Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

18 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

British technology clearly led the field here. Joseph Haydn's string quartet Op. 55 No. 2 of 1789 has the nickname Razor - the story being that Haydn joked to his English publisher, John Bland, who was visiting Eszterhaza, that he would give his best quartet in exchange for an English razor. (As usual, there's some confusion here: Bland was the publisher of the English edition of the Op. 64 quartets, not Op. 55 - along the same lines as the Miracle symphony being so named because a chandelier fell from the ceiling without injuring anyone during a performance of a different symphony.)

 

I imagine one of the Hanover Square concerts in London in the '90s. These concerts would have been well-patronised. Reputedly the, often inattentive, audience of the day had all crowded to the front to listen more intently to Haydn's music, so the plummeting chandelier missed them..

 

Although beloved by London audiences, generally reckoned to be the most sophisticated of the day, Haydn only visited a couple of times and must not be confused with Handel, who was, of course, British.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

Shaving with a cutting edge dates back a long time.  Prehistoric man is alleged to have used  flints (claimed to have been the first disposable razor), Egyptians used pumice, depiliatory creams or tweezers, later cultures used bronze razors.  From the Iron Age, iron razors became common.  Those cleanly shaven Romans certainly had them!  Eventually we got steel-bladed razors.

 

The rest is down to the vagaries of fashion!

 

( more: https://moderngent.com/history-of-shaving/ but finer details may possibly taken with a pinch of salt?)

 

 

As an archaeologist I once worked in a place in Eastern Turkey where there was some outcrops of obsidian (volcanic glass) which was used until recently as a quick source of providing a sharp blade. I  was looking at a piece which had turned up in the trench I was directing and one of the local hire workers we had explained to me in a mix of gestures and simple Turkish that the locals had used obsidian until recently as a means of shaving. So yes there is that, however the use of iron blades for shaving etc. was quite restricted in antiquity to the few who could afford them and bronze was altogether to costly. Fashionable Romans were in some periods clean shaven and others not - Roman art shows that. For those periods when shaving was fashionable the mix of implements would be blades, plucking or depilatory creams.

 

In the early Imperial period Augustus was clean shaven in depictions, as was Julius Caesar but their successors wore or didn't wear beards as the mood took them. Nero at times was depicted with a stubble and in the 3 centuries following there is no uniform standard. The Roman Empire (whether in the Republican or Imperial periods) lasted longer than the British Empire and like that of the British Empire throughout both those periods the wearing or not wearing of beards is subject to many fashions. The common folk probably resorted to either cutting with knives or any sharpened implement. But in this we are talking about those who had the resources to follow fashions. Most probably just trimmed their hair as and when they felt it necessary. 

 

So I stand by my suggestion that the wearing of wigs as an item of male fashion is a relatively beardless period. Today we might accept a different coloured beard to our natural hair (mine went grey before my hair did) but that wasn't the case in the late 17th and throughout the 18th century. Wigs continued as a means to disguise age and baldness into the 19th and 20th centuries, however a noticeable difference between beard and wig colours are subject to derisory comments in the novels of the 19th century. Also the common discomfort from lice infections would be a factor in that. Imagine wearing an itchy wig and also an equally itchy beard. I've just finished reading Thackeray's History of Pendennis again and in one passage the elder Major Pendennis, normally impeccably aged proofed by his servant, is described after a very late night with his brown wig and a quite contrasting grey stubble on his face as a means to show that his age is catching up with him. Later a passage relates how his barber and wig maker has begun to introduce a few hints of grey into the wig. And of course there is the villain Colonel Altamont whose beard and hair colouring is regularly derided for its obvious mismatching.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2020 by Malcolm 0-6-0

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

I imagine one of the Hanover Square concerts in London in the '90s. These concerts would have been well-patronised. Reputedly the, often inattentive, audience of the day had all crowded to the front to listen more intently to Haydn's music, so the plummeting chandelier missed them.

 

 

Indeed, the Miracle is No. 96 in D major, first performed at the Hanover Square Rooms on 11 March 1791, during Haydn's first visit to London, whereas the chandelier incident occurred during the premiere of the Symphony No. 102 in B flat, at the King's Theatre in May 1795, during Haydn's second visit [H.C. Robbins Landon and D. Wyn Jones, Haydn: his Life and Work (Thames & Hudson, 1988)].

