#may 1840

[thecunnydiaries]

29th Friday

Blowing so hard we could not send a boat ashore with provisions for the Officers and men at the Observatories. Erebus nearly drifted aboard of. She let go her Sheet anchor.

[curiouscatalog]

Happy May!

From: Godey’s Lady’s Book (Philadelphia, Pa. : 1840). Philadelphia, Pa: L.A. Godey, May 1843.

AP2 .G56 v. 26 1843

[clove-pinks]

I'm not done with Edward Couch (although I feel very sorry for his tragic fate). He not only looks like this but writes with the voice of an 1840s Gent in his letters home. He visits Greenland and writes to his parents: "Arrival took place this morning at 3 o’clock & one of the rummest snug little places I ever saw. x x x x x" (He uses tons of Xs in his letters, from the example in May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth).

"Old Franklin is an exceedingly good old chap." And he continues:

In our mess – we live uncommon well – too well almost – we commenced preserved meats & soups etc, a day or two ago & find them very good – in fact every thing is most comfortable – couldn’t be more so. x x x x We shall have plenty of shooting by & bye – when we arrive at our station – jammed in the ice – a regular set of game laws will come out

[tragedyandterror]

full under the read more!

last one for now! i spent a Lot more time on this one, i definitely got a bit carried away lol ok i've been awake much too long staring at these

[marquisecubey]

An illustration I made in 2020, inspired by the early daguerreotype photographs that weren't so well preserved.

Daguerreotyping is just such an interesting and meticulous process, and the detail they capture is almost unbelievable for such early technology, far beyond the scope of even many modern cameras. However, they’re also incredibly fragile. When an otherwise perfectly captured face becomes obscured by surface scratches or humidity seeps behind the glass, there's a particular kind of tragedy to it.

I was drawn to this idea of a woman whose portrait was left in an attic to rot, found in some dusty box 200 years later while cleaning out an old country home. It would have been decades since her physical body had left this world, generations coming and going, all unbothered by knowledge of her thoughts, her hopes, her fears, her passions.

Even an abandoned and broken artifact tells a story, though. Some say that if you were to look at her photograph for long enough, you could swear you saw someone's face in the clouds of chemical fog. An incorporeal, imprecise apparition that didn't show up on any modern x-ray analysis, but was unearthed and revealed by the very same decay that swallowed up the last earthly remains of her image.

Surely it was a trick of the eyes.

[tamisdava2]

Meiker: x

[marzipanandminutiae]

ok but what are YOUR favorite and probably real victorian funfacts?

There genuinely were some doctors who thought riding in trains would cause uterine prolapse [uterus falling out], when trains were new. The concern was that the vibrations from travelling so fast would break the fibers connecting the uterus to the abdominal wall. Unsurprisingly, this did not stop women from riding in trains. Because fuck that noise- trains!!!

One time in the 1840s a bunch of doctors shellacked live horses and rabbits and concluded, when the animals died (probably from heat exhaustion after being unable to sweat), that they had suffocated and that mammals breathed partially through our skin.

Some beauty manuals of the era may have created accidental sunscreen. Occasionally you see advice to wear cold cream on your face when going out, to prevent sunburn. This probably mostly didn't work- but some cold cream recipes contained zinc oxide for a "white foundation" effect, due to beauty standards favoring very light skin, which may have created a low-level SPF. Other manuals also advocate sealing the cold cream in with powder...which even more frequently involved zinc oxide.

A dentist may have gotten away with a malpractice death by blaming tightlacing. A 23-year-old maid named Annie Budden, of Preston, England, went to have a tooth pulled in January of 1895 and suffocated after the procedure, during which she had been dosed with nitrous oxide. The dentist said she was tightlaced and therefore the coroner ruled that he was not at fault- however said dentist claimed that her natural waist was 23" and her corset measured 18". Presumably that's the closed measurement, and corsets were commonly worn with at least a 2" lacing gap at the time (one corset ad I've seen mentions that women liked to give the theoretical closed measurement of their corset as their waist measurement, to make it sound smaller, while actually wearing it with the customary gap). Ergo, she was only laced down about 2-3 inches, a difference unlikely to cause asphyxiation. The fact that she worked as a maid similarly calls the assessment into question- how could she have successfully done physical labor while laced down in a way that diminished her lung capacity so much? Her employer vouched for her good character and excessive tightlacing was seen as vanity- and would have been noticed by making Miss Budden look out-of-proportion physically. That doesn't add up either, to me. The dentist went on to become mayor of the town where this all happened.

