Today's story continues the themes of the new exhibition at the British Library: Propaganda and Persuasion.

The Government of India, in common with most governments, was concerned with the health and welfare of its citizens, and explored many avenues for addressing the health problems associated with poverty and food shortages. One method adopted was campaigns to disseminate information about the importance of a healthy diet.

The India Office Records contains many files on food production and the problems of food shortages. One such file on food is in the records of the Information Department of the India Office, which contains two attractively designed booklets produced by the Government of India’s Department of Food. Entitled “Nutrition”, the booklets contain articles giving information on such subjects as food deficiency diseases, cabbage & cauliflowers, foods as sources of vitamin A, the value of shark liver oil, nutrition training and propaganda, and food facts on vegetables and milk.

Women grinding flour WD 315 no.72  Images Online      

There is also a section on recipes headed ‘On the Kitchen Front’ and showing an illustration of an Indian woman happily cooking. There follows recipes for such Indian dishes as ragi satu, dahi rice, madras curry, jawar dosai, besan-ki-puri, and mixed wheat chappatis. The August 1945 issue gives the following recipe for bhajiyas:

Ingredients: jawar flour ¼ lb. (2 chatak), Bengal gram flour ¾ lb. (6 chataks), onions ½ lb. (4 chataks), tumeric (Haldi) 2 mashas, salt 1½ ozs. (4 tolas), chilli powder 1 oz. (2½ tolas), sweet oil ½ lb. (4 chataks), water 1 lb. (8 chataks).

Method: mix the flour well in water. Add the salt and spices. Knead well into a paste. Shape into flattened cakes of equal size and fry in pure oil or butter. If desired, vegetable, like potatoes, spinach may be placed in the flattened cakes and then fried.

On the back cover of the June 1945 booklet is a food chart showing which foods help in three areas of activity:

• building and repairing muscles (milk, cheese, eggs, fish, meat, pulses, nuts and beans)
• protection against ill health (for vitamin A milk, cheese, oily fish, etc; for vitamin B peas, beans, lentils; and for vitamin C green leafy vegetables, sprouted pulses, and root vegetables)
• foods for energy (fats such as milk fats and vegetable oil; for sugar jam, honey, dried fruits, and for starches cereals)

These booklets are an interesting example of the type of publications the Government produced in an attempt to address food shortages. I'm not sure who the intended audience was for them, certainly they were for internal government use, but as they were published with illustrations they may have been more widely available. The August 1945 issues states that the brochure was only published in English, but that anyone could publish any of the articles in any Indian language, which suggests the information they contain was intended for wide distribution to the public. Perhaps one of our Indian readers of this blog has come across them in the past?

John O’Brien
Post 1858 India Office Records   


Further reading:

India Office Information Department, File 462/102 Food (general), 1944-1945 [IOR/L/I/1/1103]

 

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In January 1864, a large Agricultural Exhibition was held at Calcutta sponsored by the Government of Bengal. A relatively novel event, the aims of the Central Organising Committee were to bring together for comparison and competition from every part of India specimens of local productions.

When the Exhibition opened the contributions on show were arranged into three classes: ive stock, machinery and implements,and produce. Some of the contributors did suffer from confusion as to what was required for exhibition, with some believing that anything strange or unusual was what was wanted. The Central Committee noted in its report of the sheep submitted to them that “Hairy creatures with enormous horns were of frequent occurrence. One ram was said to have maintained a combat with a tiger”, and in another instance a woman brought a small black kid of the ordinary Bengali breed, born with three legs instead of four! Despite such minor problems the exhibition was considered to have been a great success, with an estimated 70,000 people visiting it.

The success of the Exhibition led quickly to local agricultural exhibitions being held throughout Bengal and Bihar Orissa in 1864/65. Copies of the reports on the various exhibitions submitted to Central Government by local officials can be found in the India Office Records. The reports give a wealth of detail about the organisation of the exhibitions, and the people who took part, with the mix of European and Native Indian participants being reflected in the prize lists of the various competitions.

