1890s Problems: Horse Poop

Horse poop is not something we associate as a problem of modern city life, but in 1890s London that was not the case. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 the streets of London would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure.

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, horses were still key to the day to day operations of most major cities. If people and goods weren't being moved around by trains or manpower, they were drawn by horses. Approximately 10,000 taxis needed horses to pull them. Thousands of buses moved Londoners around the city, and each of those needed 12 horses a day to move them. Add to that private carriages and carts used to move goods, and you can start to imagine the poop piling up.

The great horse manure crisis wasn't as bad as it seemed, though people worried about it enough to warrant a story in the Times. Removing the poop from the street kept block boys gainfully employed, and the problem was replaced with a new one horses were replaced with automobiles.

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Wired Love and Thereby Hangs a Tale

By the 1890s, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle achieved considerable success, as the author of Sherlock Holmes, but was anxious to start writing something different. In 1892, he wrote a play, which was immediately snatched up by London's most famous actor, Henry Irving, and presented to his theatre manager, Bram Stoker.

In his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, Stoker recorded the event, as follows:

WATERLOO 

"KING ARTHUR" 

"DON QUIXOTE" 

ONE day early in March 1892, whilst we were rehearsing Tennyson's play, The Foresters, which in accordance with the author's request was produced for copyright purposes at the Lyceum, Irving came into the office in a hurry. He was a little late. He, Loveday and myself always used the same office, as we found it in all ways convenient for our perpetual consultations. As he came hurrying out to the stage, after putting on the brown soft broad-brimmed felt hat for which he usually exchanged his "topper" during rehearsals, he stopped beside my table where I was writing, and laying a parcel on it said: 

"I wish you would throw an eye over that during rehearsal. It came this morning. You can tell me what you think of it when I come off!" 

I took up the packet and unrolled a number of type-written sheets a little longer than foolscap. I read it with profound interest and was touched to my very heart's core by its humour and pathos. It was very short, and before Irving came in again from the stage I had read it a second time. When he came in he said presently in an unconcerned way: 

"By the way, did you read that play?"

"Yes!" 

"What do you think of it?" 

"I think this," I said, "that that play is never going to leave the Lyceum. You must own it at any price. It is made for you." 

"So I think, too!" he said heartily. 

"You had better write to the author to-day and ask him what cheque we are to send. We had better buy the whole rights!' 

"Who is the author?" 

"Conan Doyle!" 

The author answered at once and the cheque was sent in due course. The play was then named A Straggler of '15. This Irving changed to A Story of Waterloo, when the play was down for production. Later this was simplified to Waterloo. 

Irving fell in love with the character, and began to study it right away. The only change in the play he made was to get Sir Arthur then "Dr." or "Mr." Conan Doyle to consolidate the matter of the first few pages into a shorter space. The rest of the MS. remained exactly as written. 

It was not, however, for nearly two years that he got an opportunity of playing it. It is a difficult matter to find a place for an hour-long play in a working bill. Henry VII., King Lear, and Becket held the Lyceum stage till the middle of 1893. Then came a tour in America lasting up to end of March 1 894. The short London season was taken up with a prearranged reproduction of Faust. 

Then followed a provincial tour from September to Christmas. Here was found the opportunity. The Bells is a short play, and for mere length allows of an addition. 

In the first week of the tour at the Princes Theatre, Bristol, on September 21, 1894, A Story of Waterloo was given. The matter was one of considerable importance in the dramatic world ; not only was Irving to play a new piece, but that piece was Conan Doyle's first attempt at the drama. The chief newspapers of London and some of the greater provincial cities wished to be represented on the occasion ; the American press also wished to send its critical contingent. Accordingly we arranged for a special train to bring the critical force. Hearing that so many of his London journalistic friends were coming an old friend of Irving' s then resident in Bristol, Mr. John Saunders, arranged to give a supper in the Liberal Club, to which they were all invited, together with many persons of local importance. 

