If you go down to the woods today

In August 1913 Joseph Knowles, a 45 year old former hunting guide, went alone, nearly naked, and without tools or supplies, into the woods of northern Maine.  He emerged 61 days later, leaner and fitter, clad in a bearskin.

      

Before

After

The expedition was sponsored by the Boston Globe. Knowles wrote accounts of his stay on birchbark, and left them in caches for a reporter. The stories proved very popular, the circulation of the Globe reportedly rose by 30,000, and a massive crowd greeted Knowles on his return to Boston. He later published a full account of his adventure Alone in the wilderness – which was a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic. He also featured in two motion pictures, which sadly don’t seem to have survived.

The book is a curious mixture of action and reflection. There are detailed descriptions of him trapping and killing animals with his bare hands, and also long passages on the joys of outdoor living, and the mental agonies that he suffered during his stay. 

There is a good deal in the book about the government’s attitude to the wilderness, particularly the game laws.  The State authorities had refused to issue him with a hunting permit for the expedition, and fined him $205 on his return for taking game out of season. 

Knowles was given a full medical before and after his expedition, and the results are shown below, comparing him to the famous strongman Eugen Sandow, who was featured in this blog last year. Knowles lost 11 pounds (about 5 kilos)  in weight, and increased his lung capacity by almost 20%. According to his doctor, although he could not match Sandow’s strength,  he “had the staying powers of three Sandows”.

Medical examination

As with modern survival experts, there were many anxious to prove that Knowles was a fraud.  A rival newspaper, the Boston American, owned by William Randolph Hearst, claimed that he had access to a cabin and was provided with food and clothing.  Knowles naturally denied the allegations, and proposed a second trip, where he would allow a dozen “representative men” to accompany and observe him. He also proposed the establishment of a colony of men and women interested in the outdoor movement. The colony would acquire thousands of acres of land, and open a College of Nature to provide training in woodcraft.

Was Knowles a fake? Some of the events in the book are not entirely convincing, but there is no doubt that many were inspired by his actions, and became interested in the outdoor life.

A modern reprint of  Alone in the wilderness is available from all good booksellers, as is a recent biography of Knowles, Naked in the woods : Joseph Knowles and the legacy of frontier fakery by Jim Motavalli.

A certain cure for boredom

A crisis hit the project this week when we came to plan our blog post. We’d catalogued energetically  all week  but nothing inspired us to admiration or witty comment, nothing tempted us to smile. To be honest, we couldn’t escape the feeling that we’d seen it all before. Yet more heroic tales of British boys travelling around the world making a nuisance of themselves, fairy stories that were frankly tedious, romantic novels that failed to grip. Was 1910 really so dull?

Luckily, just in time to avoid having to fake enthusiasm for something, I discovered Printers’ Pie: “a festival souvenir of the Printers’ Pension, Almshouse and Orphan Asylum Corporation” which instantly lifted my spirits. It’s a sort of annual published for Christmas, a collection of light short stories and colourful cartoons, including one by W. Heath Robinson. The adverts were particularly entertaining, covering everything from a replica for the Great Sphinx of Cairo (14 inches high, can be cleaned with soap and water) to “dainty motor millinery”.

1910.11.34

I also found several remedies for people in 1910 who were feeling “out of sorts”. Some of these sounded drastic: for example, Lactobacilline (soured) milk, which even the advertiser said had “a certain peculiar flavour that is impossible to describe”. My favourite was this startlingly colourful advert for Vibrona tonic wine. Perhaps the project should order a case?

Vibrona - revives the depressed

From London Underground Railways to the Tube

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London Underground, The Tube, Tube map

When most people think of the Tube, they envisage it in its modern form, under the authority of Transport for London, with uniform signage, overcrowded trains and platforms, and lots of people frantically checking the iconic Tube map that shows the miles and miles of tunnels and tracks passing through central London into the suburbs. Few people think of the history of the Tube, or realize just how long ago the concept of an underground railway in London was first thought of and implemented.

I must admit that I used to be one of those people. I had a vague idea that the Tube already existed at the beginning of the First World War but that was about it. However, over the past few years I have come across several items relating to the London Underground Railways and so have learnt a lot about their history. Cataloguing with the Tower Project is always an educational experience since many of the books are on topics about which the cataloguers know nothing. Sometimes, the research involved in providing proper subject headings for books means that we end up knowing far too much on some topics – don’t get me started on paper bag cookery (yes, really) or the New York air brake…

The first and earliest item relating to the Tube to fall into my hands was a small pamphlet extolling the virtues of the Metropolitan Railway, published in 1868. It states that “Of all the marvels of which the City of London can boast, perhaps the greatest is the Metropolitan Railway, familiarly known to the million as the “Underground.”” The Metropolitan Line is the oldest of the London Underground lines; building began in 1860 and, in 1863, the first 3 3/4 miles of track were opened. The service proved so popular that the line was soon extended. In the first five years of its existence alone, over 81.5 million individual journeys were taken on the Metropolitan Railway.