Image of prize bull c.1865 from IOR/L/E/3/748 

Livestock was often the star of the agricultural shows. The judges at Dacca reported that the standard of bulls and cows was very good, with Khajeh Abdool Gunny taking a first prize for his half-English, half-country cow, and a Mr Thomas taking first prize of 50 rupees for best bull in the Division. The Dacca Exhibition gave prizes for a wide range of manufactures, including to Gobind Chunder Dutt for “a kind of violin”, and to S A Stewart for his revolving photographic camera. Ameeroollah of Sylhet was awarded a prize of 20 rupees for a case of insects he had collected, it being judged that every encouragement should be given to the study of natural history. Special prizes were also awarded at the Dacca Exhibition. The inventive Gobind Chunder Dutt was awarded a prize of 16 rupees for a specimen of new fibre, while Syud Abdool Mujeed was awarded a prize of 4 rupees for scented tobacco. Institutions as well as individual could exhibit goods. The Dacca Girls School won 2nd prize for woollen articles, with the Dacca Jail taking prizes for fibrous manufacture and paper. Other Shows awarded prizes for flowers and vegetables. At the Burdwan Show, the Maharajah of Burdwan won first prize for geraniums and second prize for roses. For vegetables, Hurro Mohun Mookerjee of Hooghly won 30 rupees as first prize for white sugarcane, while Mrs Atkinson of Burdwan won a first prize of 15 rupees for chillies, and Sharoda Prosad Roy won 5 rupees for cabbages.

John O’Brien
Post 1858 India Office Records

Sources:
Report of the Central Committee on the results of the Bengal Agricultural Exhibition of 1864 [IOR/L/PJ/3/1092 No.81]

Reports and correspondence regarding the Agricultural Exhibitions held in Bengal, December 1864 - February 1865 [IOR/L/PJ/3/1095 No.11]

Chimney Sweeps’ Day, Blackbird is gay,
Here he is singing, you see, in the “May”.
He has feathers as black as a chimney sweep’s coat.
So on Chimney Sweeps’ Day he must pipe a glad note.


   

  From London Town by Felix Leigh Images Online

May Day used to be celebrated as a festival by chimney sweeps. Newspapers reported the carnival proceedings: ‘the ludicrous caperings of the sooty tribe, who fantastically attire themselves on such occasions, with their faces smeared with brick-dust, by way of paint, and with gilt and coloured paper ornaments in profusion’ (Sussex Advertiser 14 May 1827).  For some years before her death in 1800, Mrs Elizabeth Montague entertained sweeps every May Day in the courtyard of her house in Portman Square in the west end of London. Roast beef and plum pudding were served, followed by merry dancing.  Each guest was handed a shilling by the lady of the house as he left (Alnwick Mercury 6 May 1876).

In trying to help the sweeps, Elizabeth Montague was following the example of philanthropist Jonas Hanway who campaigned in the second half of the 18th century to improve the unhealthy and dangerous working conditions for climbing boys apprenticed to chimney sweeps. An act of kindness towards the boys which was reported in the press involved three maritime officers of the East India Company in 1776. When walking through Smithfield, the men spotted a group of little sweeps loitering hungrily near a ‘sausage parlour’.  They told ‘the little Sons of the Brush’ that they would buy them sausages until they tired of eating.  Two cooks were needed to keep up with the boys’ appetite.  After eating sausages and black puddings for over a half an hour, they were treated to 24 plum and apple tarts.  The officers settled the bills and received ‘a First of May Day Bow from the Chimney-Sweepers, and a low Curtesy from each of the Cooks’ (Derby Mercury 6 September 1776).

Journalists delighted in mimicking the language and accent of the London chimney sweeps. After street cries were regulated by the 1834 Chimney Sweepers Act, there were newspaper reports of sweeps being punished for calling out ‘Sveep’. One expressed his astonishment at the new regulation: ‘Vell, I never… I vunder vot next ve shall have. Carn’t even now call out “serveep” for van’s livelywood but vot the beak is arter us and nails us for five bob, or a month in kervod’ (Morning Post 21 November 1834).

 

Improvement in the working conditions of climbing boys was a slow process to judge from the evidence presented by The Climbing Boy’s Advocate published in 1856. This verse by James Montgomery appears on the front page:

Who loves the Climbing Boy?  Who cares
If well or ill I be?
Is there a living soul that shares
A thought or wish with me?
Yet not for wealth and ease I sigh,
All are not rich and great;
Many may be as poor as I,
But none so desolate.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records 
                          
Further reading

British Newspaper Archive

The Climbing Boy’s Advocate (reference RB.23.b.3564)

In recent months there is more and more talk about super-bugs and their resistance of antibiotics. Doctors and researchers warn that we may be taken back 200 years, when many died from simple infections. Let’s find out how we could treat some ailments if we followed our ancestors’ example.

An ill patient. Detail from a cartoon 'Quite a lucky day'.P.P.5273.c, volume XLII, p.33. Images Online

Asthma - Strong black coffee could stop the attack. Relief might also be brought by the fumes of dried blotting paper soaked in saltpetre. If that is of no help, do not hesitate to smoke 20 grains of datura leaf mixed with tobacco.

