Category: UK

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The Giant O’Brien

Charles Bryne

A few days ago the Hunterian Museum announced the decision to remove Charles Byrne from display. I have been watching the case for many years. It’s a fascinating story which was retold by Hilary Mantel in her excellent book ‘The Giant O’Brien’ published in 1998.

Generally, I’m all in favour of human remains on display in Museums. My own feelings is that I’d love my old bones to be displayed in a Museum in a few thousand years time. However, Byrne’s story is particularly poignant and argues the opposite case. Bryne was a giant, he just could not stop growing until he died. He died young and after making a name for himself (as the Giant O’brien) on account of his soaring height. (look at the catalogue entry in the Museum online collection for details of Byrne’s condition.)

John Hunter was the pre-eminent surgeon of the time, and was furiously collecting as many animal and human specimens as he could. Fantastically interested in anything and everything anatomical, he gives a shape to a Doctor Frankenstein figure. For example, his interest in electrical experiment – trying to get dead frogs to twitch with ‘life’ and he had a very active engagement with the Body Snatchers in order to investigate what made someone tall, small, fat, thin, ill, healthy, intelligent, thick, good, criminal and so on.

He pioneered various surgical techniques. Postillions (the people who rode on the horses pulling coaches) were prone to aneurysms as the horses kept squashing their inside leg. Hunter developed an operation to bypass the aneurysm. He tried it out successfully and then kept track of the patient somehow. When the postillion died the Resurrection Men would pay a visit to the local graveyard and dig up the body of the patient. Part of his thigh is on display in the Hunterian Museum (or at least it was the last time I looked). So you can see the success of Hunter’s ground breaking operation – one of wave of surgical developments of the 18th Century. The Hunterian Museum is the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and was founded by Hunter.

So, Hunter hears about the Giant O’Brien and finds out he is ill, possibly dying. He has his people keep tabs on him. Charles Byrne is determined not to end up on the anatomist’s slab. So, he organises his funeral in advance paying guards to look after his coffin. He orders a secure iron coffin and in addition, decides to be buried at sea. Because Byrne knows, as an eminent surgeon later on reported to a Commons Committee, that it wasn’t a case of whether the Body Snatchers would get a body but more how much they would have to pay for it if they really wanted it.

But, Byrne thinks he has done enough to die in peace.

Unfortunately, Hunter’s men tracked down the guarded room, and bribed the guards with what would have been a huge amount of money. Byrne was taken back to Hunter’s place, the body melted down, mounted, and was on display until the Hunterian Museum closed for refurbishment recently.

So, a step forward as he is no longer the subject of the public gaze. But in this case we absolutely know that Byrne did not want to be the property of the medical establishment. My own feeling is that he should be given his last wishes and be buried at sea.

Reference collections are very important for Science, and it is for this reason, I am sure, the Museum has not let go of Charles Byrne. But in this case, with this history, an exception should surely be made? He died on 1 June 1783

www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2023/01/hunterian-museum-defends-decision-to-retain-skeleton-of-irish-giant-charles-byrne

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London Before And After The Roman Invasion

London before the Romans
View of London from the SE as it might have looked before the Roman Invasion

I have just finished a Guided Walk called ‘London Before And After The Roman Invasion’. Its the first time I’ve done this particular walk and it was very interesting because it focussed a lot of recent changes in ideas about early London. I decided to do the walk as wanted to refresh my knowledge of prehistoric London and the early Roman period.

So, when I first came to London as a young Archaeologist, we were engaged in a series of ground breaking archaeological excavations that completely revolutionised ideas about London.

So, old ideas were:

  1. There was a prehistoric London
  2. The City came into being as a Legionary Fortress built when the Roman Army was waiting for the Emperor Claudius to join them for the attack on the capital at Colchester.
  3. A formal road system was set up on Cornhill, with the North/South spine being the road north from London Bridge
  4. Southwark was a suburb on the other side of the bridge
  5. The town grew steadily and eventually spread over to the western hill – Ludgate Hill
  6. A fort was built in AD 120 then, c200AD, the Walls were built covering a large area because of the expanding City
  7. The Romans left and everything went to hell in a hand cart.

