Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep3: Loremen S3 Ep3 - The Quacks of London

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

This episode is very much a Strong Five. Alasdair takes us back to Victorian London where phoney doctors (faux-sicians) sold cures for all known ills... and plenty of unknown ones too. @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK  

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. In this episode, I'm digging a story out of Edith Sitwell's The English Eccentrics and telling James all about the London Quacks. Alright James, we're back in the studio. It's summer, which is weird because we normally record in winter. In the depths of winter. In the depths of winter and now we're in the depths of

summer and I'm all hot. It seems more of a wintry thing as well. We release normally around the winter time. The wintertime is spooky time. That's just science. Is that because there's more nighttime? It's because there's more ghosts. Oh, because they're attracted to the cold?

Yes. Or allergic to the heat? Ghosts are very cold. And the reason it's colder in winter is supernumerary ghosts. Oh, because there's more ghosts. Because there's more ghosts. I mean, I shouldn't have to explain this. It's basic stuff.

I always wonder if it's cheaper to get air conditioning in the summer or buy a bunch of haunted goods and keep them in your bedroom. The air conditioning goes, hmm. The ghosts go, woo. It's kind of the same. But you do get woke up at 3 a.m. by the sound of screaming monks. So ups and downs. Ups and ups.

All right. So I've got a summary historical oddity for you. Brilliant. And I discovered this in a book called The English Eccentrics by Edith Sitwell, who is sort of famous. She was a bit of an eccentric herself. She dressed in historical garb. Was she from the past?

Because then that's fine. She was from the past, but the period of the past she lived in, she wore different clothes to that period. Okay. But further back in the past? She was from the past But the period of the past she lived in She wore different clothes to that period But further back in the past More pastily No, no, she wasn't dressed as an astronaut in the 1920s or anything Although that would have been eccentric That said, when she was a child

She was forced to wear an iron contraption For years on end that prevented her from moving By her mad dad who wanted to cure A spinal curvature So she had a pretty miserable childhood She didn't get on with her parents prevented her from moving by her mad dad who wanted to cure a spinal curvature. So she had a pretty miserable childhood. She didn't get on with her parents, became a poet, and wrote a book about all the English eccentrics in history. And her style of prose is very much like talking to a drunk person at a bar.

It just sort of rambles from one thing to another thing. Like, you can't skim read it, because if you read it at normal speed, it feels like skim reading because she's onto another subject and you're like, what? Oh, so that's the end of the bit about the dog

that can play bagpipes. Okay, fine. That's not coming back into it. So I thought she seemed appropriate for the medium of podcast. So my story from Edith Sitwell's

English Eccentrics is about the quacks and alchemists of London and what a ragbag this story is and what a bunch of ragtag rapscallions they are. Quacks. Quacks. And what?

Alchemists. Quacks. Whoa. This is a good example of her writing. So this is about quacks and alchemists. Now you probably know that quacks means doctors. It's a slang word for sort of phony doctors. Do you know the origin of that? Well, let's see if sitwell can provide us with an answer uh she she points out that uh the egyptian equivalent for cackling or the noise of a goose was caca and in coptic quok pronounced very much

like quack which doesn't explain it at all that just explains the sound of duck mate here are some other words that sound like quack, is all she says there. She describes each of the people as bird screaming or bird flapping and keeps throwing in bird descriptions to try and convince us that there's something innately bird-like about these mountebanks. Is mountebank a type of bird? Mountebank is not a type of bird. It means someone who gets up on a bench and tries to sell fake cures,

which is what these guys do. Mount a bank. It's Italian. But it's the same bank as in bankrupt. What? The bank in bankrupt and the bank in mount a bank both mean bench. Why is the bench broken? Is it because Jesus threw it out of the church?

Nearly. It's because if you run out of money and you were a trader or a moneylender or what have you, they would smash your table. That's it. You're out. Whoa. Bank-a-rupt-a. Really?

Yeah. I mean, none of this is on the notes, so a lot of this is lies. But I'm pretty certain some of that's true. They would literally smash your table. I think so, yeah. Wow. Because obviously you'd think it's the bank got ruptured. That's what you think.