That thing above started as a fun fact about the only credible death due to tightlacing and then I looked into it more and now I'm just mad.

Justice For Annie Budden

Sorry this has gotten off-track but I'm still mad about the whole Annie Budden thing

[palatezones]

Love the bias cutting on the bodice and sleeves! And the bertha is excellent work.

Purple and Blue Striped Silk Dress, ca. 1840, American.

Worn by Abby Green.

MFA Boston.

[jamiesansible]

I’m sure everyone remembers the article from 2020 where researches found three-ply cordage made by Neanderthals.^

But did you know that in the supplemental material for the article, it mentions that pine needles can be made into textiles?^^ As someone who works with textiles myself, I had come across pine needles as a dye stuff, but not as a fibre.

The source is listed as "L’acquisition des matières textiles d’origine végétale en Préhistoire" by Fabinne Médard. It talks about how other fibres, including brambles and broom could have been used prehistorically for a similar purpose, as well as flax. However, it contains only one metion of pine needles.

“Les aiguilles du pin sylvestre (Pinus sylvestris L.) fournissaient, après rouissage, une matière textile appelée « laine des forêts » qui remplaçait la ouate et l’étoupe dont on faisait également des tissus (Mathieu [1858] 1897)" * The needles of the Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) provided, after retting, a textile material called “forest wool” which replaced wadding and tow from which fabrics were also made.

So Scots pine needles were processed, spun and woven, or simply used directly after processing, potentially prehistorically.

If you follow the source for the quote above, it takes you to a book from 1860 called Flore forestière; description et histoire des végétaux ligneux qui croissent spontanément en France et des essences importantes de l'Algérie. It says:

“On fabrique depuis quelques années, avec les faisceaux fibreux, allongés, et tenaces des aiguilles, une espèce de drap grossier.” ** For several years, we have been making a kind of coarse cloth using the fibrous, elongated and stiff bundles of the needles.

So this processing of pine needles was also happening in the 1800s.

Another souce from the 1840s describes the texture of forest wool as resembling "...horsehair, and has been used for stuffing mattresses"** and that an industry sprung up in Humboldtsau, near Breslau for processing it. Manufacturies for forest wool then spread to Sweden, Holland and France, which may explain the mention in the 1860 Flore forestière.

Despite looking a bit more, but couldn't find much else on the subject expect a recent masters thesis in German (which I couldn't access) and an article on the designer Tamara Orjola.

Orjola's work investigates the modern use of pine needle fabric, showing there is still interest in it. She says:

"Forest Wool began with research on the forgotten value of plants. Valuable local materials and techniques are left behind due to the unwillingness of mass-production to adopt more sustainable practices. In the old days the pine tree was used as food, remedies, to build homes and furniture and for many other purposes. Nowadays, it is only valuable for its timber." ***

I find the line from prehistory to now facinating - that people have looked to something as mundane as a pine needle to spin, especially as researchers are discovering a lot of what they thought was linen fabric is actually ramie (from nettles).

As far as I can tell, only Pinus sylvestris L. and one other variety was used. I am not sure what makes that tree more suitable than other pine trees, or if it was simply a question of availability. In terms of processing, the answer as far as I can tell is retting, presumably followed by scutching and hackling - similar to how flax is processed. However I have not done that myself and cannot speak to the specifics.

It would be something intresting to try though.

________

^ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61839-w#MOESM1

^^ https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-020-61839-w/MediaObjects/41598_2020_61839_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

* https://journals.openedition.org/nda/602

** https://www.proquest.com/openview/276605d708970d416923b94e8856d20b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41445

*** https://lampoonmagazine.com/article/2021/05/15/recycled-wood-pine-needles-byproduct/

[tanadrin]

I liked this video from Jamelle Bouie a lot, and I liked it even more because he delivered it as a floating eyes and mouth over an apple.

