Commonplace 184 George & A Tribute To Mr Murphy And The Blue Ribbon Army

Anyone interested in George and his carefully stage-managed web of relationships will wonder what the heck was going on when he hooked up with Eduard Bertz, his German man-wife and long-time correspondent. It is worth starting out with the knowledge that they met after Eduard placed a lonely hearts ad in a newspaper and George saw it and responded. It was 1879 - George was 22, Bertz was four years older and in exile from his native Germany for being a political activist for the wrong side. Though there seems to be no written record of either the ad or the correspondence it elicited, this is how a similar fictional account is depicted in 'The Unclassed' (1883/4) as a device for bringing together Osmund Waymark (Man of the World) and Julian Casti (Ingénue):

'Wanted, human companionship. A young man of four-and-twenty wishes to find a congenial associate of about his own age. He is a student of ancient and modern literatures, a free-thinker in religion, a lover of art in all its forms, a hater of conventionalism. Would like to correspond in the first instance. Address O. W., City News Rooms, W.C.' (Note: WC means a West Central London district, not a water closet!)

Of course, Eduard’s ad was probably cloaked in similar faux intellectual claptrap about lonely single man seeks intellectual equals to discuss Socialism and similar nerdy stuff, but Eduard was a closet gay man at a time when the contributory bases responsible for gender were being explored, and there were few ways for gay men to meet similar types in a place where a man could be tripped up over failings in his knowledge of the social mores of the new country. 

by Tom of Finland

Morley Roberts, that most unreliable of memoirists and sometime contributor to the creation of George’s legend (there are quite a few of those haha), claimed Marianne aka Nell didn’t much like Bertz, and resented the friendship between the two men, but as Roberts never met Nell in person, his views are invalid; after all, how could he possibly know what she thought about anything if he had never discussed events with her? Maybe she was one of those women gifted with the infamous sense known as ‘gaydar’ – the ability to spot a gay man at a thousand paces – and knew dopey George would not have worked it out himself; perhaps she sensed something in George that might have wholeheartedly responded positively to homosexual advances, and she feared for her marriage, and, by extension, her financial security. Perhaps Eduard treated her like an inferior and made her feel uncomfortable. Maybe she just didn’t like him. Maybe she and Eduard got on like a house on fire and George got so jealous he told Morley Roberts a lie about what she thought of the German, as an act of revenge. Who knows? The story of it is usually told by biographers to make it look like Nell was a jealous fiend who ruined all George’s chances of socialising, even of making a Man Friend, so make your own judgement.

Pledge designed by Walter Crane ( 1845-1915)

Incapable of what might be seen as intimate relationships – that is, liaisons that brought him emotional closeness – George maintained his friendship with Eduard for over twenty years, mainly because they spent very little of that time actually enjoying face-to-face contact. Theirs was a love match shared in the many letters in which George presents his most reasoned and rational persona, but also his most anodyne, and most censored one. No confessions of wife abuse, offspring abandoning, syphilis, or the torment he visited upon his second wife. No talk of the cruel abandoning of his first wife, or his shameless exploitation of his third or the hate campaign he conducted towards his second. Nothing but carefully edited highlights reflecting well on George in his role of the put upon husband, undiscovered literary national treasure and all-round martyr. 

Francis Murphy cabinet card

It would be easy to misread the length of their friendship as a sign of a meeting of equals, or even of a meeting of minds, but George told Gabrielle Fleury that Bertz did not understand him, and that he did not feel their relationship was particularly close or simpatico. Of course, George never said this to Eduard's face, and the letters they wrote each other give no indication that George did not welcome and value feedback from his German friend, or ask for that dreaded catnip he was so addicted to – sympathy – which Eduard gave freely, always offering consolation to George for some complained of annoyance or setback. George returned the favour and encouraged the somewhat depressive Bertz when life got him down, and praised his endeavours and achievements. 

Cheers!

One interesting chapter in Eduard's life occurred not long after his June 1883 return to London from the Rugby Settlement (see See Commonplace 8 for more on this). In a letter to his brother Algernon (September 2nd 1883) George writes: I could tell a sad story about poor Bertz. To my amazement he has drifted over to the religious revivalists, has joined Blue Ribbon Army, Young Men's Christian Association, and I know not what. He spends his days & nights at Salvation Army meetings, & the like. Whether this means weakening of the brain, I can't say; I stand & marvel but protest has been in vain. 

So, who do we have to thank for The Blue Ribbon Army? Francis Murphy (1836-1907), that's who. He was an Irish immigrant to the US who started his own Evangelical Temperance Movement taking the blue ribbon motif from a verse in the Old Testament Bible: Numbers 15:38-39: Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments, throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue: and it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them. He toured extensively in the States, Australia and Europe, and maybe Eduard went to a Temperance meeting when he lived in the Rugby Colony in Tennessee from 1881-3. 