Bleeding from internal organs - The bottom line of the treatment: Keep Quiet! That will probably give you a chance to say good bye to the world, in silence, whilst you are being served cold effusions. Lemonade or alum whey (two teaspoons of powdered alum with two tumblers of milk) with a sprinkle of opium is the treatment. If you have a fever too, a mixture of two drachms of nitre in barley water with some lemon and sugar to taste should sort you out.

Convulsions - Put your child immediately into a hot bath and give it some castor oil. Adults should be treated with cold water to the head, mustard plasters to the calves, and a serving of purgative.

Hiccoughs - Not life threatening, but irritating! Try holding the right ear with the left forefinger and thumb, bringing the elbow as far across the chest as possible.

Hysteria - Put away your diazepam and use a mixture of whisky, water and chlorodyne instead. If you are treating a hysteric after the medicine has been administered, just leave them alone.

Lung infection - Take linseed poultices and ipecacuanha, then dress in a bran jacket. Recovery guaranteed!

Poisoning - If you have a heated dispute with your mother-in-law just before Sunday dinner and suddenly you think a little extra something has been added to your soup, try a mixture of milk, soap, water, whites of eggs, seed oil, and rice-water topped with mucilaginous drink. Time is of the essence, so drink it immediately! It will work on acids, but if you suspect that arsenic was the extra spice you will need also to take an emetic.

Toothache - Mix 40 drops of carbolic acid, 60 drops of eau-de-cologne, and a piece of gum mastic (an aromatic resin from a pistachio tree), apply one drop onto cotton wool and put into the hollow.

  Snake wearing a hat - from a collection of poems and songs by Edward Lear. Images Online

If you happen to be in a more exotic clime and get bitten by a snake follow these simple instructions:
1. Tie a ligature every few inches; (whipcord seems to be the best, but don’t be too fussy)
2. Ask someone to cut the flesh around the bites and let it bleed. If the snake is deadly, just let them amputate the joint or run the knife round the bone.
3. You need to suck the poison out (you are already poisoned, so nothing to loose, really!) and then your assistant must burn the wound with carbolic or nitric acid, nitrate of silver, or a hot iron. If you are still standing, you will be given a drop of brandy!

Good health!

Dorota Walker
Reference Specialist, Asian and African Studies    

 

Further reading:
F. A. Steel & G. Gardiner, The complete Indian housekeeper and cook, ed. by R. Crane and A. Johnson (Oxford 2010)

 

Despite knitwear being cheap thanks to computerised weaving and cheap overseas labour, the knitter’s art is reviving.  I recently started inventorying the British Library’s collections of vintage knitting guides and the 1930s seemed a good period to start.

 

Photo by Luca Sage taken at a knitting event at the British Library Spring Festival 2012   

Stitchcraft, the monthly fashion knits magazine, was bought out by Patons & Baldwins in 1932 and continued for another fifty years.   Two collections of P&B’s patterns, issued under the Stitchcraft banner in 1937 and 1939 and 1948-1953, give a good sampling of vintage designs. The firm produced a wide range of patterns, mainly directed to middle class women who had the leisure time for knitting unusual wear.
 
From crêpe and Angora collars to raglan, ruffled, or flared sleeves, there were a lot of ideas back then that, deservedly or not, have been ignored since.  Unlike today, patterns are offered for “the larger figure” and “the older woman”, with stitch-styles such as Fair Isle, arrowhead, fir-cone, bobbles, zig-zags, pin-checked, mock cable, ladder-stitch, moss-stitch, pinwheel, and beehive.
 
Cardigans, jumpers, hats and gloves, twin-sets - you’d expect those.  But a knitted ‘shower-proof golf coat’?   The adventuresome and skilled could make a floor-length luxury dressing gown with silk lining and with any luck they wouldn’t have dribbled cigarette ashes on it.  Some things may have seemed lovely ideas but would the maintenance of knitted panties and cami-knickers really be worth the effort of constructing them in the first place? 
 
Throughout there are suggested colours for a certain style and the occasional rejoinder that “Black and White is Chic!”  Fashionable yarns included Kelpie, Halcyon, Catkin, Diana, Dunora, Beryl, Honeycomb, Totem, Patona, Bouclé, Kingfisher, Bouclet, Mororavia, Netta, Veronica, and even Super Cherub Baby Wool.
 
Mills that supplied yarns tended to merge through the years, and so, the union of Lister with Lee Target, later known as Lister-Lee, resulted in numerous published patterns. From the mid-1960s they offered a series of Mary Quant designs, another with the ‘Op-Art Look’ in black-and-white, faux-military sweaters for children, a  ‘Party Girl’ series, knitted NASA space suits for techno kids of 1969, funky ‘hot pants’ in 1971, and designs for the Royal Wedding of 1981.
 
