29/04/2011 by Scheong

The Biggest Maritime Disaster Ever: The M.V. Wilhelm Gustloff

Disasters at sea will always be famous. The R.M.S. Lusitania, the R.M.S. Titanic, the H.M.H.S Britannic and the Oceanos, to name but a few. And they’re all famous for different reasons – War, luxury, mischance, cowardice and bravery…and yet, none of these is the biggest maritime disaster of all. No, not even the Titanic, which this year commemorates the 99th anniversary of its sinking.

This unfortunate honour: The biggest maritime disaster in the world to date, goes to the ill-fated German ocean-liner, the M.V. Wilhelm Gustloff.

What was the Wilhelm Gustloff?

The M.V. (motor vessel) Wilhelm Gustloff was built between 1936 and 1938. Originally, she was a cruise-ship and was named for the asassinated leader of the Nazi Party in Switzerland, who was killed just months before construction was due to begin. The Gustloff was launched on the fifth of May, 1937 in Hamburg, Germany.

Photograph of the Gustloff being launched

The Gustloff had been envisioned as one of the most luxurious cruise-ships of the day. She was to have large communal halls and open decks so that passengers could make optimum use of the space offered by the ship. As near as was possible, her cabins were all to be the same size. This was the same for both passengers and crew, to create a feeling of equality onboard ship…although only the passenger cabins would be permitted to have oceanfront views. To continue the feeling of equality, there would only be one class onboard ship – the cruise-class.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was 684ft long (nearly a full 200ft shorter than the Titanic), she weighed 26,000GRT (Gross Registered Tons), a little more than half of the Titanic and she carried 417 crew and 1,460 passengers, making for a total complement of 1,877. By comparison, the Titanic could take over three thousand passengers and crew. She had eight decks, a top speed of fifteen knots (18mph) thanks to two propellers and engines capable of producing 9,500hp. She had twenty two lifeboats and twelve transverse bulkheads creating thirteen watertight compartments

With all these characteristics, Hitler hoped that the Wilhelm Gustloff would be a floating pleasure-ship, taking Germans all around Europe. She would be comfortable, open and safe to travel on and would be a symbol of German superiority and ingenuity. She was designed to be a cruise-ship for the masses, for ordinary German working men and women, a sign that the Fuhreur and the Reich cared about the ordinary, hardworking German citizen. To the German worker, the Gustloff was to be the ultimate prize and reward as a holiday for all his hard work. But sadly, it was not to be.

In the company of the captain, Hitler (extreme left) tours the recently-completed Wilhelm Gustloff in 1938

Wilhelm Gustloff – Hospital Ship

Whatever Hitler’s plans were for the Wilhelm Gustloff, they barely reached fruition, if indeed they ever did. Barely a year after the ship’s maiden voyage on the Thursday of the 24th of March, 1938, Germany would be plunged into the hell of the Second World War and all thoughts of the Wilhelm Gustloff being the People’s Cruise-Ship were smashed to pieces.

Once the pride of the German KdF (Kraft Durch Freude, “Strength through Joy”) shipping fleet, after several successful cruises throughout 1938 and early 1939, the Wilhelm Gustloff was turned over to the German navy, the Kriegsmarine in September 1939 with the outbreak of World War Two.

In the German Navy, the Wilhelm Gustloff was turned into a hospital ship, a role which she played from September 1939 until November of 1940. After that, she became a floating barracks for German U-boat crews.

The Wilhelm Gustloff as a hospital ship off the coast of Oslo, Norway; 1940

Operation Hannibal and the Last Voyage

For four years, between 1941-1945, the Gustloff had remained at anchor. During this time, it was used mostly to house sailors and submariners, but by 1944 and the Invasion of Normandy in June of that year, the War started going bad for Germany, especially on the Eastern Front. Operation Barbarossa, the attempt by Hitler to invade the Soviet Union, was a complete disaster and now the Russians wanted revenge. By January 1945, the German army was fighting off Italy, Russia, England, America, Commonwealth troops, Free French fighters and resistence-fighters on almost every front imaginable and it was rapidly losing the war.

As the Russian army pushed westward across Eastern Europe towards Poland, Operation Hannibal was executed.

Operation Hannibal was nothing less than the biggest seaborne evacuation in military history. It even eclipsed the famous Dunkirk Evacuation when the “little ships” were used to evacuate Allied soldiers from the beaches of France in 1940. In total, Operation Hannibal was going to try and evacuate about one and a quarter to two million people in roughly a thousand ships over the course of fifteen weeks.

One of those ships, was the M.V. Wilhelm Gustloff.

On the 22nd of January, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff is given the order to prepare to take on thousands of escaping German refugees. Many are women, children and wounded soldiers. German civilians are terrified of what retributions the Russians might unleash as they sweep westwards and many want to escape back to Germany as fast as possible. The Wilhelm Gustloff is at anchor in the port city of Gdynia, German-Occuped Poland. The crew are worried. Apart from the fact that they have to house so many thousands of people, they are worried about the mechanical strain; the Gustloff’s engines have been cold for the past four years while it was in harbour, and there is no time to run the necessary maintenance and safety-checks.

On the 28th of January, the Gustloff’s crew receive the order to prepare for evacuation. Thousands of refugees, mostly sailors, nurses, civilians and wounded soldiers file onboard, each person bearing a permit of travel that allows them refugee status and permission to board the Gustloff.

Gustloff’s last voyage took place on the 30th of January, 1945. On this day, the ship is ordered to raise anchor and steam westwards towards the German city of Kiel. The official passenger manifest lists about 3,000 people onboard (the Gustloff is rated to carry only 1,800 passengers and crew), but even this is not even close. In the panic of evacuations, thousands of people who aren’t supposed to be there, force their way onboard the already dangerously overcrowded ship. Even as the Gustloff leaves the harbour, people are offloaded onto the ship from harbour-tugs which pull up alongside while their passengers climb on, using the ship’s boarding-stairs. In total, the Gustloff is carrying about ten and a half thousand people.

January 30th, 1945. The Gustloff leaves Poland. This is the last photograph ever taken of the ship

Onboard the Gustloff, things are far from easy. The ship is crammed so far beyond capacity that even with extra safety-equipment onboard, there is only enough lifeboats, flotation-vests and life-rings for less than half the ship’s full complement of passengers and crew. The passenger-quarters are so full that any space at all is fair-game as a sleeping-area during the voyage back to Germany.

On the bridge, the Gustloff is in the combined command of four captains, three civilian captains and one military one. They argue constantly on the best precautions to take. Do they turn off the ship’s lights to prevent detection? Do they stay near the coast where Soviet submarines will find it harder to patrol? Do they go into deeper water away from the shoreline where lights from cities will certainly outline the shape of the ship? Do they go straight ahead to make the most of what short time they have, or do they steer a conventional wartime zig-zag course to try and throw off enemy submarines who might try and torpedo them?

The only thing that the captains seemed to agree on was that their escort was wholly inadequate. All they had was one torpedo-boat, the Lowe, to protect them from the formidable force of the Russians and anything that they could throw against them. The ship was a sitting duck.

The Lowe, originally a torpedo-boat in the Royal Norwegian Navy. It was captured by the Germans in 1940 and was returned to the Norwegians in 1945 at the end of the War

The Sinking

With such disagreements over defensive actions and with such a useless escort-vessel, the Wilhelm Gustloff was easy pickings for the Russian submariners who hunted down fleeing German shipping. The submarine that’s after the Gustloff is the S-13, under the command of Capt. Alexander Marinesko.

Just before 8:00pm on the 30th of January, the S-13 spots the Wilhelm Gustloff. It’s in deep water with all its lights on, as a warning to other shipping, but to the crew of the Russian submarine, it’s a big, fat target. For a whole hour, Capt. Marinesko orders that no actions be taken. The Wilhelm Gustloff is a big prize and the Russians must be patient, lining up the perfect shot before they try and take the ship down.

Eventually, shortly after 9:00pm, Capt. Marinesko gives the order to fire. The S-13 lets loose three of a possible four torpodoes into the water. The fourth torpedo misfires and jams in its torpedo-tube. Quick thinking on the part of the S-13’s crew prevents the malfunctioning torpedo from exploding and destroying the submarine. The captain has no idea what his target is because it’s so dark outside. All he knows is that it’s a big German ocean-liner with all its lights on.

At 9:16pm, disaster strikes.

The first torpedo slams into the Wilhelm Gustloff, forward of the bridge, blowing a hole in her port bow. The second torpedo strikes the ship further back, below the ship’s swimming-pool. The third torpedo hits the vessel amidships, destroying the engine-rooms.

To prevent the ship from sinking, the captains order all watertight doors to be closed at once. This unwittingly drowns many of the ship’s crew who would have been essential in manning lifeboats and organising evacuations. The second torpedo kills hundreds of the Women’s Naval Auxilliary who have used the empty ship’s swimming-pool as a sleeping-area. The third torpedo arguably creates the most damage of all.

By striking the ship’s engine-room, the third torpedo simultaneously disables the ship and isolates it from the outside world. With the engines crippled, the Wilhelm Gustloff is unable to move, but even more unfortunately, the damaged engines will no longer power the ship’s generators – all electrical power, from lights to telephones and even the ship’s wireless radio, suddenly lose power, plunging everything into darkness. If not for the ship’s emergency generator (for the wireless-room only), the Gustloff would have sunk without anyone knowing what had ever happened to it.

Although the wireless-radio is still operational (if just barely), its transmission range is only two kilometers. Within that radius, only the Gustloff’s escort-vessel, the Lowe, picks up the ship’s desperate S.O.S message. It immediately steams towards the ship.

Onboard the Gustloff, panic reigns supreme.

Whatever people are not immediately killed or drowned in the opening minutes of the attack are now desperate to get off the ship. There are barely enough lifejackets to go around and certainly not enough lifeboats. The three huge holes in the ship’s hull causes a dangerous list to Port and the ice on the ship’s boat-deck sends many people sliding into the freezing January waters. Whatever lifeboats there are, become next to useless because they are frozen to their davits by the freezing temperatures. Any crew who might be able to free them and lower them safely are probably dead already, trapped inside the ship’s hull.

In the chaos, only one lifeboat is lowered successfully. Most people just jump or slide into the water where lifebelts provide little protection against the freezing water. People jumping into the water wearing one of the few life-vests that are available are susceptable to broken necks. As their bodies hit the water and sink, their chins hit the floating vest, whipping their heads back and causing spinal injuries. What few lifeboats are lowered are done so incorrectly or haphazardly, causing them to break free from the ship and crash into the water. At least one lifeboat is smashed to pieces when an anti-aircraft gun on the boat-deck breaks loose as the Gustloff continues a steady list to port.

