Untold lives blog

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the problem of rotten teeth was a concern that spanned the classes, although with the price of early dentures ranging from between half a guinea to forty pounds, only those from the upper ranks could afford to do very much about it. Early false teeth were heavy and largely for show, incapable of allowing intelligible speech and seldom secure enough to permit chewing. Indeed, various social historians have claimed that the inadequacy of early dentures was one of the main reasons behind the Victorian upper class vogue for eating in one’s bedroom before dinner to insure against embarrassment at the table. Frequently made from ivory or bone and with no enamel to protect them, early dentures were highly susceptible to decay, which often led to infection and vile-smelling breath, and those that weren’t, though they were less prone to rotting, had a rather more unpleasant provenance.

Evanion Collection 6450   

On 18 June 1815, the French Army was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. This culmination of some twelve years of war between France and the opposing European coalition may have effectively ended the political and military career of Napoleon and led to the deaths of in excess of 51,000 men, but it was not without its curious benefits. For during the first half of the nineteenth century, the most popular and profitable breed of dentures available were those made from genuine second-hand teeth, a sudden surfeit of which had just been rendered effectively up-for-grabs by the cull of 1815. These so-called “Waterloo Teeth” – a moniker which quickly became applicable to any set of teeth pilfered from the mouth of a dead soldier and continued in use throughout the Crimean and American Civil Wars – were vastly preferable to those more commonly used in the eighteenth century. These pre-war teeth were frequently acquired from executed criminals, exhumed bodies, dentists’ patients and even animals and were consequently often rotten, worn down or loaded with syphilis. The prospect of an overabundance of young, healthy teeth to be readily pillaged from the battlefield must have been a dentist’s dream.

Evanion Collection 5389

This fashion for “genuine” dentures, popular though it was, was nonetheless dogged by unappealing “graverobber” connotations and it was consequently during the mid-nineteenth century that more sustainable and palatable styles of false teeth came to the fore. Porcelain teeth, which had actually been in use as far back as the 1770s but had struggled with a tendency to chip, underwent a great transformation thanks to Claudius Ash, a silver and goldsmith who brought his expertise to dentures in the 1820s and 30s when he started manufacturing porcelain teeth mounted on gold plates, with gold springs and wire to hold them in place and make them easier to talk and eat with. Ash & Sons, which became a successful company, went on to devise dental plates made of vulcanite and silver, as well as sickle-shaped metal insets to stabilise single false teeth, aluminium and gold mesh dental strengtheners and silicate cement for fillings, among much else. It was from here that the manufacturing of false teeth really took off, with dentists’ advertisements from the British Library Evanion Collection showcasing the sudden diversity of materials and plates available – from platinum to 18 carat gold. That said, the use of the genuine article in the manufacturing of Victorian dentures did not let up throughout much of the late nineteenth century and it was not until the early twentieth century that one could be certain not to find anyone smiling at you with a set of dead men’s teeth.

Julia Armfield
Intern, Printed Historical Resources    



Further reading:
John Woodforde, The Strange Story of False Teeth, (London, 1968)

Stephanie Pain, “The Great Tooth Robbery” in The New Scientist  (London, 16 June 2001)

BBC H2G2, Waterloo Teeth, A History of Dentures  (August 24, 2005)

In 1840, Lord Auckland, Governor General of India, asked for reports upon the condition and management of the four Insane Hospitals in the Bengal Presidency at Russapaglah in the 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Dacca, and Patna. A circular letter was issued asking for information, for example, on the number of patients, the construction, organisation and management of the hospitals, the methods employed for the amusement and occupation of the patients, and the rates of cures and mortality.

The reports submitted give a wealth of detail on the condition of the hospitals and the treatment of the patients. In his report on the Russa Hospital, dated 16th January 1841, F P Strong, Civil Surgeon of the 24 Parganas, included details of the botanical activities being employed as a method for treating and helping patients suffering from mental illness by providing employment and amusements. The idea being that working in the garden provided for the patients “exercise and mental change, with a view to their forgetting or in some manner losing sight of their unfortunate condition”.

Insane Hospital, Russa Zillah, 24 Parganas, IOR/F/4/2042/92957 

All the hospitals were concerned with providing some amusement or employment for the patients on a voluntary basis, and most had a garden to which the patients had access. However, the Russa Hospital was particularly successful in cultivating a wide range of botanical products, specimens and seeds of which were sent back to England and distributed to other cultivators throughout India. Among the products the patients cultivated or experimented with in the hospital gardens were:

•    Coffee
•    Several varieties of cotton
•    Sugar cane
•    Mulberry
•    Aloe

The patients’ botanical endeavours were recognised by learned botanical organisations. For instance, the favourable results of experiments in cultivating the cactus plant, and rearing the cochineal insect, were published by the Agricultural Society in 1836. Dr Strong reported that the patients had successfully cultivated sapan wood, with its seeds being sent to the Agricultural Society, and distributed throughout India. He sent large quantities of the wood to Australasia, where he expected it would make excellent hedges. The Mysore thorn was also cultivated with the same objective.