 

There, you see, I don't just do lampirons. I can obsess about the detail on any subject that takes my fancy. No. 102 is my personal favourite of the Haydn symphonies but I'm currently well-up on No. 104 as No. 2 Son is analysing it in depth for his music A level - justly, in my view. It does seem to me to be the archetypal symphony, against which all others can be measured - especially Mahler's first, in which he played E flat and A clarinet with the County Youth Orchestra - we were fortunate to get that in before things went pear-shaped.

[St Enodoc]

15 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Indeed, the Miracle is No. 96 in D major, first performed at the Hanover Square Rooms on 11 March 1791, during Haydn's first visit to London, whereas the chandelier incident occurred during the premiere of the Symphony No. 102 in B flat, at the King's Theatre in May 1795, during Haydn's second visit [H.C. Robbins Landon and D. Wyn Jones, Haydn: his Life and Work (Thames & Hudson, 1988)].

 

There, you see, I don't just do lampirons. I can obsess about the detail on any subject that takes my fancy. No. 102 is my personal favourite of the Haydn symphonies but I'm currently well-up on No. 104 as No. 2 Son is analysing it in depth for his music A level - justly, in my view. It does seem to me to be the archetypal symphony, against which all others can be measured - especially Mahler's first, in which he played E flat and A clarinet with the County Youth Orchestra - we were fortunate to get that in before things went pear-shaped.

Mahler 3 and 5 are up near the top of the tree for me. A bit of Bruckner doesn't do any harm either (and how, exactly, did you guess that I used to play the trombone?).

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Mahler 3 and 5 are up near the top of the tree for me. A bit of Bruckner doesn't do any harm either (and how, exactly, did you guess that I used to play the trombone?).

 

According to the great H.C. Robbins Landon [op. cit.], it was Haydn's use of a trio of trombones in The Creation that saved the instrument from becoming merely a baroque curiosity. He doesn't use the instrument in his symphonies but was familiar with it as one of the permitted leisure activities for monks in Austrian Benedictine monasteries was to play trombone quartets. Also, it has to be said, he was undoubtedly influenced by the performances of Handel oratorios he heard in London.

[Hroth]

From the history of razors to Haydn and thence Mahler and Bruckner.  Amazing!

 

Now, I always thought (not having looked into it deeply) that sackbuts were of a different lineage to the trombone, but  according to Wikipedia they are the same instrument, the Italians having called them trombones from the start.  Apparently the sackbut dropped out of fashion in England and when reintroduced as Italian opera became fashionable, we started calling them trombones...

 

Something to store in the "something new every day" locker.

Unless you knew it already!

[Compound2632]

I'm mildly disappointed that most composers have chosen to give prominence to the trumpet rather than the tuba when setting the Sequence from the Requiem Mass: tuba mirum spargens sonum. However, the medieaval poet probably had something like the Roman trumpet in mind, which in Latin is indeed tuba - from tubus, a tube. 

[Donw]

All this about Razors. Surely a Razor is just a very sharp sort of knife (the shape of the blade may be important). I imagine that knives of various sorts had been used to shave over the centuries. The problem may have been keeping the blades sharp probably needed sharpening before each shave. People may well have been wandering around with nicks and cuts all over their face. Anyone painting their portrait would probably omit such detail.

Shaving a King or other important person might well have been a high riak occupation

Don

[jcredfer]

6 minutes ago, Donw said:

All this about Razors. Surely a Razor is just a very sharp sort of knife (the shape of the blade may be important). I imagine that knives of various sorts had been used to shave over the centuries. The problem may have been keeping the blades sharp probably needed sharpening before each shave. People may well have been wandering around with nicks and cuts all over their face. Anyone painting their portrait would probably omit such detail.

Shaving a King or other important person might well have been a high risk occupation

Don

 

You are quite right about the sharp knife the possibility probability of nicks / cuts.  When I was a youngster, I would accompany my father to the "Barber" for hair cutting.  While we waited, there would be gents having their shave, with a single blade, very sharp and not for nothing, called a cut-throat-razor.  They were the lucky ones, as a proper "Barber" he was highly skilled with the blade.  Some trained by lathering up a balloon and using the blade to clean the balloon.

