Author: Louisa Cornell

THE OLD OPERATING THEATRE MUSEUM

AND

HERB GARRET

9A St Thomas Street

London

Parts of this museum are not for the squeamish and access at present is limited to those who can climb a rather steep 52 steps up a spiral staircase, but the insight offered into the worlds of medicine and surgery during the Regency and Victorian eras by this unique and little known place is not to be missed. In addition to an extensive collection of medical accoutrements it houses what is considered Europe’s oldest surviving operating theatre.

St. Thomas is one of the oldest hospitals in London. It was established in Southwark, a part of London considered a den of immorality and criminal elements at the time. Thomas Cromwell pronounced it the bawdy hospital of Southwark when he visited it in 1535. It was originally set up as a hospital for unwed mothers and by the time Cromwell visited it was known for its treatment of those who suffered with venereal diseases. The hospital’s manager, Richard Mabbott is said to have kept a concubine and to have sold the church plate. At least they picked a manager who would fit in.

The hospital was moved a number of times over the years, but the clientele changed very little. St. Thomas’s Hospital was dedicated to serving the poor, those with venereal diseases, and a fair share of lunatics. Between 1693 and 1709 the hospital was rebuilt through the efforts of the hospital board president, Robert Clayton, and his friend, Thomas Guy, who founded Guy’s Hospital next door. The medieval church around which the original hospital was built was demolished and replaced with the church which now houses the museum.

In 1751 the male operating theatre was added to the hospital. It was housed in the top floor to give it better access to daylight. The female operating theatre, the one which is the centerpiece of today’s museum, was installed in 1821. Eventually the hospital moved on to better quarters, after a period of time using the buildings of the zoological gardens in Lambeth, but the original operating theatre and the herb garret were rediscovered during renovations of the church building in 1962.

The operating theatre is as it would have appeared in the early to mid-nineteenth century, complete with the viewing areas used to teach medical students. The rest of the museum is an amazing exhibit of medical instruments, medical specimens as they would have been housed during this era, and the contents of the herb garret and pharmacy where the medicines of the day were dried and prepared.

The museum features period mock surgeries and surgical lectures on Saturdays at 2:00 PM and weekly lectures on the preparation of medicines and the Regency and Victorian era pharmacy. Their educational programs, lectures, and walks are listed on the website and frankly if I had endless time I would attend each and every one. Check out the list here :

http://oldoperatingtheatre.com/schools-groups

 

The museum has a blog which is a treasure trove of information on the history of medicine as it was practiced at St. Thomas and other hospitals of the Georgian and Victorian eras.

Anyone with an interest in the earliest surgeries of the “modern” era, the creation of medicines from herbs, and some of the odd and frankly frightening ways medicine was practiced prior to the twentieth century should avail themselves of the incredible resource that is The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret.

Check out their website, but be prepared to spend some time pouring over this brilliant online presence of a real gem of a museum! Definitely adding this one to the UK bucket list!

 http://oldoperatingtheatre.com/

THE FAN MUSEUM

12 Crooms Hill

Greenwich, London

If one is fortunate enough to take a little jaunt out to Greenwich when visiting London, it is assumed one will visit the National Maritime Museum and, of course, the Royal Observatory. There is, however, another museum located between these two must-see destinations definitely worth a visit.

Located in two grade II listed houses built in 1721, the Fan Museum was the first museum dedicated solely to fans. It opened in 1991 and is now home to over 4000 fans and extended fan leaves. The oldest fan in the permanent collection is from the tenth century and the majority of the fans are from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It does have an extensive nineteenth century collection as well. My Georgian-era-loving heart leaps to hear it!

For reasons of conservation, as is done in many museums, the entire permanent collection is not on display all the time. The permanent display is changed out three times a year. So if one is interested in viewing a specific fan in the permanent collection, it is recommended one phone or e mail first to make certain it will be on display during one’s visit. What could be so specific about a fan? How about a fan with an ear trumpet built into the design? Or another with a repair kit built into the design? I, for one, would not want to miss either of those.

The museum does conservation and restoration work for other museums and for individuals who might want those antique fans they found in the attic restored correctly. The museum houses a reference library and also conducts fan-making classes. What fun!

The Green Room is primarily an educational display with information on the history of the fan, how fans were and are made, materials used in fans, and the various forms a fan might take.