Where the shoals of passengers come from, who have occupied the line in an increasing ratio ever since [its opening] , it would seem impossible to calculate, as the omnibus and carriage traffic do not seem to have decreased.

By 1905 the number of underground railways had proliferated and there was concern about the air quality in the tunnels. The Public Health and Sanitary Committee of the Southwark Borough Council commissioned a report on the chemical and bacteriological condition of the air on the City and South London Railway (now part of the Northern Line). It was concluded that adequate means of ventilating tubes and carriages needed to be found as a matter of some urgency if a rise in serious illness among Underground passengers was to be prevented. The problem of ventilating the deep tunnels and trains and keeping them cool is one that still occupies engineers today.

The item that really caught my fancy, however, is entitled “Underground aids to travel” and includes a London Underground Railway map from 1911 (image below, click on it for an enlarged version). Everyone is so familiar with the modern Tube map, first designed in the early 1930s, that seeing this geographical rather than schematic map is a bit of a shock. When I am on the Tube I don’t really think about the geographical space linking the stations (which is probably why I know pockets of London quite well but have no idea how to get from one part to another without the Tube!). This map shows the underground railways in their actual locations and makes it obvious how popular and how profitable the Underground must have been for it to have been extended so far since its beginning with under 4 miles of tunnels fifty years before. It is also interesting because it reveals the reason for the odd routes that some of the lines take through the city. I have always wondered why the Northern Line has two branches: here it can be seen that what is now the Northern Line used to be two separate railways before the City & South London Railway and the Hampstead Railway were combined.

Map of the Underground for 1911

An advert inserted into a 1911 London guidebook praises the Underground as “The quickest and cheapest method of travelling” and to a great extent that is still the case, although sadly nowadays the price of a ticket has risen beyond the standard twopenny fare which gave the Central London Railway (now the Central Line) the wonderful nickname of the “Twopenny Tube.” This nickname soon led to the other underground railways becoming known collectively as the Tube, although the name Underground also remained (and remains) current. The individual railways continued to belong to a combination of different companies until they, with the independent bus and tram companies, were finally merged into the new London Passenger Transport Board (London Transport for short) in 1933. This combination led to the development of a more unified network for the Tube, with the individual railways being renamed ‘lines’. London Transport has existed in various guises over the past decades and is now known as Transport for London or TfL.

One wonders what the early visionaries, inventors and engineers of the Metropolitan Underground Railway would make of the current extensive Underground system, the thousands of commuters and tourists who use it every day and the incessant beep of the Oyster card readers. Given the iconic place of the Tube and all its branding and design features and the fact that the Underground is still considered one of the greatest marvels that the City of London can boast, I like to think that they would be very proud of what they started, in 1863, with under four miles of tunnels and tracks…

Kathleen Ainslie, Shakespeare and Catherine Susan

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Children's books, Colour Illustrations, Kathleen Ainslie, Shakespeare

We get many books of Shakespeare quotations here in the Tower Project but few are as entertaining as this recent find. 

Ay! There’s the rub – Hamlet

The book “Tut-tut” by Kathleen Ainslie features famous quotes from many of Shakespeare’s plays accompanied by humorous illustrations. I’m not sure that I’ll ever look at some of these plays the same way again!

Poor, poor dumb mouths – Julius Caesar

Take, oh! Take those lips away – Measure for Measure

 

Catherine Susan and Me

After a bit of investigation I found out that the author, Katherine Ainslie, was quite a well-known illustrator in the early Twentieth century. She was most famous for producing a series of books about a little Dutch peg doll called Catherine Susan. Over the years she wrote and illustrated many adventures for the plucky little doll which became a firm favourite.

 

Getting arrested in “Votes for Catherine Susan and Me”

Some stories were surprisingly topical, such as “Votes for Catherine Susan and Me” which saw the main character and her friend joining a Suffragette march and ending up in jail! There were also some traditional stories featuring more everyday adventures and numerous calendars produced.

 

These books make me think of the story books that I used to have as a little girl where toys came magically to life, so it was really nice to find this small reminder of my childhood in the tower. I’m sure if I had been around one hundred years ago I would have been an avid reader of the ‘Catherine and Me’ books!

 

Catherine Susan’s Calendar 1911: 1911.6.63

Catherine Susan and Me in Hot Water: 1911.6.64

Votes for Catherine Susan and Me: 1911.6.65

Tut-tut: 1911.7.436