Return Engagement: Keeping Warm—Buzaglo stove

Isabella reports:

When I posted the photographs of the ballroom and the supper room in the Governor's Palace, Colonial Williamsburg, two very important fixtures weren't visible in the pictures. Here they are now: a pair of coal-burning, cast-iron stoves that were the cutting edge of keeping warm in the 1770s.

Also called "warming machines," the stoves were imported from London where they were effective, fashionable, and exclusive because of their cost. The stoves were the work of a famous inventor of the time named Abraham Buzaglo (1716-1788.) A Moroccan who immigrated to England in 1760, Mr. Buzaglo immediately amazed Londoners with his cast iron warming machines, which he patented in 1765. As one historian has noted, his ultimate goal was to try to "reform English prejudices regarding comfortable warmth."*

Mr. Buzaglo's trade card modestly promised that his stoves "surpass in Utility, Beauty & Goodness any thing hitherto Invented in all Europe". They "cast an equal & agreeable Heat to any Part of the Room, and are not attended by any Stench," with "a bright Fire to be seen at Pleasure." More importantly, the stoves"preserve the Ladies Complexions and Eye Sight" and "warm equally the whole Body, without scorching the Face or Legs," plus "other Advantages too tedious to insert."**

The warming machines were so popular that they became known by the inventor's name (though incorrectly, if inevitably, pronounced by the English as "Buzz-aglow" rather than "Bu-ZAH-glo".) Buzaglos warmed drafty gracious homes as well as university libraries and the shops of tailors and weavers. The two in Williamsburg were imported to colonial Virginia by the Royal Governor, Lord Botetourt (1718-1770) for the comfort of his guests in the Governor's Palace, and shortly before his death in 1770 he ordered another to warm the House of Burgesses.

So do Buzaglo stoves work? While I don't doubt that the twin Buzaglos in the palace are in fine working order, I also imagine that modern-day fire and pollution regulations frown on combining coal-burning stoves with crowds of tourists. But to a lady shivering in a silk gown two hundred years ago, I'm sure they were a very welcome upgrade from the sparks, soot, and limited warmth of an open hearth.

And, of course, there must have been all those "other Advantages too tedious to insert."

* The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities & Design in Early Modern Britain by John Crowley

** "Hot Air from Cambridge", an article by J.C.T. Oates appearing in The Library

Return Engagement: Garters at Work

Loretta reports:

Susan & I have had several discussions about garters, and where it is best to tie them if you are living in the days before the latest thing, i.e., the garters illustrated in my previous blog.

Contemporary illustrations show us that garters could be tied just above the knee or just below it.  Top left, Boucher’s The Toilette (1742), shows a lady tying her garters above her knee.  You’ll note that this is just above the knee, not up on her thigh.

You can blow up this Fragonard painting  and focus on the lady’s garters.  Again, they're tied just above the knee.  Since garters didn’t contain elastic (although they might have springs), one tied them at a place on the leg where a natural bulge would help keep them from sliding down.

Another good place to tie our heroine’s garters is just below the knee, above the swell of the calf, as Rowlandson illustrates in his Exhibition Stare-Case (ca 1811) and his many erotic engravings.

In the Rowlandson print you’ll notice how smoothly the stockings cling.  But I suspected this was not the case so much in real life.  (Anyone who wore nylon or silk stockings and garters pre-Lycra knows the annoyance of ankle sag.)

Art and illustrations usually show us smooth stockings, as in John Hoppner’s full length portrait of Captain George Porter (second at left).

But not always.  The Guitarist, by Jean Baptiste Greuze (1757), shows us how, I suspect, the stockings usually appeared in real life.

Snow Removal from the Streets of New York, c. 1888

Isabella reporting,

I have spent the day shoveling out a driveway that seems to grow magically in length in direct proportion to the amount of snow covering it, which, of course, being a Nerdy History Girl, made me wonder how snow was cleared away from streets in the days before plows.

