Forty Days And Forty Nights – Part Nine

The Third Plague Pandemic (1855 to 1959)

This pandemic, masquerading under a rather prosaic name, whilst a slow-burner, lasted over a century and accounted for more than 12 million people in China and India alone. It was the third major bubonic plague pandemic, following on from the Plague of Justinian (vide infra) and the Black Death.

The patterns of deaths suggest very strongly that there were two different sources of plague. The first manifestations were predominantly bubonic in character and its spread was consequent upon expanding global trade which made it easier for infected rats and humans and cargoes harbouring disease-carrying fleas to be transported from country to country. The second more virulent strain was predominantly pneumonic and was spread by human contact.

The first reported outbreaks were in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan in the 1850s. The disease was pretty much contained in the province until the Panthay rebellion (1856 to 1873) broke out. This violent rebellion led to upheavals of populations which in turn exposed other parts of China to the plague. By March 1894 the disease was entrenched in Canton, killing 60,000 in a few weeks, and soon appeared in Hong Kong which was just across the water accounting for some 100,000 in the first two months. It was not until 1929 that the disease ceased to be endemic in Hong Kong.

Having arrived at the great trading port of Hong Kong it was inevitable it would spread across the British Empire. The plague arrived in India in 1896 and over the next thirty years some 12.5 million would die in the country alone, principally in the northern and western regions. Interestingly, almost all of the cases in India were bubonic in character.

The reaction of the Raj to this health disaster was repressive at first. They resorted to quarantine, isolation camps, travel restrictions and a ban on traditional Indian medical practices, all enforced by the British military. But these measures were unable to keep pace with the spread of the disease and, not unnaturally, provoked resentment amongst and direct action by the local population. In a change of tack the authorities in 1898-99 introduced a policy of mass vaccination using a vaccine developed by Waldemar Haffkine which was voluntary but had 4 million takers by the turn of the century and also incorporated traditional medical practices into the treatments available. Nevertheless the disease spread to Egypt, Paraguay, South Africa, San Francisco, Australia, the Caribbean and Western Europe. The plague came and went and returned in each of these areas until the 1950s when with the global death toll down to 200 a year in 1959 the World Health Organisation withdrew its pandemic status. The last significant outbreak associated with it occurred in Peru and Argentina in 1945.

On the bright side, the challenge posed to the medical authorities by the type and geographical spread of the disease meant that researchers, doctors and immunologists had the perfect opportunity to further their knowledge and hone their techniques. It was the first pandemic where scientific advances in the understanding of the causes of disease and the corresponding development of immunology provided some assistance and those advances explain why there has not been a Fourth Pandemic (yet).

And in India, the Raj’s steep learning curve in how to implement general health programmes helped inform their overall public healthcare programmes.

Sign Of The Times – Part One

The great British pub is a wonderful institution and a good one – we are fortunate enough to have an exceptional pub no more than a twenty-minute walk from Blogger Towers (it takes slightly longer to get home!) – is something to cherish. It can be the focal point of the local community, somewhere to sit, relax, drink (of course), chat, set the world to rights and, even, fall out. Alas, though, this once mainstay of British life is under considerable threat with as many as 31 closing every week.

There are many reasons why pubs are closing – some simply deserve to – increasingly sophisticated clientele, the smoking ban, high rates of tax on the hooch, cheap booze sold at supermarkets, high rents, the land on which the pub stands being more valuable if sold to a property developer – these are some of the reasons trotted out to explain their demise. To lose this institution completely would be a disaster and, perhaps, what we are seeing is Darwinian evolution theory at work. Perhaps.

Every pub has a name and, generally, this is emblazoned on the outside of the establishment, often in the form of a sign hanging from a bracket attached to the outside wall or as a free-standing sign – a bit like a gibbet. In my haste to get inside and taste the wares and in my befuddled state upon leaving the establishment, I am guilty of not paying too much mind to the signs nor, indeed, to the name of the gaff. But the names and signs of our pubs have much to tell us.

I suppose the first question is why have a sign? In times when illiteracy was the norm there was no use a trader hanging up a beautifully written sign because very few would be able to read it. Rather trades developed their own system of signs to denote the type of trade that was transacted within their premises. So you would have three balls denoting a pawnbroker, a red and white pole denoting a barber (or surgeon) and so on.

The original sign for a pub was a bush and this was an institution that can be traced back to the Romans. Along the Roman roadside the traveller could find tabernae which were shops which sold wine and often extended their services to offer food and overnight accommodation. All tabernae selling wine were required to affix branches of evergreens to the outside of the building, the greenery symbolising the Roman god of wine, Bacchus.

This custom was adopted in Britain, although the usual vine leaves, which were a rarity over here, were replaced by small evergreen bushes. The Bush which is a common name for a pub owes its origin to this custom.

Alternatively, a pub would advertise its existence by hanging long poles or ale stakes which were used to stir the brew on the exterior wall of the building. If you came across a pub displaying a bush and a pole, then you were likely to find wine and ale inside.

The convention for naming and signing pubs took off in the 12^th century and in 1393 it became compulsory, Richard II requiring them to display a sign to make their existence known to the official Ale Taster.