The Gustloff’s woefully underpowered wireless set only manages to raise the Lowe, the Gustloff’s one and only escort-vessel, which is able to reach the stricken cruise-ship’s side within fifteen minutes. She manages to rescue 472 people in the water and in lifeboats. The Gustloff continues to sink. The severe list to port means that it becomes impossible for people to get out of the ship. Stairways and corridors are packed with panicking passengers who can’t find their way up to the boat deck due to the lack of lights and the inability to climb the stairs due to the tilting of the ship. Soon, it is a case of “Every man for himself” as people take their lives in their hands and fight to find any way off the ship and on to safety. Soldiers and sailors shoot their own families and then commit suicide rather than freeze to death in the water. Firearms are also used by the ship’s officers to try and maintain order on the boat deck, but in a scenario where even the “Birkenhead Drill” (more famously known as “Women and Children First”) is being ignored by everyone, they do little more than add more panic to the already frantic situation unfolding all around them.

In less than forty-five minutes, the Gustloff had been struck by three torpedoes, it had listed to port, capsized and finally, vanished beneath the waves.

In total, nine ships and boats of varying sizes rush to the Gustloff’s aid. Between them, they save a total of 1,252 people. The last person to be rescued was a baby which was found alive in one of the Gustloff’s lifeboats, seven hours after the ship went down. Of approximately 10,500 people onboard the Gustloff, anywhere from 9,200 to 9,500 people (the exact figure is unknown because no official record exists of how many people were really onboard) either drowned inside the Gustloff when it went down, or froze to death in the water trying to escape. It remains to this day, the biggest loss of life at sea from a single disaster.

The Aftermath of the Sinking

Despite the appalling loss of life, the Wilhelm Gustloff is probably the most forgettable and unknown maritime disaster in the world. The reasons for this are numerous and some of them are more obvious than others.

– The Wilhelm Gustloff sunk during the dying months of the Second World War. There was little interest in the popular news press about anything that wasn’t directly related to an eventual Allied victory in Europe.
– The Gustloff was an ‘enemy ship’ carrying ‘enemy soldiers’ and civillians. It wasn’t in the best interests of the Allies to take notice, or care.
– Dozens of ships were being sunk every day during the War. One more barely made a difference.
– The German government, already aware that their country would lose the war, suppressed the news, fearful of what it would do to already-shattered German morale.
– The Gustloff carried no famous celebrities, unlike the Titanic, which carried nearly all the movers-and-shakers, socialites and big businessmen of the Edwardian era.

Capt. Alexander Marinesko, the Soviet submarine-commander who torpedoed the Gustloff was shunned by almost everyone, even in Russia! Within years of his successful action against the Gustloff, Marinesko had been…

– Discharged from the Soviet Navy.
– Arrested and sent to Siberia for three years’ hard labour.
– Diagnosed with cancer.
– Reinstated with his title of captain.
– Given a military pension.
– Given a ceremony honouring his actions during the Second World War.

Just three weeks after these last three incidents, Marinesko died, in October of 1963. He was fifty years old.

Today, the Wilhelm Gustloff is a protected war-grave. It lies in 44 meters of water, off the northwest coast of Poland.

13/04/2011 by scheong

Hot off the Press: The Gutenberg Revolution

These days, we don’t think much of books, do we? They’re here, they’re there, they’re everywhere. Right in your own house, you probably have hundreds of them! They’re cheap, mass-produced volumes of information, education, joy and delight. They’re full of fancy typography, bright pictures, diagrams and indices. They have paperback covers with pretty, colourful designs on them. It’s hard to imagine the world without books, isn’t it?

And yet…this was a reality for thousands of people, once upon a time. Once upon a time, centuries ago, before a German goldsmith looked at a wine-press and got a brainwave so big, it swept into Rennaissance Europe like a tsunami and changed everything forever. That brainwave was the printing-press and the little German goldsmith was a fellow named Johannes Gutenberg. Gutenberg the goldsmith had, almost singlehandedly, revolutionised the world when he invented his newest and greatest machine…the printing-press.

Before books went to Press

Of course, books existed before Gutenberg had his big idea. They were all big, handsome, leatherbound volumes sitting on shelves or in bookcases in massive institutions such as monastries, churches, schools and universities. Some people were lucky enough to own books in their houses, usually massive castles or manor houses with their own private libraries. While books certainly were not new in Gutenberg’s time, one thing that made these books different from the books that he would create, was that nearly all pre-Gutenberg books were handwritten! They were created by scholars, monks, scribes and priests in universities, abbeys, monastries and churches all over Europe and they were frightfully expensive! To write out by hand, a copy of the Bible, in Latin, with a quill pen, took months, even years of dedicated, daily hard work, and the poor scribe couldn’t afford to make a single mistake! Not easy to do when you’re in a freezing cold scriptorium writing by candlelight.

Because books were so hard to reproduce in the Middle Ages, they were naturally extremely expensive. Few people knew how to read or write, which made this reproduction even harder, and even fewer people could afford to buy such pretty things as books! This was what the world was like when Gutenberg came into the world, ca. 1398, as a kicking, screaming baby named Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg!

The Birth of Gutenberg

Gutenberg’s date of birth is not precisely known. It could be 1395, 1398 or, to make it nice and tidy, even 1400! But nobody has ever figured it out for sure. What is known is that he was born in the city of Mainz in Germany, that his parents were Friele and Else Gensfleisch and that his original surname translates as “Goose meat” (or “Goose flesh”) in English! It would hardly do for a great inventor to have a name that sounded like a Christmas dinner, which is why it was later changed to the more acceptable ‘Gutenberg’, which was the name of his father’s ancestors.

Gutenberg came from a pretty well-to-do family which happened to be one of the wealthiest in Mainz. He grew up around the goldsmiths in Mainz and eventually, he became one himself, a profession that would prove invaluable to him in his later years. Gutenberg’s father died in 1419 and by the late 1430s, Gutenberg was making a living as a goldsmith.

The Birth of the Press

Growing up in (what is now) western Germany in the Rhineland, Gutenberg had probably seen the great successes of the German winemaking industry, which flourished in the rich valleys and soils of the region. It is thought that Gutenberg got the idea for his printing-press by examining the massive wine-presses then in operation at the enormous vineyards dotted throughout the countryside.

In the “old days”, wine was pressed by hand, with people climbing into big tubs of grapes and smashing them down with their feet to get out the grape-juice. In Gutenberg’s time, vinters were using the mechanical power of the threaded-shaft wine-press to crush the grapes to get out the juice. Machines like this were everywhere in the Rhineland and it’s not too hard to see where Gutenberg got the idea for his printing-press. In the mid-1400s, these were the modern equivalent of food-processors, taking something that previously took hours by hand (or, in the case of grape-crushing, foot) and speeding it up so that grapes could be crushed in great quantities in a matter of minutes, producing rich, concentrated and cleaner grape-juice.

A miniature model of a wine-press

Ideas were all well-and-good, but one big problem was that in order to create what was then a truly revolutionary machine, the printing-press, Johannes Gutenberg would need money. And lots of it. Even though Gutenberg’s family was wealthy, it wasn’t exactly swimming in gold. In the 1410s, the Gutenberg family (along with several other aristocratic Mainz families) were forced out of the city in an uprising and made to settle elsewhere. And at any rate, Mainz, once a bustling city, was no place for Gutenberg to try and start up a new business. It had been hit hard by the Black Death of the 1340s and 50s and it was now a shadow of its former self. In order to raise the money needed to create his new toy, Gutenberg would have to go to the city of Strasbourg, two days boat-ride down the Rhine from Mainz.

Over the next few years, Gutenberg met up with goldsmiths, carpenters and investors who were becoming interested in his idea. Of course, printing (of a sort) had existed before Gutenberg’s time, but such printing was woodcut block-printing; it wasn’t as versatile or as long-lasting as what Gutenberg had in mind. Wood-block printing could only be used to print copies of one specific thing, and since the printing-surface was made of wood, it didn’t last very long due to contact with water-based inks.

What Gutenberg had in mind was a proper printing-press with movable type. The stamps or more correctly, ‘type-pieces’, would be cast out of metal to make them long-lasting and they would be cast in individual letters so that the printer could rearrange them in any order and position that he desired, to create new words, new paragraphs and new pages, making it literally ‘movable type’.

The problems facing Gutenberg were numerous in number and considerable in their impediment of his progress. To get the money needed to build the press and mass-produce the hundreds of little metal letter-blocks needed to fill the press-bed and to get the vellum and the paper needed to print on, Gutenberg turned to a man named Johann Fust, a moneylender who loaned him 800 Guilders to help him on his way. Apart from all this, Gutenberg also had to get his hands on ink! Traditional handwriting ink, which was water-based, was too liquid to be used on the printing-press with its smooth metal type-pieces. Instead, Gutenberg had to create a whole new kind of oil-based ink which was thicker and which he could rub and work onto the type so that he could print pages reliably.

Making the metal type-pieces for his printing-press was one of the bigger challenges that Gutenberg faced. Although paper could be produced rather cheaply, for his printing-press to work, Gutenberg needed hundreds, possibly thousands of copies of the alphabet so that he could start printing. This involved extensive and tricky metalworking. To make one type-piece, he needed to engrave the letter into a block of metal, the engraved block was then used to strike a matrix, or a mould, which would be used to create the typeface. With the matrices and moulds created, Gutenberg was able to cast the hundreds of letters and punctuation marks that would be necessary to fill the press-bed and create a page of type.

By the 1440s, Gutenberg was ready to print. He had the press, the type, the paper and the ink. Now it was time to start working!

Going to Press

Gutenberg is most famous for printing the Bible, however, he didn’t start off with the Bible. Such a massive and important tome as that would have to wait until he had perfected his craft! Instead, he started by printing small pamphlets and leaflets, small religious documents and other test-pieces, to see how well his machine worked.

In the early 1450s, however, Gutenberg started with his grand dream: Printing the Bible!

When exactly Gutenberg started printing and therefore, how long it took him to finish the Bible, is unknown, but the first copies of Gutenberg Bibles became available in about 1455. The Gutenberg Bible was certainly a massive undertaking, and when you see what went into making just one bible, you’ll understand why Gutenberg practiced on smaller jobs first!

A modern replica of a Gutenberg Press

Gutenberg’s Bible (also called the ’42-Line Bible’ because each page had 42 lines of text) was not just a book, it was an elaborate artwork of illustrations, flourishes, colour-printing and typographical perfection. This amazing, illuminated manuscript was Gutenberg’s crowning achievement as a printer, something he must’ve felt very proud of.

A page of the famous Gutenberg Bible

Gutenberg experimented with a lot of things when he printed; by inking certain parts of the movable-type different colours, he was able to create colour-printing, with various parts of the text printed in red or blue ink, to make it stand out even more and make it more noticable.

Gutenberg’s press was a revolution. Although it would take a few years to catch on, Gutenberg had done what nobody else before had managed to do: make printing easier, more efficient and cheaper. It’s often believed that Gutenberg invented printing outright – this isn’t true. He merely improved on printing-methods of the day to produce something that would benefit mankind much more than any other system of mass-printing that had come before. By the 1500s, the press was spreading throughout Europe and for the first time in history, news, information and literature could be mass-produced cheaply and quickly and sent all around the continent.