Meetings of the BRA generally included food and hot beverages (such as tea from packets as above at 6d a quarter pound), whilst providing a community focal point with opportunities to socialise and give and receive support, with all areas of life covered by a web of helpers and enablers. There was also a chance to worship in the Evangelical tradition, with singing and prayer added to well-received testaments to sobriety. Here is a taster of what was on offer: 

THE TEMPERANCE CRUSADE IN DUNDEE

Last night a farewell tea meeting was held with Mr Francis Murphy, the American Apostle of Temperance, who has during the last five weeks, in conjunction with the temperance party, carried on a gospel temperance crusade in Dundee. The meeting was held in the drill hall, where upwards of 3000 persons partook of tea. A choir of over 100 voices led the singing of hymns. Provost Moncur occupied the chair, and on the platform were many clergymen and others. Mr Murphy leaves Dundee for Manchester, where he is to begin a crusade. In the course of his address, the Provost, on behalf of the Executive Council, presented Mr Murphy with an address, expressing their deep sense of indebtedness to God for having directed Mr Murphy to Dundee, and their gratitude to Mr Murphy for his extraordinary labours, which had bean unparalleled in result. The committee also recorded that during the campaign of a month, 32,000 persons had taken the pledge of abstinence, and at least 40,000 had donned the “blue ribbon” badge of union in the work. Mr Murphy, in acknowledging the address, expressed his sincere gratitude for the manner in which he had been assisted in his work, and for the very great kindness he had experienced . He promised, if spared, to return to Dundee after his work in Manchester was finished, and to carry on the work until it was finished. Speeches were delivered by various gentlemen.

A Dundee Newspaper, 30th January 1882

Eduard may have made use of the wider remit of the Blue Ribbon lot offering beds for the homeless, which would be invaluable to a man with few contacts and friends returning to London from the States. He didn't stay in England for long. After a brief spell of real poverty, he eventually found work at the British Library (he'd worked in the Rugby settlement as a librarian) which provided him with the means to try his hand at children's fiction, producing 'The French Prisoners: A Story For Boys', published in 1884 and available here for free click. Bertz finally returned to Germany in early 1884, when it was safe to come home from exile, and remained there until his death in Potsdam in 1931. 

To find out more about The Blue Ribbon Army click

The Blue Ribbon Army is celebrated in the memorable poem by the mighty William McGonagall:

A Tribute to Mr Murphy and the Blue Ribbon Army

All hail to Mr Murphy, he is a hero brave,
That has crossed the mighty Atlantic wave,
For what purpose let me pause and think-
I answer, to warn the people not to taste strong drink.

And, I’m sure, if they take his advice, they never will rue
The day they joined the Blue Ribbon Army in the year 1882;
And I hope to their colours they will always prove true,
And shout, Hurrah ! for Mr Murphy and the Ribbon of Blue.

What is strong drink? Let me think– I answer ’tis a thing
From whence the majority of evils spring,
And causes many a fireside with boisterous talk to ring,
And leaves behind it a deadly sting.

Some people do say it is good when taken in moderation,
But, when taken to excess, it leads to tribulation,
Also to starvation and loss of reputation,
Likewise your eternal soul’s damnation.

The drunkard, he says he can’t give it up,
For I must confess temptation’s in the cup;
But he wishes to God it was banished from the land,
While he holds the cup in his trembling hand.

And he exclaims in the agony of his soul –
Oh, God, I cannot myself control
From this most accurs’d cup!
Oh, help me, God, to give it up!

Strong drink to the body can do no good;
It defiles the blood, likewise the food,
And causes the drunkard with pain to groan,
Because it extracts the marrow from the bone:

And hastens him on to a premature grave,
Because to the cup he is bound a slave;
For the temptation is hard to thole,
And by it he will lose his immortal soul.

The more’s the pity, I must say,
That so many men and women are by it led astray,
And decoyed from the paths of virtue and led on to vice
By drinking too much alcohol and acting unwise.

Good people all, of every degree,
I pray, ye all be warned by me:
I advise ye all to pause and think,
And never more to taste strong drink.

Because the drunkard shall never inherit the kingdom of God
And whosoever God loves he chastens with his rod:
Therefore, be warned, and think in time,
And don’t drink any more whisky, rum, or wine.

But go at once– make no delay,
And join the Blue Ribbon Army without dismay,
And rally round Mr Murphy, and make a bold stand,
And help to drive the Bane of Society from our land.

I wish Mr Murphy every success,
Hoping he will make rapid progress;
And to the Blue Ribbon Army may he always prove true,
And adhere to his colours– the beautiful blue.

Commonplace 183  George & Eugenics' Little Brother, Phrenology PART TWO

Phrenology is covered well in a number of websites, including this one click, John van Wyhe's Phrenology On The Web, which is a treasure trove - a fecking treasure trove! - of stuff.



One of the more bizarre aspects of the fad for the pseudo-science of phrenology was the way various religious groups took its claims as gospel, and latched on to the opportunity to categorise people into good and bad types... o, hang on, that's exactly what all religions do, isn't it? Silly me! Anyhoo, when Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) developed his system of reading the character, mind and personality via the brain and head, there were few takers in the international scientific community -  those with the correct shape of the rational part of their brain were not convinced. In 1815, The Edinburgh Review published a scathing report on it. Gall's colleague and compatriot, JG Spurzheim fought back, making a very well-publicised rebuttal which, in the end did more to promote the cause of phrenology than any amount of books on the subject could have. At a time when the exploration of science was a discerning gentleman's hobby, any new-fangled theory about how the human body and mind worked was bound to attract amateur experts. Gall believed the brain contained 27 different organs which controlled various psychological, emotional, intellectual functions. Phrenology became a fashionable area of study, whilst enjoying a secondary life as a popular social activity. Mesmerism enjoyed a similar rise in public interest as an amusement as much as a medical tool.