Of all the occupations available to the patients, the cultivation of coffee was found to be the safest and best, with Dr Strong reporting that “Its cultivation is agreeable to the Insanes and occupies their attention a good deal and I believe has gone far to enable me to discharge many cured of their malady sooner than I could have done without such resources”.

Many of the stronger patients also engaged in building and landscaping work to improve the hospital's grounds, while the female patients were engaged in “spinning cotton, beating, shelling and picking rice, preparing fish spices and vegetables for the cookroom”. Most of the coffee was picked by the women, with some cooking their morning and evening meals.

The correspondence reporting on the condition and management of these hospitals can be found in the India Office Records. The report by Dr Strong on the gardens at Russa has been digitised as part of the Botany in British India Project.

John O’Brien
Post 1858 India Office Records  


See also:
Exercise to ease a trouble mind Therapy for mental health at the East India Company's Pembroke House Asylum in London

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]

Invited in 1835 to review the state of agriculture in South India, the Scottish botanist Robert Wight was not short of ideas for its improvement. One proposal, outlined in a letter to the Government of Madras, was to employ convicts as agricultural labourers. Both convict and State, Wight suggested, would benefit: the convict by acquiring a useful skill, the state from the likely increase in crop production. But the right tools for the job were essential. Recollecting the successful introduction of the wheel-barrow and the long hoe, Wight recommended ‘the most perfect implement of the plough kind that has hitherto been produced’. This was Wilkie’s plough, manufactured by the Wilkie family at Uddingston in Lanarkshire, and the winner in ploughing contests across lowland Scotland. This sketch shows the plough’s innovatory tilt: the blade cut the furrow at an angle, which allowed the wheel to roll through the furrow more steadily. 

Sketch of Wilkie's plough

Wight also sought to help skilled convicts. He recommended that prisoners keep up their trades and be given the latest equipment: hammers for blacksmiths, fly-shuttles for weavers. Such tools, he insisted, would ultimately produce ‘better men, and better Artists’. The Government of Madras was less convinced, but agreed to deploy a small number of prisoners to work on government farms.

Wight never forgot the value of proper implements. In later years, when setting up experimental cotton farms at Coimbatore, Madras, he rewarded Ram Sing, who had procured some Bourbon cotton seeds for him, with a complete set of ‘Ploughs, Harrows, Hoes, Yokes and Gear’ (IOR/F/4/1964/86089 folio 37r).

The file about convicts can be read at IOR/F/4/1815/74864.

These files have been digitised as part of the “Botany in British India” project. A complete list of digitised material is available.

Antonia Moon
Lead Curator, Post-1858 India Office Records    

Further reading:
H. J. Noltie, The Life and Work of Robert Wight (Edinburgh, 2007)

Tonight’s performance of The Singing Hypnotist by Christopher Green will mark the culmination of his work as Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the British Library. To add to Christopher’s stories about hypnotists through the ages, including Annie de Montford (‘the most powerful mesmerist in the world’), I should like to offer Dr James Esdaile, the self-proclaimed ‘Apostle of Mesmerism in India’.

Hypnotic Session ©Lessing Archive/British Library Board Images Online

In September 1846 ten Indian male patients were taken from the wards of the Native Hospital in Calcutta. They were placed in a house in the hospital grounds to act as guinea pigs in an experiment to determine whether mesmerism could be used successfully to achieve painless surgery.  The men were aged 18-40 years, both Hindu and Muslim:  Cheedam, Bissonath, Nilmoney, Neechul, Deeloo, Jahiroodeen, Dohmun, Ramchund, Hyder Khan, Murali Doss.

Esdaile ‘declined to perform Mesmeric manipulations himself, on the ground of this being needless and detrimental to his health’. His mesmerizers were young men, Hindu and Muslim, aged 14-30, most of them compounders and dressers from the Hooghly Hospital: Munoorudeen, Nilmoney Doss, Tintamanee, Nuwab Jan, Nobin Doss, Ruhim Bux. A separate mesmerizer was assigned to each patient. They worked in silence in darkened rooms but members of the Committee appointed by the Government of Bengal to assess Esdaile’s work were able to view through small apertures made in the door panels. The patient lay on his back, with the mesmerizer sitting behind him at the head of the bed, leaning over so their faces were almost in contact. The mesmerizer passed his hands over the patient’s face, chiefly the eyes, breathing frequently and gently over the patient’s lips, eyes and nostrils. The process continued without interruption for at least two hours each day, but for as long as eight hours in one case.

