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.

Grub Street (16.07.2010)

This is a perfect post for your humble scribe, for the term Grub Street describes the world of impoverished journalists and literary hacks. Originally Grub Street possibly meant a street infested with worms, or more likely named after a man called Grubbe. But since the 17th century is has been used in connection with needy authors and poor journalists. Dr Johnson said it was “much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary poems”, which seems to sum up CabbieBlog perfectly.

Even though this street was renamed Milton Street in 1830, the world of hack writers is still known as Grub Street. The inhabitants of this now metaphorical place churn out words without any regard for their literary merit. They were often called penny-a-liners. A Grub Street writer is also called a hack writer, which is another London allusion: Hackney in East London, was the place where horses suitable for routine riding or driving were raised. The word hack, in related senses, is a short form of hackney, and now, of course, refers to taxis or Hackney Carriages.

As any writer would tell you, publishing is a long and slow journey, but according to London cabbies it’s only five minutes from Grub Street to Fleet Street. There was much rebuilding in the area following war damage, and since the 1960s the pedestrian seeking to turn into Milton Street from Fore Street is faced with a solid block of buildings. The coffee shops and mean lodgings have long gone, and we will surely not meet Johnson and Savage on their late night wanderings. No matter: as long as there are writers in the land, Grub Street lives on.

“To succeed in journalism”, the late Nicholas Tomalin once wrote, “you need three qualities: a ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability . . . There are still some aspects of the Grub Street trade that can be learnt with a little application.”

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.

Dying for a drink (09.07.2010)

The next time you find yourself in Soho, go to Broadwick Street where at one end you’ll find a village pump, while standing on the junction with ???? Street is a pub rejoicing in the name John Snow which looks inviting for a swift half in this pub that takes its name from one of London’s forgotten heroes. In 1832 London was to experience a brand new epidemic imported from India, a disease which would strike fear into every person in the Metropolis.

Cholera became known as “the poor man’s plague”, with a mortality rate of 50 per cent and most victims coming from poor areas of inner cities the disease was dismissed by the well to do as a consequence of “the Great Unwashed” as William Makepeace Thackeray dubbed them.

But then cholera began to strike in middle class neighbourhoods too, making it truly a disease to cause panic. One could awake hale and hearty, develop diarrhoea, vomiting, agonising cramps and by teatime succumb to delirium and death.

Now contagion became a national obsession, and incredibly between 1845 and 1856 over 700 books on cholera were published, most expounding the common belief that it arose from impure air, blaming a miasma, or any smell, and in Victorian London there was no shortages of miasmas.
Surmising that “All smell is disease”, the founder of the workhouse, Edwin Chadwick managed to keep the scientific establishment off the scent (if you’ll excuse the pun) for two decades declaring if you removed the smell, cholera would go away.

The miasma theory had just one serious flaw: it was entirely without foundation, and one man alone identified this fact, his name was John Snow.

Born in York in 1813 and having a father who was common labourer served him well in terms of insightfulness and unlike his colleagues he did not blame the poor for their own diseases. Snow had studied medicine and became one of the leading anaesthetists of his day, attending Queen Victoria’s eighth childbirth while administering chloroform a dangerous and virtually untried practise.

Snow spent his spare time trying to understand where diseases came from; why for instance was the rate of cholera six times higher in Southwark than neighbouring Lambeth, if the infection was carried by a miasma? Furthermore if smells caused disease would not toshers, flushermen and nightsoil handlers be the most frequent victims?

Snow collected recorded cases in a scientifically robust manner making careful maps of the outbreaks. He found the people of Lambeth drank water piped in from clean sources outside the city, whereas neighbouring Southwark obtained its water from the polluted River Thames.

In 1854, a particularly virulent outbreak hit Soho. In a single neighbourhood around Broad Street (now renamed Broadwick Street) more than 500 people died in 10 days, making it, as Snow notes, probably the most devastating occurrence of sudden mortality in history, worse even than the great plague. The toll would have been higher except that so many people fled the district.

The conclusive proof was in finding a victim of cholera who lived in Hampstead who liked the Broad Street water so much she had it delivered to her door.

Snow managed to persuade the parish council to remove the handle from the water pump in Broad Street, after which cholera deaths vanished.

His finding were rejected by the establishment and at a Parliamentary enquiry he was asked ”Are the Committee to understand, taking the case of bone-boilers, that no matter how offensive to the sense of smell of effluvia that comes from the bone-boiling establishments may be, yet you consider that it is not prejudicial in any way to the health of the inhabitants of the district?”

It is hard now to appreciate just how radical and unwelcome Snow’s views were at the time, he was detested from many quarters, in part, probably because of his humble beginnings.

In 1850 London had a summer heat wave and the ensuing drought prevented waste being washed away. Dubbed “The Great Stink” as the Thames grew so noxious no one could stay near it, Parliament had to suspend its sittings and it was only this disruption to Members of Parliament that gave rise to giving London fresh water and sewers.

Snow never got to see his assumptions vindicated, dying from a stroke during the Great Stink at the young age of 45. At the time, his death was hardly noted.

So raise your first glass in the John Snow Public House and toast the hero who has made it possible to drink the water and well as beer in London.

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.

The Right Type (06.07.2010)

You probably haven’t heard his name before and after reading this will probably never again, but Edward Johnson has given us a symbol for London every bit as iconic as a red bus or my black taxi, and we hardly ever notice it.