In the late-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, science was a whole world of entertainment and wonder to anyone with an enquiring mind or an interest in novelty and creepiness. There was something about a system that claimed to explain the mind that appealed to the Gothic mindset, in the days when psychological factors of human motivation were being explored. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with its reanimated Creature thrilled all sectors of society. Ghosts, witches, public hangings, seances, the French Revolution and the horrors of the Napoleonic War, the upsurge in body-snatching for medical research, world-changing scientific discoveries and a public hunger for demonstrations of scientific experiments, was compounded by a world of uncertainty brought about by terrifying illnesses like syphilis and cholera which ensured there was always a market for weirdness. When phrenology became more than a parlour game and began to be taken seriously, some of its more sinister aspects were more akin to eugenics than psychology.

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) kick-started the debate into how humans related to animals. Notions of Determinism, the philosophy that tells us that all things everywhere arise in answer to some sort of need, which means everything is predictable and inevitable, suggested human traits and characteristics also subscribed to limited, fixed states. Phrenology promoted the notion that the physiological explains the psychological. The down side to this is that these simplistic views can be manipulated into a system that compares racial features and by loading these with negative attributes and meanings, can claim to provide evidence that some races are irrefutably better than others. Utter tosh, but there we are. Phrenology maintained that there was an ideal 'healthy' type (obviously a white, British middle class male etc etc) that all others should be judged by. The ideal Brit was intelligent, noble, resilient, creative, industrious... all the good things - again, people can be judged by it. If you can plot these characteristics to various parts of the skull - intelligence to the forehead - then any measurements deviating from the norm will be deficient or the opposite: for example, a high brow means intelligence, a low one means idiocy.

In fact, the pseudo-science of phrenology probably did more to promote racial, gender, and class stereotyping that any branch of study, and still informs racists who think in primitive, uneducated, reductive ways. For example, even the title of this one makes the flesh crawl: Combe's Popular Phrenology, Exhibiting The Exact Phrenological Admeasurements (sic) of Above Fifty Distinguished and Extraordinary Personages, of Both Sexes With Skulls of the Various Nations of the World click. It reminds us there was a time when perfectly sane usually men collected the skulls of different peoples of the world to exhibit in their drawing rooms as conversation piece curios to promote chitchat with guests. I refer you here click to boggle your mind. And here click.

In How To Read Character: A New, Illustrated Hand-book of Phrenology and Physiognomy For Students and Examiners by Samuel R Wells (1870) click is a particularly odious example of the kind of book published on the subject. Even when phrenology was being dismissed as errant claptrap, Wells was selling the sort of guff that claimed to be able to reduce people to types of mainly good vs bad, attractive vs unattractive qualities. When Professor Joseph Blackburne delivered his temperance talks with a phrenology twist, he did so with utter sincerity and good-intention. Any new medical theory put together by sincere persons who want to offer the human race a bit of help. even when it works out to be rubbish, is worth consideration. Unfortunately, phrenology lends itself well to being abused by charlatans who seek to exploit the desperate and vulnerable, or those who simply place their faith in science.

The full results of George's test by Professor Blackburne can be found at the Beinecke Library at Yale University under this heading:

Blackburne, phrenologist. "The Phrenological Sketch of Master [George] Gissing 13," Wakefield. Autograph manuscript. Accompanied by a phrenological chart and register of George Gissing, 1870 Oct and a printed form filled in by Professor Blackburne.

The first volume of the Coustillas biography has an extract:
...it observed that the boy was fit to make a good officer, a good doctor or to take up chemistry. He also deduced George would always be something of a social misfit, restless and fond of travel, he would not always be a good judge of his own conduct, but would always have a strong sense of justice. Not sure about the 'strong sense of justice' part. I would love to know what the biography has redacted - did it mention George's propensity for self-delusion, petty-mindedness, vengeance, secrecy, self-pity, cruelty.... I could go on, but I won't.

A visual aid phrenology teaching set click

Commonplace 182  George & Eugenics' Little Brother, Phrenology. PART ONE

George's father was a man of many parts, and something of a lover of science inasmuch as he ran a chemist's shop and published modest, but significant works on botany. The shop was one of several in the centre of Wakefield, so competition will have been fierce. Maybe this is why Mr Gissing Snr also dabbled in being a wine merchant, offering as broad a retail experience as possible to the sort of customer with money to spend, maybe even hoping to attract a certain demographic, posher than the average pleb who drank beer.

George was always snotty about people who ran or worked in shops, probably because the prospect of one day having to take on the chemist's shop himself terrified him. Maybe this is why he was so driven to get a useful education. It's a sort of northern England working class cliche for children to dread the thought of having to be coal miners or mill hands like their parents, so they work like mad to get to university (or turn to crime - maybe George's original approach haha) to 'better' their chances. Go and have a look at Peter Flannery's tv series Our Friends In The North click if you want to know more.

Instruments for measuring the head.

The role of the dispensing chemist was not what we would recognise today. In the UK in the 1850s, a bid to restrict chemist's shops selling the lethal element arsenic over the counter was hampered by the fact that there was no official definition of what a chemist was (that is, the sort of person who sold medicines, not the laboratory kind). Arsenic, like mercury, is a toxic substance that could in those days be sold as a curative and added to all manner of quack treatments, sold to gullible consumers who might buy in good faith from a potentially unscrupulous person setting themselves up as an expert on cures and treatments when what they really were, was a shopkeeper. So, as a result of the 1851 Arsenic Act, professional standards were introduced to monitor the role of the dispensing chemist.

