Fancy swimming

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Swimming

Synchronised swimming may come in for a bit of gentle mockery, but displays of aquatic feats and ability are nothing new.  “How to swim” by Harry Austin [1914.6.780] is so much more than just a guide to doing the breast stroke.  Austin was the superintendent of Beckenham Swimming Baths for some years after its opening in 1901 and took an active role on the committee, teaching swimming and coaching the water polo team, as well as orchestrating displays of ornamental swimming.   His wife, incidentally, became the first lady president of the Amateur Swimming Association in 1952.

Apparatus for supporting pupils in use at Beckenham swimming baths

Austin’s book does begin with a general introduction to swimming and its history; going on to describe how to learn to swim and how to execute the different strokes, diving, life-saving and floating, but what caught my attention were the sections on various tricks and displays that could be performed.  Some of these were requirements for attaining the Royal Life-Saving Society’s certificates and no doubt served to promote agility and proficiency in the water, but I can’t see too much of a practical purpose for  learning how to smoke underwater.

However, there are, apparently, two way of doing it.  One can sit on the bottom in shallow water with a clay pipe, well alight, and keeping the bowl of the pipe above water, blow bubbles and smoke at short intervals.  Alternatively, put the lighted end of a cigar in your mouth (being careful not to burn your tongue, I assume) and blow gently through it whilst swimming just below the surface.  One finishes by flourishing the cigar to show that it is still alight.  I feel the proprietors of swimming baths nowadays would take a dim view of anyone attempting this trick.

Spinning, or, The washing tub

Probably they wouldn’t like you eating underwater either: a small orange or banana is most suitable, apparently. “Pull some of the skin off the fruit and let it float up, break off pieces to be eaten and push them through the lips until all are consumed, then come up slowly and without a gasp.”

Perhaps some team swimming then?  Two or three swimmers can combine to emulate a steam tug, or a crocodile and then race against each other.  Or attach a swimmer to a land-based “fisherman” with a line and the one can attempt to draw the other to the side of the pool.  Mounted wrestling?  This requires two men standing in the water, each with another man on his shoulders and the two riders attempt to unseat each other.

For a trick that “never fails to provoke laughter when neatly done” you could get together with some friends and demonstrate the Monkey-on-a-stick.  Essentially this involves crouching under water and then periodically leaping straight up with your arms by your side.  I suspect this is harder than it sounds, especially when it comes to remembering to time your breathing while you are clear of the water.

Writing underwater

Finally, if you really want to make yourself look silly, how about Swimming like a duck?  “Balance on the breast, cross the ankles and bend the knees so that the feet come out of the water behind, to imitate the duck’s tail.  Propel by sculling with the hands under the hips.”

On the positive side, I suspect this last feat is the only one of the above that wouldn’t get you peremptorily thrown out…

“Hell with the lid off”

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First World War, France

As regular readers will be aware, the Tower Project has reached the First World War.  In amongst the usual school textbooks, novels and religious tracts we are now finding a good number of handbooks on soldiers’ duties, military drill and tactics, firing muskets, fighting with bayonets, care of the wounded, prayers for the soldiers and much other war related material.

This week I also came across “Out there,” which is an account of a visit to Belgium and France in 1916, undertaken by Charles Iggleston on behalf of the British government [1916.6.617]. The book is described on the spine as “A visit to the Front under the auspices of the War Office, thrillingly and graphically described.”   Naturally, it has strong patriotic overtones but at the same time it does give a flavour of how life was for the British Army of the day, in one small section of the war.

The author is full of admiration for “Tommy,” the British soldier: “dodging death at every hour of his life, he sticks to his work in grim earnest, with sublime devotion, overcoming all difficulties and obstacles, cheerful throughout, and with a fixed determination to win through in the end.”

The infantryman, he observes, “must needs bear the brunt of the fighting … all day and all night the infantryman is under fire so long as he is on duty, but in the mad rush of battle, the brunt of the fighting falls on him in a conspicuous degree.  He it is who rushes from his trench in the attack across the open, swept by a hurricane of fire from machine guns.  Only those who have seen No Man’s land between the opposing trenches can have any idea what this danger zone is like.”

