3 10 26 https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/4749e0f1dfc862e860e68c87599fb354.gif c7f224b413683c4820235c63edfc6f07 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 400 Height 650 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource The illustration shows the seller of nutmeg graters on his knees on the street. He wears a sign reading "I was born a cripple" and has nutmeg graters strung on his body. 'The Street-Seller of Nutmeg Graters' from a Daguerreotype by Beard. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. I now give an example of one of the classes driven to the streets by utter inability to labour. I have already spoken of the sterling independence of some of these men possessing the strongest claims to our sympathy and charity, and yet preferring to sell rather than beg. As I said before, many ingrained beggars certainly use the street trade as a cloak for alms-seeking, but as certainly many more, with every title to our assistance, use it as a means of redemption from beggary. That the nutmeg-grater seller is a noble example of the latter class, I have not the least doubt. I have made all due inquiries to satisfy myself as to his worthiness, and I feel convinced that when the reader looks at the portrait here given, and observes how utterly helpless the poor fellow is, and then reads the following plain unvarnished tale, he will marvel like me, not only at the fortitude which could sustain him under all his heavy afflictions, but at the resignation (not to say philosophy) with which he bears them every one. His struggles to earn his own living (notwithstanding his physical incapacity even to put the victuals to his mouth after he has earned them), are instances of a nobility of pride that are I believe without a parallel. The poor creature’s legs and arms are completely withered; indeed he is scarcely more than head and trunk. His thigh I hardly thicker than a child’s wrist. His hands are bent inward from contraction of the sinews, the fingers being curled up and almost as thin as the claws of a bird’s foot. He is unable even to stand, and cannot move from place to place but on his knees, which are shod with leather caps, like the heels of a clog, strapped round the joint; the soles of his boots are on the upper leathers, that being the part always turned towards the ground while he is crawling along. His countenance is rather handsome than otherwise; the intelligence indicated by his ample forehead is fully borne out by the testimony as to his sagcity in his business, and the mild expression of his eye by the statements as to his feeling for all others in affliction. “I sell nutmeg-graters<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> and funnels,' said the cripple to me; “I sell them at 1d. and 1½ d. a piece.<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> I get mine of the man in whose house I live. He is a tinman, and makes for the street trade and shops and all. I pay 7d. a dozen for them, and I get 12d. or 18d. a dozen, if I can when I sell them, but mostly I get a penny a piece—it’s quite a chance if I have a customer at 1½ d. Some days I sell only three—some days not one—though I’m out from ten o’clock till six. The most I ever took was 2s. 6d. in a day. Some weeks I hardly clear my expenses—and they’re between 7s. and 8s. a week; for not being able to dress and ondress myself, I’m obligated to pay some one to do it for me—I think I don’t clear more than 7s. a week take one week with another. When I don’t make that much, I go without—sometimes friends who are kind to me give me a trifle, or else I should starve. […] When I do very well I have three meals a day, but it’s oftener only two—breakfast and supper—unless of Sunday. On a wet day when I can’t get out, I often go without food. I may have a bit of bread and butter give me, but that’s all—then I lie a-bed. I feel miserable enough when I see the rain come down of a week day, I can tell you. Ah, it is very miserable indeed lying in bed all day, and in a lonely room, without perhaps a person to come near one—helpless as I am—and hear the rain beat against the windows, and all that without nothing to put in your lips. I’ve done that over and over again where I lived before; but where I live now I’m more comfortable like. My breakfast is mostly bread and butter and tea; and my supper, bread and butter and tea with a bit of fish, or a small bit of meat. What my landlord and landlady has I share with them. I never break my fast from the time I go out in the morning till I come home—unless it is a halfpenny orange I buy in the street; I do that when I feel faint. I have only been selling in the streets since this last winter. I was in the workhouse with a fever all the summer. I was destitute afterwards, and obliged to begin selling in the streets. The Guardians<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> gave me 5s. to get stock. I had always dealt in tin ware, so I knew where to go to buy my things. It’s very hard work indeed is street-selling for such as me. I can’t walk no distance. I suffer a great deal of pains in my back and knees. Sometimes I go in a barrow, when I’m traveling any great way. When I go only a short way a crawl along on my knees and toes. The most I’ve ever crawled is two miles. When I get home afterwards, I’m in great pain. My knees swell dreadfully, and they’re all covered with blisters, and my toes ache awful. I’ve corns all on top of them. “Often after I’ve been walking, my limbs and back ache so badly that I can get no sleep. Across my lines it feels as if I’d got some great weight, and my knees are in a heat, and throb, and feel as if a knife was running into them. When I go up-stairs I have to crawl upon the backs of my hands and my knees. I can’t lift nothing to my mouth. The sinews of my hands is all contracted. I am obliged to have things held to my lipe for me to drink, like a child. I can use a knife and fork by leaning my arm on the table and then stooping my head to it. I can’t wash nor ondress myself. Sometimes I think of my helplessness a great deal. The thoughts of it used to throw me into fits at one time—very bad. It’s the Almighty’s will that I am so, and I must abide by it. People says, as they passes me in the streets, ‘Poor fellow, it’s a shocking thing;’ but very seldom they does any more than pity me; some lays out half a-penny or a penny with me, but most of ‘em goes on about their business. Persons looks at me a good bit when I go into a strange place. I do feel it very much, that I haven’ the power to get my living or to do a thing for myself, but I never begged for nothing. I’d sooner starve than I ‘d do that. I never thought that people whom God had given the power to help theirselves ought to help me. I have thought that I’m as I am—obliged to on my hands and knees, from no fault of my own. Often I’ve done that, and I’ve over and over again laid in bed and wondered why the Almighty should send me into this world in such a state; often I’ve done that on a wet day, with nothing to eat, and no friend to come a-nigh me. When I’ve gone along the streets, too, and been in pain, I’ve thought, as I’ve seen the people pass straight up, with all the use of their limbs, and some of them the biggest blackguards, cussing and swearing, I’ve thought, Why should I be deprived of the use of mine? and I’ve felt angry like, and perhaps at that moment I couldn’t ring my mind to believe the Almighty was so good and merciful as I’d heard say; but then in a minute or two afterwards I’ve prayed to Him to make me better and happier in the next world. I’ve always been led to think He’s afflicted me as He has for some wise purpose or another that I can’t see. I think as mine is so hard a life in this world, I shall be better off in the next. Often when I couldn’t afford to pay a boy, I’ve not had m boots off for four or five nights and days, nor my clothes neither. Give me the world I couldn’t take them off myself, and then my feet has swollen to that degree that I’ve been nearly mad with pain, and I’ve been shivering and faint, but still I was obliged to go out with my things; if I hadn’t I should have starved. Such as I am can’t afford to be ill—it’s only rich folks as can