The new set of ideas were:

  1. People began to doubt the prehistoric London town in the early 20th Century, but it was completely dismissed by the 1970s and London was founded here simply because it was the best/only place for the Bridge and a superb site for the road junctions and Port.
  2. By the late 1970s evidence showed that London did not really get started till about 50AD, so the idea that London was a military foundation following on from a Legionary Fortress was dismissed. Instead, it was a town of civilians established by merchants taking advantage of the Bridge, the Road Junctions, and the Port.
  3. The formal road system was later than 43AD and Londinium was soon on both hills
  4. Southwark was rather more like South Londinium than a secondary suburb.
  5. Londinium had spread all the way to the later site of St Pauls by AD60 and its growth was very rapid. But decline set in as early as the 2nd Century. It struggled in the 4th Century and at the end of the Roman period there were not many people in it.
  6. The area inside the 200AD wall was not densely crowded, and the large size of the walled area was provably due to military decisions about the best defensive alignment for the wall.
  7. Roman London was already shrunken well before the end of the Roman presence in Britain.

Continued excavations created more data and the following discoveries were made

The foundation of London was dated to 48AD after dendrochronology dating of a wooden drain next to the main East West road through Roman London.

A Fort was built soon after the Boudica’s destruction of London in AD 60, just East of London Bridge

These two books were published and the new certainties about Roman London began to dissolve or resolve. Not yet sure which!

Lets have a look at those 7 points again:

  1. ‘There was a prehistoric London’ – Richard Coates in 1998 draw attention to the fact that the name Londinium is pre-Roman in origin and suggested it meant ‘Settlement by the flowing River’ Richard Hingley drew attention to the large amount of fine metal work in the river, and suggested a conclusion that , although there may not have been a prehistoric town before the Roman, the area was very important in the Iron Age, and suggest it was a ‘ritual landscape’ possibly associated with burial. Maybe, this might have been a factor in the Romans choosing the site to establish the crossing/town? Last year an excavation north of Liverpool Street found evidence of large scale feasting in the Late Neolithic leading some people to suggest London was an important ritual site before the coming of the Romans Dominic Perring dismisses ideas that it was an important area before the Roman period, and notes that most of the metal work is found further to the West. More about these discoveries in my post here:
  2. Dominic Perring cites evidence at three sites on Cornhill which suggests that London was indeed set up as a temporary Legionary Fortress in AD43, and suggests the first Bridge was a Pontoon Bridge. And therefore indeed built when the Roman Army was waiting for the Emperor Claudius to join them for the attack on the capital at Colchester. It was immediately dismantled.
  3. A formal road system was indeed set up on Cornhill, with the North South spine being the road north from London Bridge. This was set up in AD48, possibly still a supply base but began its transformation into a proper town c 52AD.
  4. Southwark was much more than a suburb on the other side of the bridge and had important formal buildings, possibly including the residence of the Procurator, after the Governor the most important person in Britain.
  5. The town grew quickly and soon spread over to the western hill – Ludgate Hill and the phases in this spread are detailed in Perring’s book.
  6. A fort was built in AD 62 which continued to about AD 85, and was possibly replaced immediately by a precursor to the Fort in the NW corner of the City near the old Museum of London and replaced in stone in AD 120 then, in c200AD, the Walls were built covering a large area because of the military requirements.
  7. I haven’t yet read the later London part of Perrings book, but he suggests that London develops when the Governor and the Emperor is involved in conquest, passification or development, and without government intervention London declines, so it develops in fits and starts and eventually the fits are more important than the starts and so it declines to virtually nothing.

Any way, congratulations to Dominc Perring who has created a really detailed description of the development of London. I’ve had to rethink quite a lot of my ‘old’ ideas and this is a great synthesis of the archaeology of London particularly over the last 50 years.

I’m sure I won’t agree with it all but I love the detail!

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Jane Austen Walks

I have set up my year of Jane Austen walks.

Jane Austen’s London Walks

Georgian female engraving


Sat 2.30 pm Green Park underground station, London (north exit, on the corner)

on the following dates in 2023: 2 April. 11 June. 9 September. 12 November.