The greatest everyday danger would appear to have been from the almost constant shelling, but the soldiers’ approach to them seemed almost blasé, perhaps because there was not much one could do to avoid them.  Iggleston describes walking down an open track with a subaltern, who seemed unconcerned at shells flying overhead, save for commenting, “This is a bit dangerous.”  He does then go on to explain the differences between “theirs” and “ours” and to say that one only needed to look out if the “whizz” became lower and lower…

This had its effect on the countryside “as many a blackened wall, many a roofless house, many shattered windows proclaim.”  Probably, we have all seen the photographs of this land where “traces of fierce fighting are everywhere – a bit of shattered trench, the severed trunk of a lonely tree, odd strands of telephone wire, and twisted bundles from destroyed entanglements … a spot that has been fought over and over again till the soil must have become sodden with blood.”

The descriptions of the French people living in their ruined countryside are perhaps even more heart rending than the plight of the soldiers.  Through a glass-less window, Iggleston sees an old peasant woman with a sad wrinkled face, sitting, knitting in the ruins of her cottage; having lost her two sons to the war and her two young grandchildren to a German raid.  “No one hears the white-haired peasant woman talk. She just tends her garden, lives on the few vegetables it provides, and after that – knits, knits, knits.”

Many of the French homesteads had been knocked about by the shells, but their inhabitants continued to farm their ancestral lands, sometimes gathering their harvest within yards of the Germans lines, with shells falling around them.  With all the able-bodied men away fighting, the ploughs are worked by “old men, who in England, would have been relegated to their children’s fireside, as incapable of doing another stroke of work … close by a farm cart was being drawn up a hill by a half-starved horse, an old women trying to help by pushing … while a little hunch-backed boy … added his strength to aid the struggling, panting horse.  Such are the sights one sees while traversing miles and miles of French territory.”

Today is, of course, Armistice Day, marking the anniversary of the end of the Great War.   None of the veterans survive now and increasingly the war is four or five generations removed and means only a few pages in a history book to many.  It is hard to picture the scale of the war and the vast numbers of men who were killed or died of diseases “out there,” but all of us have ancestors who lived through that time.   We should never forget.

Come dine with me

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Food, London, Restaurants

M. Ritz

Fancy a meal out this evening?  Want to know the best place to go?  Or do you just enjoy reading restaurant reviews?  If so, then “The gourmet’s guide to London” [1914.6.383] is just for you – an entertaining read about the best places to dine in the capital, from humble taverns to the highest class hotels; from City banquets to intimate occasions with a single companion.  It may be nearly 100 years out of date, but many of the establishments mentioned still exist…

Written in a very chatty and anecdotal style and published in 1914, one could also see it as a slightly poignant record of a lifestyle that was about to disappear with the Great War.  The author, Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham-Davis, educated at Harrow and having served with “The Buffs,” clearly moved in certain circles and expected only the best of gourmet dining.  A lifelong bachelor, he ate out as a matter of course and would seem to have been well known at many of the establishments he frequented.

It is interesting to see what he considered part of an everyday meal: he says that,“when men [abroad] … talk of the good things they will eat when they get home to England, the first idea that occurs to them is how delightful it will be to eat a good fried sole.” 

The Cheshire Cheese

Various game dishes, turtle soup, bacon, Oxford marmalade and Cambridge sausages are also mentioned and oysters were a staple – on their own, in oyster soup, scalloped oysters, oyster fries, pheasant stuffed with oysters; “jugged duck and oysters is a good old British dish and there are oysters in the majestic pudding of the Cheshire Cheese.”  This latter puzzled me, but apparently it was a famous dish of larks, kidney, oysters and steak, made at the Cheshire Cheese public house in London and served with elaborate ritual.