The Lister folks in Bradford shrewdly got celebrities to pose for their colourful front covers.  These included jazz singer Ottilie Patterson and her then-husband and bandleader Chris Barber modelling knitted, collarless ‘Trad Jackets’ in 1963, perhaps taking their cue from the Beatles’ brief embracing of that style.   Other posing personalities were TV star Amanda Barrie, British Middleweight Champion Johnny Pritchet, recording artists Russ Conway, The Caravelles, and The Viscounts, and Barbara Windsor and Jack Douglas in a series of ‘Carry-On-Knitting’ booklets.
 
Their 1970s and 1980s patterns reflect pop cultures of hippie, disco, and new romantic aesthetics, although they had the good sense not to try to tempt punk-rockers to take up no. 8 needles.   
 
Andy Simons, Printed Historical Sources 

 
Further reading
 
Stitchcraft patterns - reference W.P.12165 (1937 and 1939) and reference W.P.14708 (1948-1953)
Lister-Lee patterns - reference 7951.h.2 (1963-1985)

You may be surprised to learn that the East India Company provided free medical advice and treatment to its London warehouse labourers in the early 19th century. Having carefully screened men for physical defects on admission, the Company then sought to maintain their health by giving them access to a doctor as soon as they felt unwell. If the illness was not serious the labourer continued at work, perhaps given light duties.  Men with more serious ailments stayed at home and were paid sickness benefit of 1s 6d per day including Sundays.   Payment was withheld if the problem was caused by drunkenness, venereal disease, ‘fighting any pitched Battle, or by Reason of any Hurt or Injury occasioned by Idleness or voluntary Contests’.  One of the Company surgeons visited the sick labourers at home and men could not return to work without his permission. Men might be granted leave of absence to go to the country for a change of air or to seek treatment at places such as the Sea Bathing Hospital in Margate.

Consumption, pulmonary complaints and fever were common amongst the labourers. Whenever flu or cholera was prevalent in London, 40 or 50 men every day attended the Company clinic with coughs and bowel complaints. Before the water-borne transmission of cholera was identified, the Central Board of Health issued advice like this from 1832:


Instructions publicly posted to prevent the spread of cholera 15 February 1832 from Forms for returns of Cholera cases and Sanitary Instructions, etc. respecting Cholera Images Online

Two of the self-help remedies here expressly recommend drinking water, either with mustard powder or salt. With hindsight, we can see that this had the unhappy consequence of encouraging further exposure to a primary source of infection.

During the cholera epidemic in the summer of 1849 The London Daily News published an advert for Fenning's Cholera Mixture. A family size bottle cost £1 1s, more than a labourer earned in a week. The advert claimed:
‘All have been saved who have taken it.  A dose taken twice a week will prevent any attack.  Every family should keep it in the house, in the bedrooms, ready for immediate use, as the Cholera mostly attacks at midnight’.

The cholera epidemic in the summer of 1849 claimed the lives of several people connected with the East India Company in London. Warehouse pensioners and their families died in areas as far apart as Wapping and King’s Cross. Labourer Dennis Crane was struck down by cholera whilst at work in the Military Store warehouse in Leadenhall Street in August 1849. Medical help was summoned, and Crane was taken to hospital in a cab but unfortunately he soon died. The speed with which death followed the onset of cholera symptoms was frightening.

The East India Company selected well-qualified surgeons to deliver comprehensive medical treatment to the labourers.  But the Company was powerless to protect its London employees against the ravages of cholera in an era when transmission of the disease was not fully understood.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading
The London Daily News 12 July 1849  British Newspaper Archive.

If you are interested in knowing more about the East India Company warehouse labourers, please contact Margaret Makepeace at the BL.

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Snow, the pioneer anaesthetist and epidemiologist who demonstrated that cholera was spread by infected water rather than being airborne. To mark this, we are going to post a series of stories relating to cholera. We start with a cholera outbreak in Soho and the effect on the bookbinding community there.

Image taken from Punch 25 September 1852.  Images Online.

Bookbinders in Victorian London often worked in particular neighbourhoods.  One such was present day Soho.  Poland Street, Broad (now Broadwick) Street and Noel Street contained at least twenty three workshops. Binders and their families and apprentices lived above the business, and any spare rooms were rented out to lodgers. Other employees worked on the premises for six days a week. Crowding was the norm, conditions were insanitary, and water came from communal outdoor pumps.  Disease was rife.  September 1854 saw a virulent outbreak of cholera. 127 people living in or around Broad Street died in three days.  The Bookbinders’ Trade Circular noted that Wickwar & Co of Poland Street lost four people to the disease and Wright of Noel Street, six.