The Reception Room contains unmounted and extended fan leaves from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Temporary exhibits are usually arranged around a theme or sometimes feature the collections of private citizens on loan to the museum for a period of time. Check the website for a list of future temporary exhibits and there is also a list of past exhibits, but beware. Reading some of the ones on the list made me weep with envy I was not able to see them. Can you imagine any of us here at Number One London missing an exhibit of fans based on the theme of Waterloo? SOB!

Here are just a few of the fans in the museum’s collection!

 

 

In addition to the other amenities the museum has a lovely tea shop in the orangery and a delicate Japanese garden with a pond and stream. And for those of us who cannot resist there is a museum shop which promises to be quite injurious to one’s purse!

This lovely museum is going on my list of things to see when I return to my beloved England. Perhaps you will add it to yours. And if all else fails the website is definitely worth a visit!

https://www.thefanmuseum.org.uk

THE THAMES RIVER POLICE MUSEUM

I adore a good museum. I can spend hours, even days in them. I spent an entire day (eight hours) in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. I spent two days in the Rijksmuseum, also in Amsterdam, thirty minutes staring at Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch alone. The British Museum is where I saw the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and the mummy and sarcophagus of King Tut when I was only nine years old. Yes, my appreciation of museums has been a lifelong love affair.

As much as I love the big museums, the famous ones, I also have a penchant for sussing out obscure little museums. I have discovered they are often the source of the most interesting and sometimes bizarre bits of history. Makes my writer’s heart go pitter-pat just thinking about it. I keep a running list of the ones I come across in my research, so I can visit them when I get the chance. The Thames River Police Museum is one such museum.

The Thames River Police or The West India Merchants Company Marine Police Institute, as it was known at its founding, began on July 2, 1798 in Wapping High Street. It grew out of the need to protect the companies whose cargoes were unloaded on the River Thames. It was estimated the importers whose warehouses lined the riverfront were losing up to 500,000 pounds a year to theft and graft. It wasn’t seen as a real problem until the government was presented with estimates of the losses of import dues they were missing and the losses on exports companies were suffering.

The plan for the organization, operation, and function of the force was first devised in 1797 by John Harriott, an Essex Justice of the Peace. He sought the legal advice of Jeremy Bentham and the political acumen of Patrick Colquhoun, the principle magistrate of Queens Square Police Office, to sell the plan to the West India Planters Committee. With the government’s approval and the committee’s financing the first organized police force in the world was born. Thus the Primus Omnium on the force’s badge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The working divisions of the world’s first organized police force were :

The Magistrates Office – Patrick Colquhoun serving as Superintending Magistrate

                                                    John Harriott serving as Resident Magistrate

The Lumping Department – In charge of the registration of legitimate lumpers to

                                                           unload West India Company ships.

Police Establishment – Consisted of rowing galleys, each with a Surveyor (an

                                                 Inspector rank today) and three waterman Constables

                                                 under him. The Surveyors were under a Superintending

                                                 Surveyor who had his own supervision galley with a crew

                                                 of four men. Surveyors took an oath to the Crown, by

                                                 whom they were empowered, and they were also sworn

                                                 and issued an excise warrant by Customs and Excise

                                                 Service.

There were also part-time ship and quay guards, employed only when the West India ships were in the river to be unloaded. These part-time constables were supervised by the boat patrols and in the beginning were only hired when necessary to oversee the unloading of ships. However, eventually they became full-time employees, the first River Police Special Constables.

The entire force at any given time consisted of only 50 officers to control the estimated 33,000 people who worked all of the various river trades. Colquhoun, in his treatise, suggested nearly 11,00o of those workers were actually criminals. Members of every river trade were thought to be on the game, in other words, employed in stealing cargo as it was unloaded or at some other point in the arrival process.

Note : If you have not read Colquhoun’s treatise  The Policing and Commerce of the River Thames (1800) I invite you to do so as it is a fascinating work and very much an extant resource of great insight and vision.

As one can imagine, the criminal element did not take well to the work of the River Police. The efforts of these brave men caused these thieves to lose their livelihood. After about six months, a mob of 2000 men marched on the Office in Wapping to burn it to the ground, with the magistrates and any officers inside. John Harriott and his men managed to put down the riot, but Master Lumper, Gabriel Franks, was shot and died as a result of his wounds. This is the first recorded police death in history.