For many of the places he dines at, Newnham-Davis gives the full menu (often in French, of course) and sometimes the price.  For example, on a train journey from London to Southend, he dines on lobster mayonnaise, mutton cutlets, roast grouse, straw potatoes, salad, omelette au confiture, devilled sardines, cheese and biscuits and coffee.  The Great Eastern Company insisted on giving him the meal for free (with an eye to the publicity, no doubt) so as he “could not argue with such an indefinite thing as a railway company” he is unable to give the cost of his food on that occasion.

Some of the menus are extraordinarily long to modern eyes.  He lists the food served at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in 1913, which includes turtle, turbot, lobster, beef, partridge, cutlets, tongues, and seven sweets.  The cost, with wine, was about two guineas a head, for what he describes as quite a light dinner.  He may have had a point, as he then goes on to reproduce the menu for a similar event in 1837 which, as printed, was a yard in length!  “No wonder our grandfathers mostly died of apoplexy!” he comments.

There is an entertaining chapter on the Greenwich fish dinner, which had fallen out of favour by the time of writing, but apparently in the early 19^th century the Cabinet ministers of the day would take to barges for an annual pilgrimage downriver to partake of this meal.  The author recounts a visit there with an actress, Miss Dainty and her doted-on fox terrier, which was not altogether a success as she was more concerned with the welfare of the dog, tied up outside, than with attending to her food, much to the waiter’s disdain.

M. Joseph, of the Savoy, carving a duck

Further on in the book, Newnham-Davis reviews a luncheon at a Chinese restaurant, damning it with faint praise as “quite a pleasant experience.”  He boasts that Chinese food was no novelty to him, as when posted to the Far East he “learned by experience which were the dishes one could safely eat and which were the Chinese delicacies that it was wise to drop under the table.”  While out there, he unwittingly ate puppy stew, was at a banquet where many suffered from “Asiatic cholera” afterwards and was once kindly given a slip of cold pig’s liver wrapped around a prune; on which he comments, “I do not think that I ever tasted a nastier combination.”  Undoubtedly these experiences coloured his views, as he appears to have dined very circumspectly at the London restaurant.

Generally, the reports are positive, dwelling on the delights of the occasion, the friendliness of the proprietor and the pleasure of his surroundings and dining companions.  He finishes by explaining why he only publishes complimentary reviews, but I found his statement rather contradictory: “it is not fair to condemn any restaurant … on one trial and … whenever I have been given an indifferent meal anywhere, I never go back again to see whether I shall be as badly treated on a second occasion.”  Work that one out.

Two fauns and an ogre

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Arthur Ransome

Everybody knows Arthur Ransome wrote Swallows and Amazons; that wonderful adventure tale of children messing around with boats, which awakened a love of sailing in so many of its readers.  Most people also know he wrote another eleven books in the series, set not only in the Lakes, but also in East Anglia and around the world.

 These are books that I have read time and again, but (probably like many others) I must confess I’ve never read any of the rest of his writings.  I vaguely know he wrote books on fishing, edited a collection of Russian fairy tales and was a political correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, but I’d never heard of a small volume entitled “The hoofmarks of the faun” [1911.6.1209].

 This is a collection of some very early works and, to be honest, they are not terribly good on the whole.  Written over twenty years before Swallows and Amazons, he seems to be struggling to find his style.  The publisher lost £25 on it (a fair amount of money in 1911) and needless to say, it didn’t make Ransome’s name or fortune either.

 The title piece features a faun from the south, who falls in love with an elf-girl from the north but, although his feelings are reciprocated, they cannot do more than sense each other’s presence.  One day they see each other’s footsteps, but she thinks his are made by some “horrible thing.”  Learning of this from a gossipy starling, the faun sadly leaves to return to his own kind.  Not a feel-good story, then.