lay up, not we; for us to take to our beds is to go without food altogether […] Mother was a cook in a nobleman’s family when I were born. They say as I was a love-child. I was not brought up by mother, but by one of her fellow-servants. Mother’s intellects was so weak, that she couldn’t have me with her. She used to fret a good deal about me, so her fellow-servant took me when she got married. After I were born, mother married a farmer in middling circumstances. They tell me as my mother was frightened afore I was born. I never knew my father. He went over to Buonos Ayres, and kept a hotel there—I’ve heard mother say as much. No mother couldn’t love a child more than mine did me, but her feelings was such she couldn’t bear to see me. I never went to mother’s to live, but was brought up by the fellow servant as I’ve told you of. Mother allowed her 30l a-year. I was with her till two years back. She was always very kind to me—treated me like one of her own. Mother used to come and see me about once a-year—sometimes not so often; she was very kind to me then. Oh, yes; I used to like to see her very much. Whatever I wished for she’d let me have; if I wrote to her, she always sent me what I wanted. I was very comfortable then. Mother died four years ago; when I lost her I fell into a fit—I was told of it all of a sudden. She and the party as I was brought up with was the only friends as I had in the world—the only persons as cared anything about a creature like me. […] I have still some relations living, and they are well to do, but, being a cripple, they despise me. My aunt, my mother’s sister, is married to a builder, in Petersham, near Richmond—having some houses of their own besides a good business. I have got a boy to wheel me down on a barrow to them, and asked assistance of them, but they will have nothing to do with me. They won’t look at me for my affliction. Six months ago they gave me half-a-crown. I had no lodgings nor victuals then; and that I shouldn’t have had from them had I not said I was starving and must go to the parish. This winter I went to them, and they shut the door in my face. […] I can, indeed, solemnly say, that there is nothing else against me, and that I strive hard and crawl about till my limbs ache enough to drive me mad, to get an honest livelihood. With a couple of pounds I could, I think, manage to shift very well for myself. I’d get a stock, and go into the country with a barrow, and buy old metal, and exchange tin ware for old clothes, and, with that, I’m almost sure I could get a decent living. I’m accounted a very good dealer.” <h3>Notes</h3> <div><div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Grated nutmeg featured not only sweet dishes where one might expect it such as Christmas plum pudding, bread and butter pudding or punch, but, according to <a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/beeton/isabella/household/">Mrs. Beeton’s recipes</a>, grated nutmeg was essential to savoury dishes such as fowl or chicken pie, eel pie, and potted ham </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> British currency was not decimalized until 1971. It was divided up into pounds (£) shillings (s or l, there were twenty shillings in a pound) and pennies (d). See Marje Bloy, “<a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/currency.html">British Currency before 1971</a>” The Victorian Web. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> After the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, before which relief or alms were given out at the discretion of the parish, paupers were forced to seek relief in workhouses, which meant that they had to live in an institution and work in order to gain relief. See Peter Higganbotham, <a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/">The Workhouse</a>, <http://www.workhouses.org.uk/> </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Crippled Street-Seller of Nutmeg Graters Description An account of the resource Journalist Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) began publishing his vast collection of interviews and observations on London street life in the mid-century, in the newspaper the Morning Chronicle in 1849. When the newspaper collapsed in 1850, Mayhew continued his interviews, often with the help of collaborators, and bound numbers of the work in-progress were issued from 1851-1852. In 1861-62 he collected all his work in three volumes, with a fourth volume mainly written by others added later, under the title London Labour and the London Poor (<a title="Review of London Labour" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/abanerjee1.html" target="_blank">A. Banjaree</a>). Many of the London street people that Mayhew interviewed were ill or disabled; his interviews offer a rare account of how lower class people with disabilities were seen, and how they saw themselves. In the excerpt below of his interview with the “crippled street-seller of nutmeg-graters,” Mayhew attempts to establish the nutmeg-grater seller as one of the “honest poor” rather than a begging imposter. He prefaces his account of the crippled street-seller with a disquisition on the difference between those who use street-selling as a excuse for begging, and those who are honestly trying to make a living through selling their wares, and ends it by reprinting letters from those who know him swearing to his honesty and sobriety. Most of the text is a report of the street-seller’s own account of his life, in his own words. Martha Stoddard Holmes argues that there is a tension between Mayhew’s melodramatic framing of the cripple’s story and the nutmeg-grater’s own account of himself, which is straightforward to the point of being anti-melodramatic (138). The nutmeg-grater cannot walk, and speaks of the practicalities of paying a boy to wheel him around in a barrow, and to dress and undress him. He once owned a shop but lost it through customers who did not pay for their wares, and has been in the workhouse, but avers that he would rather die on the streets than die a pauper. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mayhew, Henry Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor; A Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work Vol. 1. The London Street-Folk. London: Office, 16, Upper Wellington Street, Strand, 1851. Pages 329-332. Available online at <a title="London Labour and the London Poor" href="http://archive.org/details/londonlabourand00mayhgoog" target="_blank">archive.org</a> through Google Books. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1851 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The illustration shows the seller of nutmeg graters on his knees on the street. He wears a sign reading "I was born a cripple" and has nutmeg graters strung on his body. 'The Street-Seller of Nutmeg Graters' from a Daguerreotype by Beard. Image courtesy <a title="Mayhew on Victorian London" href="http://www.victorianlondon.org/mayhew/mayhew-street-characters.htm" target="_blank">Victorian London</a> under a Creative Commons License. Relation A related resource <ul><li>Banerjee,<a title="Banjaree Review" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/abanerjee1.html" target="_blank"> A. Review of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Selected Edition of Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor.</a> </li> <li>Stoddard Holmes, Martha. Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2004.</li> <li>Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. Ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. [Contains a shorter extract of "The Crippled Street-Seller of Nutmeg Graters."]</li> </ul> Class Henry Mayhew Journalism life writing Masculinity Orthopaedic Disability https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/b3aa732d8ec9ce789862a1e948ee4838.jpg b2374c8406bda4e065580da083121674 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 711 Height 1035 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Millais's oil painting shows a blind musician and her sister resting on the roadside after a storm. Green hills and pasture make up the middleground, a double rainbow and a town can be seen in the distance. Millais, John Everett. The Blind Girl. 1856. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Still Image A static visual representation. Examples of still images are: paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type "text" to images of textual materials. Tag Items with this tag should be included in the timeline cognition Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Blind Girl Description An account of the resource <div> <a title="Millais Bio" href="http://www.bmagic.org.uk/people/John+Everett+Millais" target="_blank">John Everett Millais</a>’s (1829-1896) The Blind Girl (1856) shows a blind musician with a concertina in her lap, and a little girl, presumed to be her sister, resting on the roadside after a rainstorm. They are on their way toward Winchelsea, whose church appears on the hill-top in the background (Flint 75). With its idyllic rural landscape, this <a title="Pre-Raphaelite at Birmingham" href="http://www.preraphaelites.org/" target="_blank">pre-Raphalite</a> painting presents a more romanticized version of the life of a blind beggar than its contemporary, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. Millais’s painting draws on a long Christian tradition of reading blind people as both blessed and afflicted by their lack of sight: while the blind may face practical difficulties in navigating a world set up for the sighted, as well as missing out on visual pleasures, as people less enmeshed in the material world, they may closer to the spiritual world and to God. This tension between the material and the spiritual is reflected in the painting itself, which is an object of visual pleasure but also a reminder to the viewer, with its autumnal setting, of the decay of this world and the importance of the next world. The little girl acts as both an interpreter of the scene for the blind girl and a stand-in for the viewer, who appreciates the double rainbow that the blind girl cannot see. Meanwhile, the blind girl’s upturned face and partially closed eyes suggest that she is contemplating higher things while resting and enjoying the sunshine. The forget-me-nots in the lower left-hand corner act as a reminder to the viewer not to forget, and perhaps hint at the cruelty of the blind girl’s lost ability to see them in bloom (Flint 75). The viewer is thus encouraged to both pity the blind girl and appreciate her spirituality. Kate Flint argues that the painting “may be seen as a contribution to a developing discourse which set the visibility and the epistemological certainties of the material, industrial world, blindly self-regarding in its own pride in its achievements, against the higher worth of divine illumination” (82). </div> <h2> </h2> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Millais, John Everett Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Millais's oil painting shows a blind musician and her sister resting on the roadside after a storm. Green hills and pasture make up the middleground, a double rainbow and a town can be seen in the distance. Millais, John Everett. The Blind Girl. 1856. <a title="Birmingham Museum, The Blind Girl" href="http://www.bmagic.org.uk/objects/1892P3" target="_blank">Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery</a>. Web. August 2012. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1856 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Blind Girl (1856) by John Everett Millais. Image in the public domain courtesy of <a title="wikimedia the Blind Girl" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Millais-Blind_Girl.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons.</a> Relation A related resource <ul><li>Flint, Kate. The Victorians and the Visual Imagination. New York: Cambridge UP, 2000.</li> <li>Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. <a title="Pre-Raphaelites" href="http://www.preraphaelites.org/" target="_blank">Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource</a>. <<a href="http://www.preraphaelites.org/">http://www.preraphaelites.org/</a>> </li> </ul> Blindness Class John Everett Millais Painting Visual Culture https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/54a070ae731190da15abc5fc8f710005.jpg a671143437b88a8c181549e2af008601 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 711 Height 1185 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A black and white illustration shows a young Olive kneeling on the hearth and petting a cat. Notably, her spinal deformity is not visible. The caption reads: "Olive, little noticed, sat on the hearthrug, fondling the sleepy cat, or gazing with vague childish reverie into the fire." Illustration by G. Bowers, 1875. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. By her stature she might have been two years old, but her face was like that of a child of ten or twelve—so thoughtful, so grave. Her limbs were small and wasted, but exquisitely delicate. The same might be said of her features; which, though thin, and wearing a look of premature age, together with that quiet, earnest melancholy cast peculiar to deformity, were yet regular, almost pretty. Her head was well shaped, and from it feel a quantity of amber-coloured hair—pale ‘lint-white locks’, which, with the almost colourless transparency of her complexion, gave a spectral air to her whole appearance. She looked less like a child than a woman dwarfed into childhood the sort of being renowned in elfin legends, as springing up on a lonely moor, or appearing by a cradle-side; supernatural, yet fraught with a nameless beauty. She was dressed with the utmost care, in white, with blue ribands; and her lovely hair was arranged so as to hide, as much as possible the defect, which, alas! was even then only too perceptible. It was not a humpback, nor yet a twisted spine; it was an elevation of the shoulders, shortening the neck, and giving the appearance of a perpetual stoop. There was nothing disgusting or painful in it, but still it was an imperfection, causing an instinctive compassion—an involuntary ‘Poor little creature, what a pity!’ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Olive Description An account of the resource Dinah Mulock Craik’s (1826-1887) novel Olive (1850), features a heroine who has a shoulder deformity but who goes on to establish a career as an artist and to win the love of a Scottish minister whom she rescues from religious doubt. Olive was one of many of Craik’s works to feature a protagonist with a disability—others include The Little Lame Prince (1875) and A Noble Life (1866). In his review of A Noble Life, whose protagonist, the last Earl of Cairnforth was likely partly based on Craik’s friend Frank Smedley, Henry James remarked wryly, on that “lively predilection for cripples and invalids by which she has always been distinguished” (846). This excerpt from the novel describes the first time that Olive’s father, Captain Rothesay, who has been absent in the West Indies for four years, sees his daughter. Olive’s mother, Sybilla, has kept her daughter’s deformity a secret from her husband, fearing he will be displeased. Craik refrains from describing her heroine’s “defect” in medical terms. Instead, she borrows the language of fairy tales to describe the young girl’s physical appearance, placing her heroine within an established and perhaps more sympathetic literary tradition of viewing physical difference. Other literary characters in the mid-nineteenth-century novel described using fairy tale language include Philip Wakem in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Madame Walravens in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette (1853). <h2> </h2> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Craik, Dinah Mulock Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Craik, Dinah Mulock. Olive. 1850. Ed. Cora Kaplan. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Page 23. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1850 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A black and white illustration shows a young Olive kneeling on the hearth and petting a cat. Notably, her spinal deformity is not visible. The caption reads: "Olive, little noticed, sat on the hearthrug, fondling the sleepy cat, or gazing with vague childish reverie into the fire." Illustration by G. Bowers, 1875. Relation A related resource <ul><li>Holmes, Martha Stoddard. Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2004.</li> <li>James, Henry. Review of A Noble Life in Literary Criticism. Volume One: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers. Penguin: New York, 1984.</li> <li>Mitchell, Sally. <a title="Dinah Mulock Craik" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/craik/index.html" target="_blank">Dinah Mulock Craik</a>. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983. Available online: <<a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/craik/index.html">http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/craik/index.html</a>></li> </ul> Dinah Mulock Craik Gender Literature Novel Orthopaedic Disability https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/6f14d892a271cf49a4498e0790d429f2.jpg 4fbc405aef3d7f763ff701ce59e99b31 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 395 Height 546 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:V0003878 Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving. headline:V0003878 Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving. caption:V0003878 Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving. Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:43:"V0003878 Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving.";s:8:"headline";s:43:"V0003878 Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving.";s:7:"caption";s:319:"V0003878 Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Harriet Martineau. Wood engraving. Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A wood engraving shows Harriet Martineau gazing toward the left, with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. [from “Dedication”]: I do not believe it is possible for persons in health and action to trace, as we can, the agencies for good that are going on in life and the world. Or, if they can, it seems as if the perception were accompanied by a breathless fear,--a dread of being, if not crushed, whirled away somewhere, hurried along to new regions for which they are unprepared, and to which, however good, they would prefer the familiar. You and I, and our fellow-sufferers, see differently, whether or not we see further. We know and feel, to the very centre of our souls, that there is no hurry, no crushing, no devastation attending Divine processes. While we see the whole system of human life rising and rising into a higher region and a purer light, we perceive that every atom is as much cared for as the whole. While we use our new insight to show how things are done,--and gravely smile to see that it is by every man’s overrating the issues of his immediate pursuit, in order that he may devote all his energies to it, (without which nothing would ever be done,) we smile with another feeling presently, on perceiving how an industry and care from above are compensating to every man his mistake by giving him collateral benefits when he misses the direct good he sought,--by giving him and his helpers a wealth of ideas, as often as their schemes turn out, in their professed objects, profitless. When we see men straining every nerve to reach the tempting apples which are to prove dust and ashes in their jaws, [xiv] we see also, by virtue of our position, the flying messenger who is descending with the ambrosia which is to feed their immortal part. We can tell that while revolutions are grandly operating, by which life and the world will in time change their aspect,--while a progress is advancing which it is now scarcely conceivable that we should ever have dreamed of putting our hands,--there is not one of our passing thoughts that is not ordained,--not a sigh of weariness unheeded—not an effort of patience that is not met half-way by divine pity,--not a generous emotion of triumph in the world’s improvement that is not hallowed by the divine sympathy ever living and breathing round about us. This is our peculiar privilege, of seeing and feeling something of the simultaneous vastness and minuteness of providential administration, is one in which we most enjoy sympathy;--at least, I do:--and in this, therefore, do I find your undoubted fellowship most precious. [From “Life to the Invalid”] Nothing is more impossible to represent in words, even to one’s self in meditative moments, than what it is to lie on the verge of life and watch, with nothing to do but think, and learn from what we behold. Let any one recall what it is to feel suddenly, by personal experience, the full depth of meaning of some saying, always believed in, often repeated with sincerity, but never till now known. Everyone has felt this, in regard to some one proverb, or divine scriptural clause, or word of some right royal philosopher or poet. Let any one then try to conceive of an extension of this realization through all that has ever been wisely said of man and human life, and he will be endeavouring to imagine our experience. Engrossing, thrilling, overpowering as the experience is, we have each to bear it alone; for each of us is surrounded by the active and the busy, who have a different gift and a different office;--and if not, it is one of those experiences which are incommunicable. If we endeavour to utter our thoughts on the folly of the pursuit of wealth, on the emptiness of ambition, on the surface nature of distinctions of rank, &c. we are only saying what our hearers have had by heart all their lives from books […] [From the “Power of Ideas in the Sickroom”] If I were asked whether there is any one idea more potential than any other over every sort of suffering, in a mode of life like ours, most hearers of the question would make haste to answer for me that there is such a variety of potential ideas, suited to such wide differences of mood of mind and body, that it must be impossible to measure the strength of any one. Nevertheless, I should reply that there is one, to me more powerful at present than I can now conceive any single idea to have been in any former state of mind. It is this; that it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are. I can conceive the amazement of many at this announcement,--of many even who admit its truth, and feelingly admit it, as I myself did when it was first brought home to me from the printed page of one friend by the heart-breathing voice of another. I care not who wonders, and who only half understands, while there are some few to whom this thought may be what it is to me. No one will be so short-sighted as to apply it as an excuse for indolence in the active and healthy,--so clear is it that such cannot be what they ought to be, unless they do all they can. But perhaps it is only the practiced in human sorrows who can see far enough into the boundless truth of this thought to appreciate its worth to us. Suffice it here that it has the power I ascribe to it, and that we whom it has consoled long to administer it when we see old age restless in its infirmity, activity disappointed of its scope or instruments, or the most useful agents of society, the most indispensable members of families paralysed by disease. We long to whisper it in the dungeons of Spielberg,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> where it opens a career within the narrowest recess of those thick walls. We long to send a missive to every couch of the sick, to every arm-chair of the aged and the blind, reminding them that the great work of life is ours still,--through all modes of life but that of the madhouse,<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a>--the formation of a heavenly soul within us. If we cannot pursue a trade or a science, or keep house, or help the state, or write books, or earn our own bread or that of others, we can do the work to which all this is only subsidiary,--we can cherish a sweet and holy temper,--we can vindicate the supremacy of mind over body,--we can, in defiance of our liabilities, minister pleasure and hope to the gayest who come prepared to receive pain from the spectacle of our pain; we can, here as well as in heaven’s courts hereafter, reveal the angel growing into its immortal aspect, which is the highest achievement we could propose to ourselves, or that grace from above could propose to us, if we had a free choice of all possible conditions of human life. <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Dungeons of Spielberg: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Pellico">Silvio Pellico</a> (1789-1854), an Italian author, was arrested by Austrian officials under the charge of belonging to the carbonari (meaning a secret revolutionary society in early nineteenth-century Italy) and put in a prison at Spielberg. There he wrote Le mie prigioni (“My Prisons”) about his determination to live a Christian life in prison. His work was widely translated and inspired sympathy for the unification of Italy. In alluding to him, Martineau suggests that a life of confinement, be it from imprisonment or illness, can lead to the development of a Christian temperament. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> Martineau’s exclusion of those in the madhouse from her message suggests that she sees the insane as a limit case of who could be consoled by the ability to keep a “sweet and holy temper” in the absence of the ability to do anything else. </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Life in the Sickroom Description An account of the resource Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was a writer and intellectual of the Victorian period. She was best known for her work on political economy, but she was also deaf from childhood and an invalid for six years. She wrote about both of these experiences in her “Letter to the Deaf” (1834) Life in the Sickroom (1844) and her autobiography (1877). Life in the Sickroom is one of many first-hand accounts of the experience of being ill written by an invalid. Martineau was ill for six years, but she found taking on the identity of an invalid a reprieve from the stresses of daily life. What is interesting about her account, then, is that rather than depicting the difficulties of being ill, she portrays life in the sickroom as a time of rest and reflection, a welcome repose that can lead to time for thought and greater insight. Nor was she unusual in this respect. Miriam Bailin points out that many Victorians valued illness for the rest and repose it could offer from the stresses of daily life, and that it is perhaps not surprising that the cult of the invalid developed in the wake of the Industrial revolution alongside the “coexistent imperatives of self-discipline, will-power and industriousness” (12). Martineau dedicates her work to fellow-invalids whom she imagines will be sympathetic to her experiences in the sickroom, and to her claim that suffering can afford invalids greater insight, especially about the transience of this world. This type of dedication is typical of Victorian writing about invalidism. As Maria Frawley points out, many Victorian invalids who wrote first-person narratives about their experiences portrayed themselves as lonely sufferers seeking from their “own bed of affliction to console others, envisioned as similarly confined to their sickrooms and in need of solace” (11). In the following two excerpts, from the chapters on “Life to the Invalid” and the “Power of Ideas in the Sick-Room,” Martineau reflects on invalid’s heightened ability to grasp truisms that may seem farther off to the healthy: that wealth and status are unimportant, and that it matters less what we do than what we are. <h2> </h2> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Martineau, Harriet Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Martineau, Harriet. Life in the Sickroom. Essays by an Invalid. Second Edition. London: Edward Moxon, 1845. Pages xii-xiii, 65-66, 160-162. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1844 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A wood engraving shows Harriet Martineau gazing toward the left, with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. R. Burgess, Portraits of doctors & scientists in the Wellcome Institute, London 1973. Courtesy of the <a title="Wellcome Institute" href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wellcome Library, London</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Wellcome Library Catalogue Record" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1169696" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 1929.1</a>). Relation A related resource <ul><li>Bailin, Miriam. The Sickroom in Victorian Fiction: The Art of being Ill. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994.</li> <li>Frawley, Maria. Invalidism and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. </li> </ul> Language A language of the resource English Harriet Marineau Invalidism life writing Literature Mobility https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/dbce54f5f2e3c7a6e096fbdfb7afd7fd.jpg 0d71c9eb583f97e7432b8c02d8540ae5 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 2100 Height 2843 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 IPTC String copyright_notice:Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html byline:Wellcome Images object_name:V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading e headline:V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss caption:V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading embossed letters from a book. Lithograph by W. Sharp, 1844, after A. Fisher. 1844 By: Alanson Fisher and BouvÈ & Sharp.after: W. SharpPublished: 1844 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html IPTC Array a:5:{s:16:"copyright_notice";s:123:"Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";s:6:"byline";s:15:"Wellcome Images";s:11:"object_name";s:64:"V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading e";s:8:"headline";s:69:"V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss";s:7:"caption";s:500:"V0015876 Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading emboss Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman reading embossed letters from a book. Lithograph by W. Sharp, 1844, after A. Fisher. 1844 By: Alanson Fisher and BouvÈ & Sharp.after: W. SharpPublished: 1844 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html";} Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A black and white lithograph shows Laura Bridgman guiding her friend Oliver's hand over an open book with raised print as she teaches him to read. Both children's signatures appear at the bottom of the print as further proof of their literacy. Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman (1844). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see how free they are from all concealment of what is passing in their thoughts; observing which, a man with eyes may blush to contemplate the mask he wears. Allowing for one shade of anxious expression which is never absent from their countenances, and the like of which we may readily detect in our own faces if we try to feel our way in the dark, every idea, as it rises within them, is expressed with the lightning’s speed, and nature’s truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing –room at court, could only for one time be as unconscious of the eyes upon them as blind men and women are, what secrets would come out, and what a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so much pity, would appear to be! The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room, before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb; destitute of smell; and nearly so, of taste: before a fair young creature with every human faculty, and hope, and power of goodness and affection, inclosed within her delicate frame, and but one outward sense—the sense of touch. There she was, before me; built up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or particle of sound; with her poor white hand peeing through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that an Immortal soul might be awakened. Long before I looked upon her, the help had come. Her face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own hands, was bound about a head, whose intellectual capacity and development were beautifully expressed in its graceful outline, and its broad open brow; her dress, arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity; the work she had knitted, lay beside her; her writing-book was on the desk she leaned upon.