And a Special Christmas version on 23 December 2023

An exploration of Mayfair, the centre of the London section of Sense & Sensibility and where Jane came to visit her brother

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Jane Austen devotee in possession of the good fortune of a couple of free hours today must be in want of this walk.”

People associate Jane Austen and her characters with a rural setting. But London is central to both Jane Austen’s real life and her literary life. So, this tour will explore Jane’s connections with London and give the background to Sense and Sensibility, a good part of which is based in this very area. We begin with the place Jane’s coach would arrive from Hampshire, and then walk the streets haunted by Willougby; past shops visited by the Palmers, the Ferrars; visit the location of Jane Austen’s brother’s bank and see the publisher of Jane’s Books. The area around Old Bond Street was the home of the Regency elite and many buildings and a surprising number of the shops remain as they were in Jane Austen’s day.

This is a London Walk Guided Walk lead by Kevin Flude

To Book:

Christmas With Jane Austen Virtual London Tour

12th Night


Saturday 23 December 2023 7.30pm

We look at how Jane Austen spent Christmas and at Georgian Christmas traditions and amusements.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Jane Austen devotee in possession of the good fortune of a couple of free hours must be in want of this virtual walk.”

This is a special walk, which looks at the traditions of Christmas during the Regency period and how Jane Austen might have celebrated it. It will give some background to Jane Austen’s life and her knowledge of London. We used her novels and her letters to find out what she might have done at Christmas, but also at how Christmas was kept in this period, and the range of ‘Curiosities, Amusements, Exhibitions, Public Establishments, and Remarkable Objects in and near London available to enjoy.

This is a London Walks Guided Walk by Kevin Flude, Museum Curator and Lecturer.

Review: ‘Thanks, again, Kevin. These talks are magnificent!’

To Book:

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Plaque in the Roman Empire

Roman Skeleton Museum of London in Docklands Exhibition 2018 photo K. Flude

I was puzzled to find a message, from reader of this blog Harriet Salisbury, voicing interest in coming on my ‘Decline and Fall of Roman London’ Walk in order to find out about Roman Dental problems.

Harriet is not only a brilliant editor, but also the author of a great book on the oral history of war time London, so I had to follow up this puzzling comment. And my recent post on my upcoming walk said:

Faced with plaque, civil war, invasion, mass immigration,  industrial decline, reversion to barter; the authorities struggled against anarchy and descent into a Dark Age

Now there are many reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire but I have never yet heard anyone, apart from me, blame dental plaque. So, I then spent a couple of hours changing the q of plaque to the g of plague in various places where the deadly dental disease was referred to. Of course, Harriet might equally have wondered whether a rash of information panels had been a contributory cause?

As you will know I have an interest in the history of health and medicine. A cursory glance at any of the skeletons you find in museums will normally show that pre-modern skulls have much better teeth health than modern people. And the reason for this is, mostly, because they did not have sugar to rot their teeth. Instead of sugar-created cavities, their problem tended to be wearing teeth out by the roughness of the grain they used. But I investigated more and found that recent work in Herculaneum and Pompeii had investigated Roman teeth health in a scientific manner. This showed that the diet of even the poor was much better than most modern diets because it was essential the much lauded ‘Mediterranean Diet’ with olive oil, no added sugar, lots of vegetables,fruits and smaller amounts of meat. In short, Roman society had a system in which even the poor had balanced nutritional diets, and therefore good levels of natural immunity.

Pompeii also had a high level of fluoride in the water. The Romans seem to have brushed their teeth with a flayed stick and used abrasives made of ‘ground-up hooves, pumice, eggshells, seashells, and ashes‘. They used a mouth wash of human and animal urine, and disgusting as this may seem, the ammonia would have acted as a cleansing agent.

To find out more about the science behind the story please go to: https://www.docseducation.com/blog/ancient-romans-had-healthier-smiles-we-do-today

This picture from ebay shows you a flayed stick toothbrush – I include the seller information so you can buy some!

Ebay Ad for natural toothbrushes

Harriet’s book was based on a wonderful oral history collection at the Museum of London. Worth having in you are interested in London history, the Blitz and ordinary people’s lives. And also for any lover of ‘Call the Midwife’.