In 1861, The United Society of Chemists and Druggists was formed to establish a professional body to oversee the trade. Everyone already practising as a chemist was allowed to join, but the Society had no power to insist on the acquisition of specialist knowledge leading to a qualification, and so shopkeepers could join on the same level as those who had studied at university. In fact, these untrained shopkeepers were entitled to sit on the Society's Council, and it wasn't until 1864, with the Pharmacy Act, that a register was set up to monitor the activities and skills of chemists freely selling in their shops what were poisons and heavy metals. Clearly, anyone who wanted to compete in the market had to offer the very best in professionally recognised skills and standards - and a fine range of table wines haha.

George??

Mr Gissing Snr was a man who wanted to make his mark on Wakefield, not from behind a shop counter, but on the mean streets, ankle deep in muck (it was said of some northern towns that pigs were let to roam about to eat the filth of the streets - which was a wicked lie. Pigs are clean-living from choice and have quite delicate digestive systems). Local politics called and found Thomas Gissing ready, willing and able, but what lay in store for Gissing Jnr Number One Son? In October 1870, in an attempt to find the answer to that, he took thirteen-year old George to be examined by Professor Blackburne, renowned expert phrenologist, Wakefield resident and father of Joseph Henry Blackburne aka The Black Death, one of the most celebrated chess players of all time.

Information about Professor Joseph Blackburne comes from a very interesting (if somewhat niche) book about his son: 'Joseph Henry Blackburne - A Chess Biography' by TD Harding (pub McFarland and Company Inc of Jefferson, North Carolina August 2015 and available to download through google play). It's a fascinating read, even if you aren't interested overmuch in chess. More proof that the Douglas Adams Theory of Interconnectedness rules: Prof. Blackburne was living in Chorlton-on-Medlock when his chess champion son JH was born - George lived in the same part of Manchester when he was at Owens College and his GP, Adolphe Wuhltuch had two sons Victor Lionel and Julius, who both went on to be chess champions in Yorkshire (they get a mention here click in the annals of Yorkshire Chess History). Victor Lionel payed against The Black Death more than once. And in 1870, JH Blackburne played a series of games in Baden-Baden organised by Ivan Turgenev, who later employed George to write about British life for the publication Vyestnik Evropy click. 

Back to Joseph Blackburne the phrenologist. He was born in Leeds in around 1818 and many of the extended Blackburne family lived in Huddersfield and Wakefield.  By 1838 he was living in Manchester and marrying a local girl there. Joseph started out as a book-keeper with a sideline in painting miniature portraits, but when this failed to provide for his growing family, he began looking to diversify. It seems many Victorians turned their hand to whatever they could to make a go of things, ever setting themselves up as experts which, of course, some were. Those without the benefit of an expensive education had to make their way as best they could. Joseph attended meetings of the Phrenological Society held at the Manchester Mechanics' Institute click and a second career was born. Phrenology was one of the 'new' branches of science so beloved of the likes of the Positivists. It sought to quantify human characteristics and present them as 'types', but as with the equally new sciences of sociology and psychology, falls short of providing any testable evidence to support those claims. 

Joseph was a committed teetotaller and delivered lectures on the topic and held support meetings at the Middleton Temperance Hall when it opened in 1847, as reported in the Manchester Courier and the Manchester Times. He also toured England and Ireland with his temperance talks, taking The Black Death with him. There is a correlation between the performance of any medical procedure - I'm stretching that term to include phrenology here - just as there is in exhibition-level activities like world-class chess. The Black Death will have picked up some pointers from his father whose customers will have expected a certain amount of hocus-pocus flim-flam in the quasi-scientific examination, head measuring and translating figures into predictions. Medicine on any level requires a belief in magic (from both sides of the deal), and the style with which consultations and treatments are delivered can make the difference between a subject believing in a cure and finding some amelioration for their condition and a doubting Thomas who goes on to waste away from despair and fear.

Those who sought to explain the mysteries of alcoholism latched on to phrenology's promise of the possibility of being able to predict anyone who might be susceptible to addiction simply by determining personality traits divined by measuring the shape and features of the head and applying the basic rules of phrenological. By recognising those who were vulnerable to addiction, a warning could be given to prevent the destructive effects of , for example, alcohol and keep the potential alcoholic on the straight and narrow. We nowadays recognise that genetic predisposition towards addictive vulnerability is a more or less proven fact, so phrenology, though using the wrong parameters, did point in a direction that gave the addict some explanation as to why self-control was sometimes of little use. 

George, to a 'T'????

On 19th August 1850 Joseph advertised in the Manchester Times:

LIKENESSES. - J. BLACKBURNE Miniature Painter & Practical Phrenologist, 40, King-street, Manchester. From the very liberal patronage with which the artist has been honoured, he has induced to PROLONG HIS STAY within this city, and has REMOVED from No 10, King-street to the more convenient rooms at No 40, opposite the Old Exchange, where numerous likenesses of popular ministers, &c in the city,and others, may be seen. Terms moderate, - Open from nine am till eight pm.