I'm going to respond to this comment as an apple because I kind of like doing it. It's fun. And I'm gonna respond to this comment by way of a story.

So, all Americans know about the anti-slavery movement, the abolitionist movement. And the way we're taught about the abolitionist movement or the anti-slavery movement, whatever you want to call it, is kind of that this was inevitable--that obviously slavery is terrible and obviously there are people against it and it was gonna end. We teach it as a thing that was bound to happen. So the Civil War comes and slavery is ended, and it's sort of a very neat story.

But I'm gonna ask you to put yourself in the perspective of an abolitionist or an anti-slavery politician in, say, 1840 or 1848; and if you are one of these people, you have a deep-seated opposition to slavery. If you're an abolitionist, you may have spent the previous 10 or 20 years traveling the country, giving speeches, rallying people, doing everything you can to stir up moral outrage at slavery. If you're a politician, you have been working, doing a grind of politics--somewhat dangerous, because people may not like slavery, but they're not super thrilled about black people either--but you are in legislatures, you are filing petitions, you are building coalitions, you are trying to make whatever headway you can to, if not challenge slavery, then at least challenge some of the racist and anti-black laws that are on the books. Both--whether you're an anti-slavery politician or ablitionist--you do not think in 1848 that slavery is gonna be over in your lifetime. You hope that it might be; but you have no particular expectation that it will be. You are not optimistic about the end of slavery. You may not even be optimistic about the world as it exists, because you look around and you see human bondage and horrible brutality that's been there for hundreds of years, and for all you know will be there when you're long dead.

So the question to ask is, why do these things? Why did these people bother? Why did they continue struggling against slavery, despite not really having any optimism about the end of the institution? And the answer--beyond a deep-seated sense of moral commitment--is that these people didn't need to be optimistic in the ultimate outcome, they just needed to be optimistic in the ability of humans, of people to make change; they needed to be hopeful about human agency. That's what they needed, and that's what they had. And so they did not know how far they would be able to take the baton, but they worked and hoped that when the end of their lives came, they'd be able to hand it off to people who could take it even further than they could.

The abolitionists and the anti-slavery politicians were essentially living out what Antonio Gramsci called the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. I think the exact quote is, "I'm a pessimist because of my intelligence, but I am an optimist because of my will." What this is is recognizing the reality of the world around you, not looking at the world as if it's any better--or any worse--but any better than it is; but not pinning your hopes for a better world on some sort of linear change, linear move towards something better; but pinning your hopes on one of the true constants of human society, which is the ability of human beings to work their will on the world, and the ability of humans to push and persevere.

So, this is all to say that I am not asking anyone to be optimistic about the world. That's very silly; the world's a very terrible place right now--not the worst it could be, but pretty bad--and I do not contest that. But I do think that people should have a bit of this optimism of the will, and this optimism about human agency, and our ability to build a better world. And this is sort of where my very strong distaste for doomerism comes from, because the sense that it is the worst, and nothing can be better, is just fundamentally incompatible with any kind of optimism of the will, any kind of belief in human agency and belief in our ability to change the world around us. And it's also why you will find me on this account often pushing back against the most negative renderings of what is happening in our society, for example. Not because I think everything is great--I do not--but because I do think that the path towards change requires one to have clear eyes about the situation in which you find yourself; and clear eyes both means recognizing the bad, but it also means recognizing those areas where you can make gains, and where you can find success; and where you can win minor victories.

And you may say, well, what's the point of a minor victory? But I think what the anti-slavery struggle demonstrates, what the civil rights struggle demonstrates, what the labor struggle demonstrates in this country, is that minor victories become fuel for modest victories, become fuel for major victories, and major victories can be the things that fundamentally change the entire field of play. So. Pessimism of the intellect, my friend, optimism of the will.

[thecunnydiaries]

15th Friday

Squally. Sent hands to assist in warping the Erebus up the Harbour: anchored her ahead, a Snug berth. Working Party ashore house building, likes the taste of the wild cabbage much.