Nowadays. But no, it's someone comes and karate, chops your table into toothpicks. Yeah. Cool. It is cool. So the mountain banks we've got on hand for you here are Don Lopez. Don?

Don Lopez. I don't think he was like, I'm Don Lopez. He was Spanish. So he's like, Don Lopez. OK, because I was thinking about that yesterday, about the guy that invented champagne, just called Dom. Yeah, I'm Dom Perignon.

I'm a monk. And I'm pissed. He, Don Lopez, had a powder, the powder, sorry, that made Venus a goddess, and he was selling it, and basically it did everything you want. It made black teeth white, it made wrinkles disappear. It's basically a panacea and a sort of

fountain of youth type of thing and that was pretty standard there was a seventh daughter which I guess is a pretty magical thing to be and she sold cures outside of the sign

of the blue ball which I think blue ball must have meant a different thing in those days on Laborious Vein Street which is a really good name for a street, especially bearing in mind there's a sign of a blue ball there,

which was near Shadwell Market, so we could easily go there and check. That's not far from here. Basically, there were loads of people who were printing up bills saying, here's all the things I can cure for sixpence or what have you. Right. I've seen that. It's still there nowadays. You still get that through the door, don't you? Well, it's like homeopathy it's you know it's yeah it's like alternative medicines dr dude i will solve your everything yeah there was someone published the

woman's prophecy or the rare and wonderful doctoress which came to cure and you're gonna have to bear with me here but i do enjoy the names of the apparent illnesses glimning of the gizzard quavering of the kidneys, the wombling trots, et cetera. Oh, I'm sorry. The wonderling trot. Oh, okay. Single.

The wonderling trots costs more if you want them to sort that out. I thought they were wombling trots. They are wombling. W-A-M-B-L-I. Oh, but not like the Wombles of Wimbledon. No. Wombling here. Heaven forbid.

And also the trots is... What's a nice way of saying it? Well, I could use the Cockney rhyme and slang, the thrumpney bits in my family. If you had to go to the toilet a lot bum-wise, that was known as the trots. Yes, yes. You had the trots.

Yes, although when you said thrumpney bits, I thought that meant a different running slang, so I've been very confused. Not the Bristol City. Not that one. This is foul to anyone over the age of 60. Another hand

Bill promised to cure distempers incident to the body of man, the names of which Ardus follows. The Strong Fives. The Marthambles. Don't interrupt me, James. The Strong Fives. He's got a classic case of the Strong fives the marthambles don't interrupt me james the strong the strong five he's got a classic case of the strong fives the marthambles the moonfall and of course the hogger grockle perfectly reasonable genuine illnesses there mr catafalto also known as colonel catafalto this guy published two different handbills in a short period of time and he'd

been promoted he'd joined the army and been promoted to colonel in between the first and second either sitwell describes him with his ghostly black caravan filled with a multitude of black cats he was the best at marketing i think because he had a thing where one of his playbills puts out a thing where it sort of says um right the word has gone out that me and my cats are actually devils uh but we're not devils we've actually just got a really good solar microscope and thereby pulling in the devil crowd and the solar microscope demographic so that the two the two genders and also any cat fans yeah and so people would come and see his performing cats and his solar microscope um and think are they devils basically i could go on and Edith Sitworth does go on there's millions of them

and they're all talking absolute balderdash but I thought I would focus on just two two of them the first is and you're going to like this guy's name

Kenelm Digby so Kenelm Digby the surname's not as good but he is the son of one of the gunpowder plotters oh right yeah so he's

you know pretty big deal he was a philosopher a privateer and and an adventurous sort, as well as a natural philosopher in the sense of sort of scientist, magician type. And privateer being a licensed pirate. Yeah. Yes, sort of nautical, if you will.

Yeah, so they got the people to go around just killing Spanish people, but on the sea, so it's fine. And said the queen told them to do it. Yeah, our queen said I had to do it. Did she? Where's your papers of mark? And then they would have them, and then they'd be on your way if they were stopped by a traffic policeman in the sea.

He married the beautiful Venetia Digby. It took me a while because I can't read my handwriting there. Basically, I'm struggling to slip in some supernatural because these guys are so obviously fakers that there's not much. I heard one of them and his cats might have been the devil. They might have been the devil, although he denied it.