The play met with a success extraordinary even for Irving. The audience followed with rapt attention and manifest emotion, swaying with the varying sentiments of the scene. The brief aid to memory in my diary of that day runs: 

"New play enormous success. H. I. fine and great. All laughed and wept. Marvellous study of senility. Eight calls at end." Unfortunately the author was not present to share the triumph, for it would have been a delightful memory for him. He was on a tour in America; "and thereby hangs a tale."

 Amongst the audience who had come specially from London was  Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat, owner and editor of the Chicago Times Herald,  a close and valued friend of Irving and myself. He was booked  to leave for America the next day. When the play was over  and the curtain finally down, he hurried away just in time to  catch the train for Southampton, whence the American Line boat  started in the morning. He got on board all right. The follow-  ing Saturday he arrived in New York, just in time to catch the "flyer," as they call the fast train to Chicago on the New York  Central line. On Sunday night a public dinner was given to Conan  Doyle to which of course Kohlsaat had been bidden. He arrived  too late for the dining part ; but having dressed in the train he  came on to the hotel just as dinner was finished and before  the speeches began. He took a chair next to Doyle and said  to him:

"I am delighted to tell you that your play at Bristol was an  enormous success!"   

"So I am told," said Doyle modestly. "The cables are excellent."   

"They are not half enough!" answered Kohlsaat, who had been  reading in the train the papers for the last week.   

"Indeed! I am rejoiced to hear it! " said Conan Doyle  somewhat dubiously. 

"May I ask if you have had any special  report?"   

"I didn't need any report, I saw it! "   

"Oh, come!" said Conan Doyle, who thought that he was in  some way chaffing him." 

That is impossible!"   

"Not to me! But I am in all human probability the only man on the American continent who was there?" 

Then whilst the  gratified author listened he gave him a full description of the play  and the scene which followed it. To my own mind Waterloo as an acting play is perfect ; and  Irving's playing in it was the high-water mark of histrionic art.  Nothing was wanting in the whole gamut of human feeling. It was a cameo, with all the delicacy of touch of a master-hand  working in the fine material of the layered shell. It seemed to  touch all hearts always. When the dying veteran sprang from his  chair to salute the colonel of his old regiment the whole house  simultaneously burst into a wild roar of applause. This was  often the effect at subsequent performances both at home and in America.

There's so much in this tale that I love, but mostly it's the global nature of the story. Even years later, as Stoker sits writing it, he can hardly believe the speed with which his friend got from the Lyceum Theatre in London to Doyle in Chicago - faster than the cables even! No wonder Victorians were interested in evolution and felt they were sitting on the edge of the future. No wonder we relate to them so well today.

Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes tells a very contemporary story, which, after being forgetten for many years, is resurfacing as something very much like internet dating, and is near the top of my reading list. Stoker's Dracula was also considered a bit of technofiction, in which the protagonists used half a dozen new modes of recording their thoughts to tell the story of a vampire in London. I wonder what Stoker and Doyle would have thought of FaceTime and Skype.

I'm not, however, convinced that Stoker ever used most of the technology he was fascinated with. For many Victorians, new technology was frightening. Sigmund Freud and Queen Victoria were afraid of trains. The first time they showed a movie of a train in London, people fled the theatre afraid that the train was headed right for them!

Back to Stoker's story above, I love almost any story that can incorporate the word foolscap. It's a word I'm afraid will drop out of usage, during my lifetime. And I love that Stoker explains why he shared an office at the Lyceum, though my heart breaks for him a little bit.

He was the theatre manager and he was sitting there writing (maybe working on Dracula, when Irving barged in. Mrs. Stoker didn't like it when he wrote at home because he liked to act out his characters, so maybe the theatre was the right place for him to be writing, but he probably justified his sharing an office to his father too.

Abraham Stoker, Bram Stoker's father, was a petty Dublin cleric, who felt he had let his employers walk all over him throughout his career and wanted his sons to have more than him. Stoker doted on Irving and still had to share an office - poor guy.