 

Julian

[Hroth]

16 minutes ago, Donw said:

Surely a Razor is just a very sharp sort of knife

 

And because it HAS to be kept sharp to scrape the stubble off without too many nicks and cuts, its a special sort of knife and has a name to lable it as such.  In addition, ordinary knives are the wrong shape,  length and the handle is at the wrong angle to navigate the face with safety. The first folding razor of the "cut-throat" or straight style was introduced by Sheffield steelmakers in the 1680s

 

Previous mention has been made of the fashion for clean shavenness as opposed to beardiness from the 1890s onwards, this is probably due to the introduction of the Safety razor in the 1880s, which requires less skill and finess to manipulate, and is less deadly in the hands of the careless user...

 

15 minutes ago, jcredfer said:

They were the lucky ones, as a proper "Barber" he was highly skilled with the blade.

 

Of course, the Barber was, up to the middle of the 18th Century a "Barber Surgeon", quite willing to do rather more than give you a shave with a few nicks....

 

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Previous mention has been made of the fashion for clean shavenness as opposed to beardiness from the 1890s onwards, this is probably due to the introduction of the Safety razor in the 1880s, which requires less skill and finess to manipulate, and is less deadly in the hands of the careless user...

 

Ah, fashion driven by technology. But many of those high Victorian worthies have luxuriant sideburns but clean-shaven lower lip and chin.

 

10 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Of course, the Barber was, up to the middle of the 18th Century a "Barber Surgeon", quite willing to do rather more than give you a shave with a few nicks....

 

Both occupations boiled down to knowing how to keep a blade sharp and use it accurately.

[Buhar]

I once had shave with a cut-throat razor from a barber with a very marked squint. I didn't notice before he started but I ended up both mesmerised and anxious as the only eye I could see in the mirror was looking up at the ceiling! 

Alan 

[Northroader]

The leather strap found in old carriages to raise or lower the door drop light was always a favourite target for theft. Cut off, taken home, then one end attached to some fixed object at about waist height, the other end held with your left hand and pulled tight, then holding the cutthroat razor in your right hand, it was “stropped” against the strap, backwards and forwards, sharp edge trailing, to put a nice cutting edge on it. Meat pies, anyone?

[ChrisN]

31 minutes ago, Northroader said:

The leather strap found in old carriages to raise or lower the door drop light was always a favourite target for theft. Cut off, taken home, then one end attached to some fixed object at about waist height, the other end held with your left hand and pulled tight, then holding the cutthroat razor in your right hand, it was “stropped” against the strap, backwards and forwards, sharp edge trailing, to put a nice cutting edge on it. Meat pies, anyone?

 

I think it was one of the Welsh railway companies that they refused to put anymore of these straps into their carriages as all of them had been removed.

[Hroth]

40 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Meat pies, anyone?

 

Its a fair cop, guv.....

 

 

[Donw]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

The leather strap found in old carriages to raise or lower the door drop light was always a favourite target for theft. Cut off, taken home, then one end attached to some fixed object at about waist height, the other end held with your left hand and pulled tight, then holding the cutthroat razor in your right hand, it was “stropped” against the strap, backwards and forwards, sharp edge trailing, to put a nice cutting edge on it. Meat pies, anyone?

 

I wonder where the one my Dad used came from, he used it to keep a safty razor sharp.

 

Don

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

 

The leather strap found in old carriages to raise or lower the door drop light was always a favourite target for theft. Cut off, taken home, then one end attached to some fixed object at about waist height, the other end held with your left hand and pulled tight, then holding the cutthroat razor in your right hand, it was “stropped” against the strap, backwards and forwards, sharp edge trailing, to put a nice cutting edge on it. Meat pies, anyone?

 

How antisocial. Could one not while away a tedious train journey sharpening one's cut-throat razor on the strap in situ? Though I suppose other passengers might find this a little disturbing. 

[lanchester]

The fashionability of beards from the 1850s onwards is often  put down to the Crimean War and the utility of the beard as a muffler/draught excluder in the bitter Crimean winters. 

 

However, this is apparently not so. According to historian Kathryn Hughes in 'Victorians Undone' (don't all rush - it isn't at all that sort of book) in a chapter on 'Darwin's beard', "In the 1830s and 40s ... the prevailing taste had been for clean shaven faces.You only have to look at pictures of ...Disraeli, Dickens, Ruskin to see a series of girlish looking young men, tender and rosy skinned. But shift forward 15 years and each of those lovely faces now lies buried under bristling facial hair".

