I was rather upset to not find anything for the Book Traces website. I find the overall idea and assignment super fascinating and hoped to find something interesting or at least authentic in my search but I unfortunately had no luck. I spent over three hours searching the stacks for a book with some sort of writing in it. I looked all through poetry, literature, letters, history, religion and more. I really felt confident that poetry or literature would have something and spent most of my time in the PR and PS section. Overall, I was really disappointed.
I found a few books with pencils markings and writing in them but I had no way of telling when that was done for example, The Life of Sterne by Percy Fitzgerald and Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin. One book The English Poets by T.H. Ward got me especially excited because it appeared to be marked all over with notes about the poems and inferred meanings behind certain symbols but on further examination I realized the writing was too current as on one of the final pages it was dated for a lesson plan. For a few others the writing was clearly done in ballpoint pen. I also found books that had what I thought to be markings but turned out to be printed that way like Life and Letters by Robert Browning which had what I thought was a signature but sadly wasn’t. One book tricked me because I thought it contained a handwritten letter from the late 1800s but the letter was bound into the book and was apart of the story. The closest I came to finding any sort of authentic ancient article was a receipt in a book from 2004. Everything else seemed to be a dead end.
I do not really understand how I did not find anything as I looked through a variety of books and focused on the two sections that seemed to have the most luck for other people. A section like poetry or literature would seem to have a lot of writing in it as people try to deceiver what the author is trying to say or as they make comparisons to their own life. There were also a few books that were about other languages such as Irish and Scottish books and I hoped that they would have markings about the translations or something along those lines but again nothing. In all, I enjoyed looking through the well over 50 books and wish I had found something but the appearance of the books themselves with interesting some had marble like patterns on the seems and one book had pink pages but I never found what I set out to find.
Today, Reuters is one of the most important news agencies in the world. In the article “Who is Mr. Reuter?”, the author tells the story of the man Mr Reuter. The report is contemporary to Mr Reuter’s life and career, which make it even more interesting for us, readers from the 21st century.
The way that Andrew Wynter introduces the topic is interesting, because it questions how could a single person do as much as an institution:
“If he be (a person), by what extraordinary organization does he manage to gather up over night a summary of events over the entire continent, and to place it before us as a startling interlude between coffee and toast at the breakfast-table?”
The author offers an explanation:
“Mr. Reuter’s history is like that of all courageous and energetic men, who, seizing upon a new idea,career work it persistently and silently, until one fine morning, from comparative obscurity they suddenly find their names famous.”
Mr. Reuter was convinced that a new era in correspondence had arisen as he saw the success of the first working telegraph on the continent — that between Berlin and Aix-Ia-Chapelle in 1849. He decided to work in the improvement of this communication system.
Paul Julius Reuter, the founder. Reproduction: http://historianet.nl/d Aix-Ia-Chapelle in 1849. He decided to work in the improvement of this communication system.
In that city of Aix-Ia-Chapelle Mr Reuter opened his first office. He employed a service of carrier-pigeons to gain time in the journey between Aix-la-Chapelle and Brussels. Concerned about the regularity and safety in the transmission, Mr Reuter required three different pigeons to despatch each message. As a consequence, the passage from Brussels to Aix-la-Chapelle would take about one hour to be completed.
However, when the line was extended, a gap of five miles remained between French and Prussian capitals. It resulted in an enormous delay in the correspondence. To fix this, Mr Reuter provided horses to forward despatches between the two points.
Reuters Commercial Department in London, 1938 Reproduction: http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/the-important-contribution-of-a-companys-history/o forward despatches between the two points.
Then, more lines were opened and after the connection between Calais (France) and Dover (England) was made successfully, in 1851, Mr. Reuter transferred his office to London. Since that moment, connections with the principal continental cities became possible.
As the writer tells, Mr Reuter analyzed that it was the moment to make the telegraph “the handmaid of the press”.
The Times was investing a lot of money to catch up on the news from all the world. So Mr Reuter offered them the telegraph system. However, they denied. There was some prejudice about the political telegrams, which frequently contained errors. Besides that, sometimes the telegram had to be translated into three or four languages before they reached the British public, so the newspaper wouldn’t like to risk publishing an imprecise information.