This is a screenshot of ‘The War on our Doorstep’ so the link won’t work, but World of Books or any other online book seller (including the ‘evil empire’ but best not to boost the income of such stupidly rich people?)

I have updated and reposted my January 4th post to include what to look out for in the night skies in January.

Last chance to make the Twelfth Night cake & the night skies, January 4th
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New Walk! The Decline And Fall Of Roman London Walk

Reconstruction View of Roman Riverside Wall being built
Reconstruction View of Roman Riverside Wall being built

Sunday 22nd January 11.30am Exit 2 St Pauls Underground Station
 

An exploration of what happened at the end of the Roman Period, and how the City became deserted, and then, reborn as an English City.


The first British Brexit?   The Roman Britons kicked out the Romans in 407AD, and, soon, asked them to come back after a catastrophic collapse.  Faced with plague, civil war, invasion, mass immigration,  industrial decline, reversion to barter; the authorities struggled against anarchy and descent into a dark age.

But was that how it was?  Wasn’t it a rather a transition into the Late Antique period in which life for most people went on much as before except paying taxes to local rulers rather than distant Romans?

The walk investigates why the Roman system in London broke down, and what really was the impact of the end of the Roman system in London? What is the evidence?  and can we trust it? Or can we really do nothing much more than guess? 

We tramp the streets of London in search of light to shine on the dark age of London.

This is a London Walks event by Kevin Flude, ex Museum of London Archaeology and Museum Curator

To Book:

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New Walk for Next Week – London before and after the Roman Invasion

London before the Romans
View of London from the SE as it might have looked before the Roman Invasion

Tower Hill Underground
Sunday 8th January 2023 11.30pm

The walk looks into the evidence for a prehistoric London and tells the story of the coming of the Romans in AD43

The walk is led by Kevin Flude, a former archaeologist at the Museum of London.

The walk investigates the City of London before and after the the Roman Conquest. What is the evidence for settlement before the Romans set up town of Londinium? Why did the Romans establish the town on this spot? Who were the early Roman Londoners and what made their choice of site so successful?

The fledgling Town was then burnt down by Queen Boudiccan and her Icenian rebels. We look at the evidence for the Revolt and London’s recovery to became the capital of Britain.

This is a London Walks Guided Walk. Look at their web site for a list of other of their amazing walks.

REVIEWS (from London Walks website)
“Kevin, I just wanted to drop you a quick email to thank you ever so much for your archaeological tours of London! I am so thrilled to have stumbled upon your tours! I look forward to them more than you can imagine! They’re the best 2 hours of my week! 🙂 Best, Sue

To Book:

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Upton Lovell Shaman becomes a Goldsmith

‘Materials in movement: gold and stone in process in the Upton Lovell G2a burial’

Upton lovell 'shaman' display wiltshire museum
Screenshot from Wiltshire Museum web site

The journal Antiquity reports amazing discoveries in a paper called : ‘Materials in movement: gold and stone in process in the Upton Lovell G2a burial‘ and citing that the paper is

‘advancing a new materialist approach, we identify a goldworking toolkit, linking gold, stone and copper objects within a chaîne opératoire,

Setting aside what ‘new materialism’ and ‘chaîne opératoire’ are for the moment. Briefly, their analysis of the objects found in the Bronze Age burial of two people evidence that the person(s) identified as a ‘shaman’ on the basis of clothing/jewellery was (as well?) a gold worker. What is amazing is that they were using Neolithic axes which would have been hundreds of years old to make gold sheets. There was also evidence interpreted as tattooing instruments. As Upton Lovell is 12 miles from Stonehenge it means this is big news in the archaeological world, making most of the newspapers.

The authors dig deeper into the meaning of ‘New materialism’:

‘This approach advances on traditional technological studies in two ways. First, whereas materials are usually approached as having fixed properties, new materialists argue that these properties emerge relationally; they change through time and in combination with other materials, people and places (cf. Barad Reference Barad2007; Bennett Reference Bennett2010). Second, ‘making’ is seen not as the simple imposition of the will of a maker on an inert material but, instead, materials play an active role in the process.’

