What was life like for the poor in Victorian London?
Well, if you had no money at all fcuk off and die.
Night is approaching, and you’ve been fortunate enough to earn or scrounge or steal a few coins during the day. You’re hungry, cold and tired. Not many options, but best place to head would be the Salvation Army.
Here you could go for the penny sit up, giving you the luxury of being indoors and out of the cold. Well yes, sat on a wooden bench, and you might even get a meal if you’re lucky, but don't even think about lying down or worse, sleeping, because that'll earn you a whack around the ear.
What's that, you're loaded? Lucky sod, now you can lash out for the tuppeny rope deluxe, which Dickens describes as a row of hammocks,* giving you the right to sling your arms over it and hang by the shoulders for a comfortable night’s sleep. You might not notice, but the penny sit up chaps envy the fact you’re allowed to sleep. If you were allowed to sleep on the bench, no-one would pay the extra pennies for the rope or the coffin. The seasoned homeless were able to sleep on the penny bench in the upright position, some would cooperate by taking turns to sleep while others propped them up; this could work when the shelter’s more compassionate monitors turned a blind eye.
The association of the tuppeny rope with drunks led to the urban legend that it is the source of the term “hangover”, but this is disputed. The rope is untied at 6am, giving you and your fellow danglers a rather unceremonious wake-up call.
You’ve got 4d?? Wow, this affords you the best of Victorian luxury, the four-penny coffin, allowing you to settle down for a horizontal sleep in your own cheap, wooden coffin alongside hundreds of other destitute Londoners.
As late as 1973, there was a doss house in Maidstone that still had the rope and side benches.
* “The twopenny rope..is just a cheap lodgin'house, vere the beds is twopence a night...They has two ropes, 'bout six foot apart, and three from the floor, which goes right down the room; and the beds are made of slips of coarse sacking, stretched across 'em...At six o'clock every mornin', they lets go the ropes at one end, and down falls all the lodgers.” — Pickwick Papers p. 229
...I wonder why city authorities bothered with any of it...who cares, after all, how the poor get their rest...
And believe it or not we're probably looking where there's ice.
Daytime temps are around 400 degrees C, inside the craters not exposed to the sun, minus 200 degrees C.
You don't wanna be what's small and furry, or wet and scaly at the end of that attack.
Biomimicry.
Falcon and B2 bomber.
When design is based on just how good nature is.
Biomimicry Examples:
- Climbing pads capable of supporting human weight are a mimic of the biomechanics of gecko feet.
- The aerodynamics of the famous Japanese Bullet train was inspired by the shape of a bird’s beak.
- The first flying machine heavier than the air from the Wright brothers, in 1903, was inspired by flying pigeons.
- Architecture is inspired by termite mounds to design passive cooling structures.
- Velcro is born from the observation of the hooks implemented by some plants for the propagation of their seeds via animal’s coat.
- The study of shark skin is at the origin of particularly effective swimming suits, as well as a varnish for planes fuselage
In 1918-19, an axe wielding serial killer terrorised New Orleans, and killed and injured 12 people, targeting mainly Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans, and mostly in their home.
At the height of his reign of terror, on March 13 1919, a letter purporting to be from the Axeman was published in newspapers saying that he would kill again at 15 minutes past midnight on the night of March 19, but would spare the occupants of any place where a jazz band was playing. That night New Orleans' dance halls were filled to capacity, and professional and amateur bands played jazz at parties at hundreds of houses around town. There were no Axeman murders that night, or since, and the perpetrator was never identified.
This is the origin of The Axman’s Jazz.
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The Axeman's letter
Hottest Hell, March 13, 1919
Esteemed Mortal of New Orleans: The Axeman
They have never caught me and they never will. They have never seen me, for I am invisible, even as the ether that surrounds your earth. I am not a human being, but a spirit and a demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the Axeman.
When I see fit, I shall come and claim other victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe, besmeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company.
If you wish you may tell the police to be careful not to rile me. Of course, I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way they have conducted their investigations in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to not only amuse me, but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to discover what I am, for it were better that they were never born than to incur the wrath of the Axeman. I don't think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past. They are wise and know how to keep away from all harm.
Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wished, I could pay a visit to your city every night. At will I could slay thousands of your best citizens (and the worst), for I am in close relationship with the Angel of Death.
Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a little proposition to you people. Here it is: I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it out on that specific Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.
Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and it is about time I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or realm of fancy.
The Axeman
Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned in 1996 by fusing the nucleus from a mammary-gland cell of a Finn Dorset ewe into an enucleated egg cell taken from a Scottish Blackface ewe. Carried to term in the womb of another Scottish Blackface ewe, Dolly was a genetic copy of the Finn Dorset ewe.
Lang may yer lum reek...
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