For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Boney’s Body Parts (22.07.11)

All cabbies know the location of Napoleon Bonaparte’s nose but few would have realised that at Christie’s in 1972, an appendage belonging to the Emperor of a more personal nature appeared at auction.

Bonaparte died in May 1821 and with claims as to the manner of his demise no fewer than 17 witnessed the autopsy which was carried out the day after he died by his own doctor, Francesco Antommarchi in the company of 17 witnesses, including seven English doctors and two of Napoleon’s aides, a priest named Vignali and a manservant. The Emperor instructed that his heart be removed first and sent to his wife Marie-Louise but that vanished before it could be delivered. The stomach was examined next and it was generally agreed that cancer was the cause of death, although recent claims include the suggestion that he was poisoned. Nothing else is recorded as having been removed during that surgical examination.

Decades later it was commonly rumoured that Napoleon’s penis had been cut off and had been stored away carefully during the autopsy.

No recorded confirmation exists of this and if true one can only suppose that when all 17 had their backs to the corpse Boney’s manhood was quickly snipped off with nobody noticing afterwards he had something important missing.

However, in a 1913 lecture, Sir Arthur Keith, conservator of the Hunterian Collection at the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (certain Napoleonic organs were supposedly in the museum’s possession), ventured what seems to be the indisputable opinion that, given the number of witnesses, the brevity of the autopsy (less than two hours), and the fact that the guy was, come on, Napoleon, the loss of the penis would not easily have escaped notice.

Napoleon’s friend Vignali who administered the last rites was left a large sum of money in Napoleon’s will as well as numerous unspecified “personal effects”, and later Napoleon’s manservant claimed In a memoir published in 1852 in the Revue des mondes that Vignali had indeed been the culprit who removed the body part, although the claim was never corroborated.

In 1916 Vignali’s descendants sold his collection of Napoleonic artefacts to a British rare book firm, which in 1924 sold the lot for about $2,000 to a Philadelphia bibliophile, A. S. W. Rosenbach. The inventory at the time refers to “the mummified tendon taken from Napoleon’s body during the post-mortem”.

During the 1930s A. S. Rosenbach was displaying the “tendon” in a blue velvet case and describing it as Napoleon’s penis. It later would be the centrepiece of a display at the Museum of French Art in New York, how that could have been described as art is anybody’s guess – but Damien Hurst get away with it. A newspaper at the time contradicted Napoleon’s assertion that he was well endowed describing the exhibit as “something like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shrivelled eel . . . one inch long and resembling a grape”.

At Christie’s London auction house in 1972 the punitive penis was put up for sale complete with the velvet-lined case, but having failed to reach its reserve price was withdrawn, probably not for the first time when it was in full working order leading a scandal-mongering British tabloid to trumpet, “NOT TONIGHT, JOSEPHINE!”. Eight years later it popped up again in a Paris auction house and was brought rather appropriately, by John K. Lattimer, a retired professor of urology for $3,000. At the time of writing the penis is still, as it were, in Professor Lattimer’s hands.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Pedalbus proliferation (19.07.11)

They started out as a “bit of fun” around the West End over 10 years ago and have proliferated into a fleet of over 800 unregulated passenger-carrying vehicles, which clog up the streets and have been proven to be unsafe at speeds over 9 mph. Only last weekend one was reported to have been involved in an accident which resulted in one policeman needing hospital treatment. I’m referring, of course, to Rickshaws. As recently as last week John McDonnell MP successfully objected to the TfL London Local Authority Bill at its Second Reading on the grounds that it would lead to the continued proliferation of these unlicensed, unsafe rickshaws clogging up central London’s streets.

Now a new novel way of travelling around the capital has hit the streets – The Pedalbus.

Made from aluminium it resembles a flatbed freight car, with four wheels and eight seats on the deck each with its own set of pedals.

I have to admit that every time I see one of the four currently in use it brings a smile to my face. For the genius of its inventor Luke Roberson was to arrange the seats in two rows facing each other over a bar; and while pedalling away furiously, passengers – if that is what they are – are enjoying a glass or two of chilled Chablis. With a driver in the front, minus the glass of wine, who is in charge of the steering and brakes. It makes for a very humorous diversion when plying a cab around London’s streets.

Hiring a Pedalbus has become a trend among corporate clients as a way of team building, and that is the problem. Rather miraculously, as with the rickshaws, the Pedalbus is totally legal to travel around London’s main roads, and while they remain a novel bit of fun if Luke Roberson continues to be successful, or in the worst case scenario, rogue operators who are uninsured enter the marketplace; these vehicles over time will present the same menace as rickshaws do today.

The Pedalbus is the type of inventive, entrepreneurial and frankly slightly unhinged invention that the English excel in; if the numbers on the road are kept down by Pedalbus they should not present a problem for London. Luke Roberson should take out as many available patients on his invention as he can to prevent less scrupulous operators from stealing his great idea and for good measure remove the grey areas that it operates; is it a bike, a commercial vehicle (therefore unable to enter the Royal Parks) or a vehicle that has to be taxed? If those issues can be resolved and enter the Statute Book under TfL London Local Authority Bill, to be considered when Parliament finishes its summer recess, Pedalbus could be a welcome addition to London for years to come.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Let the train take the strain (15.07.11)

All over central London holes are appearing, some small, some like at Tottenham Court Road, huge, all for the purpose of improving your travel experience with Cross Rail. The scheme might, at this point, seem a crazy idea, but its predecessors were simply barking mad.