The End of Gutenberg

Although Gutenberg had revolutionised the world of writing and printing in the same way that Henry Ford would eventually revolutionise the world of transport five hundred years later, unlike Ford, Gutenberg didn’t exactly live to see fame and fortune.

In 1455, Johann Fust, the moneylender who had loaned Gutenberg his much-needed start-up cash, demanded his loan be paid back. He took Gutenberg to court, claiming that the funds he had given to Gutenberg had not been used for the purpose that Gutenberg had borrowed them for. Fust’s determination and evidence caused the court to rule in his favour, leaving Gutenberg a broken and bankrupt man. It would be another ten years, in 1465, that Gutenberg finally got the credit he deserved, for the mark that he’d made upon technology. Gutenberg was rewarded by Adolph II of Nassau, Archbishop of Maintz with the title of ‘Gentleman of the Court’. This title came with a court outfit, a stipend and two tonnes of grain and wine, tax-free. Gutenberg, with the help of friends and relations, also eventually rebuilt his business as a printer, although he didn’t make the fortunes that he hoped he would, from his printing business. He died on the third of February, 1468, at the age of seventy.

12/04/2011 by scheong

Vaulting to Victory: The Story of the Wooden Horse

Most people think of the Wooden Horse as the famous Wooden Horse of Troy or the Trojan Horse, with which the ancient Greeks tricked the Trojans into bringing about their own downfall. Hidden inside an enormous wooden model of a horse were thirty Greek soldiers who after gaining access to the city, opened the gates to let in the rest of the Greek army who laid waste to the city and finally defeated the Trojans, ending a ten year siege-war.

Just as famous, and perhaps just as forgettable, is the other Wooden Horse with which its builders didn’t break into, but rather, broke out of a fortified complex.

This article is about the Wooden Horse of Stalag Luft III, the famous German prisoner-of-war camp for Allied airmen during the Second World War. It will detail how the horse was made and how it facilitated the escape of the three men who dug this tunnel to freedom. The facts and figures in this article are supplied chiefly by my first-edition copy of “The Wooden Horse”, written by the escaper Eric Williams in 1949.

Stalag Luft III – Sagan, Poland – 1943

RAF Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams was shot down over Germany in December of 1942. While in a POW camp, he met and became friends with Lt. Richard Michael Codner. When they escaped from the camp where they were captives, they were hunted down and recaptured. As a punishment, both men were sent to Stalag Luft III near the town of Sagan in Poland. Considered escape-proof, Stalag Luft III was the most secure Allied airman POW camp in all of German-occupied Europe. The security-measures in place meant that it was virtually impossible to get out. There was barbed wire, fences, watchtowers, searchlights, armed guards, microphones buried into the ground to listen for tunnelling and a dusty grey topsoil and an annoyingly pale yellow sandy subsoil that made tunnelling (but more importantly, disposing of the excavated sand) especially hard.

The problem with the Germans’ logic was that they built the most secure camp to house their most troublesome and escape-hungry POWs. To them, this made sense. To the Allies, it merely served as a challenge to find out just how escape-proof this camp really was. And they put the Germans to test countless times. Tunnels were being dug out of the camp on an almost around-the-clock basis. But the problem was that the tunnels had to be aggravatingly long before they were the slightest bit of use to the POWs as a means of escaping.

Between the prisoner sleeping-quarters (large huts or barracks built on stilts about a foot off the ground) and the perimeter fences, were several yards of open ground. And between the perimeter fences and the safety of the woods were even more stretches of barren, empty, treeless, stumpless, hillless and bumpless ground. Even digging from the huts nearest to the fences, tunnels were well over a hundred or more feet long before they reached the trees, and the soil that had to be excavated for such a long tunnel was a constant headache to the POW escape-committee, a group of POWs whose job it was to fund and assist all escape-attempts within the camp.

Overcoming an Obstacle

Williams and Codner were quick to realise the problems associated with tunnelling out of the camp, but the problem was that this was the only way to escape. When Williams saw how hard and long a struggle it would be to dig a conventional tunnel from a building to the edge of the outlying woods, he knew he had to come up with a solution. When Codner mentioned an attempt by POWs to dig a tunnel right out in the middle of the ‘No-Man’s Land’ between the huts and the fences by digging the hole with their hands and hiding the sand in their pockets and covering the hole with bed-slats and sand, Williams was inspired to try and find a way to disguise a tunnel’s trapdoor out in the open, in plain view of the guards while the tunnel was dug underneath. Codner considered the idea stupid, it was impossible to disguise a trapdoor thoroughly enough that the “Goons” (the German sentries) wouldn’t notice it at once. But Williams persisted that there had to be a way.

He struck on the idea when he thought of the vaulting-horses that they used to have in school gymnasiums. Such horses, used for gymnastics, were about three feet high and about two feet wide at the base, hollow inside and with solid sides. Prisoners could put the vaulting-horse in the middle of the space between the huts and the fence and vault over it all day long while inside the horse and under the ground, a prisoner (transported inside the horse) could dig a tunnel. At the end of each tunnelling session, the prisoner climbed out of the tunnel, attached bags full of sand to the underside of the horse and held onto the inside of the horse while men carried it away to a safe place where the sand could be dispersed. The trapdoor to the tunnel would be covered with excess sand and the grey topsoil could be sprinkled on top. This would make the ground under the horse (once it had been carried away) look completely untampered with.

This still from the 1950 film “The Wooden Horse” shows a faithful reproduction of the actual horse used in the 1943 prison-camp escape

The third man in the escape, Oliver Philpot, a Canadian RAF pilot, acted as the ‘behind-the-scenes’ man during the escape. While Williams and Codner did most of the digging, Philpot helped with disposing of the excavated sand and organising the horse and the vaulters necessary to create the illusion of harmless exercise, to fool the German guards. In return for all his help, Codner and Williams promised him a spot in the escape.

Digging the Tunnel

Digging of the tunnel did not start right away. For the first few weeks all the vaulting-horse was used for was…vaulting. It was necessary to vault over the horse every single day for several weeks so that the German guards would get used to the sight of it…so used to it that they would pay absolutely no attention to it when it came time to dig the tunnel underneath it. There was always at least one vaulter in the group who acted as a total klutz. He would foul up his jumps and knock the horse over…deliberately…to show the Germans that there was nothing hidden inside. The Germans themselves took no chances – Within the first few days of the horse being built and used, it was scrutinised minutely by the guards to make sure there was nothing abnormal about it…which there wasn’t. It was a vaulting horse and that was all that it was meant to be. To the Germans, at least.

Once the Germans had gotten used to the sight of the horse, it was time to start digging. The plan was simple.

On every vaulting day, a man (either Williams or Codner) would hide inside the horse, holding onto the framework inside while men carried the horse out of the hut where it was stored. To carry the horse, they had a pair of long shafts which could be slid through two pairs of holes on the sides of the horse. Apart from making the horse easier to carry, the four holes also served as air-holes inside the horse.

The area where the tunnel was to start was marked by two pits in the ground which were eventually created by the constant scraping and landing of the feet of the vaulters over several weeks. By putting the horse between these two dents in the sand, it was easy to correctly access the tunnel mouth every single time.

Working alternatively, it took Williams and Codner four days to sink the shaft for the tunnel. It was to be two feet and six inches square and five feet deep. The shaft and the start of the tunnel were shored up with bricks and planks of wood. The trapdoor was set eighteen inches below the surface and was covered by a foot and a half of topsoil. This would prevent any German guard who walked over the top of the shaft to hear any hollow echoes underneath.

The first seven feet of the tunnel itself was shored up with wooden bedboards all around: bottom, roof and sides. This was a necessary precaution: the initial few feet of the tunnel were directly below the landing-area of the vaulters. Without sufficient shoring, the constant force of men landing on top of the tunnel would cause it to collapse. This was the only part of the tunnel, with the exception of the shaft, that was shored up. Because the tunnel was so near the surface, the weight of the sand above was not so great that cave-ins would be a likely possibility.

The conditions in the tunnel were terrible. Fresh air was almost nonexistent. The men dug with trowels or crude spades fashioned from food-cans. Their only source of light came from candles. They often worked naked or stripped to their waists because of the warmth in the tunnel, but also to prevent the German guards from seeing yellow subsoil (a telltale sign of a tunnel-in-progress) on their clothing. The tunnel was also extremely cramped. It averaged only two and a half feet by two and a half feet, giving the men barely any room to move. At the end of forty feet (a distance that took them eight weeks to dig), the men had almost given up. The lack of fresh air in the tunnel was chronic and the physical toll on both the tunnellers and the vaulters who covered for them, was beginning to show.

Tunnelling was not without risks. Cave-ins were a serious and constant problem. In the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III (In 1944), tunnels that were thirty feet below the ground required solid wood shoring and supports all the way along the tunnel to prevent cave-ins. This tunnel, just five feet below the surface with barely any shoring at all, was in just as much danger of a cave-in as one that was six times deeper under ground.

Miraculously, though, cave-ins on this tunnel were few. In fact there was only one major one to speak of, when Codner was in the tunnel. Some of the roof gave way, burying him alive. The cave-in was so severe that the surface of the sand was broken, opening a hole into the tunnel. A vaulter jumping over the horse spotted the hole and deliberately tripped when he landed, falling over the hole and covering it with his body. He laid there, pretending he’d twisted his ankle, while below, Codner managed to scoop away the fallen sand and shore up the cave-in with planks taken from the tunnel-shaft.

Eventually, though, the exertion of the digging and the sheer fetid nature of the air in the tunnel began to seriously effect the mens’ health. Williams was suffering severely from exhaustion brought on by the strain of the work and the lack of fresh oxygen. He was so ill that he was confined to the camp hospital for nearly a week. Although the tunnel didn’t progress very far in the meantime, his convalesence did give him a chance to pump other patients in the hospital for news about the outside world and what his chances were for escape.

Preparing for Escape

Provided your tunnel wasn’t discovered and it didn’t collapse, getting out of a prisoner-of-war camp in German-occupied Europe was pretty easy. The real problem in escaping was the struggle that many prisoners faced after getting beyond the wire. To get across occupied Europe, anyone who wished to travel anywhere at any time at all, required a whole armful of passes, letters, certificates, passports, identification-cards and travel-permits. All these things had to be forged by forgers inside the prison-camp for use by the potential escapee.

Apart from the paperwork, prisoners also required civilian clothing. All prisoners were put into camps wearing their military uniforms. To make it through occupied Europe, they had to have civilian clothes so that they didn’t stand out as the enemy. Tailors inside the camp would churn out suits, waistcoats, overcoats, shirts, jackets, shorts, jumpers and any other article of clothing that might be needed to dress a prisoner-of-war up as an everyday civilian. They used everything from bedsheets, blankets, curtains and any old and discarded uniforms that they could find, to make new clothing.

