worcester Art Museum.

There are several amazing things about this exhibition. First, the glass negatives survived for over a century and ended in the hands of a collector who was also a devoted Worcester historian.* Second, the photographer’s logbook also survived, and stayed with the photographs. Third, thanks to his granddaughter’s making the connection between tiny numbers on the negatives and the logbook, it became possible to identify the people in the photographs. Thus, the Clark University students who researched the photographs were able to contact many of their subjects’ descendants. Also, during my third visit to the exhibition (yes, it’s that good, that moving), I got to meet one of those descendants.

The Beaver Brook neighborhood became a new home when the Ku Klux Klan and white backlash, combined with a national depression and the end of Reconstruction, destroyed the lives that former slaves had been making for themselves in the South. They came north, and some came to Worcester, “a city with a deep abolitionist tradition and influential white residents sympathetic to their plight.”**

Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1904

Since it’s impossible to do the show justice in a blog post, I offer links.

The Worcester Art Museum page on the Bullard exhibition includes several reviews well worth reading as well as a short YouTube video.

This exhibition runs until 25 February—only a few more weeks. However, thanks to Clark University’s collaboration with the museum, we can see many of the images at the website, Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard, 1897-1917.

There you’ll find not only a gallery of the photos, but also a page about the collection and the photographer, a map of the neighborhood in 1911, essays connected to the images, and a chance to add information and/or comment on individual photos.

I also highly recommend the beautiful exhibition catalog.

*Frank J. Morrill, a retired history teacher and collector, and definitely and delightfully a Nerdy History Person.
**quote from exhibition catalog.

Images: William Bullard, Martha (Patsy) Perkins, 1901  and Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1904, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and Worcester Art Museum.

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The Green Man Inn, Putney Heath

Loretta reports,

The Green Man Inn at the northern end of Putney Heath features in a crucial scene of A Duke in Shining Armor. Like many of the places I use in my books, it did exist. Like not quite so many, it still exists, and so of course I was thrilled to actually pay a visit there during my stay in London last summer.

Many of the old travel books online emphasize the inn’s importance as a resort of highwaymen. However, I’ve focused on its use as a place for bolstering one’s courage before a duel and—for the survivors, a place to calm the nerves with a brandy and soda (as is recommended by my favorite book on dueling, The Art of Dueling).

Duels took place nearby in Putney Heath at dawn or (less usually) dusk. Duelists chose out-of-the way places, like Putney Heath or Battersea Fields because they were reasonably close to London, yet far enough away to reduce chances of the authorities blundering in and spoiling the fun of men trying to kill each other. Duels, though they remained a popular way for gentlemen to settle disputes, were against the law.

Doubtless the landscape has changed over the last century and a half—fewer trees then, for instance, in many places than there are today. Still, given the heath’s reputation as a favorite spot for highwaymen, I suspected it was as easy to find a suitable place, not far from the road yet not visible from it, as it was during our visit. A short walk took us to what looked like an ideal spot: A good sized clearing where the ground was level, offering both combatants a clear sight. Yet the road wasn’t far away, and it was easy to imagine the carriages standing by, ready to take the duelists, alive, wounded, or dead, away.

Images:
The Green Man photograph © 2018 Walter M. Henritze
Green Man, Putney from Charles G. Harper's The Old Inns of Old England : a picturesque account of the ancient and storied hostelries of our own country 1906
Cruikshank, The Point of Honor decided, or the Leaden argument of a Love affaire, from The English Spy, 1825

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Dickens and the Cratchit Family's Christmas Pudding

Mrs. Cratchit by Arthur Rackham

Loretta reports:

I haven’t yet seen the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, but no one needs another movie to associate Charles Dickens with the holiday, thanks to his story, A Christmas Carol.

This past summer, while in London, I spent a few hours touring the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street. Among many items claiming my attention was the kitchen, because we Nerdy History Girls are always curious about everyday life. This house, which reflects the author’s lifestyle when he was just beginning to be famous, is very much a middle-class household, considerably upscale from that of Mr. Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit.