The Committee reported that in seven cases the processes produced deep sleep.  It proved impossible to wake the patients with loud noises; light; burning with red hot cinders placed on the chest; pricking with a pin or the point of a knife or scapel; sticking a pin between the fingers or on the point of the nose; or pulling hairs from the chest.  It was different from sleep induced by narcotic drugs since the patient could be woken quickly with transverse passes, fanning, and blowing on the face and eyes. Seven surgical operations were performed without signs of pain whilst the patient was asleep. The patients were all unaware that an operation had taken place.

It was decided that the method warranted further investigation and Esdaile was put in charge of a small experimental hospital in Calcutta for one year. Again his work found favour. Esdaile was appointed Presidency Surgeon in 1848 and Marine Surgeon in 1850. However the East India Company’s support for mesmerism in hospitals fell away when ether was established as a quick and cheap alternative. Esdaile continued with mesmerism in private practice but returned to the UK in 1851.


Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records             


Further reading
IOR/V/26/850/11 Report of the committee appointed by Government to observe and report upon surgical operations by Dr. J. Esdaile, upon patients under the influence of alleged mesmeric agency (Calcutta, 1846)
James Esdaile, Mesmerism in India, and its practical application in surgery and medicine (London, 1846)
Waltraud Ernst, Esdaile, James (1808-1859) Oxford DNB

As the Metropolitan Railway celebrates its 150th anniversary, we’d like to draw our readers’ attention to some less well-known papers in the India Office Records which concern the development of the London rail network.

Cover of Near and far : pleasant home districts on the north side of London served by the Metropolitan Railway (1912) Images Online   

In 1874 the India Office received notice that the proposed Hounslow and Metropolitan Railway was to run through the grounds of the Royal Indian Asylum at Ealing.  The Elm Grove estate in Ealing had been purchased by the Secretary of State for India from the Perceval family for £24,500 in March 1870. Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt supervised the conversion of the house into a lunatic asylum for patients who had been sent home from India. The Royal Indian Asylum opened in August 1870.

Clause 32 of an Act passed in 1878 for the building of the Hounslow and Metropolitan Railway was intended to protect the interests of the Royal Indian Asylum:
•    no more than two acres of land was to be acquired compulsorily without the consent of the Secretary of State
•    the railway was to pass through the grounds of the Asylum in a cutting
•    a bridge and road over the cutting were to be constructed and maintained
•    the railway was to be fenced off from the Asylum grounds.

Negotiations between the India Office and the railway company before conveyance of the land in 1881 centred on the amount of compensation to be paid for the land, the positioning of the bridge, and the fencing.  Dr Thomas Christie, the Superintendent of the Asylum, was consulted about the protection to be given to patients passing across the bridge. It was agreed that a properly constructed iron railing would be sufficient and that it would look better than the high brick wall shown in the drawing submitted by the railway company.  Christie believed that patients were less likely to climb an open railing than a wall beyond which they could not see without getting to the top. The only horizontal railing bars should be at the top and bottom – intermediate bars would ‘give facilities for climbing’.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records  

Further reading:
For papers, correspondence, plans and drawings about the Hounslow and Metropolitan Railway scheme at Ealing Search our Catalogues Archives and Manuscripts
IOR/L/SUR Papers of the India Office Surveyor’s Department
IOR/L/L/2 India Office Property Records
Anthony Farrington, The records of the East India College Haileybury and other institutions (London 1976)

Henry George (Harry) Keith (1899-1982) was Conservator of Forests in British North Borneo, a state administered by the British North Borneo (Chartered) Company from 1881 until 1946 when it became a British Crown Colony. It is now the Malaysian state of Sabah.

The Court of Directors of the British North Borneo Company, based in London, constituted the government of North Borneo which was represented in the territory by a governor and an administration that by the 1930s had sixty British officers.

Harry Keith is perhaps best remembered as the husband of Agnes Keith (1901-1982) who wrote a trilogy – Land below the wind; Three came home and White man returns - detailing the family’s experiences in Borneo in the 1930s and 1940s, including their internment by the Japanese.

Throughout the 1930s, Keith argued that the forests of Borneo should not be solely seen as a source of timber for export but were an essential resource for local communities and a source of revenue from the trade in non-timber forest products. Keith reminded his superiors in London of the government’s obligations to the people of Borneo, including the management and exploitation of forests for the public good.