Escaping prisoners also needed cover-stories. All potential escapees had to clear every stage of their escape-plan with the ‘Escape Committee’, the group of prisoners whose job it was to oversee all escape-attempts within the camp. This wasn’t just a formality – the Escape Committee had control over the forged papers, money, passports, stockpiles of clothing, food, equipment, maps and anything else that an escapee might need during his bid to freedom. But he could only get these if the plan that he had for his escape was considered feasible.

All three escapees, Eric Williams, Richard Codner and Oliver Philpot, had their cover-stories that they would be French labourers. To this end, they were supplied with money, tools, working-class outfits and work-permits and passports in French. When they escaped, Oliver would go his own way while Williams and Codner would go as a pair, Codner spoke fluent French and so was able to liase with any friendly French workmen that they might find and through them, contact any local resistance-movements.

The Breakout

With the distance between the tunnel mouth and the safety of the forest around the camp greatly reduced by their ingenuity, Williams, Codner and Philpot finished their tunnel at the end of October. At six o’clock at night on the 29th of October, 1943, the three men made their escape.

Codner had been left in the tunnel all day to dig the last few feet towards the safety of the woods. He survived in the dark with the help of a candle and a length of metal pipe, which he stuck up through the soil every few feet to create air-holes to ventiliate the tunnel and compensate for the increasingly oxygen-deprived air below the ground.

Shortly after five o’clock, Codner and Williams, together with a third man, were transported towards the tunnel inside the horse, where Codner and Williams made their way down, with the third man left above ground to seal the entrance of the tunnel and obliterate all evidence of its existence. The three escapees stayed below ground in the interim period, preparing for the escape by continuing to dig and handing each person their allotted escape-materials – food, money, equipment, necessary identity and travel-papers and their outfits of civilian clothing.

At six o’clock, the tunnel was broken open, safely within the cover of the forest and the three men climbed out. With the guards in the camp concentrating on the prisoners within the wire, they paid no attention to the three men who were making their getaway outside the wire.

The Escape

Oliver Philpot, the Canadian, headed off alone. He thought that having a partner would slow him up. Williams and Codner stuck together, travelling as a pair of French labourers. Codner spoke fluent French and this helped them bridge any language-barriers and gave them a chance of contacting any local resistance movements. Williams, who spoke nothing but English, was advised by the members of the Escape Committee to just play dumb, or at best, to merely say the words: “Ich bin auslander, nicht verstehen”, or: “I am a foreigner. I don’t understand”.

Williams and Codner travelled by train, hopping from city to city, heading northwest. They saw this as the best way to put as much distance between themselves and the camp and travelled by rail as far as the Polish port city of Stettin. Here, they managed to contact French labourers and dockworkers who were part of the local underground movement. After interrogation to ensure that they were who they claimed to be, the French agreed to try and help.

It took several days, but eventually, Williams and Codner managed to secure passage (that is to say, they would be smuggled aboard) a ship leaving Stettin for the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. Although the two officers believed that this was a waste of time (Denmark being occupied by Germany), their contacts assured them that it would be easier to get to Sweden from Poland via Denmark than from Poland to Sweden directly, since the quantity of ship-traffic between Denmark and Sweden was much greater.

The journey was a very unplesant one. The ship was searched by S.S. officers with sniffer-dogs before it was allowed to leave port. The captain plied the Germans with schnapps to distract them from their work and peppered the dogs’ noses to prevent them from smelling his hidden ‘cargo’. To keep well out of the reach of the Germans, Williams and Codner were confined to the chain-locker in the ship’s bilge. Despite being provided with blankets, the journey was uncomfortable at best.

In Denmark, their initial plans for escaping to Sweden were foiled by resistance-activity. Acts of sabotage had caused an increase of guards around important parts of Copenhagen such as the docks, which made escape by a large ship impossible. Instead, Williams and Codner were taken to Sweden in a small fishing-boat by one of their resistance contacts.

By the next morning, the two men had reached the Swedish city of Goteburg where they managed to contact the British Consulate. To their surprise, Oliver Philpot had also made a successful escape to Goteburg, taking a train to Danzig and then a boat from there directly to Goteburg, beating his fellow escapees by a full week! After spending another week and a bit in Sweden, they were flown back to England and eventual safety.

Eric Williams died on Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1983. He was seventy-two.
Oliver Philpot died on the 6th of May, 1993. He was eighty.

Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to find any birth and death records of Flight Lt. Richard Michael Clinton Codner.

Left to Right: Richard M. Codner, Eric Williams, Oliver Philpot

27/03/2011 by Scheong

Taking the Waters: The History of the Modern Soft-Drink

Soft drinks are something we take for granted today. Everything from sparkling mineral-water, soda-water, tonic-water, lemonade, Sprite, 7-Up, Fanta, Solo, Irn Bru and the most famous soft-drink of all…Coca Cola.

But where did all this start? How did mankind one day discover that cold liquids would suddenly taste amazing and refreshing if they were merely carbonated? When were the first soft-drinks created and what did they originate as? How did they develop from curiosities and cures, to one of our most beloved and addictive beverages today?

This article tracks the development of the modern soft-drink from its birth as a medicine in the 18th century, to its mass consumption by its worldwide fizzy fandom in the 21st.

The Birth of Hydrotherapy

In the 18th and 19th centuries, medicine was crude. It was a mix of folklore, misguided science and age-old superstitions which on the whole…did nothing. Medical theory was advancing in this time, but cures for disease were few and far between and were of wildly varying effectiveness. People who suffered from anything from asthma to stomach-pains to muscle-pains would take a whole range of weird and scary potions, pills and concoctions to try and alleviate their discomfort and pain. However, the medicines prescribed by pharmacists and doctors were often unpleasant, either to look at, or to taste…in many cases, both!

It was in an effort to find cleaner, more comfortable ways to medicate the body that hydrotherapy was developed.

Hydrotherapy, or ‘water-therapy’, is the use of naturally mineralised waters, to cure various complaints. Mostly, it was used for muscle and joint pains. In cities such as Bath in England, it became fashionable to visit large public baths and springs which were filled with natural mineral-water to soothe joint-pains. This activity was known as ‘taking the waters’, from which the title of this article is derived.

The Rise of Medicinal Water

As hydrotherapy progressed, bathhouses and spa-retreats started popping up. Combined with a good diet and regular exercise, people began to recognise the benefits of water. Immersing oneself in a bath of cold water had the effect of increasing the heartrate, stimulating muscles and relieving joint-pain. Mineralised water was considered so beneficial that people began drinking it, as well as bathing in it. As early as 1661, the natural mineral-water available in the city of Bath was being bottled and sold for its ‘healthful benefits’.

However, there was some truth to mineralised and medicated water. And we should like to hope so. For without it, modern soft-drinks would not exist.

The first of these new waters was ‘soda water’.

Also called sparkling water or carbonated water, soda-water was created in the mid 18th century by a man named Joseph Priestly. In an experiment conducted in 1767, Priestly held a bowl of water above a vat of fermenting beer. The carbon dioxide released from the beer was impregnated into the water. Priestly called this vapour ‘fixed air’, and wrote about his experiements. He soon discovered that cold water impregnated with carbon dioxide had a pleasant, fizzy and sweet taste, and so experimented with finding a way to reproduce this effect. By dripping oil of vitriol (an old name for sulphuric acid) onto chalk, he could create carbon dioxide gas. By forcing this gas into water, he could create the world’s first soft-drink…

…soda water.

Although Priestly invented soda-water, the world’s first soft-drink, and recognised that it tasted wonderful, that was more or less all he did. It would take another man to put a marketing angle on Priestly’s invention and introduce it to the world. That man was an 18th century German watchmaker and scientist. A man named Johann…Jacob…Schweppe! And so…the world’s first soft-drink manufacturer, Schweppes, was founded in 1783.

The next step up from plain soda-water was a step away from commercial beverage-manufacturing, and a return to mankind’s original experiments with mineralised waters…to find cures for disease. Their first major breakthrough came in the mid 19th century with the invention of…

Tonic-water.

The word ‘tonic’, although rarely used today, still has medicinal connotations. And well it might, for that was precisely what it was meant to do. Tonic-water was invented when chemists put a small amount of quinine-powder into carbonated water. As quinine is very potent, only a small amount of it was added to a relatively large amount of water (only a few grains to each bottle), but the effect was amazing.

Apart from giving the water a distinct and slightly bitter taste…that tonic-water still has today…the water, thus treated with quinine, was now very effective in combating one of the most feared diseases that ravaged the African continent (and other tropical areas) during the 19th century – Malaria. It was for this reason that this quinine-infused water became known as ‘tonic-water’, because it was quite literally a ‘tonic’ (medicine) for malaria.

Tonic-water is relatively easy to make. You add quinine-powder, citric acid and baking-soda to a bottle of water. You seal the bottle tightly and invert it to mix the powders and dilute them in the water. The quinine is diluted with the water while the baking-soda reacts with the citric acid to let off carbon-dioxide gas. The gas, sealed inside the bottle, carbonates the water, thus creating carbonated tonic-water. Although a relatively easy process, the somewhat trial-and-error nature of making carbonated water this way was that the pressure of the gas could vary according to the quantities of baking-soda to water. If the pressure was too high, the bottle could explode in your hands!

One risk of bottling soda-water was that the corks used to seal the bottles could dry out and shrink, compromising the seal (and turning the cork into a dangerous missile if the pressure in the bottle managed to shoot it out). Some soda-water bottles were deliberately designed so that they couldn’t stand up straight. That way, the soda-water kept the cork damp and the swollen cork would keep the bottle tightly sealed.

Citrus Drinks

The next step up from creating cold, fizzy water was…creating cold fizzy water with flavour! With methods for safely and effectively manufacturing carbonated water now in place, the 18th and 19th century saw the rise of our first flavoured soft-drinks. The most famous of these was…lemonade!

Lemonade is created in several ways. Some use carbonated water, some use still water. In recipes calling for still water, baking soda was used to carbonate the water and lemon-juice and sugar was used to give it that sweet and sour lemony-taste that we all recognise today. Other fruits such as oranges and limes were also used to give plain carbonated water a different and more interesting taste.

The Most Famous of All: Coca Cola

Although famous today for being sickeningly sweet, conspicuously browny-red and for causing everything from pimples to dental problems to obesity and for being used for everything other than drinking, from cleaning toilets to removing blood…Coca Cola was actually invented as a medicine!

Coca-cola, or ‘Coke’ was invented in the state of Georgia in the United States in 1886. It was originally an alcoholic beverage called ‘Pemberton’s French Wine Cola’ and was created by a chemist named…John Pemberton.