Plan of north part of Îles Kerguélen, showing Christmas Harbour

[scotianostra]

Edinburgh Castle's dog cemetery.

Looking down to the wee graveyard last week.

Hidden within the grounds of Edinburgh Castle, a dedicated dog cemetery may be the landmark's strangest feature.

There are a huge number of fascinating historical stories hidden within the walls of Edinburgh Castle, but perhaps none so curious and touching as the tale behind the castle’s dog cemetery.

The small green space is thought to have originally been the site of a medieval tower, but since 1840 it has been the final resting place for regimental mascots or honoured dogs belonging to high-ranking soldiers.

The cemetery is referenced in this verse from the Scottish Bard, Robert Burns:

”Berkin dugs here lie at rest ”The yappin worst, obedient best ”Sodgers pets and mascots tae ”Still the guard the castle to this day.

One of only two like it in Scotland, the unique graveyard is home to more than 20 headstones.

Sadly, several of the inscriptions have worn away over the last century or so, probably thanks to Edinburgh’s signature chilly, wet and windy weather.

Of the engravings still visible, the oldest dates back to 1881 - a dedication to Jess, band pet of the Black Watch 42nd Royal Highlanders.

The newest headstone in the cemetery belongs to Winkle, the “dear and faithful friend of Lady Gow and the Governor”, who died in 1980.

Other faithful pups laid to rest here include Yum Yum, Tim and Dobbler, who travelled as far as China, Sri Lanka and South Africa with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

These days, visitors to the castle cannot enter the cemetery, but it can be viewed from above, like I did.

[clove-pinks]

An urban Mayday scene sketched circa 1845 by John Wykeham Archer, description by the British Museum:

Tothill Street, Westminster, with a Mayday performance; children gather in the street to watch a performance, a man in a gold hat and brightly coloured jacket dances with a woman, a clown capers to the right, and in the middle of the group stands a figure wearing a costume shaped like a large shrub surmounted by a crown and flag, to the left of this street scene is a coffee room and souphouse.

[jo-the-bass-stealer]

"But he had to try, really try, to make sure that he did not stop dreaming in his native tongue."

— from Babel by R. F. Kuang

i feel like a fraud sometimes. i harp on about the importance of the irish language, of speaking it if and when you can, of making it easier to learn. but is it really my native tongue if my first language is english, like most of the irish population? are we really irish if we have never gone to sleep and dreamed as gaeilge?

i think about it a lot when i write. i write in english, because i am not fluent in irish. i fear i will never be fluent. even now, i'm typing this post in english. i feel like a liar. i feel like i'm spitting on the graves of people long gone, who lived under laws banning the irish language. people that taught the language in hedge schools. people that wrote our declaration of independence, and were shot dead for it, never living to see an independent ireland.

i think about my classmates in school. how they hate irish. they hated it as much as maths and french and history. i think about a kid that declared in front of the entire class (and the teacher) that it was a useless, pointless, needlessly difficult language. i remember the pain on her face and the sickness in my gut.

i think of the future too. how ireland's population surpassed five million people for the first time since the 1840s, when a famine destroyed our crops and the english crown sent starving, monolingual farmers bags of corn, with cooking instructions written in english. i think of my mother's cousin and his wife, who despite being in the majority of irish people with english as a first language, speak exclusively irish to their toddler. that child will learn english as a second language. that child dreams in irish. i think of the phrase 'in my lifetime.' a united ireland, in my lifetime. i wonder how many people have fallen asleep and dreamed of that? in my lifetime, in my lifetime, in my lifetime...

i think of another phrase too. a seanfocail. "is fearr gaeilge bhriste ná béarla cliste." broken irish is better than clever english.

i may not dream in irish, and i may never. but i might. and while i wait, i dream of a united ireland, of children in the far-flung future ag caint as gaeilge, ag cannadh as gaeilge, ag gáire as gaeilge. speaking, singing, laughing in irish. then i dare to imagine like so many before me, in my lifetime, in my lifetime, in my lifetime.