In 1858, he made another offer to the press. At this time, he has chosen a different strategy. He sent his telegrams for one whole month to all the editors in London, leaving it to their option whether they used them or not. The quickness of Mr. Reuter’s telegrams, and the accuracy of the information they contained, were appreciated by the press, and one newspaper after another became subscribers of Mr Reuter’s system.
Though, Mr Reuter’s telegrams still wasn’t noticed by the great public. One day, The Times published a French emperor speech, just one our later than the time it was pronounced. It wasn’t a regular speech: it’s meaning war was the following start of a war with Austria. The news has shaken the stock market and since then, everyone started looking for Mr Reuter’s telegraph system.
The war began, and Mr. Reuter sent special correspondents to the French, Austrian, and Sardinian camps.The telegrams were impartial and accurate, which made Mr. Reuter gain the confidence of the press.
The work of Mr Reuter continued. He had located agents to transmit news from America, India, China, the Cape and Australia. Wynter evaluates Mr Reuter’s contribution to the 19th society:
“What Mr. Reuter has already done for Europe, he is about to do for the other quarters of the globe. It will have been observed that all our earliest information from America, India, and China, the Cape, and even Australia, is derived from this gentleman’s telegramAs a conclusion, the author reflect about Mr Reuter’s importance to their future, that is, our present:
“The pedestrian, as he walks along Fleet Street and the Strand, will perceive high over head what might be termed the political spinal cord of the metropolis; every here and there it gives off right and left fine filaments; these are going to the Globe, the Sun, the Morning Post, the Herald, the Standard, the Telegraph, and all the other daily papers which line this great thoroughfare. These are the lines by which Mr. Reuter puts the whole British public in possession of the thoughts, and records the actions of the rest of the world; and as we watch the wires ruling their sharp outlines against the sky, for all we know they are conveying words which may affect the destinies of millions yet unborn.”
Read more about in: http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications8/socialbees-30.htm
I chose to research Goodge Street from Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. Goodge Street appears in this story as the location in which the man’s hat was found: “found at the corner of Goodge Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Mr. Henry Baker can have the same by applying at 6:30 this evening at 221B, Baker Street” (Carbuncle).
Poverty Map of Victorian London
According to the Charles Booth Online Archive Poverty Map, the general area of Goodge Street was middle class and ranged from “Mixed. Some comfortable others poor” and “Middle class. Well-to-do” people. The British History Online archive was able to give me more information about the actual architecture of the street. The houses were “kept to a fairly uniform height,” and below the third floor of every house there was a modillion cornice. A modillion cornice is a type of extravegant molding that can be used in architecture or even on certain types of furniture.
Example of modillion cornice (http://blog.classicist.org/?p=145)Example of pediment used in Victorian Architecture (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Pediment_%28PSF%29.png)
A pediment was above each window of the upper range windows. Today, parts of this design are still in place. Of course, over the decades, Goodge Street has faced architectural changes. The neighboring street, Charlotte Street, was rebuilt, which affected the design of Goodge Street as well as any damage that was accumulated by “the raids.” After doing a quick Google search I realized the raids the author was talking about were the air-raids in World War II. Today, Goodge Street houses the Goodge Street underground tube station, but during the second World War it was used as a bomb shelter for Allied forces.
(British History Online)
Besides their height, the houses themselves had very little “uniformity in the size of the units, some having three and others two windows in their width according to requirements” (British History). When this sketch was drawn most of the buildings had shops on the first floor.
The information I have gathered about Goodge Street reflects on the Sherlock Holmes’ story because it is located near Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes lives. Most of his detective work happens in his surrounding neighborhood, so it makes perfect sense that he would be walking through Goodge Street and then find a clue to a case. More specifically for the story, it makes sense that it took place on Goodge Street because of the financial state in that neighborhood. The citizens who lived there were a mix of middle class, “well to do” people. When Sherlock finds the hat he has trouble placing exactly where the owner would stand financially. It makes sense that the owner was once wealthy, and then down on his luck and living in a neighborhood of middle class.