 Neither is the closing story, “The ageing faun,” which is another tale of lost love.  In between these two are a rather odd, slightly philosophical, piece on love and dreams and a rather better story, called “The little silver snakes,” which touches on the occult, but suffers from a slightly anti-climatic ending.  Then there is a rather puzzling literary criticism on a chap called Peter Swainson, who allegedly had one book published a few days after his death.  I can find no trace of this book and no trace of this Peter Swainson in birth records of the time.  Did he really exist, or is this some kind of fantasy criticism?

 “Rolf Sigurdson” is perhaps the best work in this collection, with echoes of Norse mythology, a reasonably strong storyline and a happy ending.  This one I read and enjoyed, without needing to wince at flowery prose or wonder quite what Ransome was on about.

 So much for that.  My interest awakened, I dug out another early book of his, entitled “The imp and the elf and the ogre” [1911.6.590].  I expected this to be more twee fairy tales, but no, it is in fact a rather charming and informative children’s book about nature.  Ransome could write for children – that is so very apparent from this book.  In fact, if you’ll just excuse me, I think I’m going to slip away and curl up in a corner with it…

“Next wielding sceptre you may see…”

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Kings and Queens, Rhymes

William I: Although his harshness may disgust us / He tempered truculence with justice

We catalogue quite a few books of supposedly memorable rhymes, intended to make it easy to learn the names and dates of  British sovereigns, so I didn’t initially take much notice when I picked up yet another one [Kings and Queens of England by Basil Procter, 1909.7.2126].  However, glancing through it, I couldn’t help but be amused by some of the phrases and rhymes:  this one is rather more entertaining than many of its genre

So here is a quick romp through British history from the Romans who “ruthlessly besieged our land” until “they all went trundling home again” and the Saxons (“I can’t remember half their names”) to Edward the Confessor “Who really should be sharply blamed / For letting William’s Norman horde / Come conquering over from abroad.”

After 1066 (“No matter if your memory’s rotten / This date should never be forgotten”) we move on to the Plantagenets and Henry II who gets ten flattering lines, followed by the comment “Bright was his reign; one thing may fleck it / That sad affair of Thomas Beckett.”  Then we have Richard I, the Crusades being dismissed as “Completely futile, though sublime” and John who “Ate heavily of fruit and died” via Henry II who “when at Lewes he met De Montforte / The wretched king was forced to run for’t” to Edward I, in whose reign “The Scotch were very nearly quelled.” Unfortunately next, “Edward Two, the Scotties teasing / Went home much quicker than was pleasing / Finding Edward so besotted / The English had their king garrotted.”

Skip a century or so: “But as I’m feeling rather blurred / I’ll hurry on to Richard Third / Who basely in the tower did smother / His nephew, Edward V, and brother.”  Later on, Henry VIII is dismissed in four lines; the second couplet being: “He with the Pope refused to palter / And six times over climbed the altar.”  Climbed?  

Richard III: Though hunchback and a trifle tainted / Richard was not so black as painted

Of Cromwell, the author merely comments “He had a wart upon his forehead / Which many folk considered horrid” and Charles II “was a wanton lad / And soon was going to the bad.”  William and Mary get a good press, Anne is “dull” and the Hanovers “in long succession / Create a very drab impression.”  After George III (“He lost America and went mad”) and George IV (“if speak I must / ‘Tis with unutterable disgust”) the author has to be a bit more careful, as he reaches living memory and the grandfather of the current king.

William IV is skipped over in two harmless lines, Victoria gets eight lines of eulogy and of the reigning couple, Edward VII and Alexandra, it is claimed “No greater monarchs have we seen” which, personally, I think is stretching the point a bit.

Having been amused by this work, I can’t help wondering how Procter would have treated later sovereigns; Edward VIII for example.  Perhaps something along the lines of: In order to his great love sate / Poor Eddie had to abdicate.  Well, it’s no worse than any of the above!

Any other suggestions, anyone?

Ode to… a tram accident

Perhaps one of the best known disaster poems is William McGonagall’s infamous “The Tay Rail Bridge Disaster.”  In fact he seemed to rather specialise in writing about calamities, but he was and is by no means alone.  Poems have been written about the Titanic, Hillsborough, the 2004 tsunami, Aberfan, the Challenger space shuttle explosion… you name it, someone, somewhere has been moved to immortalise the occasion in verse.

