Turnspit Dogs

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Screen Shot 2013-04-23 at 12.24.10 PMBack in the eighteenth century and before, when meat was roasted over an open kitchen fire, someone needed to turn it on a spit for even cooking. Sometimes boys did this hot, dangerous, and deeply unpleasant job. Sometimes cooks used dogs.

In grander kitchens of English, American, and many European houses, turnspit dogs were put on a treadmill, which was attached to a rotating wheel. When the dog turned the treadmill, the treadmill turned the spit. Can you see the dog in the wheel?

Turnspit_Dog_Working“Long-bodied, crooked-legged” breeds were used, and in large households, they might work in teams, performing the task on different days. Although it’s hard to confirm this, several sources I read asserted that the term “every dog must have his day” comes from turnspit dogs taking turns at the wheel.

In the book Of Englishe Dogges published in 1576, there’s a section on “Curres of the mungrell and rascals sort,” where the author describes a certain dog called “Turnespete.”

“For who any meate is to bee roasted they go into a wheele which they turning rounde about with the waight of their bodies, so diligently looke to their businesse, that no drudge nor scullion can doe the feate more cunningly.” (34-5)

 

Images: Turnspit dog via Wikimedia
 From Henry Wigsted’s Remarks on a Tour to North an South Wales in the Year 1791, p 53

Altar Ego

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The character of Miss Havisham in Dickens’ Great Expectations was probably modeled after an actual person Dickens encountered in his childhood, a jilted woman who’d lost her mind and wandered the streets in her wedding dress.

 

(source: The Victorian City, page 10)

 

 

Poisoned Milk

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The mother of Abraham Lincoln died in 1818 of “milk sick,” a disease contracted from drinking the milk of cows that had grazed on white snakeroot.

Beer Flood

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On October 17, 1814, at a brewery in a London slum, a huge vat of beer (over 135,000 gallons) ruptured, in turn rupturing other vats. The flood of beer broke through the brick walls and gushed into the streets. It flooded several basements, killing at least nine people.

 

Uprising

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362px-The_first_slave_auction_at_new_amsterdam_in_1655Most people associate slavery in America with the southern states, but slavery very much existed in the North as well. In Manhattan in the early 1700s, the number of black slaves was nearly equal to that of free whites (Gilbert, 1).

Conditions were ripe for slaves to revolt. Unlike those living in Southern plantations, which were vast distances from one another, many enslaved people lived in close contact with one another in the densely populated area of lower Manhattan, making it easier to plan an uprising.  Enslaved blacks also mingled with free blacks, which wasn’t something that happened in the South.

In 1712, twenty three slaves set fire to a building in lower Manhattan. When white colonists came to extinguish it, they were set upon. At least nine whites were killed and six more were injured.

The conspirators were arrested—along with dozens more—and twenty seven were condemned to death. Of those, six committed suicide. The rest were executed in various horrible ways that had long since been outlawed for modes of executing whites.

 

images: Slave auction in New Amsterdam 1655 via wikimedia
Sources: Alan Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists
 
New York: The Revolt of 1712 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p285.html

Ahoy, Mate

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The cask on a ship that held the day’s supply of water was known as a scuttled butt—a cask (butt) that had a hole bored in it (scuttled) for withdrawing water. Because sailors congregated around this nautical “water cooler,” the term “scuttlebutt” became navy slang for gossip and rumors.

 (Thanks to Will Miller)

The Secret Painter

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Last week I blogged about Velazquez and how much I loved his paintings. Today’s post is about his slave (yeah, I know, slave). His name was Juan de Pareja (1606 – 1670). Call him an indentured servant if you want, but the man was effectively Velazquez’s slave in that he was not at liberty to leave. For years, Pareja prepared brushes, ground pigments, and stretched canvasses for the artist. While he was at it, Pareja observed his master carefully, and secretly taught himself how to use the materials, and how to paint.

Pareja was referred to as a “Morisco” in Spanish. One way to translate the word is that he had mixed parentage (the offspring of a European Spaniard and a person of African descent–once described as a mulatto, which is today a derogatory word). Another way to translate the word is that he was a Moor—someone descended from Muslims who had remained in Spain after its conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella. I’m going with “a man of Moorish descent.”

In 1650, Velazquez was preparing to paint a portrait of Pope Innocent X. As practice, he painted Pareja, who had accompanied the artist to Italy. Here is the portrait:juandeparejaIt’s a pretty amazing picture, isn’t it? (If you couldn’t tell, I’m in a major Velazquez admiration phase.) Velazquez got all sorts of props for it from the artists in Rome–he was even elected into the Academy of St. Luke.

I haven’t been able to verify the story, but according to some sources, Velazquez would not allow Pareja to pick up a paintbrush. But according to the story, one day, when King Philip IV was due to visit Velazquez, Pareja placed one of his own paintings where the king would see it. When the king admired it, believing it to be by Velazquez, Pareja threw himself at the king’s feet and begged for the King to intercede for him. Whether or not that story is true, Pareja did become an accomplished painter, and impressed the king so much that he ordered Pareja freed.

Pareja remained with the artist’s family until his death.

It was hard to find examples of his paintings, but here are two that I believe are attributed to him. Sorry the quality isn’t very good.

Juan_de_Pareja_-_Judith

The-Vocation-of-St-Matthew-xx-Juan-de-ParejaThe figure on the far left certainly looks like Pareja did a self portrait, doesn’t it?

Censored

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The first formal index of prohibited books was issued in France by the University of Paris in 1544, and in Italy by the Inquisition in 1545. In 1559, Pope Paul IV published the first papal list of banned books, including 48 heretical editions of the Bible.

Concrete Thinking

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Colosseum_01The ancient Romans were better at making concrete than we are today. According to a recent study by the US Department of Energy at Berkeley Lab, researchers have finally figured out how they made it.

First, what is concrete? According to this informative website, it’s an artificial building material that’s a combination of an aggregate (such as chunks of stone, rubble, broken bricks) plus a binding agent (such as lime or gypsum), and water. Builders slather it on in its wet phase, and then it dries and sets and hardens.

The binding agent in modern concrete is “cement” or “Portland cement,” which is manufactured from natural stuff. The term “reinforced concrete” refers to concrete that has been strengthened with steel bars. The Romans didn’t use reinforced concrete.

The special binding agent in Roman concrete (opus caementicium) was a volcanic dust called Pozzolona.

512px-Ostia_MarketplaceWhat’s fascinated researchers for so long is how the Roman concrete that was used to build harbors—submerged in sea water—managed to survive two thousand years, when Portland cement gives out after fifty. An analysis of the mineral components in Roman concrete dating to 37 BC reveals the recipe. According to the researchers’ press release “The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated – incorporating water molecules into its structure – and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.”

It’s also way more environmentally friendly to produce. And evidently there are sources of pozzolan—volcanic ash—all over the world.

The Monty Python blokes may well ask, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”

 

The Colisseum, built of concrete and stone: By Dudva (Own work) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Temple in the Ostia Antica by FoekeNoppert , Own work http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

Channeling

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On August 25, 1875, a 27-year-old former British naval officer named Captain Matthew Webb smeared himself with porpoise oil and became the first person to swim the English Channel. It took 22 hours to swim the 39-mile distance. On July 24, 1883, he attempted to swim the rapids below Niagra Falls and drowned.