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Getting Around

One of my favorite contemporary writers (William Gibson) once said that one of the biggest problems he faced when writing was how to move his characters around. I know what he means. I sometimes find that I have problems with scene changes. I find my characters so fascinating that I would gladly chronicle every moment of their lives for the duration of the story, but know that could be tedious for my readers. Then I sometimes have the problem, because my work is set in the 1890s, of how to move my writers from place to place, physically. I'm talking transportation.

The most exciting thing that happened in transportation in London of the 1890s is, without a doubt, the Bersey Cab. Bersey Cabs hit the London streets in 1897. They were the first "horseless" taxis in the greatest city in the world. At their peak, inventor, Mr. Walter Bersey had over 75 of these "horseless" carriages on the road in London and they were probably the first experience most Londoners had of cars at the time.

Bersey Cabs were electric cars. They could only travel thirty miles on a charge, but a clever system was devised to make changing the battery quick and easy. Sadly, unreliable tires and a failed attempt to generate his own electricity did Bersey in financially and he went out of business in 1899.

Honestly, as excited as I am by the electric taxis, the writers I've been talking about in this blog would have considered the vehicles a spectacle. Like many Londoners, they might have been embarrassed to be seen riding in them. If they got in them at all, it would have been as a lark. 

My writers would have relied primarily on horse and steam power to get them around town. Sometimes, they would take a train, but, for shorter trips it was probably the hansoms of Sherlock Holmes stories that got authors from place to place.

The most popular form of hansom was properly called a "cabriolet," which is where we get the word "cab" from. "Taxicab" is actually a word that is American in origin and was coined by Harry Nathaniel Allen of the New York Taxicab Company. He used the term as a contraction of "taximeter cabriolet," which referred to a vehicle for hire. The vehicle pictured above was so popular that it's proper name became a standard descriptor.

The taximeter part of that serves as a good reminder that these cabs cost money and anyone, who has read Dickens, should remember that most of London was poor. The trains were cheap enough to allow many people a way to commute, but this too was a drastic change from the way that things used to be.

Working as a clerk, in Dublin, Bram Stoker's father, Abraham Stoker walked three miles to work every day and it was probably uphill both ways. It stands to reason that many Londoners did the same thing, but in 1829 omnibus services began operating. Like modern bus services, these were colourful carriages covered in ads.

The omnibus was a very popular form of transportation for those who could not afford a private vehicle and they were still on the streets after thirty years of competition with horse-drawn trams on rails, also called horsecars. These ran earlier in the morning and were cheaper than the buses.

I understand how horsecars could beat the omnibuses by running earlier for less, but I don't understand the advantage of putting what looks like the same thing on rails. If any experts on the subject know and care to leave a comment, I would appreciate it. 

I'd like to wrap up by saying something about bicycles, but, those were still used primarily for recreation. I found a list of what women shouldn't do on bicycles in New York. These are things like not fainting in the road, not boasting of your long rides, not asking people what they think of your bloomers, not going to church in your bicycle costume, and not cultivating "everything that is up to date because you ride a wheel." Women cyclists were called "centurions." 

The suffragist, Susan B. Anthony said:

Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride on a wheel.It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. 

According to Anthony, by 1896, women were buying 25-30% of all bicycles. The Rudge-Whitworth ad recommends the bicycle as a means of transportation, but I still think this was primarily a pastime for the middle class and wealthy.

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Traveling Along Fleet Street

I found this picture on Flickr. It's a view of Fleet Street in the 1890s.

Upon closer examination (or rather by taking a few steps back in the photo below), what looks like tents along the sidewalk on the left side actually appear to be the awnings of various shops.

We can already see the electric lights; before the end of the decade, London would have it's first electric taxis, which were, for obvious reasons, referred to as horseless carriages.

It's funny to think how much the street must have changed in such a short time. Those early electric taxis were set up so that the passenger could cover up the windows because many people wanted to ride in them, but didn't want to make a spectacle out of themselves.

I'm thinking about this place because, as I mentioned in my previous entry, Fleet Street was the location of news reporting. Highly imperialistic tones characterize journalistic writing of the era. With all of these changes happening and the architecture in the background, it is easier to see why. Today, as writers, we are told to write about what we know. Newspaper journalists in the 1890s knew this place well.