During the course of the next few weeks I will be taking a look – after extensive research! – at pub signs, common and unusual, and the stories behind them.

Curmudgeons Of The Week

Music isn’t always the food of love, as Plymouth grandparents, Robert and Christine Fox, have found out. They have been threatened with an ASBO – in some parts still a badge of honour I’m told – for playing their music too loud. What has got their neighbours’ goat is their predilection for the oeuvre of Roy Orbison and Fleetwood Mac which they play, doubtless at volume, in their garden.

Whilst neither artist are much too my taste – Pete Green Fleetwood is OK – I wouldn’t have thought that either would cause too much offence. But there’s nowt so queer as folk, it seems.

This curious and frankly sad story got me thinking. What sort of music would so annoy you that you would be roused to complain or, conversely, to what type of music would you subject your neighbours to rouse their ire?

I always find a bit of Miles Davis’ atonal masterpiece, Bitches Brew, has them running to the hills. Alternatively, a bit of Iggy Pop and the MC5 always gingers things up. The younger generation might turn tail when subjected to the wall of saccharine that is Tony Bennett.

And I would be raising the white flag and dialling Environmental Services if I was subjected for too long to the bagpipes.

This one has legs – all contributions gratefully received!

Fashion Victim Of The Week

It’s a tough life being a dedicated follower of fashion.

Rather like lycra, I find you have to have a certain body shape to carry off skinny jeans – and very few, in my experience, have. Those who insist in trying to pour a quart into a pint pot run very real dangers as the experience of an unnamed 35 year-old woman from South Australia reveals.

Wearing her skinny jeans all day she helped her rellie move – this involved squatting down to clear out cupboards – and began to notice that her jeans felt increasingly tight. For many people this might have been a sign that a change of strides were in order but our game Sheila persisted in wearing them until she fell and lay prone on the ground, like a beached whale, unable to right herself. Now this may be a common sight on the streets of Adelaide but she lay there for several hours before someone came to her aid.

The fashion victim was hospitalised and on an intravenous drip for four days before she could walk again unaided. Apparently she suffered a bout of compartment syndrome which forces the muscles to swell because of constriction, compress downwards and crush the nerves. It is a condition that can afflict you if a bandage or plaster cast is too tight. An expert helpfully advises, “if you start to get any numbness the first thing you should ask is whether your jeans are too tight”.

I will remember that in future!

Tales From The Nursery – Part Twenty

Rain, Rain, go away

One of the delights of British weather is its unpredictability. You never quite know what you are going to get from one day to the next and, naturally, the current climatic conditions and our forecast of what is to come and our frustrations with what we are experiencing provide ample topics for conversation. More often than not we can be certain that rain is not too far away.

In the days before national weather forecasts our forefathers were more acute in their observations of the sky and the way that animals and plants behaved in order to get a sense of what the weather had in store. Often this folk knowledge was handed down in the form of proverbs such as red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, clear moon, frost soon, rainbow in the morning gives fair warning and my particular favourite, if you can see the hills, it is going to rain and if you can’t see the hills, it is raining. Nothing like a bit of realism!

Rain being such a common feature of the British weather and its presence putting a bit of a dampener on outdoor activities whether it be gathering crops or attending a fair or just playing outside, it is inevitable that the frustrations found an outlet in song and, in our particular case, a nursery rhyme.

There are a number of variants of the rhyme but they all start off with the same opening sentiment which is reflected in the most common modern-day version, “Rain, rain go away/ come again another day”. One of the earliest versions that can be found in print appears in the Anglo-Welsh historian James Howell’s Paramoigraphy or Proverbs of 1659 which goes as follows, “Raine raine goe to Spain:/ faire weather come againe”.

For those who like to find as historical allusion in our innocent nursery rhymes, they latch on to the allusion to the Spanish and bad weather and conclude that it is a reference to the Spanish Armada. In 1588 the superior Spanish fleet (in numbers, at any rate) was defeated by Lord Howard’s fleet of 34 Navy vessels and 163 armed merchant ships because of the greater manoeuvrability of the English boats but also because adverse weather conditions scattered the Spaniards. Howell’s version of the rhyme commemorates the role that rain played in that victory.

That may be the case but in 1687 John Aubrey records a variant which he notes is used by little children “to charme away the Raine” and which runs, “Raine, rain, goe awaye/ come again a Saturday”. Other variants that can be found substitute the Saturday for more notable dates such as Midsummer day, washing day, Christmas Day and Martha’s wedding day. Curiously, you would have thought that each of those days which are special and involve some communal activities would have benefitted from fine weather and that there is a streak of malice in the rhyme.

By the mid 19^th century the rhyme had well and truly been claimed by children and was used to vent their disappointment at not being able to play outside because of the weather. “Rain, rain, go away/ Come again another day/ Little Arthur wants to play”, and later on in the century, “Rain, rain/Go away/ Come again/April day;/ Little Johnny wants to play”.

What we have, I think, is a rhyme which focuses on the British obsession with the weather and, in particular, the disruptive effects of rain and which can be tailored to suit all occasions – nothing more and nothing less.