Another ad:
J. BLACKBURNE, Artist and Practical Phrenologist, 40, King-street, Manchester still continues to take PERFECT LIKENESSES in every style, suitable for all kinds of frames, cases, lockets, brooches, &c, at prices from One Shilling upwards. Numerous specimens of well-known Ministers and others to this city may be seen at the artist's rooms. Open from ten a, till eight pm. - NB Phrenological Registers (so important to all wishing to know themselves) for One Shilling with a full analysis of character, from 2s 6d.

By 1851, Joseph was describing himself in the census of that year as 'Practical Phrenologist, Miniature Painter'. Still situated in Manchester until mid-1852 when he took his show on the road to the major seaside towns:
MR. BLACKBURNE the Phrenologist and Artist, 40, King-street, Manchester, has returned from Scarboro' to the above Gallery, where he has been liberally patronised for faithful Miniatures, Portraits, and Phrenological Examinations. LIKENESSES faithfully copied in every style. Phrenological Registers, 1s. 

In 1855, Joseph added a line in daguerreotypes to his repertoire, which reflected the rise of the popularity of photography and the threatened obsolescence of the portrait miniature. By 1856, he described himself as 'photographic artist' and in 1858, he was simply 'photographer' for a while, then back to photographer and practical  phrenologist. with no mention of the paintings. 

This fluctuation in fortunes and the ever-changing tide of his career shows a man not afraid to respond flexibly to the demands of a fickle public. Following trends, then ditching them, responding confidently with what the public wanted led him to finally settle on phrenology as his main source of income, which was a good move as it was resource-light and with no great financial overheads, unlike photography or the work of an artist. We have in the 1861 census a mention that he was a 'Practical Phrenologist' - all mention of photography and miniatures gone.  

For some time, Joseph augmented his income with stints as a travelling salesman, as reported in the 1861 census. He was already travelling around the country on phrenological business so it made sense to add a bit of business to it. By 1865, the family was living in London, and Joseph was appearing at the Chelmsford Temperance Society: On Monday evening last, Mr Blackburne, practical phrenologist of London, delivered a lecture in the hall of the Chelmsford Literary Institution, and, owing to the inclemency of the weather, there was a thin attendance. Subject - 'Why Teachers and Preachers should be Teetotallers. The lecture was supported by some excellent life-size portraits, painted by Mr Blackburne, of many eminent men, and also of some great criminals, including the murderer Muller, who was recently executed. (Franz Muller was hanged for what was the first murder on a British train click.)

Poor pickings in London forced Joseph back to the north and he relocated to Wakefield in the late 1860s. It was in 1870 that he examined George. In the 1871 census, Joseph was living in Wakefield and working as a phrenologist. There is also another 'Interconnectedness' moment here: it seems Joseph's Aunt Mary married a Joseph De Trosier who took her to Batley (near Wakefield) to run a chemist's shop, before moving to run a similar venture in Wakefield. Possibly Mr Gissing Snr knew Mr De Trosier through work connections. What a small world it is.
By 1875, Joseph had taken his family to live in Scarborough. In his usual way, he advertised his services, this time in the York Herald:
TRIPS TO SCARBORO' VISIT PROF. BLACKBURNE'S PHRENOLOGICAL GALLERY, 22, Newboro'-st. Portraits (life-size) of HW Beecher, the late Prof. Wells of New York, the Ven. Archdeacon Blunt and 400 others may be seen - free to visitors. 

In 1874, Joseph wrote 2 booklets. 'The Baby; How to Save it: Advice to Mothers by Joseph Blackburne, Phrenologist' but I can't find a copy. I think we can deduce what it was about. And 'Helps To Progress Physiologically and Phrenologically Considered. Again, no sign of a copy. But the rise in literacy after the 1870 Education Act led to a boom in self help books so maybe these were riding the crest of that wave.

He still toured, spreading the word, and in the Middlesborough Daily Gazette, sometime in December 1875:
THE GOOD TIME COMING. PROFESSOR BLACKBURNE, the great Phrenologist from Scarborough, will LECTURE THIS EVENING at the Borough Hall, Stockton, Admission free, reserved seats 6d.

From 1877, in the Leamington Spa courier: 
Professor BLACKBURNE, the well-known phrenologist, who has been lecturing at the Music Hall during the week, announces that he intends to continue the course next week.

At some time, Joseph returned to the north west of England, where in 1899, he died, in Southport, that seaside town so beloved by George when he was at Owens College. The probate record listing:
BLACKBURN (sic), Joseph, of the Promenade, Southport, Lancashire, phrenologist, died 6th February, 1899. Probate Liverpool 17 February to Maria Blackburn (sic) widow. Effects £111.8s.
(Blackburn was the original spelling - Joseph added an 'e' early in his career, no doubt to distinguish him from the common-or-garden Blackburns.)

Not a huge fortune to leave to his family, but considering the precariousness of his career and the uncertain times in which he lived, not a bad sum. Joseph deserves to be remembered for a lifetime dedicated to Phrenological study; he must have genuinely believed it to be a force for good.

JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO CONSIDER THE DARK SIDE OF PHRENOLOGY 

Commonplace 181 George & His Contemporaries: WT Stead PART TWO.

For a very illuminating place to discover all things WT Stead go to this website click and wallow in the wonder of the man.

