#henry bergh

[kriscynical]

Two Degrees of PT Barnum

I am very late to the party in that I've just now bothered to sit down and watch The Greatest Showman (and I loved it; I don't know why it took me so long to get around to it). Watching an entire film centered around PT Barnum — however inaccurate it may be — made me realize that I don't believe I've ever told the story of my personal connection to PT Barnum, separated by only two degrees unlike the usual six degrees of Kevin Bacon. That connection also brings me to three degrees of separation from Ringling, where I earned my BFA in Illustration.

Well, I haven't told it on Tumblr, at least, just LiveJournal about a million years ago. And give or take a degree. Math was never my strong suit. I draw pictures for a living, after all.

The story of my connection starts with this stately fellow right here:

This is Henry Bergh. He was my great-great-I don't know how many greats-grandfather, born in New York City back in 1813. Although I find it very cool that he was appointed secretary of the American legation in Tsarist Russia in 1862 by none other than Abraham Lincoln, he was most well-known for founding the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866.

I unfortunately have no say in all of you being bombarded by the commercials of Sarah McLachlan singing over images of sad animals, I'm sorry.

The connection comes in because both Henry and PT Barnum were making their way in the world during the same time period in New York, and Henry had a mighty beef with how Barnum was treating the animals in his circus and museum. And he wasn't quiet about it (he was quite the pain in the ass to a lot of people, which continues to run in the family). The website has been relegated to the WayBack Machine, but you can read letters exchanged between the two right here.

Fortunately as time went on, Henry and Barnum actually became friends as Barnum began to understand Henry's viewpoints, and he became a contributor to the New York and Connecticut cruelty societies. He even declared himself the "Bergh of Bridgeport" from his home in, well, Bridgeport.

Upon Barnum's death he left $1000 to the city of Bridgeport in order for a memorial to be built to Henry, which was unveiled in 1897:

It was originally meant as a watering trough but, as you can see, it's just a planter now.

Charles and John Ringling bought Barnum's circus in 1907, combining it with their own circus to form what eventually became the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus:

John Ringling opened Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, in 1931.

I graduated from Ringling's illustration department in 2007, which was also the last class to graduate from Ringling School. The name was changed to Ringling College the next year (and I still loathe the new logo).

So that's how I'm personally connected not only to PT Barnum, but my alma mater as well.

[autodidact-adventures]

Culinary History (Part 20): Turning the Spit

The spit had to be turned, and the job was a dreadful one.  It was done by the turnspit, or turnbroach, who was usually a boy.  John Aubrey wrote, “In olden times, the poor boys did turn the spits, and licked the dripping pans.”

In the early 1500's, Henry VIII's household had many turnspits in the kitchen.  They crammed themselves into cubbyholes beside the fireplace, and it would have been extremely hot.  Until 1530, the kitchen staff at Hampton Court worked either naked or in little clothing.  Henry VIII addressed the situation by giving the junior staff a clothing allowance, so now they were even hotter.

It wasn't just noble households that had turnspits.  In 1666, the lawyers at London's Middle Temple had one “turnbroach”, two scullions, an under-cook and a head cook.

Children worked as turnspits well into the 1700's.  John Macdonald (1741-96) was a famous footman, and he wrote about his experiences in service.  He was sacked from a job rocking an baby's cradle, and found his next job as a turnspit in a gentleman's house, at the age of only 5yrs.

However, by the time Macdonald was a turnspit, it wasn't all that usual for a child to do the job, for it had been taken over by animals.  This change had gradually happened over the 1500's & 1600's.  In 1576, a book about English dogs defined a turnspit as “a certain dog in kitchen service”.  These dogs were forced to walk like a guinea-pig in a wheel about 0.75m in diameter, suspended from a wall near the fireplace.  The wheel was connected to the spit by a pulley.

Some cooks used geese instead of dogs.  In the 1690's, it was written that they were better than dogs, because they kept going for longer (sometimes up to 12 hours).  In the 1700's Thomas Somerville said that the dogs “used to hide themselves or run away when they observed indication that there was to be a roast for dinner.”  So perhaps dogs were smarter, too.

Dogs were still being used as turnspits well into the 1800's.  Henry Bergh was an animal-rights activist, and he campaigned against this abuse, along with other things such as bear-baiting.  While this gave some stigma to the practice, it didn't change for the better. Several times when paying surpise visits to kitchens to check for dogs, he found that young black children were doing the job instead.

But mechanization ended the abuse of children, dogs and geese in the kitchen (at least in this sense).  Inventors had been working on mechanical jacks since the 1500's.  Peter Kalm (a Swedish naturalist) said in 1748 that the “meat jack” was “a very useful invention, which lightens the labour amongst a people who eat so much meat.” He claimed that “every house in England” had a simply-made weight-driven jack, but this was unfortunately an exaggeration – inventories show that about only half did.  Still this was pretty good.

The basic mechanism of a spit-jack was a weight on the end of a cord, which was wound around a cylinder.  The weight descended slowly, and the energy was transmitted to the spit/s, by a series of cogwheels & pulleys.  Some jacks rang a bell when the spit stopped.  These jacks were sometimes called “gravity jacks” because of how they worked.

There were other types of spit-jacks.  Smoke-jacks used the updraught from the fire to power a vane.  They were cheap, and didn't need winding up.  But they were dreadfully wasteful of fuel – in 1800, it was worked out that 1/1000 of the fuel needed for a smoke-jack could power a small steam engine.  Huge amounts of wood or coal had to be kept burning in the fire for it to work.

Spit-roasting was a key part of British cuisine, so much energy and effort was put into spit-jacks and improving them.  Water, steam and clockwork were tried.  Spit-jacks were the espresso machine of the day – the new technology that many kitchens had, while the rest of the kitchen objects had been around for aeons.

By the mid-1800's, the spit-jack was on the way out, because open-hearth cooking was being superseded by ovens.

[shenhuifu]

Founding of the ASPCA

Apr 10, 1866, ASPCA is founded.

[nothingbutmortimer]

Darwin meets Henry Bergh, the founder of the A.S.P.C.A., in an 1871 Punch cartoon by Thomas Nast.

The gorilla (crying): 'That man wants to claim my pedigree. He says he is one of my descendants.'

Mr. Bergh: 'Now, Mr. Darwin, how could you insult him so?'

[bigtickhk]

The Man Who Made Us Feel for the Animals

In “A Traitor to His Species,” Ernest Freeberg tells the story of Henry Bergh, the 19th-century eccentric who founded the A.S.P.C.A.

A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement by Ernest Freeberg https://amzn.to/2Eg0X5p

[mrrubbersuitman]

Superman; Vol 1, 176 Silver Age Comic Book. GD/VG. April 1965. DC Comics

[animalarchives19c]

On the 125th anniversary of Henry Bergh's death, I have been reviewing material on the American humane movement for my manuscript. 

In remembrance of Bergh's good work, I'm posting this Dec. 14, 1993 Weekly World News article on his achievements. It is surprisingly accurate! The lingering question is why, in 1993, the WWW found a story on Bergh to be as equally sensational and ridiculous as a stories of a mime who died for refusing to speak, the uncanny predictions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a swami who has not used the toilet in 25 years.