My designated area to study was Tottenham Court Road, which is briefly referred to in “A Case of Identity.”
Tottenham Court Road, modern viewTottenham Court Road, Victorian view
According to the Charles Booth Archive map, Tottenham Court Road itself was mostly red/middle class, or well to do. The surrounding areas contain mostly pink, purple, and dark blue: “fairly comfortable, good ordinary earnings”,”some comfortable,others poor”, and “very poor.” Nearby Bedford Square is colored yellow, signifying an upper class area.
Booth’s journal notes from walks with Constables around District 3 (which included Tottenham Court Road) in 1898 include descriptions of prostitutes, drunkenness, crime, and broken windows. These descriptions seem to match Booth’s harsh judgements under the “dark blue” poverty category on the map that surrounded Tottenham Court Road. A brief search on The Old Bailey database (starting in 1881 when the story was published) revealed crime clustering around theft. Continue reading →
For this assignment, I decided to focus on Fenchurch Street, a location that was mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes story A Case Of Identity. In the story, Fenchurch Street is the location of Miss Sutherland’s step-father’s place of business. Located just around the block from here is Miss Sutherland’s fiancee’s home on Leadenhall Street, which (SPOILER ALERT) turns out to be Miss Sutherland’s step-father. You can see a picture of Fenchurch Street on a map I got from Victorian Google Maps below:
When I looked at the Charles Booth Online Archive, I found out that during the 19th century Fenchurch Street was a very poor area, as you can see on the map and color guide below. The black and blues show that people of the lowest classes lived in this area. This relates back to the Holmes story because Mr. Windibank, Miss Sutherland’s step-father, tried to pose as another man to make Miss Sutherland fall in love with him so he could eventually marry her and take all her money. Mr. Windibank’s place of business was also located just around the block from Fenchurch Street on Leadenhall Street. This area was a good location for Arthur Conan Doyle to put both of Mr. Windibank’s identities in because it shows that he has very little money. If he lived and worked in a different area it wouldn’t make as much sense to the story.
On the Old Bailey Archive, I did a search on my location and found a list of the crimes committed throughout the 19th century. Most of these crimes listed were for all things theft related, like grand larceny, shoplifting, pickpocketing, and even a couple of theft related murders. When I looked at the Locating London website, I found similar results. Then I decided to look at the British History Online website. When I searched my location on there, I found many texts involving businesses and factories, where I learned that this area held many businesses and industries and probably had many jobs that people of the working class had. I’m not saying that poor people were more likely to be criminals, but in order to survive and support their families people of the lower classes needed to do what they could, and theft was probably a last resort option for them to get necessities.
I first decided to compare the topics of “crime scene”, “writing”, and “crime solving”. In the beginning of the chart, writing spikes significantly in 1893. I wasn’t able to find any major reasons why this happened history wise, but when looking at the date of the publication, I found out that this came from The Adventure of the Reigate Squire. In this story, the main clue that Holmes and Watson find is a torn piece of paper found in the victim’s hand, which (SPOILER ALERT) turned out to be written by the murderers. Crime scene seems to fluctuate until it spikes in 1908. From then to around 1925, it seems to stay pretty constant. I noticed that crime solving seemed to be pretty steady with crime scene, and would increase/decrease at around the same times, which I thought was interesting.
The second set I decided to compare was “light” and “smoking”. I put these two topics together because I thought the words in the light category were words that would be used when lighting a cigar/cigarette. The main thing that I noticed in this chart is whenever one rises/decreases, the other does as well, which makes me think that my first assumption was correct. And when you look from around 1920 on, you can see that although they are at different levels, they increase and decrease in the same pattern.
The third set I compared was “time” and “physical description”. I thought that the two would have some things in common based off of physical descriptions over time. But after doing some research, I unfortunately wasn’t able to find much of anything that would tie these two categories together.
The last categories that I analyzed were “marriage”, “business”, and “travel”. A cool thing I found was when I noticed that business made a huge peak in 1904, and after doing a little research I found out that this was when the telegraph started becoming more popular in common society. I also found that the 1904 World’s Fair occurred during this time, which was a big time for business and introducing new products to the world. Travel peaked in 1908, and I found out that this was when Ford first began making the Model T, which was a widely popular car during this time.