‘Goodge Street’, Survey of London: volume 21: The parish of St Pancras part 3: Tottenham Court Road & neighbourhood (1949), pp. 34-35. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=65160 Date acc
Edgeware Road was mentioned within Sherlock Holmes “A Scandal in Bohemia” when Sherlock had followed Irene Adler to what was the Church of St. Monica. Looking at this road, it is clear that it is one of the main roads for this area, with a wide street with several other branching off from it. On this road, there is the Mable Arc, which is a landmark well known for this area, especially since the veranda directly across from it would be where officials, such as police officers and sheriffs, would stand when there would be an execution of any sort ( Simon Rees. 2014. historicaleye.com ).
Looking about on this road, several churches can be seen lining it as one goes along it, as well as several schools and small businesses, such as printing offices and banks. On one side, this had to have been a bustling portion of the area, which would give all the more sense of urgency for when Irene Adler had the sudden, almost on the spot, marriage. However, on the more northern side of the road there were mansions and the and other such buildings. Clearly, this area would not have been in the lower class regions of London, in actuality, it was all mainly consisting of the middle and upper class ( http://goo.gl/JgRmhL). For a woman who had not been married before hand, Irene Adler was clearly making a living for herself in London to be able to only about twenty minutes of so from this area.
As I tried searching for another street name other than the infamous ‘Baker Street,’ I came across Leadenhall Street in the Sherlock Holmes short story A Case of Identity. Before completing my research I re-read the short story and concluded that this street had a huge significance in the story because it aided as a clue in Sherlock Holmes investigation. In A Case of Identity, Miss Mary Sutherland goes to Sherlock’s office in hopes of him identifying where Mr. Hosmer Angel, the man she was just about to marry on Friday, is. Miss Sutherland reveals to Sherlock that her stepfather, Mr. Windibank refused to help her find him and her only resort was to sneak out of the house she was confined to, and come talk to Holmes. Later on in the story, as she continues giving information to Holmes, Miss Sutherland reveals that there are letters that have been written to her (apparently) from Mr. Hosmer, but the only possible identification that the typewritten letters are from him is the subscription of Leadenhall Street, a vague clue but where Mr. Hosmer Angel was said to reside.
Once I found the significance of Leadenhall Street, I decided to conduct some research about it. Using “British Histories Online”, Leadenhall Street housed the Old East India House, where the East India Company was located. Although it is not certain where the East India Company “first transacted their business” (Thornbury), “the tradition of the house is, that it was in the great room of the “Nag’s Head Inn,” opposite Bishop’sgate Church, where there is now a Quakers’ Meeting House” (Thornbury). After a large fire burned most of the India House, the lasting remains of the building were sent to a British Museum for preservation. I thought this was interesting because as mentioned in A Case of Identity, this is where the letters for Miss Sutherland were sent. My assumption is that Mr. Windibank did not want the letters he wrote to his step-daughter, as Hosmer, to be marked suspicious; so he cleverly had them marked as coming from Leadenhall Street, because that would make Miss Sutherland less suspicious as to who could have written the letters since it was a very busy area.
I also found that Leadenhall Street was home to Sir Hugh Neville’s mansion in 1309, which was later “…converted into a granary, and probably a market for the City” (Thornbury). Along the east side of the Leadenhall Market was a large chapel “dedicated to the Holy Trinity, by Sir Simon Eyre” (Thornbury). According to “British Histories Online”, Leadenhall Street was home to many priests, merchants, foreigners, and visitors. Like any city, Leadenhall brought in much revenue as many people traded, purchased, and sold a plethora of items. Specific to the Leadenhall Market “in Strype’s time” (Thornbury) it was a “…market for meat and fish, a market for raw hides, a wool market, and an herb market” (Thornbury).
Lastly, I used the “Charles Booth Online Archive” to identify the poverty classification around Leadenhall Street. According to the map, Leadenhall Street was located near the financial district in London, which seemed to be a very busy area. For the most part, the citizens were of upper-middle class and wealthy. There are certain points of the map that recognize just the middle class; as the light blue areas point out the poor class.
All in all, I found that using maps could be a useful tool in researching information that is otherwise looked passed. I conclusively found the significance of an important street in A Case of Identity, and even learned some history about it!