Whenever we think of Stead, we see in our mind’s eye that lanky weasel-eyed bearded spiv with a colossal sense of smug self-importance oozing out and illuminating the space around him. Hubris, chutzpah, cojones, rampant ego mania, over-weaning self-importance are terms that almost encompass his utter belief in his own judgement and the validity of his own world view. Only the conviction that his god was firmly on his side could have offered that kind of will to succeed. Only an evangelist, a psychological terrorist for that god, could have invoked the necessary drive. It’s as if the hunt for fresh victims is his life’s work. The vulpine twinkle in the eyes is for the many victims – the politicians, hypocrites, sinners in general, and women he preyed on – who provided the stepping stones required to move him onwards and upwards in his journey to greatness. 

WT Stead
with Pope Leo XIII 'on the brain'
by legendary cartoonist Phil May

Stead, for a time, was one of the most influential characters in British public life. His opinion was sought on the main controversies of the day, and even when his views were not solicited, he freely ploughed in with his opinions and made sure his views were broadcast. He was famed for how quickly he could turn out copy and how swiftly he could sum up situations and then offer solutions for them. He knew his reading public inside out - what would make them outraged, offended, sympathetic, patriotic, angry and hopeful. He liked to create the impression he was a 'man of the people', that he spoke for the ordinary woman or man in the street - an illusion,of course, and we are much more savvy these days about anyone who sets themselves up as spokespersons for the unrepresented, the ignored and the undervalued. 

Common sense plain-speaking prose was WT's preferred journalistic style, as if the story itself required no embellishment to make it any more sensational. This is not to say his writing was simplistic - he carefully manipulated his readership into coming to his opinions very quickly. Offering solutions to the problems he raised - problems some people didn't know existed until he told them they did - was a strength, even when those solutions made things worse, as they occasionally did. Framing the problem in religious terms as if he was an evangelist preacher as much as a journalist compounded by the assertion that the truth was an instrument of his creator, gave added gravitas to all his causes. This is why his campaign to expose the sexual predation of young girls (and boys) by those who considered innocent children to be fair game as long as they were innocent working class children captured the imagination of the woman and man on the Clapham omnibus click. 

Lifted from the above cited website (with thanks):

Published in the Pall Mall Gazette in July, 1885, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon was Stead's highly scandalous expose of child prostitution. A tour de force of late nineteenth century journalism, it exposed in graphic detail the entrapment, abduction and 'sale' of young under-privileged girls to London brothels. Written in successive instalments, Stead's 'infernal narrative', as he called it, revealed to a respectable readership a criminal underworld of stinking brothels, fiendish procuresses, drugs and padded chambers, where upper-class paedophiles could revel 'in the cries of an immature child'.

The scandal was also known as the Case of Eliza Armstrong: the criminal prosecution of Stead and his accomplices for the abduction and indecent assault of thirteen-year-old Eliza Armstrong. From the impoverished Marylebone area of London, Eliza was the real face behind the character of Lily, whose tragic fate in 'A Child of Thirteen Bought for £5' concluded the first instalment of The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. Having heard during his investigations that unscrupulous parents were willing to sell their own children into prostitution, Stead sent his agent, reformed prostitute Rebecca Jarrett, into Marylebone to purchase a child, to show to how easily young girls could be procured. The child procured was Eliza Armstrong, allegedly sold to Jarrett by her own mother for just £5. Though never physically harmed, Eliza was nonetheless put through the motions of what a real child victim would have had to experience, including being "certified" a virgin by an abortionist midwife and being taken to a brothel where she was drugged with chloroform. She was then packed off to France under the care of the Salvation Army, leaving Stead to re-invent her as Lily in the Pall Mall Gazette. The subterfuge, however, did not prevent Eliza's mother from recognising the character of Lily in the The Maiden Tribute as her daughter. Claiming she had been duped into parting with Eliza, she went to the police, who brought charges of abduction and indecent assault against Stead and his accomplices. After two lengthy trials, Stead and three others, including Jarrett, were convicted at the Old Bailey and incarcerated. Stead was sentenced to three months in Coldbath-in-the-Fields prison, but was later transferred to Holloway as a first class inmate. 

Stead in his fancy dress of choice

Publishing the sordid facts after a sting operation amounting to kidnap and white slavery, Stead failed to see that his actions amounted to a crime. The fact that he used deception to kidnap the girl passed him by. But, he rationalised and claimed to have been acting for the greater good. In fact, unlike George and his stint in prison, WT celebrated his 'martyrdom' every year by donning his prison uniform. However, I can't imagine the Prison Service allowing him to keep his prison clothes, so he probably had a replica run up when he was freed. 

Stead's approach to exposing this story is said to have changed the face of journalism forever - for the worst. Was his motivation to rescue the vulnerable or to sell newspapers? Was he as bad as the sexual predators? This type of reporting was referred to as 'new journalism', but looking back it doesn't seem so far removed from what in the twentieth century became known as the 'gutter press'. Newspapers that rely on predominantly titillating sex stories for their copy are termed 'scandal sheets' and even the legitimate exposés are often seen as the worst form of investigative reporting. The farce that was the UK's Leveson Inquiry click pretty much demonstrated how reviled the press are these days - Stead's methods now refined into cross-platform surveillance techniques and phone hacking seen as legitimate journalistic tools. As it happened, Stead's reputation was forever sullied by the Maiden Tribute, and his judgement called in to question, especially when he became more deeply drawn to Spiritualism. And there was no end of child exploitation, as we all know. 