Well, the devil would. The biggest trick the devil put was getting a van full of cats. Not my words. The words of Edith Sidwell. Probably probably she probably said that uh i enjoyed that um right um venetia digmeyer there were rumors around his his to be wife that she was uh not necessarily a good character that she might have been into a general sort of hanky-us-panky-us kind of an area before marriage, which was disapproved of. And so naturally, he went to India and spoke to a Brahmin,

and the Brahmin conjured a devil, and the devil spirit told him that his wife was faithful to him, but also, watch out for assassins. And when he got back to Europe, someone tried to assassinate him, which was great news, because it meant that the other bit was also true. So he married his wife, which was lovely. And then she got a little bit ill. And so he made some Viper wine for her to drink.

And then she immediately died because of drinking Viper wine. Of Viper wine. She died of Viper wine. But he had Van Dyck, or at least one of Van Dyke's, you know, apprentices, paint a portrait of her. Not Dick. No, not Dick. Because he was famously in late, well, he was a detective, wasn't he?

He was a detective slash chimney sweep. Yeah. But not that Van Dyke, the painter Van Dyke. Okay. Who did a picture of her as Prudence, which I think is a weird thing to do for someone who died by wrongly choosing to drink Viper wine and also in the painting she's holding a snake

which feels like rubbing it in a little bit the snake's like symbolic of something that isn't I drank snake water and died it's like you knew she died of snake water you know she died of snakes not snake water snake juice yeah

but the main thing he's famous for this. But the main thing he's famous for, this is not the main thing he's famous for, but the main thing I think he's famous for in this story, is his magic sympathetic powder. And it's sympathetic in the sense of sympathetic magic, which I've brought up again and again on this podcast. Yep. In the sea, up in Scarborough.

There's a quite normal kind of magic, which is weapon salve. So, like, if you get hit with a club, you would rub it on the club. Or like you told me that you'd been kicked in the chest by a scally. We could go and apply the salve to the scallies, presumably really cool trainers, and then that would cure your problem. They could have done with having more padding on the bottom of them,

these trainers. They could have been doing with being Nicares rather than... Well, they're not the sort of pumped up ones. I don't know. They were moving at such speed, I couldn't tell. Sorry, for the benefit of the listener, James was kicked by a scammy. Yeah.

But you did pay for it to happen, right? Yeah, I paid. Yeah, it was a stag do. And we went and did wrestling, like American-style wrestling, not mud or Greco-Roman. Yeah. And I think we thought it was going to be more about building the character and stuff like that, but it was more a Scully trying to kick us in the heart. It really hurts a lot still. It really hurts a lot still.

Well, I'll tell you how Colonel Digby used his sympathetic powder, and then maybe we can apply that to your problems, your predicament. So his friend, Mr. Howell, saw two men in the street about to set to with swords. Mr. Howell was sort of a decent kind of guy, so he put his hand up between the two guys to say, Stop, gentlemen! And they both stabbed him in the hand. They felt really bad about this and apologised. And so they bound up his hand and he went back.

And then he meets up with his friend, Kennell Digby, and he's like, ah, my hand. I asked my knacks. That's what he would be saying if he was from County Durham. What Digby does is he took the bandage and he applied the sympathetic powder to the bandage. And then he put the bandage into a cool bowl of water to to what to wash it basically but at that exact moment his friend across the room talking to servant started to react strangely and he said well what is it and he thought well the coolness has come upon the hand and i don't feel any pain anymore and he went that's interesting so as long as the bandage was in the the cool bowl of water the guy didn't feel any pain and then later on for reasons that i'm not clear on he takes the bandage out of

the water and dries it off in front of the fire a few minutes later the guy's servant arrives at the house to say oh my master's in big trouble he says his hand feels like he's on fire and he goes okay and i think i know what's happened here go and tell your master that i'll be around soon but i bet by the time you get home it's been fixed. And he took it off the wreck and put it back into the bowl of water, and sure enough, when the servant got back, the pain had gone from his hand. And that was the magical power of his sympathetic powder.

So has he got to just keep that room temp? He kept it in there until the wound healed. Oh, and then he's fine after the wound is healed. Yeah, he's fine after the wound healed. Because otherwise you've just got to do that forever and then... Yeah, you've just got a whole room full of bowls with bandages in them. My hand feels like it's fallen down the back of a sofa. Oh, I missed out a nice bit, which was he had sort of a reputation for being a bit weird.

