Swan Lane, or ‘Upper Swandam Lane’ is a street featured in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes short story titled “The Man with the Twisted Lip”. It is the street where the infamous opium den – “Bar of Gold” is located. Mrs. St. Clair went to pick up a package on Fresno Street when she stumbled upon Upper Swandam Lane on her way back home from running errands, and “she did not like the neighborhood in which she found herself.”  Clearly there are no noble deeds or productive work being done in this kind of an area.

One interesting fact I would like to point out about this area is that the poverty classification for the time period of 1898-9 (ten years after Twisted Lip took place in 1889) was considered “poor”. In the story, the den was even located “between a slop-shop and a gin-shop”. A slop-shop is defined as ‘a store in which cheap, ready-made clothing may be purchased.’ I recall earlier in the semester that the rise of ready-made clothing made clothes cheaper and could disguise a person’s class better since anyone could buy the same clothes from a department store. And the latter, a gin-shop is obviously where one can purchase alcohol (opium and alcohol – probably not the best mix!).

Another interesting fact is that on the Charles Booth Poverty map, there is not much indicator of class in the area of Swan Lane. Where there is color, though, it is light blue, meaning “poor”. Our professor actually pointed out to me that the reason for the absence of classification for a good portion of the area is that there might’ve been factories there. I do know that the ‘wharves’ near it (mentioned in the story) were for vessels to lie at rest, and to load or unload on piers. London OS Town Plan shows ‘Old Swan Pier’ directly south of it in the river.

To my surprise,when I was looking up crimes on the Old Bailey website there wasn’t much to find. Swan Lane (during the period of 1674 to 1834) only had 2 associated trials (one was a theft, the other a ‘royal offense’ – more specifically, coining offense – neither one indicated violence). However, it is located next to a high-crime area, George Alley, which was associated with ’23 or more’ trials. In the story there was actually mention of an alley. Mr. Watson said “Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves…” There is no mention of George Alley, however. Maybe Swan Lane had more of a reputation for crime in the year 1889, or maybe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle just chose this location to spice things up in London. He might’ve met to associate the probably-infamous George Alley with the nearby Swan Lane.

I do think, however, that Doyle made a bit of a slip-up in where Swan Lane is located. In the story, Watson says that Swan Lane lines “the north side of the river to the east of the London Bridge.” While Swan Lane does lie north of the river, it is actually to the west of the London Bridge, which I have seen reflected on several different maps.

Another street mentioned in the story is Fresno Street, where Mrs. St. Clair picked up a package nearby. The story indicates that it was walking distance away from Swan Lane, but I have searched both maps and there is no Fresno Street. Maybe Doyle wanted to create a nice area nearby where she would have been running her errands but have been close enough to stumble into a rough neighborhood. But since much of the real area was poor, I don’t believe such a place actually existed.

Upper Swandam Lane is a central location to the story in regards to the plot and theme. There are themes of class and crime in this story. Holmes even refers to the den as a “murder trap” and says that many people have died in that den (page 131). Both Watson and Holmes’ sentiments toward that particular street are negative. And for the plot, Swan Lane is where Neville St. Clair goes in as a well-dressed man and is able to come out in disguise as a beggar every single day as he pretends to go to work. It is also where his wife sees him looking out of the window of the den, and where Isa Whitney is found completely belligerent off of opium in a room full of men under the same influence. It is a very sketchy area to say the least, and a sad picture of addiction.

 

Sources:

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – The Man with the Twisted Lip

Booth Poverty Map and Modern Map

London – OS Town Plan 1893-6

Place and Map Search for Swan Lane Old Bailey

–Associated Trial 1

–Associated Trial 2

 

 

-Miranda Delancey

 

 

 

 

I chose this topic because I think it’s important for characters (as well as TV personalities) of color to have more visibility in television. Diversity needs to be reflected in popular culture for reasons that are needless to say. Throughout the years, people of color on TV and movie screens have increased yet wavered at the same time. I feel that in the present day more diverse shows are on the rise. I  chose TV shows from the past up to the present, many of which are very successful. 

View table and spreadsheet.

  

Hey Guys ! Check out my Video Essay on WeVideo. Just click here.