[xxthewolvenstormxx]

The funeral procession of Henrik Ibsen, walking up Ullevålsveien from the church to the cemetery. 1906-06-01

A Funeral Procession… passing along Berkeley Street in Dublin.

The funeral of Ismail Gasprinsky, Bakhchisaray, 1914.

The funeral procession of French president Sadi Carnot. Image published in Finnish periodical Uusi Kuvalehti in July 1894.

Funeral_do_ator_Joaquim_de_Almeida_(1921)

The Funeral of Lord Trịnh Tùng from Recueil de Plusieurs Relations et Traites by J.B.Tavernier, Chevalier and Baron D'Aubonne 1679.

The lying in state of King Edward VII, showing guards surrounding his coffin at Westminster Hall 17 MAY 1910

Maharaja Ranjit Singh's funeral. ca. 1840, paint on paper, The British Museum. Pahari-Sikh, from the family workshop of Purkhu of Kangra

Marc Antony's Oration at Caesar's Funeral by George Edward Robertson

*All Art from WikiCommons

[heythereitsace]

Jekyll & Hyde Chronological Timeline

I don't know if people even need this, but I needed it and it didn't exist. So here it is. In the book the dates are blanked because that was the convention of the time, but I've heard in earlier drafts Robert Louis Stevenson had set the story 1883-1885, so based on that, here is a rough CHRONOLOGICAL timeline of Jekyll & Hyde (rather than the order we discover things in the book)

1833: Jekyll is born.

1840-55(ish): Jekyll's youth. He becomes friends with Lanyon and Utterson at private school. He is a wild youth with unconventional tastes that he keeps secret.

1865(ish): Poole starts working for Jekyll.

1870s: Jekyll begins studying transcendental medicine. He and Lanyon fall out over this and stop talking to one another.

Sometime early-mid 1883: Jekyll discovers the formula to transform himself into Hyde. Jekyll buys a house in Soho for Hyde and writes him into his will. Hyde begins indulging in forbidden desires.

Sometime mid-late 1883: Hyde tramples a young girl. Enfield is a witness. To avoid being attacked, Hyde goes to the laboratory door and draws a cheque in Jekyll's name. The next day Jekyll sets Hyde up his own bank account.

Sometime late 1883 (A Sunday): Enfield tells Utterson about the trampling of the girl as they pass the laboratory door on their regular walk. That night, Utterson dines with Lanyon and learns he is estranged from Jekyll. Lanyon has never heard of Hyde.

Late 1883: Utterson regularly haunts the laboratory door, and eventually meets with Hyde.

Jan 1884: Utterson dines with Jekyll and talks to him about his will, expressing his concerns. Jekyll stops taking notes in his experiment book around this time.

Aug 1884: After a night of adventures as Hyde, Jekyll awakes having involuntarily transformed into Hyde. He sneaks to the lab and takes a dose to transform back into Jekyll. Frightened, he stops taking the potion.

Oct 1884: Jekyll takes the potion again and transforms into Hyde. Hyde meets and murders Sir Danvers Carew. Hyde clears out his Soho home, destroys his papers and cheque book. Jekyll destroys the lab door key.

Oct 1884 (The Next Day, 9am): Utterson identifies Carew's body and goes to Hyde's address with Scotland Yard.

Oct 1884 (Same day, Evening): Utterson visits Jekyll. Jekyll says Hyde will not be returning and show Utterson a note he claims is from Hyde. Utterson asks Poole about the messenger, but Poole claims no letter was delivered.

Oct 1884 (Same day, Night): Utterson dines with his clerk Guest. He shows Guest the note from Hyde. A dinner invitation arrives from Jekyll and Guest compares the two. He notes the handwriting is the same, but slanted in different directions.

Oct 1884-Jan 1885: Jekyll becomes more religious and conscientious. The police hunt for Hyde and uncover some of his wicked deeds in London, but can't find him.

Jan 8, 1885: Jekyll throws a big dinner party for his friends. Utterson and Lanyon are there. It seems as though Lanyon and Jekyll may be mending their friendship.

Jan 8, 1885 (Night): Jekyll indulges his desires, but as Jekyll this time.