No. And he was worried that his friend would think that his sympathetic powder was just some nonsense superstition. And Howell, his friend, who's in great pain, quoted a Spanish saying, which is, Let the miracle be done, though Muhammad to do it. Which is quite a nice idea, because for the Catholics of Spain, what they're saying is, I don't care who does it, I don't even care if it's Muhammad, as long as it gets done. That's nice. Obviously, that's a little bit Islamophobic.

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm taking it in the context of a very Catholic person. In the context of a Catholic country, and it's the 17th century. So he had a sympathy power, which was magic, and he also saw wind being invented. Although it was described by a contemporary as being the very plinny of our age for lying, which is a format of an insult that I quite like. Yeah.

Like you are the very David Starkey of our age for being a... Which is David Starkey in our age, so you don't need it. Yeah, that's already taken. Yeah.

So he saw wind being invented? He saw wind being invented at the top of a mountain. Like it hadn't been around before he saw it? No, no, no, no, no, no. He saw where it comes from. Oh, okay.

So he was at the top of a mountain and he saw the wind starting. Oh, right. He saw the part of the mountain where the wind comes from. Right. Which is where we get our wind. Okay, not he saw, like, how are these ships working?

How are we going to work these ships? I've got an idea. Oh. He didn't claim to have invented wind, James. No, he just was. He was just present. Yeah, when the guy did the first sneeze. Or Trump.

All right. I've got one more alchemist for you. He's very, very small. He's not an alchemist. He's more of a natural philosopher. And he's Sir Charles Hall. And frankly, I'm not sure why he's in the chapter, except when you get to the story,

you'll see why she put him in there. And it's the same reason I'm including it here. He knew someone called Mr. Gobsill. And Mr. Gobsill was terribly troubled with a very different kind of wind, the sort of the tummy types. And someone told him that what you do is, if you've got a bit of wind, you eat a pebble.

And that cures it. Now, I have to say that it doesn't. Because he was so troubled with men for such a long period of time that he ate around 200 pebbles over a period of his lifetime. And so by the time he was in his mid-20s, he was clanking around full of pebbles over a period of his lifetime and so by the time he was in his mid-20s he was clanking around full of pebbles enter sir charles hall natural philosopher very wise man immediately saw what to do and with a sort of a gathering of yokels around him tied mr gobsill upside down on

a ladder that was leaned against his house and rattled him and just rattled and rattled and rattled the guy i'm quoting now until they heard the slight slow noisy journey of the stones in the direction of mr gobsill's mouth did it work james was he cured the answer is no they couldn't get any of them out they just turned him back the right way up and they all heard the stones dropping back into place didn't help at all end of the story wow Wow. So that's, someone got, whoever saw that could have said that they saw

the invention of one of them rain sticks. You wouldn't even want them to come out because they'd smash your teeth as they fell out.

That's the problem, yeah. If you shake him insufficiently violently and then they won't come out, shake him too violently, he's a deadly a deadly weapon he's shooting out he's killing yokels uh so i have four categories of school i thought it was the the five big boys what was this thing the strong fives the strong fives oh you could get strong five well that leads us on to the first

category which is naming and i've got to say now there are several names of things that i didn't include in the thing and i just i just want to give you a taste of a few of them because it seemed cruel because it seems cool because there's just some absolute corkers here even just you're getting you're getting a strong five just for strong five laborious vein street and what blue ball end or whatever james you haven't even mentioned the hocker grockles anyway it's just it's insulting to me that you've forgotten um so the things that were included in remedies include live hog lice burnt coke quenched in agna vitae red coral new gathered earthworms live toads black tips of crab's claws just the tips man's skulls elk hooves leaves of gold man's bones calcinated inward skin of a capon's gizzard, goose dung gathered in the springtime.

Sorry. I know what you like. You're always thinking, we'll get it now. Wait till spring. The stone of a carp's head, unicorn's horn, boar's tooth, jaw of a pike, seahorse tooth, rasped, frog's livers, white dung of a peacock dried, and toads and vipers' flesh. Right.