Widipedia gives a definition of chaîne opératoire

To put it more simply objects have complicated histories and contexts. You might also like to look at the original article (link below) which is written in a very strange style which gives the objects agency ‘an active role in the process’. Below is the conclusions of the article.

‘Conclusions

Drawing on microwear, residue analysis and new materialist theory, we have reassessed the Upton Lovell G2a grave assemblage. The empirical techniques attend to the materials, which are reinvigorated by situating them within this emergent theoretical landscape. These approaches reveal how the grave goods disclose an intertwining set of processes. Never static, these objects changed and shifted, requiring modification, repair and reuse. They speak to a complex interweaving of bodies—human and non-human—and their varied histories. There is far more complexity here, in relations, histories, gestures and processes, than could ever be captured under the label ‘shaman’, ‘metalworker’ or ‘goldsmith’. Grave goods are more than representations of a person’s identity. They are more even than critical relations in the construction of identity (cf. Brück Reference Brück2019). What these grave goods stress, when attention is paid to their stories, is quite different. They speak of material journeys, the colour of stone and the texture of gold capturing relations that flow across landscapes. Collectively, as an assemblage, these stone tools reveal a process of goldworking. But this goldworking involves as much the working of stone, in the shaping and upkeep of tools, as it does of metal. Here, we emphasise the repetitive and iterative nature of our chaîne opératoire, each action calling into being further moments of renewal of the polished stone surfaces so essential to the qualities other materials elicited. This goldworking chaîne opératoire is multi-material; it is as much a process in stone working as it is in the working of metal. From this perspective, the similarities in processing and working gold and stone mean that the former emerges as far more like the latter than our modern taxonomies would suggest.’

Materials in movement: gold and stone in process in the Upton Lovell G2a burial

If we analyse this conclusion based on the literary idea of ‘Point of View‘ you will see that the POV of the piece above is just bonkers. There is the ‘we’ of the authors, and the ‘they’ of the objects. ‘They’ are speaking to ‘bodies – human and non-human’. ‘They’ even have the ability to ‘stress’ an issue once ‘attention is paid to their stories’ and to be ‘reinvigorated’.

But its a very interesting find and analysis and does remind us that things are much more complicated than we realise.

I have republished my post of the Chinese New Year which you can see here:

Chinese New Year February 10th

I have republished my post of the Chinese New Year which you can see here:

Chinese New Year February 10th

I have republished my post of the Chinese New Year which you can see here:

Chinese New Year February 10th

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December 10 Time for your Beetle & Wedge

The Beetle and Wedge Boathouse Restaurant, Moulsford, Oxfordshire
Photo by Stephanie Musk (Wikipedia)

No season to hedge
get béetle and wedge
Cleaue logs now all
for kitchen and hall.

Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser www.gutenberg.org

A beetle is a hammer and a wedge is used to split logs, so the first thing Tusser enjoins his readers to do for December is to stop digging and hedging and, instead, cut firewood.

He also suggests (if I read the Tudor writing correctly):

Sharpen dull working tooles

Leaue off tittle tattle and looke to thy cattle

and suggests:

Howse cow that is old, while winter doth hold.

But don’t forget:

Out once in a day, to drinke and to play.

He suggests covering strawberries with straw to protect them; Making sure your dried cod and ling don’t rot. Store the products of the Orchard in the attic. Bleed the horse and help the bees with ‘liquor and honie’.

‘Thus endeth Decembers abstract, agréeing with Decembers husbandrie.’

Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser www.gutenbe

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Googling yourself to find your book is no 4 in a list of ‘Top Ten History Books’ of 2015!

Now here is the sort of thing you find out about yourself only if you

a. google yourself
b. go down to page 8

And there I find that thebookbag had my book as no 4 in its top ten history books of 2015, with Mary Beard at no 2.

And this is their review:

‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died…: The History of Britain’s Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunks by Kevin Flude

4.5star.jpg

History lives. Proof of that sweeping statement can be had in this book, and in the fact that while it only reached the grand old age of six, it has had the dust brushed off it and has been reprinted – and while the present royal incumbent it ends its main narrative with has not changed, other things have. This has quietly been updated to include the reburial of Richard III in Leicester, and seems to have been re-released at a perfectly apposite time, as only the week before I write these words the Queen has surpassed all those who came before her as our longest serving ruler. Such details may be trivia to some – especially those of us of a more royalist bent – and important facts to others. The perfect balance of that coupling – trivia and detail – is what makes this book so worthwhile.’

