In 1495, an epidemic of syphilis spread from Naples across Europe. (It probably reached Europe from the New World by way of Columbus’s ships.) The English called it the French pox. The French called it the English pox.
Bed Warmer
Look what I found at my local farm stand. The woman I always buy my corn from had set up a little antique sale inside the little wooden structure, with stuff that used to belong to her great-grandmother. I bought this bed warmer for five dollars.
I’m thinking it’s from the 1920s or 30s because the handle and flip-top are made of Bakelite, which was invented in 1909 but not mass-produced until the 1920s.
It would have held hot coals from the fire and would have been rubbed between the bed linens. But I’m wondering if mine might have been used in a child’s cradle, as the handle is quite short.
Before bed warmers, servants might wrap hot bricks in cloth and rush them to the beds of their masters. That can’t have been as fun as it sounds. Or a servant would simply climb into his master’s bed and warm it up with his own body heat.
Bridge Builders
Decompression sickness—more commonly known as “the bends”—is a dangerous condition that can affect people who spend time under water and then rise to the surface too quickly. While under water, divers breathe oxygen that is at a higher pressure than the surface pressure, to equalize the pressure of the surrounding water. If the diver stays under water too long and doesn’t ascend gradually enough, the gases that have dissolved in his body (nitrogen bubbles in the blood) can be emitted too quickly—much like a soda bottle that has been shaken and uncapped. The results can cause debilitating pain and death.
This was a real problem during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (which began in 1870). To build the longest suspension bridge in the world (over a mile from end to end), workers had to first anchor the bridge’s two immense towers into the bedrock beneath the East River. I’ve always wondered how they accomplished this. (You can read more detail here to learn about the process.)
So to drill down, under water, the engineers constructed a huge, watertight box, called a caisson, which was sunk to the river bottom—with workers inside it. Compressed air was pumped in to keep the water out. Then the floor was ripped out so that the workwoodeers could dig up the river bottom.
Working conditions inside the box were, as you might imagine, abysmal. Workers breathed hot air, under tremendous pressure, while standing in a few inches of frigid water. Working shifts were limited to two hours at a time, because it was so debilitating. The laborers were mostly Irish, German, and Italian, and they worked by the light of calcium lamps, drilling through stinking mud and basalt at rates of fewer than six inches a week.
The water was deeper on the New York side of the river, and laborers frequently suffered from the bends—terrible cramps, blood spurting from the mouth and nose, and bizarre contortions of the body. A great many laborers died from the bends.
The construction company hired a doctor to investigate the deaths, and he urged a five- to six-minute exit procedure (not enough time, but it certainly would have helped). But the company was in a hurry to finish construction so workers had a two-to-three-minute exit procedure—and kept dying.
Source: Gotham 935 – 7
Above Average
The fifty-star flag was designed in 1958 by a 17-year-old kid named Robert Heft for a school project. He received a B minus. After it was adopted by Congress, the teacher raised his grade to an A.
Hell’s Kitchen
There’s a neighborhood in New York City known as Hell’s Kitchen, which covers the area west of Eighth Avenue stretching from about 34th to 59th Streets. Today it’s a high-rent neighborhood, quite sought after. It’s also smack dab in the theater district of Manhattan. It’s brimming with tourists and swanky restaurants. But 150 years ago it was quite a different place.
There are competing stories about how the neighborhood got its name. According to my favorite one (which is tough to substantiate), a veteran cop was watching a disturbance on 39th and 10th Avenue, in the mid-1800s, with his rookie partner. The rookie is supposed to have said, “This place is Hell itself,” to which the veteran cop replied, “Hell’s a mild climate. This is Hell’s Kitchen.”
What is certain is that the area became a hellish place in the mid nineteenth century, when what had been a rural riverfront was transformed into really smelly industries. The Hudson River Railroad was built in 1849, running right through the neighborhood. That was also the year that the Irish Potato Famine began, and huge numbers of Irish immigrants, many of them destitute, settled there in shanty towns along the river.
Industries included tanneries (about which I’ve blogged before), gasworks, slaughterhouses, and wharves, which added to the foul odors contributed by the colossal manure heaps.
Like all working class neighborhoods in 19th century New York, workers had to walk to work, so they lived near their jobs. It’s hard to fathom how bad the neighborhood must have smelled.
Yeah, it’s a different place today.
Source: Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 991
images: Jacob Riis, 1890, Hell’s Kitchen
Dmadeo, Ninth Avenue Facing South, via Wikimedia
Famine Fare
When famine struck the settlers in the Jamestown colony during the winter of 1609- 10, starving colonists turned to cats, dogs, snakes, and rats to stay alive. When that was gone, they boiled their ruff collars, which had been stiffened with flour-based starch, and ate that as porridge.
Source: McKinley, The Cultural Roots of the 1622 Indian Attack
Tough Odds
Of the approximately 6000 people who came from England to settle in Virginia between 1607 and 1624, only about 1200 survived.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1894672
More on the Met
Couldn’t resist another blog about my trip to the Metropolitan Museum last week (see Friday’s post for the Civil War photo exhibit). It was so fun to be able to spend almost unlimited time there for a change, as usually I have one or more of my kids in tow and their shelf life in a museum is short.
Here are some highlights from the medieval gallery. This is Saint Firmin, a fourth century missionary and martyr who became the patron saint of Amiens, in Basque. Yes, he is standing up, holding his own head in his hands. His biographical record is sketchy, but he was said to have been captured and beheaded by the Romans. I just thought this statue was – well, not what you see every day.
And—sorry about the crummy photos—I was agog at the headgear on these fifteenth century courtiers. The women’s hats (although you can hardly call them hats) are called hennins. (Here is a much clearer shot of it, at the Met’s website.)
This is a statue from the fourteenth century, from a time when it was the fashion to appear pregnant. Lots of theories as to why, but consider the timing. Post-plague population replenishment?
As some of my loyal readers know, I am a huge fan of the painter Velazquez, and this painting of his slave, Juan de Pareja, has always been one of my absolute favorites.
In the headphone tour, the museum curator actually says that if he could take one painting home with him from the Museum, this would be the one. (I blogged about this painting here.)
And finally—I had no idea the Met owned this painting of Lavoisier and his wife by the painter David.
And I had no idea how enormous it is. Lavoisier, known as the father of modern chemistry, was guillotined during the French Revolution (I blogged about him here). And David is another source of (my) fascination—I blogged about him here and here.
Slaves of New York
In 1746, at least half of the households of New York City owned one or more slaves.
Gotham, p 127
Props
Hello, all! Back from my vacation!
I had a wonderful and varied trip, which culminated in a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past Monday. My husband (a history teacher) and I visited the amazing and poignant exhibit called Photography and the American Civil War, which you should go visit if humanly possible, if you’re a Civil War fan.
Here’s one cool part of the exhibit, a photographer’s studio posing stand, which I’ve never seen up close before.
It was a standard fixture in every nineteenth century portrait gallery, used to hold the sitter’s head rigid during the long exposure times. (I blogged about old-fashioned photos here, and why they took so long and why people tended not to smile.)
Here’s another and more macabre way photographers used these stands: to prop up dead people in order to take their photo. You can see one in this picture. Yes, the guy is dead. I know.
For more about why such post-mortem pictures were so common, you can read that post. There are many heartbreaking pictures of dead children visible if you do an online search, but I haven’t posted any because I find them too sad.