Digital Humanities

London Road

~ Danielle Koppie

In “The Man With the Twisted Lip,” London Road is briefly mentioned as Sherlock and Watson begin their dash to finally solve the mystery of Mr. Neville St. Clair’s disappearance. Upon further research, I learned some interesting facts about the road that had little significance in the actual Sherlock Holmes story. Unfortunately, there are over twenty roads called “London Road,” just in the city of London, alone! So many of the facts that I saw were not entirely accurate due to the inability to distinguish between multiple roads. Since many of the websites are not specifically based around Victorian London, it was more difficult to find the correct road.London Road in text

By using the Old Bailey Proceedings through Locating London, I was able to find that there were not many crimes committed on the road, but of the ten crimes that came up in the search results, five of them were highway robberies, and three involved animal theft. The first result was of a man names James Coates, who viciously stole a diamond ring from Mrs. Elizabeth Atley. He was sentenced to death for this crime (“James Coates, highway robbery”). I also learned that the London Road in Ipswich, not in London, is apparently site of the flat of Steve Wright, who murdered five women in 2006, an event about which a movie and a musical were written (both called London Road).

While looking at the OS Town Plan of Victorian London, I can tell that London Road has not changed much, and is still a major road in the city. Much of the information about London Road on British Histories contained information about religion. It was interesting because several of the articles were about religions that do not dominate London, such as Judaism and Islam. There are also many bits of information about monuments and buildings on the road.

London Road, Google MapsLondon Road Google Earth

The Charles Booth website offered the most useful and accurate information, despite having the worst design of any of sites. The website shows a map of London and color codes each street based on economic class. It shows London Road in pink, which means that the average economic state of people on London Road back in Victorian London was “Fairly comfortable.”

London Road Charles Booth

Works Cited

Doyle, Arthur Conan. London: Strand, 1891. Short Stories: The Man With The               Twisted Lip by Arthur Conan Doyle. East of the Web. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.                 <http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TwisLip.shtml>.

“Search.” British Histories. University of London, n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.                        <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/search?query=%22London+Road%22>.

“Booth Poverty Map & Modern Map (Charles Booth Online Archive).”Booth                   Poverty Map & Modern Map (Charles Booth Online Archive). London                   School of Economics and Political Science, n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.                         <http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?                                                                             sub=view_booth_and_barth&args=531720%2C179260%2C1%2Clarge%2C0>.

“James Coates, highway robbery. 15 January 1702 (t17070115-7).” Old Bailey                Proceedings Online. Web. 6 November 2015.                                                                  http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17070115-                                        7&div=t17070115-7&terms=+London%20+Road%20#highlight

Old Bailey Proceedings

Victorian Google Maps

Google Ngrams: Musical Instruments

~ Danielle Koppie

For this assignment, I decided to use the category that I had failed to find information for in the Book Traces assignment: music. I plugged in names of Nineteenth Century composers such as Beethoven, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky, but none of the comparisons were significant enough for me to write about. I then decided to steer away from composers and look more into some instruments. I knew that this time period was incredibly important in the field of music, so I figured the instruments had to have seen some interesting developments. I plugged the words “trumpet,” “flute,” and “piano” into the Ngram Viewer, with the default settings. I saw that at first, the word “trumpet” was significantly more popular than either “flute” or “piano.” Flute was low but stayed fairly consistent until the end of the century. The most interesting increase, however, was definitely in the word “piano.” Its frequency more than tripled between the years 1850 and 1900. It went from least popular of the three to most popular by far. Some quick research explained that throughout the Nineteenth Century, the piano became more and more affordable, as companies began to mass produce the instruments. This allowed for many families to purchase pianos for their homes.

Some research on the flute showed that in about 1847, a man named Theobald Boehm invented a new type of flute that became the premise for the instrument we use today. Toward the end of the century, workshops began to adopt and modify Boehm’s design, and it was used in orchestras all across Europe and America. This explains the increase in the word “flute” from about 1887 to 1898.

As for the trumpet, its graph was fairly consistent throughout, and there was not much information on the Nineteenth Century trumpet alone. I did find out that around that time, similar to the flute and piano, the basis for the modern day trumpet was invented, but it was in the key of F, rather than today’s standard B♭. On the graph around 1810, there is a rather large spike, but I could not find any information that explained it.

I found this to be an interesting assignment because it relies on us making assumptions, which is what historians are forced to do when they are researching various trends on graphs like our Ngrams. This tool could definitely be valuable for anyone who is researching a topic from many years ago. Google has scanned millions of books into its system, which makes the research incredibly accurate. Also, I got to learn about the instruments I enjoy, which was fun.

Ngram

 

Works Cited

“The History and Development of the Modern Piano.” Renner USA. N.p., n.d.               Web. 07 Oct. 2015.

Estrella, Espie. “History of the Trumpet.” About Education. About.com, n.d.                   Web. 07 Oct. 2015.

“Theobald Boehm (1794-1881).” FluteHistory.com. Flutehistory.com, n.d. Web.             07 Oct. 2015.