Coca-Cola changed from its alcoholic form to its non-alcoholic form in the very year it was invented. In 1886, the temperance movement was beginning to gather steam and prohibition came to Georgia. Unable to sell alcoholic beverages, Pemberton instead marketed his new wonder-beverage as a medicine. Among other things, Coca-Cola was designed to cure headaches, impotence and drug-addictions!…An interesting claim when you consider that the drink famously gets is name ‘Coca-Cola’ because one of the main ingredients was…cocaine!

Mmmm…Healthy!

Originally sold over-the-counter by the glass, Coca-Cola was sold in bottles starting in 1894. Cocaine was removed from the drink’s recipe in 1903, but nevertheless, the name ‘Coca-Cola’ remained.

Drinks for a New Century

From their birth in the 18th century to their acceptance as a refreshing drink in the 20th century, soft-drinks underwent many changes. By the early 1900s, soft-drinks really began to rise in popularity. Temperence movements around the world meant that people, unable to buy alcohol, started drinking soft-drinks instead. Soda-fountains, manned by the ‘soda-jerk’ (so called because of the jerking-action used to operate the levers which carbonated the drinks with gas and which dispensed the aerated beverages) became increasingly popular. Soft-drinks were cheap, refreshing, delicious and easy to buy. A bottle of Coca-Cola cost about five cents in the early 20th century.

But why are soft-drinks called ‘soft’ drinks? This name was given to them to differentiate them from ‘hard’ drinks, meaning alcoholic beverages, as opposed to ‘soft drinks’, those which were non-alcoholic.

Soon, new flavours and brands of soft-drinks began to emerge, both on shelves and under soda-fountain counters all around the world. ‘Pepsi’ was first established in 1898, ‘7Up’ was created in 1929. ‘Fanta’ was invented during the Second World War in 1941. ‘Sprite’ and ‘Sunkist’ showed up in the 1960s and 70s. In keeping with soft-drink’s ‘medicinal origins’, ‘Pepsi’ (named for the pepsin enzyme which it contained) was supposed to aid the digestion of those who drank it. Of course, like Coca-Cola it didn’t actually do this, but Caleb Bradman, the man who invented Pepsi, liked to think that it did.

In the 21st century, soft-drinks continue to be enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, every single day. From its beginnings as a health-drink and tonic through its evolution as a healthy and tasty beverage, to a refreshing and invigorating drink to everyone’s favourite fizzy thirst-quencher, soft-drinks have remained in the public eye for the best part of nearly three centuries.

21/03/2011 by scheong

A Blast from the Past: The Creation of Dynamite

The history of dynamite is one of construction, destruction, death, invention, innovation, trial, error and inspiration. A history worth reading about.

Who Invented Dynamite?

The inventor of dynamite was a man named Alfred Nobel. Nobel was born in Sweden in 1833. In 1851 at the age of 18, Nobel moved to the United States of America to study chemistry. As a child, his family had travelled extensively through Europe and he had learnt several languages. He spent four years in the United States and returned to Sweden in 1855. When his father’s family business collapsed, Alfred devoted his studies to the manufacture, use and safe detonation of explosives and through trial and horrendous error, came upon the single explosive that was used so extensively for the next century that, even though it’s considered outdated today, is still considered…dynamite!

19th Century Explosives

The 18th but increasingly the 19th century, saw the boom-years of the Industrial Revolution. Literally. A lot of things were going ‘Boom’ in the 1800s. The transcontinental railroad across the USA was being built, in Australia and California, gold-rushes were driving people crazy trying to get rich. In Seuz, a great canal was being dug through the earth. In England, London’s famous ‘Underground’ railroad system was being built.

But for all this to be possible…for all the tunnelling, blasting, mining, trenching, dredging and excavation to be made possible…people needed explosives. To chip away at rock for hours was ineffective when you could instead blast the rock apart and then just simply carry away the leftover pieces. Easy in theory, very difficult in practice.

There were two main explosives in the mid 19th century. Blackpowder and Nitroglycerine.

Blackpowder had been used since the 1600s for construction-work and mining. People drilled holes into rockfaces, filled them with blackpowder, trailed a fuse, lit it and let the explosion do its work. But blackpowder was relatively weak. It was designed for use firing rifles, cannons, pistols and muskets…not blasting holes in rock. This ancient recipe of charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate, had to be replaced with something more effective.

That more effective something was invented in 1847 by an Italian chemist named Ascanio Sobrero. Although he was actually trying to create a medicine at the time, Sobrero’s discovery nearly blew his hands off! He had unwittingly invented an oily, liquid explosive which he called…nitroglycerine.

Nitroglycerine has an explosive power eight times what blackpowder of a similar quantity could produce and people were quick to see that this could blast and tunnel and mine and build and quarry, a hell of a lot more effectively than old-fashioned gunpowder. However, there was a problem.

Nitroglycerine is notoriously and lethally unstable. Because it is a contact-explosive which detonates from sufficient agitation, the slightest shock, bump or jolt can cause it to blow up. Because of this, using, but even moreso, transporting, nitroglycerine was extremely dangerous. For nitroglycerine to be used in construction of major engineering projects, it was necessary to have a chemist on-site to mix the concoction for you, then and there, when you needed it. Transporting nitroglycerine to a construction-site by a bumpy, jolty, shaky and vibrating horse and cart was a sure recipe for disaster on a monumental scale.

The biggest problem, apart from this, was nitroglycerine’s unpredictable nature. People knew it was unstable and that a jolt could cause it to blow up, but the problem was…they didn’t know how much of a jolt. You could strike a bottle of nitroglycerine with a hammer and nothing could happen. Or you could jump up and down with a bottle in your hand and it would blow up in your face.

It was for all these reasons, it’s legendary instability and frustrating upredictable nature, that a safer explosive had to be found. Something that could be safely transported, safely carried, safely detonated without the risk of exploding unexpectedly.

Alfred Nobel’s Blasting Cap

Nitroglycerine was wonderful stuff. Used properly, it could speed up construction-work on major public-works projects, it could allow people to mine faster and more effectively or blast and split rocks apart for quarrying that much easier. But its unpredictable nature meant that it was very hard to use it properly. Anyone who handled nitroglycerine was in deadly danger of being blown to smithereens. It was to prevent this and to make nitroglycerine easier to use, that Alfred Nobel invented his blasting-cap.

Before Nobel came along, everything about nitroglycerine spelt doom and destruction. First you had to transport it. If your wagon hit a bump, the entire transport of explosives could go up like a nuclear-bomb. Then you had to carry it to where you needed it. One trip or careless jolt and you became a statistic. But then you had to actually detonate it.

People did this in various ways back in the 19th century. One way to detonate nitroglycerine, as many people knew…was just to give it a jiggle. Enough agitation and the quantity of nitroglycerine in question would explode! But nobody really knew just how much agitation it required. And to agitate the mixture, they needed to be near to it. And nobody wanted to be next to nitroglycerine when it exploded.

The other way for nitroglycerine to be detonated was to pour it onto a surface…lay a fuse…light it…and run like all hell. The problem with this is, one stray spark could set off the mixture prematurely and send you flying into the air (or worse). Clearly, there were a few occupational hazards to using nitroglycerine.

Alfred Nobel examined nitroglycerine and decided to try and combine these two methods of detonating nitroglycerine. He recognised that sufficient agitation would cause it to explode. And he also recognised the danger of an open flame or an unpredictable fuse. To try and make this safer, Nobel created his blasting-caps.

Nobel’s blasting-caps were simple, really. They used mercury fulminate (a shock-detonated explosive like nitroglycierine) to create a chain-reaction. Exploding a small amount of mercury fulminate in a metal precussion-cap produced enough of a shock to detonate any nearby nitroglycerine. Nobel’s invention made it easier and safer to detonate nitroglycerine without the need to be connected to the nitroglycerine (such as holding onto a rope and jiggling a bottle) and without the need for open flames from fuses or matches.

Transporting Nitroglycerine

Nobel’s blasting-caps, invented in 1862, were a success insofar as they allowed for safe detonation of nitroglycerine. They did not, however, solve the far more dangerous issue of how to transport nitroglycerine.

Because vibrations, jolts and shocks can cause devastation to anyone transporting nitroglycerine, elaborate measures were taken to try and package it so that it was transported in as shock-proof a state as possible. An article in the Titusville Morning Herald of the 15th of October, 1870, said that…

“…The use of nitroglycerin has become so common, and the casualties resulting from any accidental explosion of it have been so frightful, that any improvement which adds to the safety of its transportation and storage deserves any encouragement. Mr. Nobel, the most extensive manufacturer of it in the world, whose name is everywhere associated with the improved explosive agents of the day, adopts the practice of mixing it with alcohol. This is said to make it perfectly harmless, so that a rifle ball may be fired into it, or a percussion cap explode in it with perfect safety. The simplicity of this process, and of that which restores its explosive qualities, recommends it as much as does the safety of the prepared article.

If water be added to the solution, the nitroglycerin immediately sinks to the bottom, and is drawn off for use. In the prepared state, it is packed in hermetically sealed cans, thus preventing the evaporation of the alcohol, which would restore its dangerous qualities to the nitroglycerin, and it may be sent to any distance, and in any climate without the risk of explosion…”

Trying to find a safe way to transport nitroglycerine and to use it became something of an obsession with Alfred Nobel. In 1864, his younger brother Emil Nobel was killed in a nitroglycerine explosion that destroyed their factory. While he was having more and more success with his explosives, Alfred needed something that was much better, more effective and a lot safer. He was beginning to pay the price for his dangerous occupation as an explosives manufacturer.

Inventing Dynamite

Dynamite was finally invented in 1866 when Nobel discovered a substance that would, at the same time bind nitroglycerine together so that it didn’t have to be transported as a liquid in fragile glass bottles, and which would render the explosive harmless until it was ready to be used (or at least, harmless if handled with common sense). This substance was…earth!

Or to be precise, it was diatomaceous earth, also called diatomite, a special type of soft soil a bit like sand. Among its other properties, this earth was very absorbent and was therefore wonderful for mixing with nitroglycerine. Anyone reading this who has a pet cat might recognise this substance…that’s right: Alfred Nobel’s famous invention is a lethally unstable explosive…mixed with kitty-litter! And there is even a legend about how this discovery was made. It was an accident!

To transport nitroglycerine safely, bottles and jars of the stuff were packed into crates and the hollows between the jars were filled with diatomite sand, to cushion the jolting of transportation. When workers were unloading some nitroglycerine near Nobel’s factory one day, they accidently dropped one of the crates! Fearing for their lives, the men bolted! When the cate did not explode, they returned to inspect the damage, which was minimal. Some of the lower jars had broken from the impact, but the sand had done its job and prevented an explosion.

Nobel, searching for a substance to add to nitroglycerine to render it harmless until the time of planned detonation, examined the sand used in packing the nitroglycerine. He experimented with the nitro-infused sand and discovered that if the mixture had a fuse or blasting-cap applied to it, it would detonate, but was otherwise rendered inexplosive due to the sand mixed in with the liquid nitroglycerine.