Overall, I thought this assignment was interesting, but when it came to figuring out how these categories compared to things in history I didn’t find it very helpful. I thought the spikes in the charts would lead my research to significant things throughout history but most of the time I couldn’t find anything, which was a little disappointing.
I have chosen abstract topics, which are not too related to History. Nonetheless, I have observed a thematic connection between them, so I divides them into 4 groups.
The related topics of each group show more appearance at the same time periods, suggesting that Arthur Conan Doyle was writing about related themes in each time. Especial concentrations can be seen between 1891-1893, and 1904-1905. After 1908, the release of stories had been constant till the 1920s.
Chart 1: topics 4, 10 and 15 – Investigation, Mystery and Violence
In February 1892, we can see the greatest peak of the whole graph related to the topic “mystery”. This was the release date of The Speckled Band, a story full of words related to mystery, as our class well knows. The peak of “violence” (April 21, 1893), is the release date of The Gloria Scott, a story that ends with a death, which related words are within the “violence” topic. The peak of investigation (September 16, 1893) is related to the story The Greek Interpreter, which involves kidnapping and intimidation, which are material for “investigation”. “Mystery” seems to be the most important topic in the 1904 eight stories, as it stands out from the other topics.
Chart 2: topics 14, 16, 26 – Time, Location, House
The greatest data here are the peaks of “Time”, in March 16, 1892 – release of The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb – and “House” in February 1, 1911 – release of “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax”. The first, happens over the summer (time aspect), and the second involves a pursuit along housing environments.
Chart 3: topics 5, 8 and 29 – Conversation, Relationship and Appearance
The principal trends in this graph are a great peak of Relationship in September 1, 1891 (A case of Identity, a storyabout marriage and the relationship between stepdaugther-stepfather) and a growing appearance of “Conversation” matters in the stories between 1893 and 1903.
I have selected the topic 27 – Sitting – from my 40 topics to the list of the 10 favorite ones.
I have chosen to leave the most different topic one alone in the forth graph. It is “Sitting”, which includes words such as “chair sat room fire bell laid asked lit lamp”.
The first peak is related to the story The Boscombe Valley mystery (October 16, 1891), which involves traveling by train, carriage, driving, actions that might involve terms around “Sitting”. The second peak coincides with The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (September, 1908), a story that happens inside a house (so it has related terms to “Sitting”).
Using Mallet’s Topic Modeling program, DHM293 ran all 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories with various settings. Changing the number of iterations and topics, I finally settled on settings of 100 topics and 2000 iterations, with 20 words in each topic.
1) Murder in Sherlock Holmes
crime death police murder reason charge scene tragedy night committed arrest violence evidence murdered motive constable caused suspicion escape attempt
2) Watson
watson dr doctor friend means surprised matter natural blessington amberley patient disease days medical continued knowing reasons armstrong trevelyan brougham
3) Men in Sherlock Holmes Stories
face man eyes dark thin tall expression figure features looked beard voice middle manner handsome gray clean age huge fierce
4) Women in Sherlock Holmes
woman wife husband love life knew girl loved married lady women rich daughter soul beautiful power nature beauty marriage young
5) Transportation in Sherlock Holmes
home minutes cab waiting heard wait glad ten ha walking twenty church quiet send reach talking feel driven long drove
6) Deducing in Sherlock Holmes
case facts points explanation fact simple theory admit investigation give solution problem confess correct present obvious formed probable connection false
7) Holmes’ mannerism
holmes head hands shook easy smiled sank sunk breast short forehead gesture rubbed began forward clapped despair branch leaning eagerly
8) Villains in Sherlock Holmes
great doubt criminal dangerous country brain set career act failed makes gang cunning power war europe compelled sufficient traced remains
9) Smoking in Sherlock Holmes
sat pipe fire looked time cigar tobacco smoke asked sherlock corner long chair armchair smoked lit roylott smoking moran observe
10) Accents in Sherlock Holmes
don ll ve won talk thing give answered didn bit ready bad couldn wait eh minute masser wouldn isn lucky
I don’t tell many people this, so consider yourselves lucky. I have my super-secret time machine whirring to life in the garage, so why don’t you join me on a trip? We can travel back into the 19th century to investigate three common words, how their usage began or changed during those hundred years, and potential reasons why this was the case.