Local physician and early epidemiologist, John Snow, investigated the cause of the cholera by gathering reports of the circumstances of the fatalities:

[William Wickwar] was sent for from Brighton to see his brother [John Wickwar] at 6 Poland Street, who was attacked with cholera and died in twelve hours, on 1st September. The gentleman arrived after his brother's death, and did not see the body. He only stayed about twenty minutes in the house, where he took a hasty and scanty luncheon of rumpsteak, taking with it a small tumbler of brandy and water, the water being from Broad street pump. He went to Pentonville, and was attacked with cholera on the evening of the following day, 2nd September, and died the next evening.

Analysis of these incidents led Snow to an important discovery; cholera was not air borne but transmitted by water, and the epicentre of this outbreak was an infected supply in Broad Street. The pump there was eventually shut down and measures were taken, albeit slowly, to eliminate the conditions in which the disease could thrive.

 

Jaffray Collection 156        

Despite the loss of these experienced craftsmen and women, items in the British Library’s John Jaffray Collection indicate that the Wickwar and Wright businesses survived, as did the wider bookbinding trade in Soho, ultimately thanks to the enquiring mind and perseverance of their neighbour, John Snow.

 

Philippa Marks
Curator, Bookbindings; Printed Historical Sources  

 

Further reading;
Maurice Packer, The bookbinders of Victorian London, London, 1991
The Bookbinders’ Trade Circular, London, issue for September 1854
John Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera second edition, London, 1855

For Mothering Sunday, we have a story about an unusual family in Victorian London.

Mother and daughter, 1879, by Federico Zandomeneghi (1841-1917)
© De Agostini/The British Library Board

In November 1847 a curious case came before the Lord Mayor of London. William Cawley, aged 77, had brought a charge against Elizabeth Cawley, aged 23. William was a labourer who had retired from the East India Company warehouses in 1810 on a pension of 7s per week. He had gone from his lodgings in Pentonville to East India House to collect his quarterly pension, buttoning it carefully into his trouser pocket. Elizabeth had slipped her hand into the pocket and tried to take his purse. The Lord Mayor asked whether Elizabeth was his daughter.  William sighed deeply: she was in fact his wife. They had wed when she was just 17, but she and her mother had both only married him because they thought he had money. This surprising comment prompted the Lord Mayor to probe deeper and this is the story he uncovered.

After the death of William’s first wife Ruth, a ’blessed angel’, he had been mad with grief. A few months later on 29 April 1842 William married widow Elizabeth Shaw at St Sepulchre Holborn. The marriage was never consummated and his new wife said that she would make her daughter marry him if he released her. As he liked the daughter better, William accepted her offer and married Elizabeth Martha Shaw bigamously at St George Bloomsbury on 16 May 1842.  He claimed that he had not had a happy moment since then and from being in comfortable circumstances when he met ‘this greatest pair of devils’ he was now reduced to having only his Company pension to support him.

Given the opportunity to put forward her side of the story, young Elizabeth complained that Cawley refused to give her money and would not support their six year old daughter Elizabeth Martha Sarah. Questioned whether there was any doubt over the child’s parentage, William stated that there was none. The Lord Mayor replied that there was no law to make William give money to Elizabeth but he was showing a total disregard for the decencies of life by his behaviour towards her and the child. William said that he had no objection ‘to try the mother again’ if she would promise to take care of him and protect him against her daughter.  Although the Lord Mayor was obliged to prevent Elizabeth from annoying William, he also impressed upon the old man his duty as a parent to provide for the child.  When William protested that he could not afford to do so, the Lord Mayor admitted defeat but told him that ‘between two wives a man may fall to the ground’.  Elizabeth was discharged after promising to pass by Cawley with ‘silent contempt’.

William Cawley died on 26 January 1850.  As part of their welfare scheme for warehouse labourers, the East India Company paid Elizabeth £5 5s for his funeral expenses and £3 3s as a death benefit for her and the child.  Elizabeth remarried  in 1856.  Confusingly, her daughter appears to have married the same man twice, in 1872 and 1875. We should love to hear from anyone who can shed light on that story!

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records     

Further reading
The Cawley story is reported in several newspapers in  (spelling the name as Crawley) British Newspaper Archive.
Information about the East India Company warehouse labourers can be traced through the India Office Records – contact Margaret Makepeace for help. Many have potted biographies in the India Office Family History Search.