The cost of forming and establishing this police force in the first year was an estimated 4,200 pounds. During that same year, John Harriott reported to the Home Office that instead of an entire fleet of watermans’ boats clogging up the River Thames anytime ships were there to be unloaded, the scene was quiet and business-like. More important, he estimated the work of the Thames River Police had saved more than 122,000 pounds worth of cargo, not to mention rescuing several lives as well.

Because the museum is housed in a working police station, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Police Unit, arrangements must be made ahead of time by appointment. Visits are normally conducted by the Honourary Curator, a retired serving officer with many years experience of policing the river. But look at all of the amazing things on exhibit !

                                        

 

 

For some great research on the Thames River Police and more information about the museum I strongly suggest you visit the website.

http://www.thamespolicemuseum.org.uk/index.html

There you will find numerous articles written about the history of the River Police by current and retired members of the force. And you can even e mail them with questions. I actually discovered this gem of a museum via an online workshop offered by the Beau Monde Chapter of RWA a few years ago. One of the participants in the workshop was PC Bob Jeffries of, you guessed it, the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Police Unit. He has made a great study of the history of the Thames River Police and is always happy to answer inquiries. Visit the website and read his wonderful articles on The Wapping Coal Riot of October 1798 and The Ratcliffe Highway Murders of December 1811.

And should you get the chance, don’t miss this jewel of a little museum. Tell PC Jeffries I said “Hello!”

Guess Who Made The List ?!?

Yes, dear readers, we are pleased and proud to announce our home away from our London home – NUMBER ONE LONDON – has made the list of the top London blogs and websites.

Anyone who has not availed themselves of this list are missing a real treat! These blogs and websites cover a fair buffet of information about London. From the Londonist with its mix of current events, unique festivals, places to visit, and incredibly detailed posts about London past, present, and future to several blogs about living in London posted by young Londoners, ex-pat Americans living in London, women living in London, and every sort of Londoner in between – this list is a must have for anyone who loves our very favorite city in the world!

There are blogs about food and where to find the best of everything. There are blogs about fashion – the latest trends and the best places to find that one piece you simply must have this season. There is a blog on the life and work of a nurse in London. Blogs about SECRET London, with all of the best places you’ve never heard of, but must see!

Of course for those of us who study London of the past in order to convey its character to our readers, this list is a goldmine of blogs and websites on historical London. Spitalfields Life is a wonderful resource about a specific area of London and its history. London Past offers a palette of wonderful images of London from its beginnings through both World Wars. And the London Historians blog is a dangerous rabbit hole down which anyone interested in the history of the great city might fall and never return.

We at NumberOneLondon want to thank both the conveyors of this award and our loyal readers and followers for all of your support. NumberOneLondon is a labor of love for Kristine, Vicky, and I and we are so very pleased you all love London as much as we do!

Top 75 London Blogs and Websites by London Bloggers

 

BY LOUISA CORNELL

I know of few horse-mad little girls who have not read Marguerite Henry’s King of the Wind, which won the Newbery Medal as the “most distinguished contribution to American literature for children”  in 1948. I still have my much-loved hardbound copy. I daresay not many of those little girls realized Henry’s book was a fictionalized biography of perhaps the greatest foundation sire in the history of Thoroughbred racing. King of the Wind took a great deal of its material from the legends and folklore which surrounded the stallion, sometimes known as Sham or Shamim. The real story of his arrival in England is in all likelihood a little less dramatic.

So far as we know, the horse who would become the Godolphin Arabian was foaled in 1724 in Yemen. As a young colt he was sent by way of Syria to the stud of the Bey of Tunis. It is believed the colt, along with a few others, was sent as tribute to Louis XV in 1728. Due to the long sea voyage the horses did not appear at their best, and the king was not impressed. In spite of that, it is doubtful Sham was used as a cook’s carthorse, no matter what the legends might say.

We do know the horse was imported from France to England in 1729 by Edward Coke, a gentleman with connections at court, including the Duke of Lorraine (later Francis I of Germany.) It is thought Coke acquired Sham by way of the French court, perhaps from the Duke of Lorraine himself. Coke stood the young stallion at stud at his newly purchased Longford Hall in Derbyshire.