Jan 9, 1885 (Daytime): Jekyll daydreams on a bench in Regent's Park and involuntarily transforms into Hyde. He flees to a hotel in Portland Street and writes a letter to Poole and Lanyon to arrange for his chemicals to be brought to Lanyon's house. Poole and Lanyon break into Jekyll's office and Lanyon brings the chemicals to his house.

Jan 9, 1885 (Evening): Hyde travels around in a cab waiting until midnight until the driver gets suspicious. He walks the streets and punches a woman in the face who offers him to buy some matches.

Jan 10, 1885 (Midnight): Hyde arrives at Lanyon's, drinks the potion and transforms into Jekyll in front of him. Jekyll confesses his crimes to Lanyon. Jekyll returns home and falls into a deep sleep.

Jan 10, 1885 (Daytime): Jekyll transforms spontaneously into Hyde walking to his lab. A double dose restores him to Jekyll, but 6 hours later there is another spontaneous transformation into Hyde. From now on, every time Jekyll sleeps or relaxes too much he transforms into Hyde. He needs the potion constantly to stay as Jekyll.

Jan 12, 1885: Utterson calls on Jekyll. He's told the doctor is sick.

Jan 13, 1885: Lanyon writes his testimony of Jekyll's transformation. He seals it up to be opened by Lanyon when Jekyll has died or disappeared.

Jan 14, 1885: Utterson calls on Jekyll. He is denied entry.

Jan 15, 1885: Utterson calls on Jekyll. He is denied entry.

Jan 16, 1885: Utterson dines with Guest.

Jan 17, 1885: Utterson visits Lanyon, and is shocked by his deterioration. Lanyon says he will soon be dead and can't mend his friendship with Jekyll, but won't say why. Utterson writes to Jekyll demanding an explanation.

Jan 18, 1885: Jekyll writes a cryptic and darkly-worded letter to Utterson that does not explain why he and Lanyon have fallen apart. He says he intends to lead a very secluded life going forwards.

Jan 25, 1885: Lanyon is bedridden.

Feb 8, 1885: By this time, Lanyon is dead. The day after the funeral, his sealed testimony is sent to Utterson. He puts it in his safe.

Feb 1885: Utterson keeps calling on Jekyll, but is not admitted. His visits become fewer and fewer.

Feb/Mar 1885 (A Sunday): Enfield and Utterson walk by the laboratory door again, and walk into the courtyard hoping to see Jekyll. They try to talk to Jekyll at the window, but he is seized with terror and slams the window shut.

Feb/Mar 1885: Jekyll's supply of salts is running low. He sends messages to his servants to get more from chemists across London - none can give him salts that work.

Sometime Mar 1885: Trapped in his cabinet, Hyde burns Jekyll's paintings and letters from his father. He defaces Jekyll's religious books with blasphemies. Jekyll keeps trying to make the potion with the new salts that keep arriving, but concludes his original batch must have been impure, and this unknown impurity was what made the transformation possible. The servants hear Jekyll cry out upon the name of God.

Mar 1885 (1-8 days after the cry): Poole hears Hyde weeping like a lost soul in the laboratory. Poole catches sight of a masked Hyde going through packing boxes in the laboratory.

Mar 1885 (8 days after the cry): Jekyll uses the last of the original salts to write his last will, confession, and a note to Utterson. He puts them aside and becomes Hyde, finally and forever.

Mar 1885 (8 days after the cry, 10pm): Poole visits Utterson and asks him to help, saying he thinks there's been foul play. Utterson comes to the house and hears Hyde's voice behind the cabinet door. He listens to Poole's evidence and agrees he thinks Jekyll has been murdered. Utterson confronts Hyde, and he and Poole break down the cabinet door. Hyde poisons himself with cyanide. Poole and Utterson find Jekyll's will, note and confession. They search for Jekyll's body but can't find him.

Mar 1885 (Same day, 10-11pm): Utterson goes home and reads Lanyon's testimony, followed by Jekyll's confession.

Mar 1885 (Midnight next day): This was when Utterson planned to return to Jekyll's and call the police.