Keith highlighted the economic importance of non-timber forest products in North Borneo, including edible birds’ nests. The nests are produced from the saliva of several species of swifts that nest in the limestone caves found throughout Borneo and elsewhere in maritime Southeast Asia. The nests are prized by the Chinese – both in China and in the communities of the Chinese diaspora – for their culinary and medicinal uses. Singapore and Hong Kong are still the main centres of trade in birds’ nests.

Chinese tradesman selling birds’ nests [BL,455.e.9, plate 45]  Images Online      

From the earliest days of Chartered Company rule in North Borneo, the royalty (usually a 10% ad valorem tax) levied on edible birds’ nests was an important source of revenue for the government.

In 1931 the Curator of Raffles Museum in Singapore, F. N. Chasen, prepared a report for the North Borneo government on the birds’ nest caves in the territory. He argued that creating forest reserves were an important way of isolating the caves from human disturbance. He believed the birds’ nest industry could be exploited further, benefiting both collectors and the government who charged a tax on the trade in nests. Using Chasen’s report to support his case, Keith was able to reserve 45,000 acres of forest specifically for the protection of the swifts’ habitat. Preserving forests near the birds’ caves also allowed the nest collectors easy access to bamboo and rattan canes used for scaffolding to access the birds’ nests.

Keith’s views and work, often in conflict with the logging companies’ interests and not always appreciated by the India Office in London, showed the benefits of enlightened forest management practices in a colonial environment.

Nicholas Martland
Formerly Australasian Studies Curator

Further Reading

In 2002 the British Library purchased a number of rare publications relating to British North Borneo from the estate of Harold and Agnes Keith.

The official records of British North Borneo are held at the UK National Archives.

British North Borneo. Report by Governor Treacher, from 1st July to 31st December, 1882. (London, 1883).[BL, RB.31.b.258]

Chasen, F. N. The birds’ nest caves and industry of British North Borneo with special reference to the Gomantong Caves. (Jesselton, 1931) [BL, W36/8055 DSC]

Dennis Higton, who died earlier this year at the age of 90, was a British aeronautical engineer who played a little known, but important part in the testing of Britain's first jet aircraft in 1942 and 1943.
Dennis grew up in difficult circumstances and with limited prospects in the hungry years of the 1920s and 1930s depression, until a position as an engineering apprentice at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), Farnborough offered him a rare opportunity. As Dennis recalled for his interview for National Life Stories An Oral History of British Science, “I can’t tell you the resolve that I put upon myself not to cheat, not to slack, to become absurdly diligent because I wouldn’t have another chance.” His practical skills and hard work at night-school won him a position in the Aerodynamics Department when he completed his apprenticeship. As a practical engineer, without a university education, Dennis faced a daunting challenge joining a group that included some of the nation's finest theoretical aerodynamicists and mathematicians.

Dennis Higton being The Boy at RAE

However, this very difference from those around him helped make Dennis an invaluable member of the team. His start as an apprentice meant that he could bridge the divide, social and educational, between technical workshop staff and aeronautical scientists, and his ingenuity as a practical engineer would prove invaluable to more theoretically inclined colleagues.

In the 1940s and 1950s Farnborough was heavily involved in trying to understand the behaviour of aircraft flying at high speed. With wind tunnels unable to function accurately at speeds approaching the speed of sound, much of this work had to be based on data collected 'live' by instruments fitted to aircraft which were then recorded as the planes flew high speed test flights. Not only were the test flights dangerous, but the primitive nature of the instruments available and the tiny spaces on aircraft to fit the equipment created great problems for measuring flight data. Faced with these problems, Dennis devised a range of ingenious instrumentation installations for recording data from aircraft in flight, including the instruments for the first official flight test programme of Britain's very first jet aircraft, the Gloster E.28/39 powered by Frank Whittle's newly developed jet engine. These instruments provided invaluable data for other aeronautical engineers of a more theoretical bent to base their calculations on.

Dennis Higton on the Gloster E.28-39

We may hear about “great British inventions” like the jet engine, carbon fibre, or the modern computer, but how many of us could name more than one or two of those who helped to create them? As Dennis' story reveals, behind every scientist you've heard of, and every item of engineering you use, are an army of hidden individuals, making small but vital contributions as part of a wider team effort.

Dennis Higton (in white shirt) talking to aircrew of a British Buccaneer strike bomber under test on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington.  Photo courtesy of David Eagles.

Dennis Higton’s full life story interview can be accessed via the British Library Sounds website.

Thomas Lean
Oral History of British Science project interviewer (Made in Britain strand)

A version of this post appears on the History of Science blog