The Great Blizzard of 1888 deposited as much as 60 inches of snow over New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts over a four-day span in March. Single-digit temperatures and high winds contributed to the misery, with fifty-foot

drifts reported. Telegraph and telephone lines were knocked down, train lines were halted, ships were wrecked and grounded up and down the coast, and more than 400 people perished from the storm's cold. Many people were trapped in their homes for over a week. Modern weather reporters love to speak of how snow storms leave a city "paralyzed"; in 1888, New York really was stopped cold in its snowy tracks.

How did they clear all that snow away? In much the same way that I've been clearing my driveway. As these pictures show, snow was slowly and laboriously shoveled by hand into horse-drawn carts. The carts were then driven to the river, and one by one emptied into the rivers. It must have been back-breaking work, and in the wind and freezing temperatures, an exhausting challenge to both the men and the horses.

Top left: The Snow-Storm - Carting snow from the Streets of New York, by Stanley Fox, 1888.
Right & lower left: Photographs following Blizzard of 1888 by E.A.Austen. All images from New York Public Library.

Fashions for February 1811

View online here

Loretta reports:

Very often the winter fashions, especially in the early decades of the 19th century, make me shiver.  Muslin?  Really?  But here at least we have layers, with the outdoor costume using wool or velvet, and the opera dresses involving layers.

You will notice quite a difference in artistic style between this and last month's 1827 fashion plates.

View online here

Read online here

Breakfast Links: Week of January 27, 2014

We can't predict whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow this weekend, but we can guarantee the freshness of our Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of favorite links to other blogs, web sites, articles, and images, gathered for you via Twitter.
• This beautiful shawl was a 17th birthday present in 1838.
• Book cover nightmares: a collection of bad Jane Eyre covers.
• The real Flashman? Incomparable Victorian adventurer Colonel Frederick Burnaby (1842-1885)
• A life in tattoos: William Jenkins, transported at age 19 in 1845.
• Everything you need to know about firing an arquebus in one simple GIF! (Professional soldier; do not attempt.)
• Image: Beautiful light at Hampton Court Palace.
• Russian menu from the Cafe Paris in Archangel in 1917, seven weeks before the October Revolution.
• Mapping the silence of housekeeping in 1925.
• When Edgar Allan Poe needed to get away, he went to the Bronx - but he had connections to Boston, too.
• Image: "A Soho night club serious disturbance," Illustrated Police News, 1897.
• How twelve million letters a week reached soldiers in the trenches during WWI.
• This expressive face from the 8th c. survives from an ancient city that was washed away by Lake Nasser.
• The key of Hell: an 18th c. book of black magic.
• Image: A carte-de-visite of three men standing around a chicken (and why not?)
• An 18th c. recipe for a Marmalade of Oranges.
• British propaganda at its finest declared that Napoleon was short; the truth was that he and Nelson were precisely the same size at 5'7".
• Pilgrim house, lovingly reassembled 350 years after construction, is for sale.
• The first Sherlock Holmes film was made in Union Square, NYC, and the second in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
• An Edwardian expedition to the pyramids, c. 1910.
• Who is Gladys E. Reed? Mystery of an extraordinary WWII Wren artist.
• Why did George Washington travel to Barbados?
• A visit to the abandoned 19th c. Bancroft Road Jewish Cemetery in London.
• The end of the Regency.
• A cat piano? Ten of the strangest musical instruments in history.
• Now online: over 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts at the British Library.
• Image: Socially v. eugenically "desirable" female traits, from Scheinfeld, You and Heredity, 1939.
• I've got my eye on you: 18th-19th c. eye miniatures.
• Jessie Tarbox Beals, the pioneering news photographer who lugged 50 lbs of camera gear while wearing a corset.
• A view that hasn't been seen in 500 years.
• The height of medieval fashion at the 15th c. Burgundian court.
• Let there be light! The lighting of the first gas street lamps in Pall Mall in 1807.
• Frost Fair: when an elephant walked on the frozen River Thames.
• The many lurid broadsides chronicling John Holloway's murder of his wife in 1831.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.