Works Cited
“Leadenhall Street.” Charles Booth Online Archive: Booth Poverty Map. London School of Economics and Political Science. Web. 9 November 2014.
Thornbury, Walter. ‘Leadenhall Street and the Old East India House’ Old and New London: Volume 2. British Histories, 1878. Web. 9 November 2014.
I decided to examine the Waterloo train station referenced in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Adventure of the Speckled Band.” Still in use today the historic location is recognized a total of three times in the story. The first reference appears when Helen Stoner mentions Waterloo as she talks with Holmes and Watson at the very beginning of the story. Later Holmes and Watson catch trains at the Waterloo station en route to Stoke Moran.
An immediate glance at Google’s modern and 1893 maps reveals changes to neighboring buildings and lots but nearly none to the street layout, other than that not much can be deduced. Fortunately, there are a plethora of websites that offer a deeper look at the rich history of the Waterloo train station. Unfortunately, as I write this post the serves for “Locating London” and “Old Bailey Online” are currently down. This narrows my resources for analysis down to “Historical Eye”, “Charles Booth Online Archive”, and “British Histories”. Of these remaining sources I’ve found only the “Charles Booth Archive” to have worthwhile (or any) information regarding the Waterloo station.
The 1898-99 map in the Charles Booth archive illustrates poverty levels in London at the time.
The key puts the map into perspective
The adjacent blocks to the Waterloo station are shaded primarily pink, red, and purple. This indicates that the area was fairly developed financially at the time, with the common economic states of neighboring residents being classified as purple “Some comfortable others poor”, pink “Fairly comfortable”, and Red “Well-to-do”. (Charles Booth Archive) But even though there is a clear cut majority there are still instances of poverty strewn throughout the area surrounding the station. Mostly these poverty stricken localities are labeled light blue for “Poor” and also dark blue for “Very Poor. Chronic Want” (Charles Booth Archive)
Another thing to notice about Booth’s poverty map is compared to other localities the area around Waterloo station was sparsely occupied by residences.
This area by Kent road has a much greater population density.
From this information one can infer that the Waterloo station was built in an industrial area surrounded by work places.
I also learned that including Waterloo, there were a total of 37 train stations throughout London in 1898. (Charles Booth Archive)
Works Cited
“Booth Poverty Map.” Booth Poverty Map (Charles Booth Online Archive). London School of Economics & Political Science, n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2014.
I chose to research Tottenham Court Road because it is mentioned in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. In the story, Petersonis heading home at night on Tottenham Court Road when he stumbles upon a group of men beating James Ryder. Evidently, Tottenham Court Road is located in an unsafe area.
I began my research by taking screenshots of Tottenham Court Road in Victorian Google Maps. Below is Tottenham Court Road during the both Victorian Era and the present day (“London”).
“British Histories” offered me the most information. At the top of the page is a search bar in which I entered my street name. The search resulted in plethora of publications concerning Tottenham Court Road. The excerpt that I found most valuable on this website revealed that 1878 marked a turn in the lives of many people in London. The author explains that in 1878, poverty was spreading on Tottenham Court Road in Rathbone Place. Walford describes it, “where poverty is almost hopeless” (“Quick”). This helps to explain the violence that Peterson encountered that night he was heading home on Tottenham Court Road. Because of widespread poverty in the area, the men likely attacked James Ryder because they were hungry wanted to eat his goose (and take the blue carbuncle!).
Another site that I found useful in researching Tottenham Court Road was “Old Bailey Online.” It was easy to search for criminal records near or on Tottenham Court Road. The search page allowed me to adjust the time period as well. I searched for records between 1800 and 1901. Almost all of the records from Tottenham Court Road and nearby areas documented theft crimes. Most of them were grand larceny, some of them highway robbery, and a few of them theft from a specified place. One of the records, for example showed that Sarah Crosby stole a shirt, and seven stockings (“The Proceedings”). After viewing the records, I reviewed the situation from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle during which the men are attempting to take James Ryder’s goose. With my new knowledge of theft crime on Tottenham Court Road, I realized that it wasn’t uncommon for such situations to occur.