After further experiments, Nobel had created what he initially called “Nobel’s Blasting Powder” in 1867. His ‘powder’ was created out of a ratio of 3:1 of nitroglycerine to diatomite sand. At last, people had a safe explosive that was as powerful as nitroglycerine but which had none of the instability. The liquid nitroglycerine was mixed in with the earth and the resulting paste was formed into sticks which were wrapped in waxed paper. Using dynamite was as easy as inserting a blasting-cap into the end of the stick of dynamite, trailing away a fuse and then lighting it. The fuse would eventually set off the blasting-cap which woud set off the dynamite.

Nobel’s new invention was a success! Nitroglycerine could now be used safely, although for added protection, sticks of dynamite were often frozen solid in transportation as an extra preventive against accidental explosions. The name ‘Dynamite’ comes from the greek word for ‘Power’, from which we also get words such as ‘Dynamo’ and ‘Dynamic’.

Using and Storing Dynamite

Dynamite was fantastically popular. Finally, construction-workers and builders and engineers had a powerful and safe explosive. You buried the sticks of dynamite, stuck in a blasting-cap and a fuse, lit the fuse and let the explosives take their course.

Of course, Dynamite wasn’t always used for peaceful purposes such as construction and public works. Dynamite, as an all-purpose explosive, was easy to buy. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the availability of dynamite meant that it was used for several murder and assassination-plots. One of the most famous was in 1880, when a carpenter planted dynamite under a dining-room in the Winter Palace in Russia, intent on killing Tsar Alexander II. The assassination was a failure, but it showed just how accessible high explosives could be, to the wrong kind of person.

It was because of publicity like this that Alfred Nobel decided to create the prizes that now bear his name.

The Nobel Prizes

First awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prizes are awarded each year, to those who have made outstanding achievements in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Medicine and most famously of all, world peace; the famous Nobel Peace Prize.

The prizes were created as a direct result of the unforseen and disastrous consequences that Alfred Nobel had created with his invention: Dynamite. What had been created to help mankind build and construct and advance society, was also being used to destroy it! Horrified by this and troubled by the kind of legacy that he might leave on the world, Nobel instructed in his last will and testament that his fortune was to be used to create a series of prizes to be given to those people who conferred ‘the greatest benefit to mankind’ in the categories listed above – Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine, Literature and World Peace. Nobel died in December, 1896 at the age of 63, about a week before Christmas. Apart from a few years during the Second World War, Nobel Prizes have been awarded each year for the past 110 years.

23/02/2011 by Scheong

Bringing out the Dead: The Life of a Body-Snatcher

After I found a book on this subject at one of the local junk-shops, I thought that an article on the crime of body-snatching would make a fascinating little bit of morbid reading. It’s one of those old-fashioned crimes that we often read about in history books, like witchcraft or poisoning wells or being transported for stealing a loaf of bread. Body-snatching is one of those crimes and like all crimes, it makes people ask the question ‘Why?’ Why was it done? Why was it necessary? Why would you want to do it and who were the people who that committed crimes like this?

What Is Body-Snatching?

Body-snatching is the crime of disinterring a corpse. Or in layman’s speech…digging up dead bodies. Ain’t that cuddly? In the form that most people would understand it, body-snatching is the crime of digging up dead bodies which would then be sold. To medical colleges, teaching-hospitals, anatomical colleges, doctors and surgeons, to be precise. It was a crime prevelant in many countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the United Kingdom, especially, it was at epidemic proportions before the 1830s. If you’ve ever seen those old Georgian-era churchyards and cemetaries and seen the fenced-in burial-plots or those huge, wrough-iron fences with the adorable, razor-sharp spikes on top that are built around the perimeter of graveyards, those aren’t just there for morbid decoration. They were designed as a deterrent for body-snatchers, who would raid cemeteries at night to steal freshly-buried corpses!

For those of you who have heard of the saying of ‘doing the graveyard shift’, the crime of body-snatching was what made this shift so necessary. City watchmen and constables would perform the graveyard shift in churchyards and cemeteries at night to stop people digging up corpses! You can imagine how rife this must’ve been if the phrase ‘the graveyard shift’ has survived over two hundred years to be still used in the 21st Century!

Why would people want to Snatch Bodies?

As I’ve explained, ‘body-snatching’ is the crime of digging up freshly-buried corpses, and that this crime was particularly rife during the Georgian and Regency Era.

But why?

You have to admit that willingly wanting to break into a churchyard at night to dig up a dead guy is not something most people would want to do, hardened criminal or not. So why was this crime so popular?

Legislation is designed to prevent crime and aid humanity, but sometimes, and sometimes more often than not, it, aids crime and prevents humanity. In this case, legislation prevented humanity from learning all that it could about…humanity. And it aided criminals who were willing to help humanity better understand itself.

In the 18th century, medical science was advancing at a slow, if steady rate. Slowly, people were casting off the old-fashioned medical beliefs that had been taught and passed down for centuries since ancient times. Medical students were not interested in humors or blood-letting or spells and potions. They were interested in finding out how the human body was composed and how it worked. To aid curious and hungry growing medical minds, anatomical colleges and great medical teaching hospitals were created in the 17th and 18th and early 19th centuries. Doctors and surgeons or medical students flooded to these institutions so that they might learn more about how the human body worked and how they could better treat and cure it.

But for people to understand how the human body worked they first needed bodies.

An old operating or dissection theatre. If you’ve ever wondered why they were called ‘operating THEATRES’, it’s because these were the chambers where medical students would go to watch their lecturers put on a show about the human body and they were set out, quite literally, like theatres. Students would stand on the tiers above and around the central stage to observe the doctor or surgeon dissecting or operating on the body below (which would be on an operating or dissection table). The wooden rails were there so that students could lean on them and be more comfortable

The problem was, in 18th century England, bodies were notoriously hard to come by. The only bodies that could be given to such medical instruction schools for the purposes of studying anatomy were those of murderers, suiciders or the destitute who had died by execution, their own hand or through neglect and poor health. All well and good, but how many people are hanged each year? Or commit suicide? Or are found dead on the streets? Probably a fair few, but that was few enough. These were the ONLY way that such medical institutions could get their hands on bodies. Even if someone DIED and had stated in their WILL that they desired their remains to be left for the purposes of science and learning, this was against the law. There simply were not enough ‘state-provided’ corpses to be sent to medical colleges for professors and doctors to teach their students about the intricacies of the human body. They needed more bodies. And they didn’t really ask questions about where the bodies came from…if you get my drift.

Enter: The Ressurectionist. Also called ressurection-men or ‘body-snatchers’, these men would break into churchyards and cemeteries under cover of darkness to dig up corpses that had been recently buried, and send them off to doctors and surgeons who could use them to teach their students about the human body. There was big business in body-snatching. Of course, doctors have always been wealthy people, and they could…and would…pay generously for a really nice ‘specimen’. This led to the rise of the body-snatcher in the 18th century.

How was Body-Snatching Done?

It was just as well that stealing bodies paid really well (or well enough, at least), because stealing them in the first place was pretty damn hard. To begin with, you needed to find a graveyard. Having found it, you had to get over the numerous obstacles that protected it. Gates were locked at night, bars couldn’t be squeezed through and it could be tricky climbing over the sharp, wrought-iron railings. Coupled with that, there were often watchmen or police-constables on patrol, doing “the graveyard shift”. There were even watch-towers in larger cemeteries!

The tower in the middle of this cemetery (round, white building) was built for watchmen to stand guard in, and keep an eye out for body-snatchers at night

If you got past all these obstacles and barricades, you still had to dig up the body. And there was a lot of digging. To be ‘six feet under’ isn’t just a euphamism for death, it was also quite literally how deep a coffin was buried under ground! At a rough calculation, you would have to dig out about 72 cubic feet of soil with nothing but a shovel, by lamplight, risking discovery with each shovelful of earth. And once you found the coffin, you had to get it open. Coffins were often nailed shut and would have to be forced open with a crowbar. Having gotten the coffin open, you had to get the body out (a dead weight of say, 200lbs, less or more, depending on the individual) and then you’d have to close the coffin and then bury the empty coffin all over again in an operation that could take over an hour! And even then you still had to smuggle the corpse out of the cemetery!

Body-snatching, rather obviously, was against the law. Punishments for body-snatching ranged from fines to terms of imprisonment. Occasionally, body-snatching even resulted in execution. The famous body-snatchers, Williams Burke and Hare, who were Irish immigrants in Scotland, would actually murder people so that they could sell the corpses to Dr. John Knox, who ran an anatomy school in Edinburgh, Scotland. Burke was hanged for murder in January, 1829, after Hare testified against him. Hare was never prosecuted for murder and went free, but Burke’s body, as with all bodies that were hanged…was donated to a medical college for dissection. A rather fitting end.

The End of the Body-Snatchers

The crime of body-snatching, in the United Kingdom, at least, ended in 1832. The Burke and Hare murders had highlighted to the population that there was a serious and legitimate need of dead bodies, by medical instruction colleges. Doctors, surgeons and anatomists needed dead bodies if they were to teach medical students about their own bodies. In order to further the cause of medical science and to prevent further cases of body-snatching, the British parliament passed the Anatomy Act in 1832.

Under the Murder Act of 1752, only the bodies of executed criminals could be used for medical dissections. By the passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832, Parliament allowed, amongst other things…

— People to donate their remains to science in their wills (unless the family objected, and if they did, then the body would be interred).
— Doctors and surgeons the legal right to claim any unclaimed corpses from prisons or workhouses, for the purposes of medical science.
— For proper regulation of anatomical teachers (who were thereafter required to register a license as a lawful teacher of human anatomy).

08/02/2011 by Scheong

Pen Profile: Waterman #12 ‘Secretary’ eyedropper (1904)

From the 1890s until the 1950s, the Waterman Pen Company was famous for manufacturing awesome fountain pens. Their vintage pens are among the most famous and collectable in the world. I’ve always wanted one, especially one of their lovely Red Ripple hard rubber (also called ‘Woodgrain”) pens…but that was not to be.

Until recently.

No I didn’t get a woodgrain pen…but I did get something just as interesting:

This is a Waterman #12 ‘Secretary’ pen from 1904. Like all pens from the era, it’s made from hard rubber, and like almost all pens from the era, it’s an eyedropper. I like eyedroppers. Messy as they are to use, they are, nonetheless, idiotproof. Unscrew the pen-barrel, squirt in the ink, screw the barrel shut…and write! What could be more idiotproof than that?

Apparently people were stupider back then because the original box, which comes with the original instructions, have written on those instructions rather detailed steps about how to use an eyedropper pen. Although it’s probably not surprising that instructions were made that detailed – fountain pens were like iPads in 1904 and were only just becoming a commercial viablity.