Back in 1884, Stead cast his gaze on the British Royal Navy. His 'What Is The Truth About The Navy By One Who Knows' click was the result of his research into the woefully under-funded and under-outfitted RN. Ever the amateur sailor (he kept a small place at Hayling Island near Portsmouth and was often to be found sailing the Solent and developing Chichester into a working sailing harbour), Stead initially had an interest in defence issues more than the actual Senior Service, but he recognised the precarious nature of Britain's place in the turbulent world of disputed international borders, reneged on political agreements, broken alliances and the potential for wars. The general sense of impending doom that haunted the late Victorian mindset had replaced the complacent view that Britain Ruled the Waves, but Stead was one of the first to realise technology had brought innovations to sea-going forces, but investment in the Navy had stagnated. By asking publicly in the Pall Mall Gazette (September 15th 1884) a series of very basic questions about the maintenance of the fleet and the readiness of the naval ports, the number and strength of the ironclad warships, and the preparedness of the dockyards for refitting in a time of war, and the state of the supply network to service the Navy's need for coal to fuel the ships, Stead brought the spotlight immediately down on what he considered to be an enormous area of national vulnerability. By sharing his concerns with the reading public - as opposed to going through the representatives of the Admiralty or MPs in the House of Commons - he raised public interest and promoted an Empire-wide debate. The upshot was a review of the Navy and the implementation of a vast amount of investment.

To read more about it click. And here is Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem about the concern he had for the Royal Navy:

The Fleet

You, you, if you shall fail to understand

    What England is, and what her all-in-all,

On you will come the curse of all the land,

    Should this old England fall

                Which Nelson left so great.

II.

His isle, the mightiest Ocean-power on earth,

    Our own fair isle, the lord of every sea—

Her fuller franchise—what would that be worth—

    Her ancient fame of Free—

                Where she . . . a fallen state?

III.

Her dauntless army scatter’d, and so small,

    Her island-myriads fed from alien lands—

The fleet of England is her all-in-all;

    Her fleet is in your hands,

                And in her fleet her fate.

IV.

You, you, that have the ordering of her fleet,

    If you should only compass her disgrace,

When all men starve, the wild mob’s million feet

    Will kick you from your place,

                 But then too late, too late.

'Heart of Oak' click is the official march of the Royal Navy click and we see below that WT Stead was ready to do his maritime bit - Steady Boys, Steady! 

Stead feeling a bit Stead-y in his Hayling back garden.

The Titanic sinking saw Stead off, when he was on his way to a religious conference in New York. Ironic as much as Titanic. 'Nearer My God To Thee' indeed! click. For most of his adult life, WT Stead was an advocate of Spiritualism. This sort of malarkey always marks a person down as a gullible fool, much as Scientology and believing some of us are space lizards does, but Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred Russell Wallace click also believed the dead could speak to the living. I suppose Spiritualism isn't any less believable than any other form of religion, but why hasn't WT Stead come back to tell us what to do about the Migrant Crisis or Daish or whether or not the UK should remain in the EU?? He must be bursting with good advice and we on the Clapham omnibus are very much in need of it.

Commonplace 180    George & His Contemporaries: WT Stead. PART ONE.

For all of George’s career as the unappreciated amateur delusional-aristocrat legend of Victorian English literature, a parallel life was being lived by one of the towering figures of British cultural life: journalist; news editor; social activist and campaigner; outspoken critic of injustice and hypocrisy; scourge of everyone he disapproved of; deviser of the publication The Review of Reviews; part-time maritime sailor; promoter of coitus interruptus as a form of birth control; several time Nobel Peace Prize nominee proto-feminist; occasional employer of the Divine Oscar Wilde; religious zealot; forthright peace campaigner; ego-maniacal diplomat; friend and advisor to kings; outrageous sexist flirt and sporter of an exorbitant beard, the force of nature that was William Thomas Stead (1849-1912). 

His death at the sinking of the Titanic was the entirely fitting end for a man who would not have gone gentle into that good night on sea or land, or even in the air or outer space if those options had been available. Stead would have gone kicking and screaming, singing songs exulting his maker – ‘For Those In Peril On The Sea’, praising his Eternal Father as he sank beneath the waves click. Ever the lover of a headlining news story, and always intent on making history as much as reporting on it, as he was drowning, WT will have realised what a scoop he was living, and what an historic event he was forced to be part of - and probably not for the first time.

The NY Central Park Memorial to WT Stead click

Stead was never a shrinking violet, even as a boy touched by strong Protestant faith and a determination to demonstrate his special relationship with his god. That he turned his hand to doing (mostly) good was a great loss to the criminal world – he would have made a great con artist or international jewel thief, or a Gangs of New York style leader of assorted ruffians. He was aggressive, focused, ruthless, relentless, and he had that deep vein of sentimentality so beloved of Mafia dons and East End psychopaths. 