One of Sham’s first offspring was out of Coke’s mare, Roxanna. This colt, Lath, foaled in 1731 was said to be a beautiful and elegant horse. He was sold to the Duke of Devonshire. Lath was considered the fastest racehorse of his day, faster than Flying Childers had been. He won the Queen’s Plate nine times out of nine at Newmarket. He was not as successful at stud, but his daughters went on to become important dams in the history of British racing. If you have read the other posts in this series you will know the duke had a taste for well-bred horses. In spite of his many flaws, you have to admire a man for that. Or perhaps only those of us who love Thoroughbreds do.

Unfortunately, Edward Coke died a young man, only 32 years of age, in 1733. He left his mares and foals to his friend, Francis, the 2nd Earl of Godolphin. He left his stallions – Sham, Whitefoot, and Hobgoblin – to one Roger Williams. However, in 1733 the Earl of Godolphin bought Sham from Mr. Williams and thus the horse became known as the Godolphin Arabian.

Descriptions of the Godolphin vary. The first recorded was that of the Vicomte de Manty who upon seeing Sham on the colt’s arrival in France described him as “beautifully-made although half starved, with a headstrong temperament that made him unloved among the barn staff.” He was an Arabian. What did they expect?

William Osmer, veterinarian and one of the men who knew the Godolphin best said:

“Whoever has seen him must remember that his shoulders were deeper and lay farther into his back than any horse yet seen; behind his shoulders there was but a small space; before the muscles of his loin rose excessively high, broad, and expanded, which were inserted into his quarters with greater strength and power than any horse ever yet seen of his dimensions. It is not to be wondered at that the excellence of this horse’s shape was not in early times manifest to some men, considering the plainness of his head and ears, the position of his fore-legs, and his stunted growth, occasioned by want of food in the country where he was bred.”

The reference to his stunted growth referred to his relatively short stature. Reports have him standing somewhere between 14’2 and 15 hands high. There is an early portrait of him in Lord Cholmondeley’s collection at Houghton. It is said to be a glamorized image, whilst Stubbs’s portrait is said to be an accurate depiction of a horse thought not particularly handsome by the standards of the day.

The Godolphin Arabian was Britain’s Champion Sire in 1738, 1745, and 1747. His most well-known colts were Lath, Blank, Cade, and Regulus – all outstanding racers. The latter three became champion sires in their own right. He also sired two important fillies – Matchless and Selima, who went on to become the dams of some of racing’s most important lines. The major Thoroughbred sire, Eclipse, traces his sire’s line back to the Darley Arabian, but his dam was a daughter of Regulus, thus Eclipse’s line is traced back to both of these founding sires of British racing.

Today the majority of thoroughbreds trace their sire line back to the Darley Arabian. However, many of America’s finest racers trace their sire line back to the Godolphin Arabian. These include Seabiscuit, Man o’ War, War Admiral, and Silky Sullivan. And a great many of  the horses who trace their sire line back to the Darley Arabian can trace their dam’s line back to the Godolphin Arabian.

Both the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian’s descendants have inherited skeletal and cardio anomalies which gift them with the build and stamina for racing. Passed along the sire lines, they have a shorter back, with five lumbar verterbrae rather than six, which gives them a longer stride. Secretariat’s stride was twenty-five feet, second only to that of Man o’ War, which was twenty-eight feet. And from the dam lines, they have abnormally large hearts, responsible for their incredible stamina. Secretariat’s heart weighed 22 pounds, twice the size of an average horse’s heart. I find it particularly fitting they inherit their hearts from their mothers.

The Godolphin Arabian stood at stud for over twenty years, the cat Grimalkin his one constant companion. He died on Christmas Day in 1753. His age was estimated to be 29 years. He was buried in the stableblock at Wandlebury House at Gog Magog in Cambridgeshire with solemn ceremony and a tribute of cake and ale drunk by the mourners. The house was torn down in 1956, but the stableblock remains and can be visited today, as can the grave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marguerite Henry’s book was a fictionalized account of this incredible horse’s journey to legend. However, there are two quotes from her work I hold to be true for the Godolphin Arabian and his fellow founding fathers. Three horses far from home who came to England and wrote their names in the history of British racing forever.

When Allah created the horse, he said to the wind, ‘I will that a creature proceed from thee. Condense thyself!’ And the wind condensed itself, and the result was the horse.

But some animals, like some men, leave a trail of glory behind them. They give their spirit to the place where they have lived, and remain forever a part of the rocks and streams and the wind and sky.