I bought this pen for a variety of reasons, at the 2010 Melbourne Pen Show. The first reason is I didn’t own a vintage Waterman at the time and especially not one as cool as this. Second…I’ve never owned a pen this old that came with its original packaging and instructions! Third, it has a really sweet superflexible nib (also called a ‘wet noodle’) which oozes characteristics that most pens today would strip their gold to have.

Reading the advertising material on the box is a wonderful step into history, seeing just how Waterman marketed its products. The underside of the box is entirely devoted to warning the customer about fake Waterman fountain pens, instructing them to “make sure when buying a Waterman’s Ideal Fountain Pen, to see that our trademarks are stamped on every gold nib and on every holder”. I think it’s also very telling of how revolutionary the idea of a portable reservoir pen was at the turn of the century, when you read the instruction (that has shown up on every single pre-1910 pen-box that I’ve ever seen), that says (all in big, bold, underlined capitals):

“DO NOT REMOVE GOLD NIB FROM THE HOLDER”

When Waterman was advertising to a public which had only ever grown up using steel dip-pens with easily-broken, rusty nibs which had to be removed and replaced every few months, this instruction was very important, and again shows just how new the novelty of the fountain pen was. The pen itself is rather simple. Black, chased hard rubber with two gold bands around it. The nib is a New York Waterman’s #2 nib in 14kt gold, which is about as flexible as you could get. The pen fills easily (if messily) and writes smoothly. I love it!

Eyedropper pens such as this lasted until about 1915, when more practical self-fillers, such as Conklin’s crescent, Sheaffer’s lever and Parker’s button-filler began to replace them and become more popular with writers. But that doesn’t make those pens any better writers, just better fillers, and fountain pens of this vintage are as much fun to use as those made decades later.

03/02/2011 by scheong

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Happy Chinese New Year, Everybody!

Despite the pressure of being the “Model Minority” and being expected to know four instruments, three different sciences, being able to kick butt with your arms in a straitjacket and having a quintillion relations…being Chinese does have some benefits.

Such as being able to celebrate TWO new years. Isn’t that just grand?

The dating of this post is important. The Third of February, 2011. Chinese New Year and the start of the Year of the Rabbit, something that I have been waiting for, for a long time…

Why? Mostly because I am a rabbit. And rabbits are supposed to be artistic, family-oriented, creative, loving, compassionate, peaceful and sincere.

Who doesn’t like a fat, fluffy, cuddly wabbit?

D’awwwwwwww…!!! Wook ad dah widdle wabbitywobbitywibbitywoobbity!…

Amazingly, this article is not about rabbits. Or about animals at all. Or it might be. No. This article is about Chinese New Year. More specifically, it is about the legends, myths and traditions that surround the Chinese New Year. And there are a great many of them. Enough, in fact, for me to write up a long, boring article about them which you are now compelled to read.

What’s the Deal with the Freakin’ Animals?

The most famous aspect of Chinese New Year, apart from the fact that it never seems to take place on the same date each year, much to the confusion of Westerners…is the fact that Chinese people celebrate their new years according to animals, not dates. We don’t have 1945 or 1984 or 2012. We have the year of the Rabbit, Dog, Pig, Ox, Snake and the Giant Polka-Dotted Sea-Turtle (okay I made up that last one).

There are twelve animals in the Chinese Zodiac. In order (yes, there IS an order to this), they are:

Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. A fascinating and mismatched bunch of animals. And so begins our first legend.

Exactly how the Chinese came up with this Dirty Dozen of the Barnyard Variety happened, as it always does, back in the old days. Before people had figured out how to date years, a legend tells that one of the Chinese gods had set a competition. A Chinese Zoological Olympic Games that would rival the Beijing Olympics. It went like this:

To try and put names to the years, the Jade Emperor, a Chinese God, decided that on his birthday, there would be an Amazing Race. All the animals in China were to compete in a race through the woodlands. The first twelve animals to cross the river (and therefore, the finishing-line) at the end of the race, would be honoured for all time by having years named after them.

And so, training began. Now I’d like to say that there was an Ancient Chinese drugs-scandal and that the Panda was disqualified for testing positive to Gentically-Modified Bamboo Extract or something, but historical and mythological records don’t mention this. But what happened was the following:

The rat and cat were great friends. They liked to party a lot together. When the race came, they asked the Ox to help them across the river at the end of the race. The Ox agreed. The other animals, deciding they didn’t need help, went off on the race alone.

The Rat won first place in the race because, being a crafty rat as rats always are, he kicked the cat into the river and jumped onto the bank before everyone else. The cat lost and the Ox won second place.

Next came the Tiger, who swam across the river and arrived, exhausted but triumphant, in third place.

The rabbit, being a creative fellow, decided that swimming was SOOOO last year (whenever that was!) and decided to go leap-frogging, and jumped from rock to rock, acoss the river. Impressed with the Rabbit’s ingenuity, the Jade Emperor awarded him fourth place.

Next, came the Dragon, who took advantage of the great tailwinds and flew in to land without mishap on the riverbank. The emperor knew that the Dragon was an awesome creature who could do great things, and asked him why he didn’t show up first. Well the Dragon was the original Rainmaker, and said that he had to make rain for the farmers on the way over. He also sent wind down to accompany the rain, and also to help Rabbit, who had hopped onto a log after the last rock, and who was blown ashore by the dragon’s breath. Touched by the Dragon’s sportsmanship and generosity, the emperor granted him fifth place.

Next came the snake and the horse, claiming sixth and seventh places, respectively.

Next came Goat, Monkey and Rooster, floating on a raft. The emperor granted them eighth, ninth and tenth places.

Last came Dog (eleventh) and finally, Pig, in the last and twelfth place.

But what happened to Cat? Well the legend says that Cat came out of the river last. As 13 is an unlucky number to some people, the emperor did not grant the Cat a place in the winning ranks. Enraged that he had been tricked out of a chance of fame and immortality, the cat chased the rat until the end of time, which is why cats chase rats today.

Things that go Bang in the Night

Lighting firecrackers is a fun, noisy and potentially dangerous new year’s tradition that has existed in China (and other parts of the world) for centuries.

The legend of firecrackers is that in Ancient China, a young warrior was travelling through a village on New Year’s Eve. He was grabbed by an elderly villager and pulled into his cottage whereafter the old man barred the door. He told the warrior that there was a ferocious beast who lived in the forest nearby, and who came out each New Year’s Eve to eat anybody who was caught outside after sundown.

The warrior told the villagers to tell him where the beast lived. Unafraid, he unsheathed his sword and went into the jungle to slay it. Although the beast was gone, the villagers, who had previously used gunpowder and red paper to scare the beast away, were scared that its spirit might come back to haunt them. To this end, Chinese people hang (and light) firecrackers outside their houses, and red cards with lucky sayings on them, to scare off evil spirits and to bring good luck during the New Year.

Hong Bao

Chinese words literally meaning “Red Bags”, Hongbao are the red envelopes filled with money that are passed around during Chinese New Year. They are given to children and unmarried adults to wish them luck and prosperity in the year ahead.

Wearing Red

It’s a Chinese tradition to wear something red during celebrations, but especially during Chinese New Year. This is because Red is the Chinese colour of celebration. It comes from the legend of the New Year’s monster (see above) who terrorised the villagers. People wore red clothing and stuck red posters on their doorframes to scare away the monster and to bring them good luck. That tradition is continued to this day.

27/01/2011 by Scheong

The Laptop Computer is Nothing New: The History of Writing Boxes

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone invented a device or a storage-facility that could hold all your documents and word-processing hardware and software and lock it up safely, out of reach of fiddly hands and out of sight of prying eyes? A storage facility that was portable and light and handy and which you could take with you anywhere that you wished, and which you could, in a pinch, open and access all those documents that you so desperately needed?

“Yeah we have that. They’re called laptops”, someone might say.

But what about the days before the laptop? What if you were travelling from London to New York or New York to Los Angeles or Melbourne to Hong Kong a hundred years ago and you had a whole heap of documents to bring with you that you couldn’t just stuff into a briefcase. What then?

Enter the Georgian answer to a “Generation @” question. How to store your files and folders when you’re on the move: The Writing Box.

What is a Writing Box?

Also called a writing case, dispatch case, dispatch box, writing chest or lap-desk, a writing box was mankind’s answer to the laptop computer in the days before…well…laptops! These boxes or cases were designed to be desks or offices…packed into a box. They ranged from the plainest of plain-Jane boxes, to the most elaborate, fanciful, foppish boxes that you could imagine, inlaid with pretty woods, ivory, pearls and other wonderful materials that did absolutely nothing to the practicality of the box and only increased its weight. But, whether a banged-up ‘entry’ model or a super-deluxe model, writing boxes were designed to hold everything a 19th century professional gentleman needed for correspondence and business and were stocked with everything that one could expect to find in an office, study, den or standard bureau desk of the era.

Such boxes typically came equipped with locks, keys, a writing-surface, inkwells, lightwells, pen-trays, pidgeon-holes, storage-spaces for such essentials as paper, seals, sealing-wax, nibs, postage-stamps, envelopes, pencils, money and enough little hidden compartments to spirit away the Crown Jewels right under the nose of the queen. They really were offices in a box. They were the iPads of their day, transforming a huge, bulky thing like this…

…into a compact little thing like this, small enough to put in your steamer-trunk:

Isn’t that just lovely!?

The History of Writing Boxes

In a day before passwords, ID numbers, retina-scanners and fingerprint-readers, professional men were always on the lookout for a way to safeguard all their precious documents such as private letters, deeds, wills and testaments and other important pieces of paper…like birthday cards from mummy.

To hide these things from prying eyes (especially those birthday cards!), men would store these papers in boxes when they weren’t at their desks, and lock them to keep them secure. The first writing-boxes like these were descendant from “bible-boxes” and came into being in the 1600s. Bible-boxes were used to…as the name suggests…store bibles in, during an era when bibles were expensive, handwritten documents worth their weight in gold and liable to be stolen.

Eventually, in the second half of the 17th century, such ‘bible-boxes’ were repurposed or the design was taken and improved, and the first incarnation of the writing-box appeared on the scene, as a rectangular box with a sloping lid. The box held papers and the sloping lid was the writing surface. They looked a bit like this:

This bible-box with a sloping lid for reading and writing dates from 1673

Such boxes provided a ‘desk on the move’ for such people as merchants, members of the clergy and professional men of the turn of the 18th century. But pretty soon you’ll see a big problem with these boxes.

They’re not squared off.

In the blocky world of the 1700s, where squarish chests and trunks and boxes were stacked onto the rooves of carriages and sent rattling and bumping halfway across Europe and America, a box with an irregular, sloping lid was difficult to pack and wasted space when it came time for people to pack up their new, 2hp fourwheeled carriage for the drive from London to Bath in 1725. A better and more practical design was needed.