The words I chose were “opium” and “cocaine”. I chose those words because addiction was very prevalent in the 19th Century. People didn’t actually know how the human body worked at that time, and that you could actually become addicted to substances. Their lack of education led to open and widespread use of drugs.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, opium is “A reddish-brown strongly scented addictive drug prepared from the thickened dried latex of the unripe capsules of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, used illicitly as a narcotic, and occasionally medicinally as a sedative and analgesic.” From our readings in class, I discovered what opium dens were – they were these meeting places, basically living rooms where a bunch of people took the drug together, and would get uncontrollably high and even pass out there for a few days. The dictionary also found that the word started being used in 1398, but the first English use or citation of the word was in 1615: G. Sandys Relation of Journey 66: The Turkes are also incredible takers of Opium. I think the quote from this could relate to the empire that Britain would become. One website, victorianweb.com, states that “By 1830, the British had become the major drug-traffickers in the world.” This word contains several drops and rises, but its highest peak was late 1870’s. I believe this has to do with the Opium Act of 1878,which “strengthened the role of opium as a cornerstone of the British imperial economic policy in the Far East.”

Cocaine is defined by oed.com as “An important alkaloid obtained from the leaves and young twigs of the coca plant, valuable as a local anæsthesiant, and also used as a stimulant.” Victorianweb.com states that cocaine was first extracted in 1860 from coca leaves by a German chemist, but that the commercial production of cocaine was delayed until the 1880’s when it became popular in the medical field. The graph reflects this because the word isn’t in use until the early 1880’s (using the English corpus – using the British English corpus didn’t make much of a difference with either words.) The dictionary’s earliest citation of the word is from 1874, from a chemistry book which explained the chemical make up of the drug and from where it derived. Another citation from 1886:  Brit. & Col. Druggist 31 July: The valuable alkaloid cocaine, whose properties as a local anæsthetic have created almost a revolution in ophthalmic and other branches of surgery. This shows how people also used this substance medically (from oed.com: 1887 Braithwaite Retrospect Med. XCV. 11 Cocaine Cotton for toothache.) Another quote from victorianweb.com verifies this: “Cocaine lozenges were recommended as effective remedies for coughs, colds and toothaches in the Victorian era. It was believed in the nineteenth century that cocaine had therapeutic effects and it was often prescribed in the treatment of indigestion, melancholia, neurasthenia. Cocaine was also used as an anesthetic.”

The assignment at hand was much easier said than done. After my first encounter at the library, I thought I’d hit the jackpot in no time. So much so that I decided to go rogue and hunt for a book in the stacks.

Walking in and out of the stacks felt almost like a maze, every aisle looked the same and you don’t know where you came from or how to find your way back to the particular aisle from which you came. It really is amazing the amount of books stacked into one floor. One thing I would like to say is the weird markers on each of the books didn’t make this feat all that much easier – to me it pretty much looked like ‘library speak’ for how to re-shelve returned books.

I went to the library three separate times to find the “perfect” example of marginalia (I am guilty of being a perfectionist), but to no avail. I hunted through the aisles, in search for all of the indicators of a Victorian book, and I was somewhat successful at this part of the deal. At first, I looked for rebounding, series & book size, the sewing of the pages to the actual cover, gold leafing – anything that would indicate to me, “this book is old”. What was troubling that the bounding technique (sewing of the pages to a cover that was just one cohesive cover) was used in several books dating long past 1923.

I found that a lot of the books that looked very worn were published mid-20^th Century. But then I remembered other indicators which were ridges on the binding and cover style. I realized this when I had given up hope one time and was walking through the stacks and saw in the distance, a book with obvious ridging on the side.

At that point I had become so desperate that I had literally gasped out loud. It was beautiful. I immediately attacked and went to open it, but again, no annotations.

After three separate searches through the library, I decided to stick with what I had originally found which is technically not marginalia, because it was done intentionally. It was a rebounded book entitled Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, 1864. In it I found a four page letter that was a facsimile to match the handwriting of Parker. The letter was written in 1856. I think that this is very interesting, because why would anyone want to make an exact copy of someone else’s handwriting? I assume he had to be a pretty important person.

I will probably be opening every Victorian book I spot in the library from here on, and hey, I might even find something worthwhile for Book Traces!

P.S.: I even found a series of books from the 17^th Century with a very similar style to that of a 19^th Century. They were the diaries of Samuel Pepys, and they contained news articles that were pasted to the books. I thought I’d include some pictures anyway.

Items:

http://holmesiana.net/items/show/102

http://holmesiana.net/items/show/143

http://holmesiana.net/items/show/137

Collection:

http://holmesiana.net/items/browse?collection=29

Exhibit:

http://holmesiana.net/exhibits/show/legacy/legacy

My name is Miranda Delancey. My intended major is Digital Media (still undecided between DM Production and DM Management). I’m a First-Year student. My interests include digital media, writing, video-making and photojournalism, editing, watching YouTube, pop culture, social media, and communications.

P.S. I’m really excited about this class and connecting with other people at New Paltz! 🙂