My eye was caught by “A memento of the tramcar accident at Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, Tuesday, October 15^th, 1907” [1908.8.1039].  This is a simple piece of card with a rather unexciting photograph, showing a northern cobbled street with a lot of people standing around; an overturned tram just visible in the background.    Underneath there is a six verse poem by John Crossley, which describes the incident.

 Turning the card over, there is an acrostic poem eulogising about Halifax, followed rather soberingly by lists of the killed, seriously injured and less seriously injured.  At the bottom, looking rather strange to modern eyes, is the phrase “With good wishes from….”  Clearly this rather tragic memento was designed to be sent to one’s relations and friends, although with what purpose it is hard to say.

 Anyone who rushed to be first to send the news to their acquaintances would have been a little premature though, as within days a second edition was published, necessitated by one of the “less seriously” injured, an 18 year old apprentice planer called Arnold Thornton, having subsequently died.  Naturally the relevant line in the poem is also adjusted to reflect the additional casualty.

 This does seem to have been a particularly nasty incident; one of the worst tram disasters in Britain.  As the open-topped car, packed with at least 60 people, neared the top of Pye Hill, the electric power failed, causing the vehicle to roll backwards all the way down again, gathering speed as it went despite the best efforts of the conductor to apply the brakes.  At the bottom it jumped off the rails and overturned before smashing into a shop frontage, ultimately killing five and injuring 35 others.

 The 32 year old conductor, Walter Robinson, seems to come out of this as some kind of hero, perhaps being viewed romantically because he died in the line of duty, being killed when part of the tram fell on him.  He gets a four line poem to himself on the card, being described both as “the brave conductor” and a “heroic soul.”  Furthermore £3 10s 7d of the memorial fund went to his widow – a benefit that was withheld from any of the other relatives.  Most of the money, over £19, was spent on a memorial in the grounds of the Mount Zion Chapel at Ogden, with the remaining £2 or so being used to prepare the vault in the same chapel.

 Walter has his own memorial cross on his grave at the chapel, where he was a Sunday school teacher.  This reveals further tragedy in his life: his baby son died at 8 months, followed less than 3 weeks later by his wife.  His second wife lived to the ripe old age of 94, dying in 1973, but sadly they enjoyed less than a year of married life before Walter’s untimely demise.  Perhaps she took some comfort from the fact that he was hailed a hero. As he tried desperately to bring the runaway tram to a halt, he shouted warnings and stopped passengers falling off (although some of them deliberately jumped off to save themselves).  His monument states that he was “striving to the last to save the occupants of the car” and survivors later spoke of his calm command in a terrible situation.  His widow, “faithful until death,” never remarried.

 The accident must have had a huge impact on the local community at the time, but is doubtless all but forgotten now, save for these rather sad poetical greetings cards.  But then this is one of the pleasures of the Tower collection – finding pieces of ephemera and discovering the stories behind them.

Always read the label

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Jokes, W.W. Jacobs

  

On first glance, this looks quite an ordinary sort of book.  The cover promises some kind of humour, maybe a collection of jokey anecdotes, but clearly something amusing to pass an idle hour or two with.

 On a closer look, there is perhaps a hint of some kind of spoof.  W.W. Jacobs was a well-known writer of short stories, many of them based on dockyard characters.  He was born in Wapping and his father was a dockyard worker, which no doubt led to a certain amount of inspiration for his tales about Ginger Dick, Sam Small, and Peter Russett, a trio of rather feckless and credulous sailors.

 Obviously, the cover illustrates one of these wharf-side characters, apparently having a good laugh at the contents of the book in his hand.  But why is it described as “not” by W.W. Jacobs?  A parody of his works then, perhaps?  Surely an entertaining read, anyway.