I offer some images from the kitchen, and leave you to imagine the process of making a Christmas pudding, even in this comfortable household. Then, please imagine what it might have been like for Mrs. Cratchit in her humbler abode. As a museum sign pointed out, “The Cratchit family had only one small pudding, but in a household such as 48 Doughty Street, there were often many spare puddings, cooked and stored for use at other celebrations throughout the year. Filled with spirits, old ale and spices, the puddings were well preserved on larder shelves and were even believed to improve in taste as they aged.”

Yes, that's the kitchen sink

But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses— to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough 1 Suppose it should break in turning out ! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid All sorts of horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding ! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly —with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding ! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up.
—“A Christmas Carol,” from The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume 13

Hedgehogs used for insect control

Photos of Charles Dickens Museum copyright © Loretta Chekani 2017
Illustration of Mrs. Cratchit carrying in the pudding by Arthur Rackham for 1915 edition.
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Friday Video: A Victorian Christmas & Victorian Dolls

Loretta reports:

Looking for some holiday-type historical footage for the Friday video, I came upon these stereoscopic images of staged, late-Victorian Christmas celebrations. Many of the images seem a little eerie to me. But then, Victorian images often are. In this case, too, the strange “animation,” combined with the stereoscopic effect, heightens the sensation.

But I was struck by the little girls cradling their dolls, an image that remains familiar and sweet.



Then I remembered the photos of Victorian toys—mainly dolls and doll furniture—I took in September at the Provincetown Museum, which is part of the Pilgrim Monument.* I could picture little girls on Christmas morning, lovingly holding these dolls when they were new.


*No, I didn’t climb to the top of the monument. There’s quite a lovely panoramic view on the website.

 

Video: 3D Stereoscopic Photographs of Christmas in the Victorian Era (1889-1902)


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The White Lion Inn, Putney

Loretta reports:

Most of the locations in A Duke in Shining Armor are real—or as real as I can make them. Some once existed but no longer do, some have changed beyond recognition, and some are there, looking more or less the same. None are quite the same, of course. For one thing, the extant buildings have indoor plumbing. And electricity.

The White Lion Inn, where several important early scenes occur, did and does exist, although my characters wouldn’t recognize it today, and may not have even known it by that name.

What I saw, when studying my copy of the Panorama of the Thames, was the Putney Hotel, which a note in the text referred to as the Red Lion Inn. But it seems to be the same building Ralph Rylance refers to in his 1815 guidebook, The Epicure’s Almanack, as the White Lion. (More about the book here, here, and here.)

White Lion.

“Continuing on your way to town you come to the village of Putney, at the bottom of which, close to the Fulham Bridge, is the White Lion.[2] You may have a good dinner drest here to order, in which order you ought not to forget to include stewed eels, or fried flounders. The people here have a live stock of them in the wells of the peter-boats moored off the village.”

The footnote explains further:

[2] “The White Lion near Fulham Bridge (now Putney Bridge) dated from the early C17 and was rebuilt in 1887; it is still operating, as the ‘Australian Walkabout Inn,’ at nos. 14-16 Putney High Street.” (p. 203)

View of Putney in 1829

On my investigative tour of Putney, last summer, we came upon what seemed to be the right building.  At the time, though, I wasn’t sure this was the place, because it looked like a late Victorian era structure, and closer inspection confirmed an 1880s date. Still, the big lion on top was a clue, and I asked Walter to take some photos. Once home, with various books at hand, I felt more certain of its identity. This did seem to be the White Lion, extensively renovated and decorated or maybe entirely rebuilt.  I can also confirm that it (1) is no longer the Australian Walkabout Inn, (2) was closed, and (3) had been closed for some time. But everything about its location did fit my mental images for the story. Obviously, for the interior and stable yard scenes, I had to use a combination of imagination and research into 18th and 19th century coaching inns.

Photograph at top by Walter M. Henritze, III. The image of 1829 Putney is a screen shot from the fabulous website connected with the Panorama of the Thames, a gorgeous book. I strongly recommend your visiting the website, for larger images, and tons of information. You can scroll along for the river view or search by specific locations.

More images of the White Lion here at the Victorian Web and here at Wikimedia Commons.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it. Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.