After we hide the Delorean, our work can begin. I chose musket (or musquet), anesthesia (or anaesthesia), and scientist, hoping that these three words would provide some interesting results from Google Ngrams. I set the years for 1800 to 1900, and settled on a smoothing of 5. The lower the smoothing number, the more jagged of a graph would be produced.
Musket is a word that refers to a type of infantry gun, and it had French origins from the 16th century. There were many spellings throughout the centuries, which is why I included the most popular alternate spelling. From 1800 to around the start of the Civil War, its usage almost doubled. In this same period of time, musquet was about 1/4 as popular as musket by 1800, and it had basically stopped being used by 1860. This coincides with a sharp decline in musket after 1860 as well. According to Oed.com, musket was reserved for obsolete weapons, while the more common rifle was adopted for contemporary firearms.
Next, I wanted to find a word whose usage began during the 19th century, and I settled upon anesthesia, which is generally spelled anaesthesia in Britain. Both versions were included in the search, and it is derived from Latin. Prior to 1840, there is practically no use of anaesthesia, yet thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary, we can see the use increased greatly for the remainder of the 19th century, peaking in the 1880s. The American version, anesthesia, slowly grew in usage towards 1900, but was still well below the British spelling. Of course, this word coincided with better medical technology, especially during the Civil War in the United States.
Finally, I chose another word, scientist, which I expected to rise in usage throughout the century. The slope of the graph grows slowly from the 1860s, possibly in response to Charles Darwin, who published On the Origin of Species in 1859. The Oxford Dictionary helps elucidate the origin of the word scientist, as W. Whewell stated in 1834:
…the want of any name by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively. We are informed that this difficulty was felt very oppressively by the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at their meetings..in the last three summers… Philosophers was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term,..; some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy with artist, they might form scientist…
More succinctly, in 1834 a gentleman compared art and science, and if someone who practices art is an artist, then a practitioner of science should be a scientist. This is how scientist became a word, and Ngrams shows its usage grew by about 10 times from 1870 to 1900.
Ok, its time to go…you get to choose the time machine destination this time, though.
For the Ngrams assignment I chose to look at the comparison between newspapers and magazines and I found it interesting that newspapers surpassed magazines around 1815. This could have happened for many reasons but I’ve made a few inferences. The first is that, though newspapers, in their earliest form, were first developed in the 1600s, it was not until the early 1800s that they began to become more standard, available and affordable. This is indicated where the increase in the word newspaper becomes clearly defined around 1825. Before this, both ‘newspaper’ and ‘magazine’ were pretty steady over the years with magazines even beginning on top. My theory for the much slower growth of magazines is that, like today, magazines were bought mostly for soft stories and entertainment. So big news events that effected the sales and popularity of newspapers had little to no effect on magazines.
The sharp rise of newspapers in the early 1830s was most likely brought about by the following societal developments: First, in 1831 The famous abolitionist newspaper The Liberator is first published by William Lloyd Garrison. Second, there was the The New York Sun newspaper that in 1833 cost one cent–this was the beginning of the penny press. Another spike shown on the chart for newspapers is around 1880. In this year the first halftone photograph (Shantytown) was published in a newspaper, most likely increasing their popularity. At the same time advertising was becoming more and more relevant with the first whole page newspaper ad placed by an American department store (John Wanamaker) was run in 1879. I imagine this would also increase the mentions of the word newspaper over time.
As for magazines there didn’t seem to be any spikes until about 1855. When I researched possible reasoning for this I found that in 1855 Illustrated London News published a Christmas special with a color cover produced using colored wood blocks. This magazine sold 130,000 copies a week–10 times the daily sale of The Times. That may have had something to do with that blip. When magazines start to grow steadily at the end of the 19th century this is most likely because, like newspapers, magazines began to increase in availability and affordability–leading to popularity.
Something that particularly interests me is modes of communication throughout the ages. From the 19th century through today, we experienced huge advances in technology that helped to sculpt the way we live in this day and age. Two of the biggest forms of communication that arose during the Victorian era were the telegraph and the telephone, which I decided to compare for this assignment.