 So, pity the poor reader, who shells out his sixpence and then opens his purchase to find this:

  

Yes, an entire volume of blank pages, each with a hole cut in the centre to reveal a skein of high quality wool glued to the final page.  An attached label repeats the message on the cover.  So, who is the joke on now?

The charms of Saint Catharine

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Charms, Saint Catharine's Day

This is especially for all the unmarried maidens out there who are longing to know whom they will marry.  This ritual is to be carried out on the 25^th November, which is Saint Catharine’s Day, so (as I post this) you still have a few days to gather the necessary ingredients and find at least two like-minded friends.  Then, carefully follow these instructions, which have been taken verbatim from Mother Bunch’s golden fortune teller, published around 1830 [CCD.7.56.127]

 Ready?

 “Let any number of young women, not exceeding seven, or less than three, assemble in a room, where they are sure to be safe from interlopers ; just as the clock strikes eleven at night, take from your bosom a sprig of myrtle, which you must have worn there all day, and fold it up in a bit of tissue paper, then light up a small chafing dish of charcoal, and on it each maiden throw nine hairs from her head, and a pairing of each of her toe and finger nails ; then let each sprinkle a small quantity of myrtle and frankincense in the charcoal, and while the odoriferous vapour rises, fumigate your myrtle (this plant or tree is consecrated to Venus) with it, go to bed while the clock is striking twelve, and you will be sure to dream of your future husband, and place the myrtle exactly under your head.  Observe, it is no use trying this charm if you are not a real virgin, and the myrtle hour of performance must be passed in strict silence.” 

Sweet dreams!

The forgery exterminator

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forgeries, Joseph William Palmer, Moustache, philately, stamp dealers

See-saw

This is the law

And I am its vindicator

Imprison the scamp

Who sells a forged stamp

And bless the exterminator

 This variant on a well known nursery rhyme was penned by Joseph William Palmer, a stamp dealer who had an obsession with forged postage stamps and wanted (if you will pardon the pun) to stamp out the trade in them.  As well as “Nursery Rhymes revised” [1885.4.199], from which the above is taken, he wrote and published a number of other small booklets containing poems of a fanciful nature.

 A typical example [The Spirit of Christmas, 1885.4.210] starts with the author reclining beside a warm fire after a hearty dinner and as he sinks into sleep he is visited by the Spirit of Philatelee.  They fly away together and after seeing various groups of people involved with forgeries there is a flagrant advertisement for Palmer, the honest dealer.

 “The happy land, or, Through time and space” [1886.4.190] again begins with the author sitting around at Christmas, this time musing on the death of friends (a jolly Yuletide subject) the plight of the poor and human misery in general before his spirit soars away to a Utopian land where everyone loves their neighbour, politicians make wise laws, there are no thieves or scamps and (surprise, surprise) no forged stamps and a perfectly functioning Post Office.  He then ends with several verses promoting his own virtue and diligence in trying to combat fraud.

 His poetical offering for 1890 was entitled “Through fifty years, the romance of the postage stamp, 1840-1890” [1889.4.185].  This time it is a random policeman doing the musing as he stands outside Palmer’s shop in the Strand.  While it does give some history of British stamps, there are also side excursions into Palmer’s marriage, the death of his mother and frequent references to the imminent widening of the Strand (which ultimately led to the demolition of his shop).  Inevitably though, the last few verses are again about forged stamps and how Palmer is battling against the trade in them.

 I became intrigued by these rather quirky Christmas offerings and set out to discover a little more about Palmer.  I quickly found that he published a monthly periodical called Bric-a-Brac, which promoted itself as “A collection of curiosities, old and new, and various articles from the newspapers.”  Glancing through a copy [1885.7.1096] it soon became apparent that this is yet another vehicle for some flagrant self-promotion.

 Cautionary tales about forged stamps abound and Palmer himself is mentioned in almost every article.  Clearly he is particularly proud of his part in formulating a clause in the 1884 Post Office Protection Act which made it illegal to make, own or deal in any forged stamp, on pain of a £20 fine.  References to this crop up in most of his publications. To quote another of his rhymes:

“Dickory, Dickory Dock

The forgery-monger’s stock

The police strike one

Down they come

And it’s ho for the prisoner’s dock!”