 

According to Hughes, in the late 40s sideboards "began creeping further down men's faces, broadening out to the point where they became fully fledged sidewhiskers". In variety: the broad but close cropped muttonchop, or the long combed-out Piccadilly weeper (a synonym for the Dundreary). Could be on an otherwise clean-shaven face, or teamed with a moustache like Prince Albert.

 

"Gradually, muttonchops and Piccadilly weepers crept further south, eventually meeting under the chin sometime in the early 1850s. The result was the Newgate frill or chinstrap, an odd arrangement whereby the neck and jaw were left riotously hairy while the rest of the face was clean-shaven". 

 

Darwin himself adopted a full or 'natural' beard, but not until 1862. Dickens was clean shaven in 1852 but by 1858 had gone for the 'doorknocker' style for which he is remembered. (A variant perhaps on the Imperial, popularised by Napoleon III, although wearing that may have had political undertones?) Tennyson went full beard and waxed moustache in the late 50s, largely because he had had most of his teeth out and his mouth had collapsed in. Ruskin had  been of a Dundreary tendency in the 1860s but was full-bearded by the 1880s,possibly in response to physical and mental collapse.

 

So while there were definitely fashions in face-fuzz, it seems there were early and late adopters of the various different styles.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, lanchester said:

According to Hughes, in the late 40s sideboards "began creeping further down men's faces, broadening out to the point where they became fully fledged sidewhiskers". In variety: the broad but close cropped muttonchop, or the long combed-out Piccadilly weeper (a synonym for the Dundreary). Could be on an otherwise clean-shaven face, or teamed with a moustache like Prince Albert.

 

 

 

Exhibit A: Sir James Allport, c. 1877.

[monkeysarefun]

12 hours ago, Edwardian said:

In contrast, we were told to shave daily on exercise so that our gas mask fit would not be compromised,

 

 Little known Australian history fact;

 

Ned Kelly made sure his mask had an extra wide  bit at the bottom so his beard didnt get shot.

 

 

 

..

[Dave John]

Heh monkeysarefun, that looks like some of the very nebulous etched brass kits I have had to cope with in the past ...... 

[Schooner]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Coterminous...

 

Good woody sort of word "coterminous"...much better than 'newspaper' or 'litterbin'...

 

...gooorn...

 

Anyway, a salve to catch up with the thread as ever, thank you contributors all

 

S

 

ps. A pre-season bee has got firmly lodged in my bonnet these last weeks fussing about the importance of an off-topic topic. I appreciate it;s by the bye, but I wondered if Parishoners as learned as those of Castle Aching  might point a distracted soul in the direction of information on the railways of the Port of London in the period c.1870-1880? All leads gratefully received

[Compound2632]

At Buxton, the LNW and Midland Railways were coterminous - or co-terminus?

 

 

Photo by Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10878906.

[Nearholmer]

The IRS "County of London" handbook has a basic into plus loco lists, and gives reference to "PLA Railways" pub LPC 1952. The handbook also covers the many dock construction contracts and the locos used on those.

 

One thing to be aware of is that the PLA want formed until 1909, so you need to look for East & West India Docks, and Millwall Docks for the earlier period. The IRS handbook groups these under PLA.

 

NLS Maps should help with track layouts.

 

Would be worth finding a "docks" website with the chronology of construction ....... I'm fairly sure that the first railway connections came from the opening of the North London Railway in 1850, when it was actually called the East & West India Docks & Birmingham Junction Railway, but there might have been traffic out on the Blackwall Railway, after it was de-cabled, very slightly before that. None of the recorded E&WI Docks locos dates to before 1870, so whether there were earlier, unrecorded locos, or whether shunting was by horse before that, one can probably only guess.

 

There was also a sort of "half measures" rail connection into the London Docks, by a short branch from the Blackwall Railway at Leman Street, connections into the Royal Docks, dating from the early 1850s, and connections into the Surrey Docks from the LBSCR Deptford Wharf Branch, but I think these were later (need to check).

 

Which particular area are you interested in?

Edited April 2, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Checking dates, the Deptford Wharf Branch was opened in 1849, so marginally earlier than the NLR. It served Greenland Dock, although I'm not sure whether it did from the very start, and Greenland Dock was incorporated into the Surrey Docks in 1865, so .......

 

So what? I'm not sure, but its good to know that the LBSCR got to the waterfront first.