As the 1700s progressed, some smart fellow realised that if he sliced a rectangle in half, diagonally, and moved the cutting-line so that it was slightly off, when this was applied to a box, when the lid was opened and laid down flat, a complete, compact writing-slope could be created for anyone who wanted to use it. When business was done, the slope was simply folded up into a neat little box. Such was the basic form of the writing box for the next two hundred years.

A writing box from 1790. Note the diagonal cut on the side of the box which would allow it to be opened up to present a sloped writing-surface for the user, and the spare drawer in the side of the box for storing writing-equipment

Once the form of the box was established and the basic design had been finalised, writing boxes became wildly popular. Maybe people in their wigs, tricorne hats and long coats lined up outside the local carpenter’s shop at 4:30 in the morning to get the new iBox 1.1 in 1730 or something.

Such was the popularity of the writing box that they started being used by and for everyone and everything. Their practicality and portability allowed them to be carried on journeys, on long sea-voyages, on military campaigns, scientific and geographic expeditions and even for a trip out of town to visit the Duke for the weekend shooting-party. It was during this time that writing boxes became fine pieces of craftsmanship, handmade by cabinetmakers, carpenters and skilled artisans. They ranged from sturdy, utilitarian pieces with brass-edgings to protect the wooden corners from damage…

…to exquisite, five-star models with inlaying on the outside of the case, brass handles, beautiful leather writing-slopes and lots of secret compartments:

As time progressed, writing boxes only became more and more popular and people from all walks of life, both men and women, carried them around for their own personal use. Unlike a desk which was a piece of furniture that anybody used, a writing box was considered a personal and private accessory, like a woman’s handbag or a man’s briefcase. Only your most personal and important documents or necessities were stored within its sides.

In trying to understand why writing boxes lasted so long, one has to understand the nature of correspondence, communication and just good-old-fashioned pen-pushing back in the “good old days”. Even in the third quarter of the 19th century, writing boxes remained essential pieces of travelling kit and they were essential when you consider what they were used for.

Why, for example, were writing-boxes carried everywhere? Surely it was easier to carry a pen?

Well…the first practical fountain pens didn’t finally show up until around 1895. Before then, a dip-pen and inkwell was the only way to go. Before you could get ink that was bottled in safe, screw-top, leakproof bottles, a travelling inkwell, which had a lid that locked securely and a rubber or leather seal to prevent leakage, was the only ink supply you were likely to get. And with the dip-pen shaft came the little box of nibs or ‘pens’ as they were called then, that went with it. This was a lot of things to carry around in your pocket when all you wanted to do was write “c u back @ home 2nite” on the back of your Victorian calling-card at King’s Cross Station in London.

Writing boxes therefore carried everything that you needed to do business. Mostly though, they were used for correspondence. Most likely, their contents included seals and sealing-wax, stamps, a couple of envelopes, notepaper, nibs or quills and a pen-shaft. All writing-boxes also had a dedicated slot or alcove where a sealed inkwell would sit. Such wells usually came with the box as a set.

Apart from the fact that writing on the move was rather tricky before the invention of the fountain pen, the fact of the matter was that a lot of Victorians and Georgians carried around a frightful amount of paper with them, especially when travelling. Before the age of the electric telegraph in the 1840s and 50s, sending a letter was easy. Receiving a reply could take months! To cope with likely memory-loss, most people wrote two letters! One for themselves and one to send to their friend or member of their family. That’s why all those old-fashioned desks have those pidgeon-holes. When it took three months to get a reply, you wanted to be damn sure you remembered what you mentioned in your letter in the first place! This accounts for why writing-boxes had so many cubbyholes and storage-spaces underneath the writing-slopes.

The Victorian Writing Box

Writing boxes in all honesty, probably didn’t die out until well into the 20th century and each era had its own special designs of writing-boxes. Elaborate Victorian boxes looked very different from their Stuart grandparents in the 1660s, since the Victorians were communicating faster with more people and had more papers and documents to store. Telegrams and letters meant that news moved faster and secrets had to be kept even safer. While secrecy was still important and it wasn’t uncommon for such boxes to have secret compartments, emphasis moved more to storage and organisation than anything else.

Here is a series of photos detailing what a writing box belonging to a businessman or other wealthy professional who did a good deal of travelling, would have looked like in the 1880s up to the turn of the 20th century:

Typical in design of most boxes from the middle-Georgian era up to the turn of the 20th century, this three-fold writing box is representative of the fine, top-quality boxes made during the the heyday of this unique piece of office-equipment. Swathed in black leather on the outside and navy blue leather inside, this box measures 10.5in. wide by 6.5in. high and 15in. long. It is fitted with brass hinges, propping hinges, locks and a folding handle on the lid.

Unlocking the box and raising the lid reveals the three smooth panels of ivory which collectively were called an “aide memoire” (Latin. Literally ‘Memory Aide’) which was basically a really fancy notebook for you to jot down any quick notes that you needed to remember, with a pencil. These pencil-marks could later be erased with the wipe of a damp cloth. The dark blue leather is also visible along with the pen-tray and the two boxes for “LIGHT” (matches) and “INK” (a travelling inkwell).

When opened, the underside of the lid reveals compartments for storing papers as well as sleeves for holding the writing box’s original desktop implements, made of elephant-tusk ivory:

This panel on the underside of the lid slides into a recess behind it so that the top of the box can close and lock smoothly down upon the part below it. The ivory utensils comprise of a letter-opener, a paper-folder, an old pencil (sadly, not made of ivory!) and an ivory-shafted parchment-scraping knife, used to remove dried ink from paper by scraping the edge of the knifeblade over the parchment to remove the stained paper-fibres. The black, leather sheath is marked with “JOSEPH RODGERS & SONS / CUTLERS TO HER MAJESTY”. The Joseph Rodgers company was a famous manufacturer of cutlery, ranging from first-class silverware to paperknives to fine gentlemen’s grooming equipment (err…straight razors!).

The paper or parchment-folder (the thin piece of ivory above the pencil) is an interesting implement used by only a few people today…mostly book-restorers and bookbinders…and which was used to help fold letters and handmade envelopes back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern envelopes are a relatively new invention and before their arrival, most letters were themselves folded into their own, handmade envelopes before the whole thing was sealed with wax, addressed and posted. A paper-folder such as that one was used to make sure that the lines and folds of the letter were clean and crisp and as tight as possible, so that it could be folded up to make its own envelope.

Removing the pen-tray from between the “LIGHT” and “INK” boxes reveals the secret compartment underneath (which these boxes were famous for having), which served as extra storage-space for writing necesities such as nibs, extra pen-shafts, sealing-wax and sealing-stamps. Postage-stamps might also be stored down there.

Modern matchsticks as we know them today, were invented in the 1820s and they were soon given their own little boxes in writing boxes, along with their partners, the travelling inkwell:

These matches are the original strike-anywhere ‘vesta’ matches. The inkwell has had a modern, plastic insert put inside it to replace the original liner (probably made of either glass or ceramic) which has been lost over the last hundred or so years. Matchboxes like the one pictured also came with a specially inbuilt striking-surface and match-holder to put the lit match in while lighting a cigarette or, as was probably more common, lighting a candle or a stick of sealing wax:

The match-holder is the small, round hole in the bottom right of the matchbox, below the striking-surface.

Another famous feature of all writing boxes was that the leather writing-slopes had leaves which could be lifted up to reveal extra storage for paper underneath. And this one is no exception:

Another common feature on boxes such as this was the catch on the bottom leaf of the writing-slope, to prevent the leaf from falling open when the box was folded up and locked:

This particular box was manufactured by the Toulmin & Gale Company of London and dates to about 1885-1890 and it’s part of my personal collection of writing instruments and paraphernalia. It was also the inspiration for this article.

Writing Boxes Today

Once an essential piece of luggage for anyone travelling further than six feet from a desk or a public inkwell, writing boxes eventually died out as practical pieces of office-equipment and convenient desks-in-a-box during the 20th century. The invention of the fountain pen and the growing popularity of the mechanical typewriter meant that it was easier to write and correspond on the move without carrying around what would soon become a historical curiosity. As reservoir fountain pens became cheaper and more widely available, boxes such as the one above were soon forgotten. Their very historical significance was forgotten the moment the latest Parker or Sheaffer or Waterman hit the shelves of stationers’ shops all over the world and many were shoved away into attics, basements or just plain thrown out. For that reason, they can be treasured and valuable antiques today, worth anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. Many writing-boxes were simply trashed, smashed and thrashed, their locks broken, leaves ripped out, inkwells smashed or lost and their secret compartments destroyed. Some were repurposed as sewing-boxes, piggybanks, nick-nack nooks and other, more practical things.

Many of the surviving examples from the Georgian or Victorian era, such as the ones featured in this article, are more often than not, locked away in museums behind glass cases where people can see them and appreciate them from a distance. Boxes of a quality such as the one in my collection are quite rare and are usually museum-pieces. Boxes which are as in good a condition as mine and which as complete as mine are rarer still – many of them have all their utensils broken, broken up or just plain lost over the fifty or more years since these boxes were ever used as desks on the move.

If you own a writing box such as one that might be featured in this article, be it one that you bought at an antiques shop or which you inherited from family…Look after it. They are rare and beautiful pieces of writing history which should be treasured for centuries to come.

12/01/2011 by scheong

Yet Even More Origins of Common English Phrases

Hello and welcome, to another edition of “Common English Phrases”, bringing you the origins of common English phrases and idioms from today and yesterday. Here’s another four phrases for this latest addition to our list…

“Red Carpet Treatment”

To be given the “Red Carpet Treatment” or to “Walk the Red Carpet” means to be pampered and treated like a celebrity. This phrase comes from the early 20th century in the United States. The famous express locomotive, the 20th Century Limited, ran a nightly rail service between New York City in New York, and Chicago in Illinois. To guide passengers of the express towards the train, porters and 20th Century Limited employees would quite literally…roll out the red carpet…so that passengers travelling on the exclusive train would know where to go.

Recieving the original “Red Carpet Treatment” on the 20th Century Limited

The Graveyard Shift

To work the ‘Graveyard Shift’ means to work late at night. This comes from the 19th century where police-officers would literally have to work an all-night shift in church graveyards to prevent people breaking into cemetaries to steal dead bodies for medical research.

“The Rule of Thumb”

The ‘Rule of Thumb’ is a rule or a consistency that never changes. The original ‘Rule of Thumb’ actually referred to wifebeating, which was common (and legal!) in several countries in the 19th century. Laws, such as those in England, stated that a man could beat his wife with a wooden stick, provided that the stick be no thicker than his own thumb, hence…the rule of thumb.

“Caught Red-Handed”

To be caught ‘red handed’ means to be caught in the act of committing a crime. This saying comes from the 19th century when modern policing was just being introduced. Without forensic sciences like what we have today, most of the time, the only way to catch murderers was to literally catch them in the act of murdering, with the blood of their victim/s on their hands…hence, to be caught red-handed.

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