Tobacco smoke or pollution?

FUMIGATION OF THE THAMES.

Tobacco fumes are unpleasant to the majority of ladies. Nevertheless, we must protest against the prohibition of smoking abaft the funnel on board Thames steamers. The other day we were ascending the river in one of these vessels, seated in that quarter of it, when a youth, who was indulging in a Pickwick to the windward of us, was caused to transfer himself and his enjoyment forwards. No sooner had he gone away with his smoke, than our nostrils were assailed by the vilest of odours; a breath from the open mouth of a sewer on the opposite bank. This was just as we were passing the Archbishop‘s Palace at Lambeth; and we could almost have imagined that Dr. Sumner had been at work purifying the Church, and had rendered its abuses palpable to the olfactory sense; in such great indignation were our nostrils at the perfume emitted in the neighbourhood of his Grace’s premises. We wished our young friend back again with his “weed,” the fragrance of which we very much prefer to that of metropolitan tributaries to the Thames: and until that stream is somewhat dulcified, we should think that even ladies would approve of universal fumigation on board its boats.

Fair point.

(August 1853)

Cancer? Try homeopathy

HOMŒOPATHY SUPERSEDED.

Here is a gross libel or a fine satire:—

EXTRAORDINARY ANTI-SURGICAL OPERATION. THE USE OF THE KNIFE UNNECESSARY.

MR. R. L——, MEDICAL HERBALIST, 15, I—— Street, Roxburgh Terrace, begs respectfully to intimate, that as a great many Persons have been very desirous to see the Serpent which he extracted alive lately from the breast of a lady labouring under Cancer, he will be most happy to show it to those interested, any day from 10 to 12 o’clock, at his house, 15, I—— Street.

Edinburgh, 12th August, 1853.

This is either a libel upon somebody or other, glanced at under the figure of the Serpent: or it is a satire on the gullibility of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, from the News of which city it is extracted. The modern Athenians, with all their acuteness, are said to be rather susceptible subjects for quackery.

(August 1853)

RIP Westminster Bridge

THE DOOM OF WESTMINSTER BRIDGE.

The Act has at length passed for the total destruction of Westminster Bridge, and another bridge is to succeed, which, if it is really to succeed, must be as unlike as possible to the existing bridge, which has been a complete failure. The career of this bridge has been downward from the first, and its continuance has been a phenomenon similar to that which is illustrated by the old saying that “a creaking door hangs long upon the hinges.” Westminster Bridge has been, as long as we can remember, “going, going, going,” and it has been a matter of constant wonder that it had never yet “gone.” We have never on traversing it been able to look back upon it with the respect due to “the bridge that carries us safely over,” for we have always felt that the safety was due rather to good fortune than to any merit the bridge itself had to rest upon.

We cannot help feeling delighted that an act of Parliament will at last put this unhappy old bridge out of its misery, instead of sanctioning the further infliction of the painful operations to which it has been subjected. The poor old bridge is no longer to be maimed and mutilated, but it is to be made away with once and for ever. It has already undergone the process of trepanning, by having something removed from its crown, and it has long ago been able to boast of nothing better than wooden legs, by the process of giving it timbers to stand upon, as well as wooden arms, by the substitution of wood-work for its old original balustrades. We are delighted that the old nuisance will not be suffered to die in its bed, or rather in the bed of the river, into which it daily threatened to tumble. Westminster Bridge has, indeed, had a fair trial, for it has been tried by its piers, and its condemnation has been the inevitable result, for its piers have been, perhaps, the chief cause of its downfall.

Shame; it looked quite a grand old thing.

(July 1853)

Manchester: the unlikely birthplace of vegetarianism

The Vegetarians in the North.

The Vegetarians have been consuming a quantity of green stuff in public at the Town Hall of Salford. We shall expect soon to hear of a variety of Extraordinary Feats performed by geniuses of the Vegetarian class, such as swallowing turnips whole, demolishing spinach by the sieve, onions by the rope, and cabbages by the cartload.

Here’s an interesting fact. There were more vegetarian restaurants in Manchester in 1880 than 1980. Unlikely as it seems, industrial Manchester, and particularly Salford, were host to the birth of the modern vegetarian movement.

It started in 1809, when a charismatic preacher, reading Genesis 9.3 (“And God said, Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you: even as the green herb I have given you all things, but the flesh, with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”) encouraged his congregation to abstain from meat. “Meat-eating is unnatural. If God had meant us to eat meat, then it would have come to us in edible form, as is the ripened fruit”.

The next year, he published this poem, arguing that God is in all moving things.

Hold, daring man! thy hand restrain –
God is the life in all;
To smite at God, when flesh is slain –
Can crime like this be small?

His influential successors came to found the vegetarian society. All of the founding members came from Salford.

Why Salford? Who can tell. Perhaps it was a reaction against the dark satanic mills; a need for purity amongst the grime. Perhaps it was Manchester’s position as far from the reaches of the established church in London that lead to the flourishing of these fringe beliefs. Or perhaps it was simply a very charismatic individual.

Nonetheless, the movement was popular and successful. In Fountain Street in the heart of Manchester there was a vegetarian establishment which boasted two dining halls, a lecture theatre, and billiard, smoke and reading rooms. It had a full-time staff of 21 and spawned a satellite restaurant nearby. There were also the Smallman’s Restaurants, founded by Frederick Smallman a health food pioneer and vegetarian. He set up business in 1876 and his establishment grew to eight in the city.

For more info, see this great article by Derek Antrobus.

(1853)

 

American music? What next?

NEW AMERICAN MOVEMENT.

Somebody writing from Naples, about Music, to a fashionable contemporary, says:—

“I know, too, more than half-a-dozen Americans who have left their gold cupidity behind them, and are now in Italy, living in small dirty back rooms with a piano-forte, practising solfeggios, with the intention of becoming singers of Italian opera.”

The development and cultivation of music in the soul of America may, perhaps, tend to arrest the progress of Filibusterism, and other stratagems and spoils; including the spoliation of black liberty: and to render the airs which Jonathan sometimes gives himself—on the fishery question for instance—tolerable. But it will in all probability produce results yet more extraordinary. A go-ahead people will not be content to stop short at operas and concerts. Music will be utilized; applied to political and social purposes; employed to enhance the charms of eloquence, and adorn the wisdom of statesmanship. Patriots will sing bravuras at caucus or in Congress on behalf of freedom: and Presidents will express themselves in notes arranged to form symphonies; whilst the foreign policy of the States will take the form of overtures. The unseemly contests which sometimes occur in the Legislature will be replaced by grand scenas; and the stump-orator that now is will become a stump-warbler: whilst the mob will respond in chorus. American song will be famous all the world over, and command immense engagements, being paid for—as no doubt it will be delivered—through the nose

(September 1853)