The first ever railway in London was the London & Greenwich Line and ran for almost its entire 3.75-mile length along an elevated viaduct, thereby, its planners reasoned, avoiding congestion at ground level. Unfortunately, it would take 878 brick arches to construct which were both expensive and time-consuming, for what was a journey that could be walked in less than an hour.

Later in 1840 the Blackwall Tunnel to Minories line used stationary engines at either end and hauled the carriages along using stout cables attached to the carriage ends.

In 1861 a London engineer Sir John Fowler designed a smokeless engine for London’s new underground network. Fuelled by red-hot bricks placed under the boiler it unsurprisingly made only one brief experimental run and was for given the moniker “Fowler’s Ghost”.

Before electrification smoke-filled tunnels continued to be the norm, and how anybody survived a journey, one can only imagine. Early Metropolitan Line trains were initially fitted with a tank in which the smoke was routed allowing it to be discharged each time a train broke cover.

At Crystal Palace in 1864, the new atmospheric railway was launched. It was smoke-free as its tightly fitting carriages were pushed into a circular tunnel in the manner of a piston forcing them along using only air pressure. History doesn’t record how many ear drums were perforated. In 1867 a similar system was demonstrated at the American Institute Fair in New York [pictured], Alfred Ely Beach demonstrated a 32.6 m long, 1.8 m diameter pipe that was capable of moving 12 passengers plus a conductor.

In 1943 Professor Sir Patrick Abercrombie, forgetting that there was a war on, proposed that tunnels were excavated all over the place in order to reduce congestion on the surface. Apart from the fact that hardly any traffic was seen in London during the war, it proposed that a tunnel be bored under Buckingham Palace; the plans probably to this day lie on a shelf gathering dust.

Not content with the Victorian vandalism of removing the colonnades along the length of Nash’s Regent Street. The Greater London Council in 1967 (probably at the behest of Ken Livingstone) commissioned a feasibility study for twin overhead passenger monorails to run down the middle of Regent Street. Once they were built one supposes that another feasibility study would be needed to decide where the Christmas decorations should be situated.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Power to the people (08.07.11)

Cabbies pass it every day on their way to the Wyndham Grand Hotel or when taking a shortcut through Chelsea Harbour with hardly a glance in its direction and like its younger sibling Battersea downriver, Lots Road Power Station lies dormant awaiting redevelopment; this disused industrial building is the world’s oldest thermal power station and almost certainly the first steel-framed building in Britain.

At the turn of the last century, Edwardians decided, rather sensibly, that smoke-filled tunnels with steam locomotives carrying passengers on London’s Underground were not the way to go, and electric-driven trains were the way forward.

The bohemian painters of Chelsea objected to removing smoke from the tunnels populated by the workers and instead discharging the pollution over their green and pleasant riverside residences. But built it was and for the present stands a testament to Edwardian engineering at its very best; 220 piers supporting brickwork on a German steel frame; 453ft long, 175ft wide, 140ft high; chimneys 275ft tall; originally its 64 boilers drew water from an artesian well 500ft deep, supplemented by 60 million gallons a day drawn from the Thames via a single pipe wide enough for a horse to walk through.

At first, the electricity was used to power the District Line but as demand grew and as the Underground network was extended it was burning 500 tons of coal a day; later it converted to oil and then to natural gas running eight newly installed Rolls-Royal Avon turbines.

Eventually, electricity would be more cheaply obtained from the National Grid than generating the network’s own power at Lots Road and so this industrial dinosaur has now lain dormant for decades. The power station’s attractive location standing on the bank of the Thames opposite one of London’s most beautiful Georgian churches, St. Mary’s, Battersea, has made it a victim of more ubiquitous luxury flats.

Now a development planned by Sir Terry Farrell hopes to provide about 800 residential apartments and penthouses units in riverside towers of 37 and 25 storeys and the conversion of the historic Lots Road Power Station. The development will see a signature waterside restaurant, cafes, retail units and offices together with a leisure complex. Planning permission has been granted and development is underway.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Paris Syndrome (01.07.11)

For some Japanese tourists, their first taste of Europe has proved overwhelming. Coming from a culture that espouses civility and respect, they had expected European capitals to have the same degree of controlled manners as that of Tokyo’s 33 million inhabitants.

For someone who drives daily on London’s roads, experiencing the rude and aggressive attitudes of my fellow road users and some of my passengers, it came as a surprise to learn that some Japanese have been hospitalised by this culture shock.

It was a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, Professor Hiroaki Ota, who first identified the syndrome some 20 years ago. Named the Paris Syndrome from where this condition first surfaced, presumably after a Japanese tourist took a ride in one of its capital’s famously grumpy cabbie’s vehicles, Japanese tourists are now being forewarned before embarking on a European tour.

Paris Syndrome affects around 20 tourists a year, mainly women in their 30s with high expectations of what may be their first trip abroad. The Japanese embassy has a 24-hour hotline for those suffering from severe culture shock and can help find hospital treatment for anyone in need. This year alone, the Japanese embassy in Paris has had to repatriate four people with a doctor or nurse on board the plane to help them get over the shock.

It appears to spring from the shock of the disparity between the popular image of Paris – of accordions, flowers and cobbled streets are seen in the film Amélie– they do not realise that within our lifetimes, those cobblestones have been prised up and thrown in anger.

Around a million Japanese travel to France every year. However, the only permanent cure is to go back to Japan – never to return to Paris – next time visit London where cabbies are courtesy personified.