The sites that I found least useful were “Historical Eye,” “Locating London,” and “Charles Booth’s Online Archive.” I was unable to search on “Historical Eye.” On top of that, reading through the site proved to be ineffective because it lacked any information on Tottenham Court Road. “Locating London” turned up only four results even after searching various forms of the street name in 1800 (Ex. Tottenham, Tottenham Ct. Tottenham Court Road). As it turned out, each result led me to the same exact record. The record had nothing to do with Tottenham Court Road, in fact, it only appeared in my search results because the word “Tottenham” appeared on the record once without any context (“Home”). Link to this record: http://www.londonlives.org/browse.jsp?div=NAHOCR70004CR700040070. After an hour of trying to find Tottenham Court Road on the “Charles Booth’s Online Archive” by switching back and forth from Victorian Google Maps to Booth’s map, I still could not locate it. This is unfortunate because Booth’s archive would have been useful for my research considering that it maps poverty.
[Edit Nov. 10th: I now know that there is a search bar on Charles booths online archive. I searched my street name and the following picture of my street revealed that in 1898-99, residents of were living fairly comfortably.]
Altogether, Victorian Google Maps, “British Histories,” and “Old Bailey Online” were helpful in learning about Tottenham Court Road, but the other GIS maps were difficult to navigate even after reviewing how to use some of them in class.
I initially questioned the reliability of topic modeling as a means of analyzing and interpreting bodies of literature. I understood how trends in word distribution could thematically summarize and reveal patterns in a canon but due to a misconception of how the process worked I remained skeptical. My skepticism came from denying that a universal algorithm could be applied to a variety of canons and for each yield worthwhile data. My attitude shifted as I began to familiarize myself with MALLET’s interface and the nature of the topic modeling process. While nothing is perfect the program offers sufficient means to customize the analysis, a necessary component to effectively rendering worthy results. My experience proved this feature can in fact make or break an analysis and ultimately dictates the practicality of the data sets you receive. I came to this conclusion after running multiple trials of the same canon but with varied analysis and getting results that varied in effectiveness. For instance my first trial with MALLET yielded “iffy” results. The algorithm ran on its default setting grouped into 50 topics with 1000 iterations, 20 topic words and enabled stop words. Due to whatever reasons when the Sherlock Holmes canon was analyzed according to the default setting the resulting data groups contained many “outlier” words which made generalizing them under one topic difficult. If the data analysis wasn’t customizable than I couldn’t have adapted the algorithm to a practical setting for getting significant data. But in my second trial, when the same canon was analyzed with slight variation, (50 topics, 2000 iterations, 10 topic words, with stops words) the results were data sets more easily understood and grouped into topics that reveal trends in the body of literature. Some of the results were as follows:
Topic: High Class Estate “house long high large place windows garden front standing servants” This group reveals a recurring theme of wealth and upper social echelons in the Sherlock Holmes collection.
Topic: Business “business good money hundred pay worth pounds company thousand gold” This data shows a pattern of finance and business throughout the Holmes stories.
While the aforementioned data sets were interesting they weren’t usefully insightful. Then I started noticing an intriguing pattern worth analyzing arising in most of my trials. On numerous occasions in different trials suspense and excitement were grouped with appeals to the senses.
Topic: Suspense (visual) “face turned instant back eyes head forward sprang suddenly caught” I chose to label this topic as visual suspense because these words imply suspense and appeal to the readers sense of sight.
Interestingly enough in trial 4 (100 topics, 3000 iterations, 10 topic words, with stop words) another suspenseful appeal to the senses surfaced, this time addressed to hearing and sight.
Topic: Suspense (auditory/visual) “heard long window light sound suddenly silence match slipped sharp”
The trends were interesting but due to the small amount of topic words they needed to be substantiated. I wanted to see what would happen when I increased the amount of topic words. For my next trial, trial 5 (100 topics, 4000 iterations, 20 topic words, with stop words) a similar but more elaborate case of sensory appeal occurred.
These topics indicate a pattern of dramatic sensory appeals throughout the Sherlock Holmes series. Showing a trend in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing style that makes the content of his stories easily engaging to the reader. Which I theorize as a potentially significant factor towards the great popularity of the Sherlock Holmes Stories. An inference I would never have been able to make without topic modeling.
