The Diary of Nathaniel Bryceson (Part 7)

[Ruskie]

Sorry Deb, I signed off last night before I saw your last post. Yes we've looked at that word before - I agree it looks like 'lodger'.

In today's entry Nat has his usual italics regarding Ann, but then says he went for a walk with her - but no italics. Another string to Nat's bow - he can fix clocks. Well at least he's trying to. 

[drykid]

Fixing clocks isn't as easy it seems; I remember my dad's disastrous attempt to fix my grandfather's old mantel clock. He forgot to release the tension in the main spring before trying to take it apart, which meant that at one critical point he removed a screw and the whole thing exploded, for want of a better term, stripping all the teeth off the main flywheel in the process. It cost a fortune to get put right by an expert afterwards (it would probably have made more sense to throw it away, but it has sentimental value.)

Anyway the chapel on Gray's Inn Lane was otherwise known as the Chapel of St Bartholomew and was destroyed in WWII.  (Apparently it was quite a plain, flat-roofed building.) Wren's St. Mary's Abchurch on the other hand thankfully still survives, although like most of the Wren churches it was damaged in WWII also.

Is it just me, or are most of the suggestions for reducing cholera on that handbill largely irrelevant? I'm fairly sure that lack of sleep wasn't a known cause of cholera (And even if it was, it was something that most of the poor in those days had little choice over anyway.)

[Ruskie]

Ah no wonder I couldn't find anything about the Chapel in Grays Inn Lane. I did find St Marys Abchurch. Another Wren creation though one site says designed by the 'office' of Wren so who knows how much input the great man had on this particular church.

Yes I think the Cholera thingy is all wrong. It was spread throuh unhygenic conditons - food/water etc. which is not mentioned

[Siamese Girl]

I have noticed of late that all plugs are up in the City to keep the streets cleansed and to keep away the cholera

I just wonder what the "plugs" were. I suppose there was some system to regulate the drains, but that suggests that the normally the plugs were in ... but if the plugs were normally in, how would the drainage work 

Everyone then believed cholera was spread by bad smells ... although I'd imagine London smelt pretty bad anyway, so how could they tell the bad smells that caused cholera from the general bad smells that were just unpleasant?

Carole

[drykid]

Ah no wonder I couldn't find anything about the Chapel in Grays Inn Lane.

I'm fairly sure this is referring to the same building:

CII—Gray's Inn Road. East side, Nos. 214–252 (even numbers)
Nos. 214–224 are early 19th century houses with shops and three storeys over, partly renovated.
St. Bartholomew's Church, now demolished, was built in 1811, at a cost of £9,000 by admirers of William Huntington (1745–1813), coalheaver and preacher, who added to his name the initials S.S. (Sinner Saved). (ref. 35) His previous church, Providence Chapel in Titchfield Street, had been burnt down. St. Bartholomew's seated about 1,300. After Huntington's death several dissenting preachers (fn. a) occupied the pulpit, (ref. 7) but in 1837 it was opened as an Episcopal Proprietary Chapel, having been sub-leased to the Rev. Thomas Mortimer (ref. 36) by the trustees of George Davenport. (fn. b) A plan of the site made in 1836 includes an almshouse. (ref. 37) The chapel was eventually purchased, consecrated and endowed as the district church of St. Bartholomew in 1860. (ref. 36) It was almost entirely destroyed by bombing on 17th October, 1940. Architecturally the church was of the plainest type of early 19th century meeting house with a flat ceiling of considerable span. Among the memorial tablets was one to Clarissa Murray, Sunday School leader, d. 1864.

From: 'The Calthorpe Estate', Survey of London: volume 24: The parish of St Pancras part 4: King’s Cross Neighbourhood (1952), pp. 56-69. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=65562  Date accessed: 04 October 2010.

Yes I think the Cholera thingy is all wrong. It was spread throuh unhygenic conditons - food/water etc. which is not mentioned

Although maybe that wasn't known at all back then?  I'm not sure of the history of cholera treatment.

And yeah I didn't get the "plugs" bit either.

[steve_gus]

Hi

Misc thoughts :

Plugs might be manhole / sewer covers?

Perhaps Nat isn't so interested in Ann due to 'slow progress' or she has given him a 'cold shoulder due to his continuous undergarment removal attempts. Perhaps the frustration explains the 25 mile long walks

I wonder if Nat will have 'Ann up' to give her his present? Lucky for her, its a saturday, not a sunday


Those cholera prevention notes wouldnt do anything. In fact as it was water borne, you would have been better drinking more beer, not less. Its things like the cholera misunderstanding (smells) that make me one day think that we will look back and say, that stuff about man made global warming was all wrong. (Millennium bug anyone?). The Thames stopped freezing over in the 1700s, which wasnt industrialisation and 20,000 years ago, the UK was in an ice age. So something changes naturally. Locks like ive gone off on one, sorry for digression

[Aniseed]

It was John Snow who first noticed that Cholera in Soho seemed to be linked to one particular water pump in the London cholera epidemic of 1854. Read this article, which explains it all much better than I could! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow_%28physician%29 It's terribly sad that although he'd got to the bottom of things, after the immediate epidemic, the government thought the public would find it too 'unpleasant' and so ignored it. Plus ca change.

ETA: It was partly this that made the government commission Joseph Bazalgette to build the London sewers after the Big Stink of 1858 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette although they thought it was the stink that caused the cholera, but by getting rid of what caused the stink, the end result was the same.

ETA: Interestingly the current London sewer system is not sufficient, and after heavy rainfall it overflows into the Thames. Thames Water is currently consulting about the favoured route for a new sewer overflow system which will take the effluent to a water treatment works somewhere in Essex (I believe).

[Ruskie]

drykid, that does sound fairly likely to be the same church ... is Gray's Inn Lane the same as Gray's Inn Road?  You wouldn't think there'd be too many Chapels built on the same road. 

It was believed that the black plague was caused by a miasma, so not a real lot of progress between then and 1846.

It does make sense for "plugs" to be manhole covers, though if they were "up" how could this keep the "streets cleansed" as Nat describes?

[drykid]

drykid, that does sound fairly likely to be the same church ... is Gray's Inn Lane the same as Gray's Inn Road?  You wouldn't think there'd be too many Chapels built on the same road. 

True, and it's even less likely to have two referred to as episcopal.  According to wikipedia "Gray's Inn Lane" became "Gray's Inn Road" mid-19th century.

Its things like the cholera misunderstanding (smells) that make me one day think that we will look back and say, that stuff about man made global warming was all wrong. (Millennium bug anyone?). The Thames stopped freezing over in the 1700s, which wasnt industrialisation and 20,000 years ago, the UK was in an ice age. So something changes naturally. Locks like ive gone off on one, sorry for digression

It's probably best if I don't get into the climate change thing, but there are other reasons for the Thames not freezing over these days then simply the climate changing (though I'm not disputing that is a part of it.)  The construction of the embankment and the removal of the old London Bridge (the one with houses built on it) apparently also played a part too. It's a shame really, as it sounds like it would've been great fun to see one of the ice fairs that took place on the river itself.

Also as one of the people who spent several years going through programs and fixing date-related code in the late 90s, I can assure you that the millenium bug wasn't a myth.  It was just (mostly) well enough planned for in advance to prevent any major crises on the day.  But you could argue that the publicity that the whole issue got, helped to make sure that companies took it seriously, so in that respect it was no bad thing.  But yeah, this is way off-topic