Crossness Pumping Station, London

I received some very strange looks on a train recently, reading Paul Dobraszczyk’s Into the Belly of the Beast:  exploring London’s Victorian Sewers (Spire 2009).  It’s a perfectly sensible subject, with an entirely respectable cover, but maybe the title is a little over-wrought.

(The last time I got funny looks on a train was years ago when I first read Sue Townsend’s delightful The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾ [1982]:  I was rolling around the carriage at the Christmas lunch scene where Adrian is lusting after his aunt’s prison officer girlfriend, and ends up eating the wing of the turkey because he’s too embarrassed to ask for any other part of its anatomy.)

Paul Dobraszczyk’s book is a very interesting addition to the somewhat limited literature about what the Victorians called the “sanitary question”, the great environmental issue of the nineteenth century – how to provide the rapidly growing urban areas with clean drinking water, sewage disposal and a dignified, hygienic way of disposing of the dead.

Dr Dobraszczyk analyses how Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s Metropolitan Main Drainage system, constructed at huge expense and upheaval, initially between 1859 and 1868, is represented by the illustrative material left behind – maps and drawings, photographs and press coverage.

Among the insights he uncovers is the fact that before Bazalgette could begin to lay down a coherent drainage system for London he needed the area to be surveyed systematically.  All the previous maps had stopped at some arbitrary district boundary, and they were all at different scales or levels of detail.

Another revelation is the identity of the architect of the great steam pumping stations which are the glory of London’s industrial archaeology – Crossness (1862-65), Abbey Mills (1865-68) and the less flamboyant sites at Deptford (1859-62) and Pimlico (1870-74).  This was Charles Henry Driver (1832-1900), who also worked for the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, provided architectural detail for the seaside piers at Llandudno (1878) and Southend-on-Sea (1887-90), and collaborated on the Mercado Central [Central Market], Santiago, Chile (1868-70) and the Estação da Luz [Station of Light], São Paulo, Brazil (1897-1900)*.

I was concerned that I’d never encountered Driver’s name before, and began to feel I needed to keep up, until I read a review of Dr Dobraszczyk’s book in the Victorian Society’s magazine, The Victorian, which admits “this reviewer had never heard of Charles Driver”.  The reviewer was Stephen Halliday, whose book The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis (Sutton 1999) I greatly admire.  If the name is news to Stephen Halliday, then Charles Driver is a real discovery.

*  The Estação da Luz suffered a disastrous fire, in which one firefighter died, in December 2015:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35157694.

Abbey Mills Pumping Station is a working installation operated by Thames Water and is very rarely accessible to the public.

The pumping stations at Abbey Mills and Crossness feature in Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Temples of Sanitation.  For details, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2015 Cemeteries and Sewerage:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Tomb of Dr John St John Long, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Dr Johnson remarked that “In lapidary descriptions a man is not upon oath”.

But how do you frame an epitaph when the life of the deceased has been marked by scandal?

Dr John St John Long (1793-1834) lies beneath a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery that is a masterpiece of lending dignity to a remarkable man who is, perhaps, remarkable for unfortunate reasons.

Long is usually described as a quack doctor.  In fact he practised from a Harley Street surgery, though he “had not been regularly educated as a surgeon”.  On at least two occasions the deaths of his patients led to manslaughter charges:  in the first instance he was fined £250;  on the second, though the coroner’s jury returned a manslaughter verdict “on the ground of gross ignorance, and on other considerations”, Long was exonerated at the Old Bailey and “several ladies, elegantly dressed, remained with the prisoner in the dock throughout the day, to whom this verdict appeared to give great satisfaction”.

Nevertheless, he received glowing testimonials from patients who felt they had benefitted from his treatments – among them the Countess of Buckingham and the radical politician, Sir Francis Burdett, who recommended Long to the Marquess of Anglesey for a treatment for tic doloureux.

His tomb at Kensal Green carries a lengthy and delicately poised inscription:

It is the fate of most men to have many enemies, and few friends.  This monumental pile is not intended to mark the career but to shew how much its inhabitant was respected by those who knew his worth and the benefits derived from his remedial discovery.  He is now at rest and far beyond the praises or censures of this world.

Stranger as you respect the receptacle for the dead as one of many who must rest here, hear the name of John St John Long without comment.

Most commentators quote only the final paragraph – which has a more terse effect.

Of the “benefits derived from his remedial discovery” nothing further was heard after Long’s death.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Victorian Cemeteries, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2015 Cemeteries and Sewerage:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Tomb of Andrew Ducrow, equestrian, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Probably the most bombastic monument in Kensal Green Cemetery is that to Andrew Ducrow (1793-1842), the equestrian owner of Astley’s Amphitheatre in Lambeth.

Ducrow’s entry in Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Ducrow] likens his stage act to the modern-day Chippendales, because he and his sons dressed in flesh-coloured body stockings and posed on the backs of white stallions.

Even though Astley’s burnt down three times, Ducrow was clearly worth something.  His plot in Kensal Green Cemetery is in a prestigious location near to the Duke of Sussex, and his monument cost £3,000.  Built initially for Mrs Ducrow, its design by George Danson is a ponderous mix of classical and Egyptian motifs, originally coloured and surmounted by a statue of Hygieia, goddess of health, cleanliness and sanitation.

The inscription, which Ducrow clearly wrote, declares that the tomb was “erected by Genius for the reception of its own remains”.  It was described in the contemporary periodical The Builder as “ponderous coxcombry”.

The real genius of Astley’s Amphitheatre was, of course, its founder, Philip Astley (1742-1814).  In many ways he is the originator of the modern circus, because he was the first professional trick-rider to perform in a circle, though he never used the Latin term “circus” or the English “ring”, but called it a “ride”.  He introduced clowns and acrobats into his show to extend and vary the performance.

Most significant of all, he determined that the diameter for the circus ring, as we now call it, should be 42 feet, for that caused a cantering horse to lean at the optimum angle for a man to stand on its bare back.

Now that‘s genius.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Victorian Cemeteries, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2015 Cemeteries and Sewerage:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.