135,000 copies to date in 7 editions and formats. I did suggest a new updated edition to add a section on King Charles III but they said ‘they had no plans.’

http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/Top_Ten_History_Books_2015

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The Great Museum of London Reunion! (and closure)

The Great Museum of London Reunion

The Museum of London is reverting to its ‘original name’ the London Museum and moving to Smithfield. The problem is that they have decided to close the old Museum while they build the new one, which I think, sucks. To my mind a Museum’s job is to present its collection to the public: some of the objects are unique and need to be seen. To hide them all for four years because of convenience and cost savings is, I think, an abrogation of its duty. Of course, the Museum also runs the Museum of London in Docklands which is some compensation but all the same – four whole years!

So, today, it closes its doors. Then in the evening it hosts, what I imagine will be a ravening hoard of archaeologists and museum staff, for the greatest of all reunions. I’m very excited. I will be looking out for 2 wives, several ex-girlfriends and loads of old friends and colleagues many of whom I have not met for a very long time. I split up with Julie, my first wife, in our first few months as archaeologists at the Museum and a few years later met Poppy, the mother of our children, who worked as a Conservator at the Museum.

As I was a trade union representative while at the Museum, and co-edited the scurrilous archaeological ‘fanzine’ called ‘Radio Carbon’ I was, therefore, more often than most archaeologists to be found at the Museum. There I got to know quite a few of the Museum staff. So its going to be a blast. The original invitation was for a 2 hour event, which was then increased to 3 hours, and yesterday it was increased to 4 hours with live showing of England’s world cup game.

Radio Carbon (the author is to the left with finger up his nose)

Photos: Left: Kevin Flude in the Museum’s Library, One of my few claims to fame is that I introduced computers to the Museum of London (and the V&A)

Centre: Archaeologists at the GPO site (near St Pauls) the author in the front row with glasses surrounded by so many friends!

Right: Dig Party held at Trig Lane with home made fairground attractions and cocktails such as the Portaloo Flush (as I remember it vodka dyed blue with added raisins.) The author is in the foreground to the left. (photo Derek Gadd)

The original museum for London was called the Guildhall Museum, founded in 1826 and the repository for treasures found in the ‘City of London and suburbs’, and founded by the City Corporation. The foundation of the London County Council changed the balance of power in the metropolis and in 1912, the ‘suburbs’ struck out on their own and the London Museum was founded as a museum of the whole of London. It was encouraged by the Royal Family, particularly Queen Mary, and found a home in the Royal Palace of Kensington.

the London Museum (I think!)

In 1965 an Act of Parliament merged the two museums from which emerged the Museum of London which was purpose built, and it was to be funded one third each by the Government, the City and the Greater London Council. This was changed when Mrs Thatcher abolished the London Council and the funding was swapped to 50% City and 50% the Government.

The Museum of London
The Museum of London at night (photo K Flude)

In the interim before the new museum was built, the Guildhall Museum set up a temporary display at the Royal Exchange, and then moved into a building on the new Barbican High Walk. (thanks John Clark for information on the information on the merger.) The new museum was opened in December 1976, in a brand new building designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya. Instead of rooms with multiple exits, it was designed to allow only one route through – from the Prehistoric, through to the Romans, and then through a dark tunnel to the Dark Ages, and medieval, then downstairs down a ramp with a ceiling that echoed the Crystal Palace into Modern London. Its ethos was always to tell the story of London rather than highlight the ‘treasures’ and had people friendly, narrative driven displays of great clarity.

It will be much missed.

Roman Gallery, Museum of London
Roman Gallery, Museum of London. Mosaic to the left was excavated with the help of the author.

Aftermath

The Great Reunion was very noisy with competing sound systems and was very jolly. So great to see so many old faces (and still recognise them!) and sorry to miss so many who could not, for one reason or another, attend.

Steph, Paul, Louise, Julie