So those are just some of the ingredients. I mean, those are some of my, those are all linked to some of my favourite anecdotes. White dung, for example. There was another one which I really... It took me ages to read this before I realised how to read it correctly, because it's a list of the things that this person can cure.

And it is convulsions, bots, ribbed heels, farsi, chillbl heels, farsi, chillblains, the mange, spasms, also religious and love melancholy. And this is what got me. It's measles and swine, Christians and prating in elderly persons. And I thought it meant that it could cure Christians, but I realise now what it means is it can cure measles and swine and Christians. And it also cures prating in elderly persons and makes an

admirable beauty water good sitwell adds alas the recipe is lost to us today no a little bit of irony there from sitwell so this story contains all the names yeah definitely i mean all of the words of some of my favorite words that i've heard recently it's a strong five it's gotta be you've got you've caught the strong five yes uh now let's womble on i'm just a thing a thing about unicorns yeah so dolphins whales used to be four-legged animals the whale was somewhat like a cow a proto cow that went back into the sea and the dolphin was some other thing that lived in the land went back into the sea the narwhal could it have been a unicorn maybe an early sort of thing yeah that's what i've

been thinking in the break between series two and three yeah it could it could be. Could be, cool. So if you're a narwhal, write in and let us know what you think. There's nothing like a good narwhal story to break the ice. Because they would break it with their horns. Because that's what they're... Thanks for explaining.

Yeah. The next category is supernatural. Supernatural. What are the scores? Ooh. Extremely high, I assume, because we've got devils. We've got possible devils.

Well, have you? Yeah, you've got the man with the ram full of cats. We've got a straw pigeon informant devil in India. That's all the devils. That's all the devils. We've got the power of sympathetic magic. We've got a guy with a stomach full of stones. That's not very supernatural.

That's more misguided. Okay. Yeah, I'd give it a three. All right. Because it's a bit devilry, but it's a lot of faux medicine. And I think they're treading that line between this is actual scientific medicine and this is magic. That's very much what the alchemist is, isn't it? Yes.

Yeah, you're right. It's sort of science applied to magic. Yeah, all right. You're right. And I'll be honest. I searched through his whole memoirs just for the word ghost, hoping there was a bit where he said, oh, by the way, I saw a ghost,

thinking James never gives me four or five unless there's a proper ghost. Full-on ghost. There isn't a ghost. Okay. Just one and a half devils. Fair enough. Three is decent.

I'll accept it. My next category is liars. Liars. Because these guys were, in some cases, literal snake oil salesmen. Venom juice salesmen. Yeah, snaky juice.

Viper wine. Always giving it away. Viper wine. Everyone knows if you spill viper wine, you have to put the tips of crab claws on it. Yeah, I thought it was scorpion juice. Scorpion muck. Dried. In the summer.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of liars. We can only assume that they were full of rubbish otherwise we'd all be still drinking we'd be using the sympathetic powder wouldn't we i don't really see much practical application for that apart from unless you had a fever and you were covered in the bandages and then you took the bandages off and then you kept them in the fridge at home and then you walked around the day not having a fever. Or you had hypothermia. Those are literally the two things. I think you're forgetting how many duels people got into

at this time. Like Kenneth Digby got into a duel with someone for criticising the Queen. Being too hot or cold isn't duel related. Yeah, but duels lead to injuries. Yeah, being stabbed. He just had to get well from the wound by itself just because whether it's hot or cold is irrelevant to the fact that he's got an open

wound. Because he's now got no bandages on that wound. Wait, this is... This category is liars. We're all agreeing that he's lying. I don't think it even happened. I don't think it happened at all. It's nonsense. He gave a speech

in London explaining this story and I think everyone sort of went, all right. Right. I don't think they even believed it then. Also, why are you telling us this? To sell his powder. Mr. Digby. Also, you'd think someone whose dad was in the gun powder plot

would probably try to dissociate themselves from the word powder. Or just like, oh, you want to protect yourself from being blown up, put this on some bandages and put it somewhere that isn't blown up what even the author of this edith sitwell is playing fast and loose with the just nature of prose so she's even i don't think she's 100 reliable no so yeah five excellent and my final category is going to take a bit of explaining, but the premise of it is never off. And basically what I admire about these guys, liars though they are, is the way every day they're hustling, which is a phrase I invented to describe me. Why did you refer to yourself as they? You know that Alistair Beckett King? Every day they hustling? Yes.