—From the mournful ruin of such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, grateful hearted being. Like other inmates of that house, she had a green ribbon bound round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed lay near upon the ground. I took it up, and saw that she had made a green fillet such as she wore herself, and fastened it about its mimic eyes. She was seated in a little enclosure, made by school-desks and forms, writing her daily journal. But soon finishing this pursuit, she engaged in an animated conversation with a teacher who sat beside her. This was a favourite mistress with the poor pupil. If she could see the face of her fair instructress, she would not love her less, I am sure. I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her history, from an account, written by that one man who has made her what she is. It is a very beautiful and touching narrative; and I wish I could present it entire. Her name is Laura Bridgman. ‘She was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the twenty-first of December, 1829. She is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endurance; and life was held by the feeblest tenure: but when a year and a half old, she seemed to rally; the dangerous symptoms subsided; and a twenty months old, she was perfectly well. ‘Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, rapidly developed themselves; and during the four months of health which she enjoyed, she appears (making due allowance for a fond mother’s account) to have displayed a considerable degree of intelligence. ‘But suddenly she sickened again; her disease raged with great violence during five weeks, when her eyes and ears were inflamed, suppurated, and their contents were discharged.<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> But though sight and hearing were gone for ever, the poor child’s sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during seven weeks; for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened room; it was a year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before she could sit up all day. It was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed; and, consequently, that her taste was much blunted. ‘It was not until four years of age that the poor child’s bodily health seemed restored, and she was able to enter upon her apprenticeship of life and the world. ‘But what a situation was hers! The darkness and the silence of the tomb were around her: no mother’s smile called forth her answering smile, no father’s voice taught her to imitate his sounds:--they, brothers and sisters, were but forms of matter which resisted her touch, but which differed not from the furniture of the house, save in warmth, and in the power of locomotion; and not even in these respects from the dog and the cat. ‘But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated; and though most of its avenues of communication with the world were cut off, it began to manifest itself through the others. As soon as she could walk, she began to explore the room, and then the house; she became familiar with the form, density, weight, and heat, of every article she could lay her hands upon. She followed her mother, and felt her hands and arms, as she was occupied about the house; and her disposition to imitate, led her to repeat everything herself. She even learned to sew a little, and to knit.’ The reader will scarcely need to be told, however, that the opportunities of communicating with her, were very, very limited; and that the moral effects of her wretched state soon began to appear. Those who cannot be enlightened by reason, can only be controlled by force; and this, coupled with her great privations, must soon have reduced her to a worse condition than that of the beasts that perish, but for timely and unhoped-for aid. ‘At this time, I was so fortunate as to hear of the child, and immediately hastened to Hanover to see her. I found her with a well-formed figure; a strongly marked, nervous-sanguine temperament; a large and beautifully shaped head;<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> and the whole system in healthy action. The parents were easily induced to consent to her coming to Boston, and on the 4th of October, 1837, they brought her to the Institution. ‘For a while, she was much bewildered; and after waiting about two weeks, until she became acquainted with her new locality, and somewhat familiar with the inmates, the attempt was made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs, by which she could interchange thoughts with others. ‘There was one of two ways to be adopted: either go on to build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural language which she had already commenced herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language in common use: that is, to give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a knowledge of letters by combination of which she might express her idea of the existence, and the mode and condition of existence, of any thing. The former would have been easy, but very ineffectual; the latter seemed very difficult, but, if accomplished, very effectual. I determined therefore to try the latter. ‘The first experiments were made by taking articles in common use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys &c. and pasting upon the labels with their names printed in raised letters. These she felt very carefully, and soon, of course, distinguished that the crooked lines s p o o n, differed as much from the crooked lines k e y ‘Then small detached labels, with the same words printed upon them, were put into her hands; and she soon observed that they were similar to the ones pasted upon the articles. She showed her perception of this similarity by laying the label k e y upon the key, and the label s p o o n upon the spoon. She was encouraged here by the natural sign of approbation, patting on the head. ‘The same process was then repeated with all the articles which she could handle; and she very easily learned to place the proper labels upon them. It was evident, however, that the only intellectual exercise was that of imitation and memory. […] ‘Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the success about as great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and patiently imitated every thing her teacher did; but now the truth began to flash upon her: her intellect began to work: she perceived that here was a way by which she could herself make a up a sign of any thing that was in her own mind, and show it to another mind; and at once her countenance lighted up with a human expression: it was no longer a dog, or parrot: it was an immortal spirit eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits! I could almost fix upon the moment when this truth dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her countenance; I saw that the great obstacle was overcome; and that henceforward nothing but patient and persevering, but plain and straightforward, efforts were to be used. <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Bridgman suffered from scarlet fever. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> In remarking on Bridgman’s “large and beautifully-shaped head” and her “nervous-sanguine temperament”, Howe is drawing on the nineteenth-century science of phrenology which held that the shape of one’s head was a guide to character. See John Van Whye, <a href="http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/">The History of Phrenology on the Web </a>for more information. </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource American Notes Description An account of the resource In January of 1842, Charles Dickens paid a visit to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, just outside of Boston, MA, as part of his American tour. There he met Laura Bridgman, whom the director of the institute, Samuel Gridley Howe, touted as the first deaf and blind person to be educated. (That person was arguably Julia Brace, who had been educated at the Hartford Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb using sign language.) On his return home, Dickens published an account of his encounter with Bridgman in American Notes for General Circulation, comprised partly of his own reflections on Bridgman, and partly of Howe’s widely reprinted 1838 Annual Report for the Perkins Institute of the Blind, which Dickens literally cut and paste directly into his manuscript. The excerpt below focuses on the story of how Bridgman learned to read and write: for Howe, the moment that Bridgman becomes literate is the moment when she becomes human. Howe’s insistence on teaching Bridgman how to spell in English rather than building on the version of home sign that she is already using to communicate through formal instruction in sign language is based on a stereotype that sign language was pictorial, and could only refer to literal objects rather than expressing abstract ideas. Seeing Bridgman write English, then, is proof of her intelligence and ability to process abstract ideas. For Dickens, watching Bridgman write in her diary is akin to seeing her prove that she is a fully conscious human being. At the center of Bridgman’s story, then, is the question of the role of literacy in determining who is fully human and who is not. This question takes on larger significance in the context of Dickens’s American Notes, in which Dickens also visits slaves and factory workers, whose right to literacy was contested. (See Bourrier, “Reading Laura Bridgman”.) <h2> </h2> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dickens, Charles. American Notes for General Circulation. Ed. Patricia Ingham. New York: Penguin, 2000. Pages 39-44. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1842 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A black and white lithograph shows Laura Bridgman guiding her friend Oliver's hand over an open book with raised print as she teaches him to read. Both children's signatures appear at the bottom of the print as further proof of their literacy. Portrait of Oliver Caswell and Laura Bridgman (1844). Lithograph by W. Sharp, 1844, after A. Fisher. Courtesy of the <a title="Wellcome Images" href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wellcome Library, London</a> under a Creative Commons License (<a title="Wellcome Library Image" href="http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1174265" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 16376</a>). Relation A related resource <ul><li>Bourrier, Karen. “Reading Laura Bridgman: Literacy and Disability in Dickens’s American Notes.” Dickens Studies Annual 40 (Summer 2009): 37-60.</li> <li>Gitter, Elisabeth. The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001.</li> <li>Freeberg, Ernest. The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.</li> <li><a title="Perkins Institute" href="http://www.perkinsmuseum.org/." target="_blank">Perkins History Museum</a>. <a href="http://www.perkinsmuseum.org/">http://www.perkinsmuseum.org/</a>. </li> </ul> Blindness Celebrity Charles Dickens Deafness Education Institutions life writing https://nineteenthcenturydisability.org/files/original/062a3b4609dad0bc5f09443ee3b8e03a.jpg 540356214f4a202f335e1ef3cf4619aa Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 1174 Height 514 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource A colour lithograph shows Ben Rhydding ensconsed amidst extensive grounds with hills and trees. Frontispiece from Ben Rhydding: The Principles of Hydropathy and the Compressed-Air Bath (1858). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1837 to 1860 Description An account of the resource Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Ben Rhydding is finely situated on the slope of Rombald's Moor,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> at an elevation of five hundred feet above the level of the sea. Whether from the natural advantages of its position, the variety and beauty of the scenery in its neighbourhood, the extensive and elegantly laid-out private grounds with which it is surrounded, or the perfection of its internal arrangements for the health and comfort of its inmates, this establishment well deserves the reputation it has secured. Built on a sandy soil, rain never lies on its gravelly walks; and the springs which supply it with water are among the finest in England. From its situation, midway between the vast upland moors and the lovely banks of the placid Wharfe, Ben Rhydding affords not only a favourable position from which to admire the varied scenery around, but one from which, by a walk requiring little time or exertion, the valetudinarian may enjoy, when he pleases, an agreeable change of temperature. Should the sun beat too strongly on the lower levels, he can enjoy the breezes of the uplands, and when cold and storm are raging on the height, the grounds by which this establishment is surrounded will be found to command a more sheltered climate than even the banks of the silvery Wharfe. Within these grounds, and by the banks of the Wharfe, even in winter, when the weather is not inclement, the delicate and consumptive may take exercise without apprehension; for as we intend to shew by and by, it is the opinion not only of Dr. MacLeod, the eminent Physician who takes the sole direction of this establishment, but also of many medical men of high standing, who are perhaps opposed to his opinions on other points, that a dry, bracing atmosphere is more suitable than a relaxing one in consumption, and that out-door exercise, when properly regulated, may often be found even more beneficial in winter than in summer. Ilkely had long been famous for its springs, and it was this circumstance, among others, that led to its selection as an appropriate site for the Hydropathic Establishment we have undertaken to describe. Ben Rhydding was erected nearly twelve years ago, at an expense of about £30, 000. The estate consists of about two hundred acres of ground; a great part of which is laid out with a view to the advantage and pleasure of the patients, affording them the opportunity for varied exercise, and communicating also with the extensive moors which crown the hills for many miles on both sides of the valley of the Wharfe. The House consists of a central building and two wings. The centre contains, on the ground floor, the dining-room, the library, and the sitting-rooms. On the first floor are the drawing-room, six private sitting-rooms, and four bed-rooms, all commanding exquisite and varied views of the surrounding scenery. The second floor is devoted entirely to double bed-rooms. The south wing contains the ladies', and the north wing the gentleman's bed-rooms. To each landing is attached a bath-room; and the bed-rooms are each fitted with a bath and an unlimited supply of water direct from the springs. The bath-rooms contain each a plunge bath and a douche. There are also hot water, hot air, and vapour baths,<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> as well as steam apparatus for local application in cases of the nerves, or other causes. Of course, too, there are all the other means and appliances, too numerous to mention, of a first-class Hydropathic establishment. The library is supplied with a great variety of the leading newspapers, reviews, and magazines of the day. Gentlemen will find in the library that quietness for reading and writing which cannot always be secured in the drawing-room. Books in the various departments of literature may be had on application to the clerk of the establishment. A billiard-room, open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., affords the means of recreation to those who cannot be much out of doors. But Ben Rhydding is not devoted solely to the Water Cure, but to the fullest carrying out in practice of the entire art of cure. Hardly inferior in importance to the hydropathic treatment is that by the Compressed Air-Bath. [… ] The Compressed-Air Bath, a strong chamber constructed of iron plates, firmly rivetted and air-tight, and with several small windows of strong plate glass, is on the west of the house, and so near, that the most delicate patient may walk, or be carried to it, in the severest weather, and at all seasons of the year, without any danger. We step across to it, and, with the Doctor's permission, peep in at one