The Duchess

Last weekend we finally got around to digging out The Duchess on Virgin's pay-for facility (I'm slow off the mark, I know) and what a disappointment... I mean, it looked gorgeous, but Keira Knightley made Georgiana look, unfortunately, like a pouting airhead. Ralph Fiennes did a fine job, but his role was one-dimensional and really did the Duke of Devonshire a disservice. The special UK spin (namely, Princess Diana 'there are three people in this marriage') was tiresome, and lines like 'Any sign of a Revolution yet?' [addressed to Charles Grey on his return from France] made me hoot with laughter. I thought Georgiana was a woman passionately interested in politics? Com'on Paramount, credit us with some intelligence!

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Insanity and the Katzenklavier

I am, as you know, a cat-lover (or ailurophile to be accurate), but history has not always been kind to moggies. Take Athanasius Kircher's cat piano (or katzenklavier, pictured above).

Designed in the mid 17th-century, it comprised a line of cats sat in six to eight cages, which were in turn sunk into the body of a piano. Each cat had its tail stretched underneath the instrument's keyboard. Nails were placed under the keys, causing the cats to cry out in pain when the keys were pressed. The animals were organised by the respective tones of their voices to create a harmonic sound.

Needless to say, this was a hypothetical instrument which Kircher seems not to have made; it was designed by the German Jesuit scholar purely as an elaborate joke (and it's testament to the robustness of the age that animals in pain were considered amusing - see Hogarth's The Four Stages of Cruelty for more on that subject).

Interestingly, the idea was then taken up in the 18th century by German physician Johann Christian Reil who felt the katzenklavier would be useful in his treatment of insanity, in particular patients who had lost the ability to focus their attention. He believed that the katzenklavier was so ridiculous that if his patients were forced to see it, it couldn't fail to capture the attention and thus cure them.

It's not clear whether Reil knew of Kircher's design or independently came up with the same idea, but either way, it must be one of the weirdest theories in the history of psychiatry. Incidentally, Reil is often credited with coining the term psychiatry (meaning 'healing the soul') in 1808.

Picture: Wiki Commons

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Word of the week: Lazybones

An instrument like a pair of tongs, for old or very fat people to take any thing from the ground without stooping.

From: Captain Grose's 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

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My Year in the 18th Century

Well, it's been a while since I blogged, but browsing through the Guardian today I found a review of a book by Fiona J Houston that cried out for a mention. The Garden Cottage Diaries: My Year in the Eighteenth Century finds the author (a Scottish museum researcher) abandoning modern life to live as her ancestors would in a 1790s cottage at the bottom of her garden. This involved wearing home-made wool clothes, collecting wood and growing her own food. As if times aren't hard enough already!

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Surgeons in the Spotlight

Thanks to The Lichfield Blog for flagging up an interesting lecture on 18th-century surgeons, Dissection and Display in the 18th Century, by Simon Chaplin MA, Director of Museums and Special Collections at The Royal College of Surgeons of England, happening at the Lichfield Garrick on May 14. More details here.

Above: Engraving of John Hunter from a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Royal College of Surgeons.
Source: Wiki Commons

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In Search of Dr Floyer

The Bank Holiday afternoon also proved the perfect time to investigate Sir John Floyer: a curious local physician – forerunner of Erasmus Darwin – who was an early researcher into asthma and a keen advocate of cold bathing.

Born in 1649 to Richard and Elizabeth Floyer of Hints Hall, Staffordshire, he moved to Lichfield in 1675 and practiced medicine there for over 50 years; he believed in the careful observation of his patients and was quick to recognise the importance of measuring the pulse in diagnosis. He published The Physician’s Pulse Watch, in two volumes in 1707 and 1710, and even had a watch adapted especially for medical use (he wrote: 'I caused a Pulse-Watch to be made which runs 60 seconds, and I placed it in a Box to be more easily carried, and by this I now feel pulses’). When James II visited Lichfield in 1686, Floyer was a member of the welcome party, which gives some idea of his status.

We knew that Floyer believed in hydrotherapy (another important work of his was An Enquiry into the Right Use and Abuses of the Hot, Cold and Temperate Baths in England, 1697, which he dedicated to the Duke of Devonshire), and that he supervised immersion baptism at Lichfield Cathedral. We had also read tantalising references to St Chad's cold bath at Unett's Well at Abnalls, near Lichfield, which Floyer himself had built between 1700 and 1703 (see below for a pic close to the area).

Apparently there were two baths – one for women and one for men – separated by a wall with changing rooms attached. Later, when Erasmus Darwin settled in Lichfield, he developed a botanic garden at Maple Hayes, a mile west of his house on Beacon Street, which turned out to be the same spot as Floyer’s baths; Darwin even incorporated the baths into his garden.


Anna Seward described the botanic garden as: 'a little, wild, umbrageous valley, one mile from Lichfield, amongst the only rocks which neighbour that city so nearly. It was irriguous from various springs, and swampy from their plenitude. A mossy fountain, of the purest and coldest water imaginable, had, near a century back, induced the inhabitants of Lichfield to build a cold bath in the bosom of the vale. That, till the doctor [Darwin] took it into his possession, was the only mark of human industry, which could be found in the tangled and sequestered scene’.

We knew that parts of the baths still existed – no doubt thanks to the restoration job that the Victorians did on them - though they were still on private land. We wanted to get as close as possible, without actually trespassing, but it proved to be a frustrating mission.


Using our trusty map, we managed to get pretty close, but on finding a set of houses backing onto fields, we stopped to ask one of the residents if they knew if we could get a glimpse of the archeological site from the public road, but she explained that due to a deer-rustling episode at Maple Hayes School a few weeks before, large deer fences (see above) had been erected, so it was doubtful that we would see anything.

We rambled back the way we had come, onto Pipe Green, a very ancient piece of land, bequeathed 'to the poor widows of Bacon [i.e., Beacon] Street', which is now a nature reserve (see below). It's still managed by the people of Lichfield - any householder who has lived on Beacon Street for five years or more or any person born on Beacon Street and who has owned a house there for three years can join the Pipe Green Trust, whose objectives are to: 'maintain and repair the boundaries hereof, to preserve, plant, replant, grow and cultivate plants, trees and other growing things, to promote and encourage the growth and development of wildlife'.

It was a shame that Floyer's baths had escaped us, but we did enjoy the gorgeous view of the cathedral spires!



Photographs © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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Lichfield From Above

Time seems to have run away from me last week, but - finally - here are some pictures of our Bank Holiday Monday jaunt up the spire of St Mary's, and the views of Lichfield from above - and very impressive they were too. I'll also be posting something shortly about our afternoon walk in search of Dr Floyer's cold baths, at Abnalls, near Lichfield, so don't go away!







Photographs © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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