A font designed nearly a century ago was adopted as the Underground’s corporate typeface and almost subliminally its usage has given an identity to London Transport and is now used for all of Transport for London’s media. With its distinctive sans-serif font for years known as “Underground” it has capitals based on roman square capitals and a lower case said to be taken from 15th century Italian handwriting. A perfectly round “O” the unusual use of a diamond dot above the “i” and “j” and with a capital M its diagonal stroke meeting at its centre, its design quite simply would change the way we read today.

By 1913 Johnston was a man already making a name for himself in the world of type. Then 35, Johnston had only really discovered his talent for (and love of) typography in his mid-twenties. By 1906, however, he had already been recognised as a man who had almost single-handedly revived and rediscovered the art of calligraphical type and lettering, and was the much-loved teacher of many of print’s future greats, his book, Writing & Illuminating & Lettering would be (and indeed still is, I should know, having once been a typesetter) one of the “must read” texts for anyone in the typographical world.

His brief was that the typeface should have “the bold simplicity of the authentic lettering of the finest periods”, it should also be easy to read from a moving train and in bad lighting, be noticeably up-to-date with the times, and yet also be completely different from anything found on other shops and signage” and finally, Johnston was told that each letter should be “a strong and unmistakeable symbol.” It took him three years (in fact all likelihood it probably didn’t – Johnston was notorious for leaving commissions until the very last minute), but in 1915 Johnston delivered a character-set that met every single one of those demands.

What Johnston created was, in effect, the very first modern “Sans-Serif” typeface which are “fonts without the little kicks.” Open up a word processing program and print out this article (CabbieBlog is set in 10pt Trebuchet MS if you’re interested), first in Times New Roman, then print it out in Arial (or Helvetica if you’re on a Mac) and look at the difference – you’ll see that the letters in the “Times” version are slightly more ornate around the edges. This is because Times is a “Serif” font and Arial is Sans-Serif. In the simplest, most generic terms, this is the difference between the two families.

Sans-Serif typefaces, therefore, are those “flourishless” families like Verdana, Arial, Helvetica and the ubiquitous Comic Sans, faces that bless documents everywhere and virtually the entire internet. Sans-Serif faces are, in many ways, the living embodiment of text in the 20th Century and Johnston, with the typeface that he delivered, almost singlehandedly revived them as a valid and useful style. The typeface now renamed as Johnson Sans, has been subtly updated by Eiichi Kono in the late seventies.

The London Transport Roundel again designed by Johnson who took an existing design of the YMCA logo and turned the basic bulls-eye into the clear and strikingly handsome symbol we see today, and like his typeface was tweaked over many years by Johnson, a process which continues today even now.

The London Transport signs are made of vitreous enamel requiring a process of silk-screen printing and five separate firings in a furnace. Incredibly all are made by a third generation family A. J. Wells & Sons of Newport, Isle of Wight.

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.

Patriot Games (25.06.2010)

Was it Samuel Johnson who was alleged by Boswell to have said “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”? He should have prefixed that quote with “phoney” for I don’t know about you, but I’m getting very weary of seeing St. George’s flags being raised to support self-adoring, over-paid footballers, rather than for self-sacrificing, under-paid and under-resourced soldiers doing their very best not to cry over fallen comrades.

I’ve supported this country during many conflicts over these past 25 years; Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever our boys (and girls) seek to fight fascism. But now all over London we see evidence of a phoney patriotism. And look how shallow all their football “patriotism” is, Marks & Spencer, that temple to middle class consumerism is like a football flea market, piled high with World Cup tat: flags, plates, kids’ games and yes, mugs. Which rather sums up those who purchase this junk? Walk across the road and the Nationwide Building Society is offering a higher rate of interest on some accounts if England wins this contest, couldn’t they have just paid better rates in the first place?

In America, that place which really likes to wear its heart of its sleeve, there are so many star-spangled banners flying on every lawn and shopping mall that all patriotic impact has been lost. They use Old Glory to support the troops; they use it to sell you a Chrysler. Many of these flags are imported anyway; the year after the 9/11 attack, the United States imported $7.9m of flags from China and some had 53 stars.

Is this mindless support for football “heroes”, a manifestation of a national nostalgia that constantly harks back to a simpler age, when we had decent men prepared to lay down their lives for a cause they believed in, or just an excuse for the indolent males of England to eat twice their own body weight over these three weeks?

The flag we all should be flying is the Union Jack, for tomorrow is Armed Forces Day which quietly acknowledges the work our brave soldiers are doing, in conditions likely to test most of us, and aims to provide a much valued morale boost for the troops and their families.

Our footballers, some of which are as rotten and corrupt as our politicians, might like to support the real men and women of courage, who between them have kept England safe, and an island that lets you dress up in a football shirt, with a flag draped around your shoulders, if you choose to be a plonker.

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.

Bathtime in London (18.06.2010)

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, or your hotel uses a cheap hand wash, think about how things used to be here in London in the 1500s:

① Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour, hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

② Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, the women were next followed by the children and last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying; Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water.

③ Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying; It’s raining cats and dogs.

④ There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house; this posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

⑤ The floor was composed of dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying; Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying; a thresh hold.

⑥ In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme; Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

⑦ Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

⑧ Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

⑨ Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

⑩ Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

⑪ England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a . . . dead ringer.