We know he was a fan of George’s ‘realist’ fiction, but that may have been down to the mistaken belief that what George was writing about was heart-felt and informed by a sympathy for the underdog. In this, Stead would have been projecting his own motives in reporting the scandal of the British political and class system as oppressor of the poor with George’s need to capture an audience to buy books in a time when 'poverty' fiction was a fad - much as 'misery' fiction enjoyed a vogue ten years ago. But George offered no redemptive resolution to any sort of problem. He was the dispassionate onlooker and social anthropologist Positivist fatalist who thought nothing could be done because the ‘natural order’ of this chaotic world requires – demands! – there always be a suffering underclass who are born to endure, even enjoy, their suffering. WT Stead was an ‘if you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem’ kind of chap, but he was never soft on those who (in his opinion) did little to better themselves or struggle their way out of the sloughs of deprivation, and had harsh views on how they should be treated. His attitude was ‘God helps those who help themselves’ – that ludicrous Sunday school text that fails to understand the causes of deprivation as thoroughly as it proves that religious faith does not by default make for empathy – and he also thought the workhouse should be denied those who refused to scratch a meagre living from the gutters and refuse tips of life. Like many who claim to have a working relationship with a deity, accepting what that deity hands out is part and parcel of that faith – if life awards you the shitty end of the stick, you better make a good job of holding on to it and thank your lucky stars (and your deity) there is any sort of stick to hold on to. And, like many influential Victorians, Stead thought help should only be extended to what they termed 'the deserving poor' - and woe betide anyone not considered 'deserving'.

Stead was sure the right person in the right place at the right time can change the course of history and improve the fate of millions. WT usually considered himself more or less always to be the right person for whatever he considered needed to be done, and his successes were often down to his forthright manner, lack of deference for any form of social class system, and a genius for knowing who to speak to about his various causes. 

He was never short on confidence, and was something of a child prodigy, particularly with Latin which he was initially taught by his Congregationalist minister father at home in Embleton in Northumberland. As with all small, underdeveloped poverty-rich places, Embleton was a somewhat savage place; the Anglican vicar of the Holy Trinity church Mandell Creighton click wrote in his published letters of 1904: 

In many ways the moral standard of the village was very low, and it was a difficult place to improve. There was no resident squire, the chief employers of labour were on much the same level of cultivation as those they employed, and in some cases owned the public-houses and paid the wages there. Such defeatist talk was the antithesis of the Congregationalist movement, a very 'hands on' set with self-determination at its heart. No doubt the opportunities for change and the possibilities for redemption Stead so carefully promoted in his working life were seeds sown in those early days at his father's knee, working the uphill struggle on the folk of the northern badlands. Speaking of which... in 1861 when he was twelve, Stead was sent to Silcoats School in Wakefield, sited between that town (now a city) and Morley, a suburb town of Leeds in West Yorkshire. George, just up the road in the centre of the dirty town, was four, and his brother, William was two; Algernon was a babe in arms.  

On leaving school, he found work as a clerk back right up north in the city of Newcastle, before landing the job opportunity of a lifetime as editor of the Northern Echo, based in Darlington. He began submitting stories to the paper at its inception in 1870, and when no-one else was available to fill the post - and work for free - he was offered the top job. Recruiting an editor this way might seem a rash act, but Stead had received an apprenticeship of sorts from the previous editor, John Copleston, and when the proprietor felt an editorial change was needed, he offered the job to Stead, who said of the job that it was a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil. Unlike our George, Stead regarded his power as a man of letters was a mission: I felt the sacredness of the power placed in my hands, to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed.  

Stead, more than most, realised that the rise in literacy brought about by the 1870 Education Act would require increases in the availability of things to read - and, by extension,something to spend wages on other than the basics of life, and the daily newspaper was the most accessible of reading matter to sell and buy. And, because of its availability, a newspaper could reach a wide and relatively uneducated population ripe for leading in whatever direction an editor wanted to take it. Like the shrewd businessman that he was, Stead did not aim his editorials at the poor themselves - after all, they were unlikely to be buying newspapers, though they could access them at libraries (as George and his family did). His preferred targets were the powerful who could make the necessary changes to the system, or who abused the system they ruled, observed by a readership who could be stirred up to follow down any path that would support Stead's point of view. But, like George, Stead stopped short of advocating on behalf of those at very bottom of the pile. These he saw as the rejects of society who existed in life's primordial slime, virtually un-evolved from the rabble of the Dark Ages. As with many Victorian self-confessed experts on the lower orders Stead feared (as did George) that encouraging such dregs of humanity would weaken the bloodline of the more capable. And who was there to counter this argument? After all, the poor underclass are always the least powerful group in any society, and realists might argue someone has to be at the bottom, just as someone has to be at the top, so why waste resources on fate? And, for one as touched by Christianity as was Stead, Christ's teachings on the subject will have resonated: Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces (Matthew 7:6). 

A quick summary of things Stead started (as listed in Saint or Sensationalist? The Story of WT Stead by Victor Pierce Jones): newspaper advice columns; village lending libraries; penny per copy editions of the Classics of English literature; pen pals; baby adoption agencies; hostels for working women; the Peace Palace in The Hague; the Civic Federation in Chicago – and many sorts of social clubs and self-help organisations. Add to this his work exploring Spiritualism, and it's clear his was a broad church when it came to addressing the needs of his fellow-humans. But it was his work with the young children who were forced or duped into prostitution that offered him his greatest publicity coup, prove to be his most controversial crusade and score for him his most infamous victory.

It was when Stead put the plan of The Maiden Tribute To Modern Babylon into action that he knew his destiny was set. JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO LEARN ABOUT THE MAIDEN TRIBUTE.