IanVisits…

Wandering up to the main Canary Wharf shopping center via the underground station - I passed a florists which a huge banner promoting the forthcoming Mothering Sunday and exclaiming “You remembered your lovers, now remember your mothers”.

One fervently hopes though, that the declaration of love is restricted to simply handing over a bunch of flowers and does not extend to the nocturnal activities which traditionally followed such a present a couple of weeks ago.

*shudders*

I have a small (and slowly growing) collection of old issues of the wondrous Illustrated London News. I originally started collecting them as sources for research, but I actually find they are quite wonderful to read (although sometimes I think Victorians used magnifying glasses as the font is tiny), and cheap to buy on eBay.

Anyhow, inspired by the recent news article on the London Underground blog about the rude staff at Farringdon station on the London Underground, I dug out an article and transcribed the following:

In a slight twist - the newspaper article was dated 13th Feb 1869 - and the recent study was published on the 22nd Feb 2008 - almost 140 years later and not a lot seems to have changed.

I added in the line feeds to make it easier to read - a trait of Victorian writings is very long paragraphs, which do not translate well to a computer screen.

Incidentally, the same issue of the newspaper is very enthusiastic about the “New Overland Route and the Railway Tunnel of the Alps”. I’ll transcribe that on a later date as it is quite amusing to our modern eyes.

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There will be a scene, of a sensational character, on the Underground Railway one of these days; and, though the interest will not be quite so thrilling as that of Mr. Boucieault’s incident which is so delightfully horrific, there will be something which the party, concerned and the spectators will remember.

How many Kensington stations there may be up to the present writing I do not know; but I know of three, and also that the officials always send you to the wrong one.

You descend - the train is off like lightning - and you are left in a region probably unknown to you, and certainly one which you had not the least desire to visit. The folk at the booking-offices are not, for the most part, uncivil; but it is, they think, no part of their business to do more than issue the ticket you demand, and they know nothing of the general system of lines. If they do attempt to advise you, take some other ticket than the one recommended, and the chances against you are reduced.

There is the High-street station, the Gloucester-road station, the South Kensington station, and on second thoughts there must be another, for neither of these is right for the Kensington station whence you get to the South-Western line.

All very well to say that we should look at the map at home and ascertain our route firstly, there is no map; I reserve other objections. Of course, it you travel every day, the points are beaten into your head; but the world occupies you with several other things besides the meaningless names of stations, and an interval of three weeks puts them out of your head.

Next, the porters on these lines are, with a few exceptions, more elaborately stupid than can be imagined. I think they do not much like the public. I dare say that the work is very hard, and that the public is often rude. Still, we pay to be told how to go, as well as to be taken.

If a rational and distinctive nomenclature were adopted, both in regard to the general names of the lines and the specific names of the stations, much affliction would be saved Victoria, Waterloo, Pancras, are excellent and well comprehended titles, but we must learn to box the compass before we can find a meaning in West Brompton, South Kensington, and North-East Tyburnia. It is a great sea crime to maroon even an offender, but it is worse to maroon an unoffending passenger, and leave him, on a wet day, in the midst of a wild, his train lost, and his expectant friends thinking as friends always think of the absent.

I concede, as readily as Leigh Hunt did, the best intentions to everybody; but if the Undergroundlings would only carry out the admirable intentions which I am sure they have, they would increase their own takings and the public comfort.

From the Illustrated London News, Feb 13th 1869.

In the early part of the 20th century, domestic clocks were still not hugely reliable and regular resetting was generally needed. People who owned a telegraph line or one of the modern radio could listen for the time pips, but there was one other way of getting your clocks reset correctly - that was a visit from the traveling time lady.

Ruth Belville spent some 40 years setting an old watch to the exact time each Monday morning at the Greenwich Royal Observatory - and then she would travel around London carrying that precious watch and would visit clients to correct their clocks. She carried on doing this right up to 1939, and when she retired she still have 50 customers. She died four years later, just as domestic radios were finally becoming popular enough to have probably put her out of business anyway.

The service was actually started by Ruth’s father, John Belville, an Assistant at the Observatory in 1836 as part of the government service to deliver Time to offices around London - until his death in 1856. His widow, Maria Belville, then offered to continue the service as a private venture - a proposal which was accepted by the subscribers and Observatory management. Maria retired in 1892, handing over control of the business to their daughter, Ruth, who carried the same pocket chronometer round London each week until she retired.

The service could have collapsed at one point as Ruth’s service competed with the telegraph company which sold time signals to its subscribers. In one notorious episode, the Chairman of the Standard Time Company, St John Wynne gave a lecture which was picked up by the newspapers where he accused her service of being quaint, and as she was female could lure the male workers at the Observatory to carnal wickedness.

Naturally, the papers leapt on this story - which far from harming her service - the publicity actually did a lot of harm to the telegraph company as it was found to be less reliable than a little lady traveling around town with a pocket watch on her person.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I got an RSS feed alert of a lecture occurring in the Royal Society on 2nd May which will be given by David Rooney, Curator of Timekeeping at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich - who is writing a book on the subject.

The Royal Society Events Page

As an aside, before the advent of the railways in the UK, time was calculated locally and varied throughout the country. This however made calculating railway timetables almost impossible and hence the country slowly adopted a single time zone for the whole nation.

I was once told that the famous clock at Christ Church College in Oxford still strikes 9pm but at 9:05pm, which was the original Oxford Time.

You may also be interested in my visit to the World’s Oldest Clock Museum in the City of London a few months back.

Kirk Douglas wearing flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors? Well, if the infamous movie The Vikings was to be filmed today, then that is what Hollywood’s Mr. Macho might have to wear as opposed to his manly leather hides.

According to a press release from Sweden’s Uppsala University, the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but with the advent of Christianity, fashions changed.

Women’s skirts consisted of a single piece of fabric and were open in front. The suspenders held up the train and functioned as a harness that was fastened to the breasts with the clasps, while Swedish viking men’s fashions were modeled on styles in Russia to the east.

Link to the press release

An interesting article in this weeks issue of The Economist drew my eye to a new body being set up by the UK government - the UK Statistics Authority. This is designed to try and fix one of the big problems with the presentation of statistics by politicians, and that is the spin.

Now, the body wont eliminate spin, but it will act as an independent repository of the raw data used in compiling the press reports so that anyone can study the same file that the PR people and politicians got when issuing their “aren’t we wonderful” statements.

Determined sleuths have always been able to get this data - but having it all in one central location is certainly going to make life a lot easier for us amateur commentators who don’t have the time (or skills) to dig through the current mishmash of reporting bodies. I expect the political bloggers such as Guido and DizzyThinks to have a field day with this.

The new body may even issue public rebukes to naughty politicians who overstep the mark in spinning the data to a favourable light.

Quite whether it will be able to force the statistics to be gathered in a manner which would result in uncomfortable reading remains to be seen, as the law promoting the new body doesn’t seem to grant them any statutory powers in that area. They can complain about poor quality statistics - but that seems to be all they can do.

For example, the changes to the benefits systems outlined the other week will push more people into work and hence we can expect flurries of spin about how many people are now getting a job. However, will the statistics also record how many of those people end up back on benefits after the minimum 4 weeks required to claim they are now employed?

That’ll be the true test of the new body.

Links:

The Economist

Press release about the new body

N.B. 

Lies, damned lies, and statistics - this well-known saying is part of a phrase attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and popularized in the U.S. by Mark Twain: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The semi-ironic statement refers to the persuasive power of numbers, and succinctly describes how even accurate statistics can be used to bolster inaccurate arguments.