of the windows. We see several patients sitting, evidently quite at their ease, reading the papers, or chatting to each other. We find, however, that, though they get more than the usual supply of air, they are required to be quiet and grave when under its influence, for the direction runs:-- “Parties not to laugh or discuss in the Air-bath!” The importance of exercising the different muscles of the body, as a means of assisting in the cure of disease, or preserving health, is fully recognized at Ben Rhydding. Not only are the “free exercises” enjoined as required, (a notice of these will be given in a subsequent chapter,) but a Gymnasium, with a suitable apparatus for exercises of a more advanced description, has been erected on a large terrace levelled for the purpose. Adjoining the Gymnasium, is a large Bowling Green, whereon, as the Muse of Ben Rhydding has ere now sung; many a roaring game, with varying success, has been contested between the lovely fair and their bearded foeman. We would gladly quote for the reader's edification, some of the stirring incidents of the peaceful war, but from respect to the maiden or matronly modesty of the fair combatants, if not to that of their antagonists, we must leave them to the immortality of the “Ben Rhydding Ariel.” Let us not, in enumerating the means of recreation possessed by this fine establishment, omit to notice the American Bowling Alley, and the Racket Court. All these are under the direction of an experienced Gymnast. […] It may not be out of place to give an account, here, of the general manner of life at Ben Rhydding. Everybody who can, rise early and get a special bath and a walk. Then comes breakfast, at eight a. m. in the summer, and half-past eight in the winter, the large bell giving a quarter of an hour's notice. Immediately after breakfast, there are short scripture readings in the drawing room. Till dinner, at two p.m. the patient consults the doctor, takes his forenoon bath and the requisite exercise thereafter, and makes excursions in the neighbourhood.<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> Dinner is plain, but substantial. There is no pampering the appetite by highly seasoned dishes, no pleasing the palate by generous wines; simplicity and temperance reign supreme. Roast meat and plain pudding form the staple dishes, though the bill of fare includes a variety of others. […] The drink is pure water. It is a goodly sight to glance down the Doctor's hospitable table, and see how thoroughly happy and satisfied the guests appear with their temperate fare: we do not see one who seems to miss his wine. No one, of course, thinks of very active exercise or exertion immediately after dinner. Some move off to the billiard-room; others lounge about in quiet meditation; while others betake themselves to the drawing-room. There is plenty of work for the afternoon,--the afternoon bath, and as brisk and long a walk in the grounds or on the moor, as the patient may think proper, and any of the exercises or relaxations, for which such abundant provision has been made. Then comes the evening meal, at seven o'clock. This meal should be lighter than breakfast, being composed, like it, of bread, white and brown, with fresh butter, water—pure and sparkling from the spring, milk, cocoa, and weak black tea. After tea, the patient seeks, of course, the humanizing influences of the drawing-room, and probably finds ten p.m. arrive all too soon. <h3>Notes</h3> <div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> Rombald's Moor is a moorland between Ilkley and Keighley in West Yorkshire, in the North of England. Ilkley Moor is part of Rombald's Moor. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[2]</a> A plunge bath or pool was a still pool large enough to immerse the whole body. A “douche” was a jet or stream of water applied to some part of the body for medicinal purposes. A vapour or Russian bath sweated the bather through steam. See Malcolm Shifrin's <a href="http://www.victorianturkishbath.org/F0GLOSSARY/2WOTSINIT.htm">glossary of terms</a> at Victorian Turkish Bath for definitions and images of the types of baths offered in hydropathic treatments. </div> <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[3]</a> Bolton Abbey and Haworth Parsonage, along with the graves of the Brontë sisters, were among the nearby attractions. See Ben Rhydding, pages 23-25. </div> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Principles of Hydropathy Description An account of the resource Hydropathy, or “the water cure” was a common treatment for ailments ranging from depression to gastro-intestinal disorders in the nineteenth-century, as well as a form of recreation. It was especially popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Patients went to establishments such as <a href="http://www.victorianturkishbath.org/6DIRECTORY/AtoZEstab/Hydros/BenRydding/BenRhyddingSF.htm">Ben Rhydding</a>, established in 1844, to take the water cure, which included drinking copious quantities of (usually mineral) water, wrapping the patient in wet sheets to induce a sweat, and various forms of baths and showers. Famous Victorians including Darwin, Tennyson and the Carlyles all partook of the water cure at one point or another. Hydropathy appealed to the Victorians partly because of the control they exerted over their own treatment. As the salesmanship of the excerpt below suggests, at a hydrotherapy establishment such as Ben Rhydding, men and women were pampered clients there by choice, free to come and go, and to bring family members with them. Ben Rhydding was one of the first hydros established in the UK; it was significant in terms of the scale of its operations and its provisions for visitors. Built at a cost of £24,000 to £30,000, it became the leading establishment in the UK (Durie 40-41). The excerpt below—published anonymously by the charismatic doctor, William MacLeod (or McLeod), who superintended Ben Rhydding from 1847 to two years or so before his death in 1875—focuses on the amenities available to the patient undergoing the water cure, from baths to billiards. In 1860 the cost of a week at Ben Rhydding was 3 13s6d<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>for a patient undergoing the water cure, and 3 for a visitor, usually a family member staying with the patient (Durie 45). <div> <a title="" href="#_ftnref">[1]</a> British currency was not decimalized until 1971. It was divided up into pounds (£) shillings (s) or pence, there were twenty shillings in a pound) and pence (d). See Marje Bloy, <a href="http://www.nineteenthcenturydisability.org/admin/items/edit/(http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/currency.html">“British Currency before 1971</a>” on the Victorian Web </div> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Macleod, William] Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived [Macleod, William]. Ben Rhydding: The Principles of Hydropathy and the Compressed-Air Bath. London: Hamilton, Adams & Co, 1858. Pages 12-22. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1858 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Karen Bourrier Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A colour lithograph shows Ben Rhydding ensconsed amidst extensive grounds with hills and trees. Frontispiece from Ben Rhydding: The Principles of Hydropathy and the Compressed-Air Bath (1858). T Picken, lithographers. Dav & Son Lithographers to the Queen. Courtesy <a title="Ben Rhydding Wikimedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ben_Rhydding_hydropathic_establishment_-_circa_1858.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a> under a Creative Commons License. Relation A related resource <ul><li>Durie, Alastair J. “The Business of Hydropathy in the North of England.” Northern History 2002(39.1): 37-58.</li> <li>Haley, Bruce. The Healthy Body in Victorian Culture. Cambridge, MA: Havard UP, 1978.</li> <li>Shifrin, Malcolm. <a title="Turkish Baths" target="_blank">Victorian Turkish Baths: Their Origin, Development and Gradual Decline</a>. <<a href="http://www.victorianturkishbath.org/">http://www.victorianturkishbath.org</a>> </li> </ul> Advertisement Hydrotherapy Institutions Medicine Travel Writing