I was surprised at my Ngram chart results because I was expecting there to be a much bigger rise in the telephone from the time it was invented in 1876. Though it did receive wide popularity before 1900, I thought it was interesting to see that the telegraph still exceeded it by a significant amount by the end of the century.
The telegraph’s mentions begin before 1800, when the electric telegraph was first being developed. But its growth begins in 1830, when Samuel Morse perfected this invention for long distance communication with the help of his system called Morse Code. The telegraph became quickly accepted by the public as a faster way of sending and receiving information. Its rise continued consistently as it came into use all around the world until around 1860, when the first transcontinental telegraph line was cerated. This sparked a jump in the chart as telegraph’s came into use worldwide. Something I also noticed was after the telephone was invented, you still see the telegraph going up, but it’s not as consistent anymore and you see more drops in the graph.
In 1876, when the telephone was invented, it automatically made a significant jump in the amount of times it was mentioned in texts, as you see a slight fall in the telegraph. The telephone came into wide use very quickly, with around 10,000 telephones in service by 1878. In the 1880’s, the telephone continues its upward climb with the development of long distance service from the Bell Telephone Company, which was the only telephone company at the time. In the 1890’s, independent phone companies began to pop up all around, giving the Bell Company competition and also supporting the continuous rise of the telephone.
I also wanted to see when exactly the telephone became more popular than the telegraph. In 1900, the telephone’s book mentions skyrocket and exceed that of the telegraph by 1905, a huge jump in just 5 short years. Since then, the telephone has almost continuously risen until modern years while the telegraph has continuously fallen to almost 0% on the Ngram chart.
Overall, I thought it was interesting to see how the amount of mentions in books and texts correlate to popularity. I was surprised to see that mentions of the telephone didn’t rise over that of the telegraph until 1905 because its usage grew so quickly in such a short amount of time. But since the telegraph was so common and prevalent in that society, it took awhile for it to lose that popularity, something that still happens all the time with technology today.
One of my favorite short stories is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was first published in 1892. In the haunting narrative, Gilman critiques common medical practices for women affected by things such as “hysteria” and “neurasthenia” after childbirth. My sources for the information are scattered throughout this post as links.
The common treatment of the time was the “rest cure.” It left the woman tethered to a bed with no means to express herself, writing or otherwise.. This supposedly promoted healthy blood flow, and removal from too much stimulation. It’s now widely recognized as a load of junk, a part of a largely misogynistic tradition that controlled women’s bodies. Nevertheless, Doctor Silas Weir Mitchell and his bed rest cure has a solidified place in literature, women’s health, and history.
Based on the story, and my slight interest in the subject matter, I chose to look at the terms “apothecary,” “hysteria,” and “neurasthenia” on the Oxford English Dictionary.
Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville are three Victorian authors that particularly interest me. The choice of settings to search for them on Ngram Viewer was simple, then. My single concern was using capital letters, as I was searching for people’s names and limit the period of time from 1800 to 1900.
According to the resulting graphic, the three writers are not mentioned until 1833, as they were really young and starting their careers. Poe was born in 1809, Dickens was born in 1812 and Melville in 1819. Dickens started submitting his sketches of the life in London to magazines in 1833. It is exactly the year that the graphic shows that he started to be more mentioned, a movement that continued increasing till 1871. A suggestion for the relative decrease in the graph at this time in his death on June 8, 1870. He left an unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It has already started to be published in a serial form since April 1870. Analyzing the graphic, we can consider that Charles Dickens died on the top of his career. Since 1877, we can verify a new growth in his “popularity”. In this year, a book called The works of Charles Dickens was published and may be the reason to this new growth.
In the case of Herman Melville, we can see that he has been more mentioned during the 1840s. It may be related to his trips over the sea, that gave him the material for four books in addition to Moby Dick. However, this novel that would be his great success, was not received well at the time because of its unusual combination of “whaling lore” and metaphysical themes. This may be the reason of his relatively low popularity over the 19th century, compared to Charles Dickens.
Edgar Allan Poe had a brief life – he died on October 7, 1849, before he has started to be more mentioned, according to Ngram Viewer. The graphic shows a special increase in Poe’s mentions over the 1870s. The reason may be the biographies and other works about him that have been published since 1870.