“Nineteenth-century Flutes.” FluteHistory.com. Flutehistory.com, n.d. Web. 07           Oct. 2015.

Researching Victorian London: The Telephone

~ wynneb1 ~ 2 Comments

During the Victorian Era, England experienced an influx of reformations and developments. It was a technological upbringing where communication was blossoming in new and phenomenal ways. “The Victorian Dictionary” by Lee Jackson supplied information on communications in the Victorian Era, particularly the telephone. Women who held jobs as telephone operators worked diligently under strategic rules and etiquette. It was a highly organized occupation. Women received explicit training while attending telephone school where they practiced the skills of answering calls and general communication. While supervised by an experienced operator, women learned how to operate tasks on dummy switchboards and plugs. The training was strategic and complex, the methods of which demonstrated the progressiveness of the Victorian Era. Whilst practicing with fellow operators, the attending supervisor corrected mistakes that were made during practice calls.

Etiquette and decorum was required as a telephone operator. The females had to make physical accommodations to maintain in good health. A company called The Postal Department required each girl be examined by a female physician; her eyes were checked and her teeth were fixed to ensure their would be nothing restricting her from working.  They were required to be at least 5 ft. 2 in, “extra lightweights [were] rejected” (Thompson par. 12). They wore graduate gown’s of dark material. A photograph of the Post Office Central Telephone Exchange depicts women communicating on telephones in their drab, dark gowns appearing identical in their disposition and appearance. The Victorian Era woman was expected to appear formal and quaint. In the workplace they were required to wear gloves to “maintain the contour and complexion of their busily worked fingers” (Thompson par. 4).

Aside from the strange requirements of their trade, the female operators experienced rather lavish lives. “Her dining-room, decorated with the flowers she and her comrades have brought from their own gardens, looks like a first-class restaurant and her sumptuous dinner costs her fivepence” (Thompson par. 12)! The advancement of telephone communication during the Victorian Era provided innovation for eras to come.

Slang in Victorian London

~ crookr1 ~ 3 Comments

The words “Area-sneak”, “Cracksman”, and “Tuck-up Fair” all, surprisingly, have something in common; they are all part of Victorian slang from London, England. Upon first hearing of such wild and fantastical words and phrases, they sound almost too weird to be real. But in all honesty, some words used today in the 21st century are as nonsensical as theirs. Slang is only a testament of the creative and innovative nature of language throughout time. For example, in Victorian London there were sometimes handfuls of different ways to say the same phrase. So way back when, a man would not “go away” or “withdraw”; he would instead “bolt”, “slope”, “mizzle”, “make himself scarce”, “walk his chalk”, “make tracks”, “cut his stick”, or “cut his lucky”. Why does there need to be so many variations of the same saying? The world may never know, but such variety of language makes for a much more scintillating conversation. There was also slang specific to crime back in Victorian London, much like there is today. The terms “area-sneak”, “Cracksman” and “Tuck-up Fair” are examples of such jargon- their meanings being a thief who sneaks down areas to see what he can steal in kitchens, a burglar, and The Gallows respectively. Some have logical connections to their meanings, while others’ explanations could only make sense in a Victorian Londoner’s mind. Either way, the words and phrases spice up the language to make conversation more unique over time. Who knows what sayings will be created and reshaped over the next 100 years, hopefully the 21st century will have a (s)language as varying and creative as Victorian London’s.

Victorian Dictionary: Teacher Training

~ Danielle Koppie ~ 2 Comments

As was the case nearly everywhere at the time, women in Victorian London were treated as horribly inferior to men. This left them with few employment opportunities and a tendency to remain home, cooking and cleaning for their families. One option available to women was to become an elementary school teacher. Similar to modern times, teachers had to go through extensive training before actually getting in front of a class.

While browsing under the Education category on Lee Jackson’s “Dictionary of Victorian London,” I was able to find some interesting information about teacher training in the Victorian Era. All of the information I found was from the “Etiquette and Household Advice Manuals,” published in the 1880s. According to the unknown author, training could begin at as young as thirteen years old, with an apprenticeship. This was also one of the only jobs for which women were required an education. The author makes a few interesting (and still relevant) points about the field. He says, “A good student is not necessarily a good teacher, and but few people grasp the difference between training and teaching.” He continues to say that Government schools are the only places a girl could go to receive quality training, and that one must have had at least two years of training in order to become a teacher. The main idea of the entire section is clearly that teachers required a great deal of training before entering the classroom. The author even states that it was common for girls in particular to have health breakdowns and to be overworked, which is why he recommends girls do not join the workforce until they have a “stronger physical frame,” around age fifteen or sixteen. Another writer, however, shares a different opinion. This writer, mentioned by the main author, believes that children who were born into the upper or middle class would become great learners even before they could talk, which would allow them to in turn become great educators. Those were the children who would apparently need less time to become quality teachers. According to the writer, they could have started their apprenticeships at age thirteen, and could have been ready to teach within two or three years. While the young age is not surprising for the time period, it is still strange to think about a fifteen year old being ready to teach a class of children just a few years younger.