My final discovery was a booklet entitled “Romance in reality, or, The story of an eventful life” [1885.7.1121].  Written by Francis Neale (more of him later) it is the biography of Palmer.  It begins with a brief history of stamp collecting, but is soon describing Palmer as “the father of philately.”  We go on to learn that he was born in Hackney in 1853 and at the tender age of seven sold his first stamp for sixpence.  As he picked up the stamp from the street, this was all profit and in true entrepreneurial style, he invested it in more stamps to sell.

 From this his business grew to occupy the large premises at 281 Strand, where he had a huge warehouse and a stock of millions of stamps, valued at a total of £25,000.  In his 1874 catalogue [1874.7.736], at the age of 21, he is already thanking his customers for eight years of loyalty.  Pictures of the shop in the Strand show it displaying his proud claim to be the “oldest established stamp merchant in the world.”

Joseph William Palmer - another Victorian gentleman with a carefully cultivated moustache

 He was clearly an obsessive man, working all hours on his business from the age of seven onwards and barely even taking time off to get married, which he did in 1880.  His wife would appear to have been his assistant in the shop and was whisked back there straight after the marriage ceremony.  Somehow, he did find time to have two children, “a bright little girl and an intelligent little boy.”

As I read this biography, it struck me that it is again full of overblown praise for Palmer and I began to wonder whether he had in fact written it himself.  Then I discovered the name of his wife: Frances Mary Neale.  Surely not a coincidence?  So, was the author his brother-in-law, or was it in fact Palmer himself using a pseudonym?  For a man so full of self-promotion, I know where my suspicions lie.

So, to finish, another of his “new improved” nursery rhymes:

“Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, where have you been?”

“I’ve been to the Strand and PALMER I’ve seen”

“Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, what did you there?”

“I saw that his dealings were honest and fair”

“Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, is PALMER the man

Who fought single-handed the forgery clan?”

“PALMER it was who strengthened the law”

“Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, give me your paw”

Reach for the sky

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Edward Watkin, Victorian engineering, Wembley Park Tower

Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Metropolitan Railway Board in the 1880s, was a man with big ideas.  His main aim in life was a railway line to connect the north of England with France by means of a Channel tunnel (which was in fact started) but he also owned land at Wembley Park, north of London, which he envisaged turning into grand pleasure grounds.  He wanted the centrepiece of this to be a great tower; bigger, taller and altogether better than the one Gustave Eiffel had recently completed in Paris.

 To realise this vision, the Metropolitan Tower Construction Company was set up and they promoted an international competition, inviting architects of the day to put forward designs for a tower of not less than 1,200 feet – it had to be taller than the Eiffel Tower.  These were eventually published [Descriptive illustrated catalogue of the sixty-eight competitive designs for the great tower for London. 1890.8.495] and it is now fascinating to look through the proposals and marvel at the inventiveness and ingenuity displayed.

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In fact, none of these designs really impressed the judges, but they settled on one that looked remarkably similar to the Eiffel Tower (but 175 feet higher) and set about building it.  The New York Times reported on this with some enthusiasm, telling its readers how “the Wembley Tower crowns an eminence of the beautiful Wembley Park, affording a lovely view of the surrounding country.”  It goes on to inform that “over 150 men are now employed fitting pieces of the tower together, and it is wonderful what rapid progress they make.” [NYT, May 20, 1894]

 Sadly, despite allowing two years for the foundations to settle, the ground could not take the weight of the structure and it began to subside.  Only the first stage of the tower up to the lower platform was built and while it was something of an attraction for a year or so, it was soon nick-named Watkin’s Folly as work was abandoned.  Eventually, in 1907, it was dismantled and the metal work recycled.  However, if you happen to visit Wembley Stadium, spare a thought for the remains of the tower’s concrete foundations, which lie underneath the pitch.