All right. I admit I didn't invent that phrase. You might be pretending there's more than one of you for tax purposes. The Alistair Beckett King. Anyway, my point is every day they hustling every day they are hustling so prove me prove me wrong no they are even the guy evidently there was rumors that his betrothed was cheating on him yeah he managed to turn that into a story above him communing with the netherworld yeah Yeah, exactly. He kills his wife with viper wine. He only goes and puts... She's holding a snake

in the painting. That's a ballsy move. That's weird. It's not really hustling. It's just weird. Yeah. A guy just liked a load of cats

managed to turn that into a hustle about being devil cats. Yeah, imagine this. You've got whatever a solar microscope is. You're taking it on the road. What's the show missing? devil cats. Yeah, imagine this. You've got whatever a solar microscope is. You're taking it on the road. What's the show missing?

14 cats. And people wanting to see a solar microscope. Well, yeah, but now you've got the choice what you want to look at. The cats or the microscope. Cats, please. I have a feeling a solar microscope, whatever it is, is better than you're imagining.

Yeah, there's got to be, I think, a four, because some of the hustles are too confusing for hustles. Unless it's a real long game that's actually still going on. What about the guy who was upside down on the ladder, James? Yeah, unless that's... That was Jossling. Yeah. He was every day, he's Jossling.

Every day, just clanking around. And it's for having wind. Well, allegedly, but it got to the point where he didn't have any appetite at all because his stomach was full of stones. I have a four-year-old son, so I know a lot about dinosaurs. And they actually would swallow stones in order to break down food. I think some birds still do it. But that obviously didn't work for this poor guy.

No. I thought it might have ended with him inventing the pebble dash when you said it was specifically on the external of his house. Yeah, that would have been good. But no. That's no hustle there. No, you don't get that kind of narrative satisfaction from Sitwell. Just random detail.

Yeah, four. I'm going to stick with four. Well, I'll take your four. But I'm going to do, and this is unprecedented in the history of the podcast, in which we've made about seven episodes or something like that. I haven't counted.

I'm going to do a trailer for a future story that I also found in the book while I was researching this. Same book. Edith Sitwell. And there is an entire chapter devoted to your friend and mine, Captain Thickness, the man who listeners will I hope remember

from the London Monster if you remember there was a man in the London Monster who was in a kind of flame war with another guy putting up bill posters

accusing each other of being the monster because they had a sort of vendetta against each other well I've done some cursory reading and it turns out

that Captain Thickness did that sort of thing a lot oh exciting he was an interesting fellow and got into And it turns out that Captain Thickness did that sort of thing a lot. Oh, exciting. He was an interesting fellow and got into bitter feuds with every single person he ever met. Witness the thickness. You will.

Stay tuned. Can we put a picture of the cover of that book? Because it is a mess. It is absolutely grotesque. It's an absolutely grotesque image. That font is... Now that's a front cover on the inner cover. Oh, if you turn over one more page,

there's a picture of Ken Elm Digby. Oh, he looks sly. He's got a bookshelf. Can I read the books on his shelf? I'm always very interested when they show people's bookshelves. He's got planks. First book, planks. Might be plants, actually, in second viewing.

What type of plank is that get me my book sim powder presumably sympathetic yeah his cookery oh i should say he wrote a cookbook so and he called it they managed to illustrate that we've got it his cookery his cookery yes he wrote a cookbook which apparently is quite good rectus in physic and e St. K. Digby of Bodies. Sir Ken Elm Digby, possibly. Yeah, of Bodies. But also a lovely picture of a chap with a big beard on a little horse. It's really, it's got something for everyone this time.

Yeah, apart from the front cover, which is nothing for everyone. Great, thanks, Edith. Thank you. Welcome to Lawmen. With Alistair. Alistair. And James. And James. Please like, subscribe.

I forgot. I don't know that one. No, it's Maybe you can say that one Alright then, you're not going to do the advert That'll cost more I can do it What did you say?

Please Like Subscribe And comment And comment. And comment. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.