Tag Archives: interpretive archaeology

A tale of two suburbs: the story (and the man) behind the naming of Sydenham and Waltham

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Should you have been so fortunate, while wandering the streets of 1860s Christchurch, to find yourself north of the square, you may have come across an establishment bearing the name of Sydenham House and containing within its walls all manner of treasures. Stepping inside, you would have been surrounded by an elegant assortment of glass and china, exotic oranges, lemons and pineapples and a few choice canaries, fowls and prize-winning birds of all kinds. You may even have caught a glimpse of the proprietor, Mr Charles Prince, a man of excellent taste and education and the eventual, unintentional, inspiration for the naming of two of Christchurch’s southern suburbs.

Colombo Street between Gloucester and Armagh in 1882. Sydenham house would have stood in the block on the left of the image, between the Golden Fleece hotel and Gloucester Street. Image:

Colombo Street between Gloucester and Armagh in 1882. Sydenham House would have stood in the block on the left of the image, between the Golden Fleece Hotel and Gloucester Street. Image: Burton Brothers, via Christchurch City Libraries, File Reference CCL PhotoCD 1, IMG0050.

We first came across the story of Charles Prince and Sydenham House earlier in the year, when we found an artefact – a double handled serving bowl – from Sydenham House on a site elsewhere in the central city. It was found blocks away from the actual location of the china shop (between Armagh and Gloucester on Colombo Street), and the bowl was marked with the name of the manufacturer (Copeland), a pattern registration diamond (with a registration date of 17th or 27th September 1861) and a banner bearing the words “Sydenham House, Christchurch, C. Prince”. As we researched the bowl and the maker’s mark, we found ourselves unravelling the tale of Charles Prince, a shopkeeper, bird importer and teacher who had a hand in naming the Christchurch suburbs of Waltham and Sydenham, through his residence and business respectively.

This piece is particularly interesting, marked as it is with 'Sydenham House, Christchurch' on the base, along with the name of the manufacturer (Copeland) and pattern registration diamond. Image: J. Garland.

The handled serving bowl bearing the mark of Sydenham House. The registration diamond indicates that this pattern was registered in 1861 (R in the top corner), on the 17th or 27th (number in the right corner) of September (D in the left corner). The pottery manufacturer, Copeland, was in business from 1847 until well into the 20th century (The Potteries 2014). Image: J. Garland.

Charles Prince arrived in Christchurch in 1858 on the Zelandia, having previously been the principal of the Classical School of Westbury East in St Kilda and the master of Grays Grammar School in England (Christchurch City Libraries 2014). On or soon after his arrival in New Zealand, he appears to have formed one half of the partnership of Prince and Dawes, with a man named Edmund Marriott Dawes, although this was broken in 1861 (Lyttelton Times 24/04/1861: 8). Sydenham House was in operation from at least 1860, and Prince continued as proprietor of the shop until 1867, when he went bankrupt and the business was sold (Christchurch City Libraries 2014; Lyttelton Times 2/04/1867: 2).

Prince also continued his calling as a schoolmaster, filling the role of master of the Christchurch Commercial School in the 1860s in addition to founding the private Christchurch Commercial Academy in 1860, with the intention of “embracing every branch of a sound English and Commercial education” (Lyttelton Times 8/09/1860: 1). Until his bankruptcy in 1867, he also lived in a large – twelve roomed! – house known as Waltham House, “pleasantly situated in Colombo Street south, within a mile of the Town Belt (Moorhouse Ave)” (Lyttelton Times 9/03/1867: 3). The size of the house alone suggests that he was a relatively successful and affluent man – at least until he went bankrupt.

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Advertisement for birds and dogs sold at Sydenham House in 1864. Image: Lyttelton Times 10/09/1864:6.

He was known, not only as an educator and a retailer of assorted finery, but also as an importer and keeper of prize-winning birds (Press 10/09/1866: 2, Lyttelton Times 10/09/1866: 2). Many of the advertisements for Sydenham House and mentions of Charles Prince in contemporary newspapers make reference to his birds, some of which won prizes at local A & P shows (my favourites are the excellently named dorking fowls!). After he went bankrupt in 1867, Prince ended up on the West Coast, where he remained traceable in the newspapers of the time due to his occupation as a schoolmaster and, amusingly, to his reputation as a bird fancier, with one article stating that he has “become prominent by his expenditure and taste in the purchase of poultry” (Grey River Argus 15/03/1873: 2, 13/05/1873: 3). Another West Coast newspaper recounted an incident in which he ran afoul of some erstwhile avian burglars who allegedly absconded with a pair of ‘Bramah’ chickens (although the article does also suggest that the birds might just have run away…; Grey River Argus 4/11/1872: 2).

However, bird burglars aside, it’s Charles Prince’s time in Christchurch that is most of interest to us today, specifically his time as proprietor of Sydenham House and resident of Waltham House. Sydenham House is described in contemporary accounts as a building “containing eight rooms, a coach house, stables, a shop and store” and was sandwiched between G. Coate’s watchmaking and jewellery store and Miss Phillip’s drapery (Lyttelton Times 16/04/1867: 6). As well as birds (and dogs!) the store appears to have sold all manner of goods, from fancy glass wares (including cake shades, decanters and custard glasses) to all manner of china (“breakfast, tea, dinner, dessert and toilet services”) and household accoutrements (candlesticks, lamps and toilet boxes; Lyttelton Times 28/09/1861: 5, 10/09/1862: 6). He also sold local and exotic delicacies, from “Canterbury grown walnuts” to pineapples, which can’t have been a common foodstuff in 19th century Christchurch (Lyttelton Times 22/03/1862: 5, 23/04/1862: 5).

Advertisement for Sydenham House from

Advertisement for Sydenham House from 1862, listing all kinds of treasures for sale. Image: Lyttelton Times 10/09/1862: 6.

The establishment also functioned as a boarding house,  with a variety of tenants, including a French teacher, a writing teacher and a professor of phrenology (Lyttelton Times 30/01/1866: 3, 15/09/1866: 1, 14/02/1867: 7). This last, Mr A. S. Hamilton, was available for consultation at Sydenham House, describing himself as “twenty eight years [a] Practical Phrenologist in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the Australian Colonies… [who] may be consulted [for] delineations of characters and advice for direction, correction and profitable application of the mental powers” (Lyttelton Times 14/02/1867: 7). I’m not sure of the efficacy of Mr Hamilton’s advice, but I know that I could definitely use some help with the “profitable application of the mental powers” this morning…

Colombo Street between Armagh and Gloucester in the 1880s. Sydenham House would originally have stood on the right hand side of the image, about a third of the way along the block. Image:

Colombo Street between Armagh and Gloucester in the 1880s. Sydenham House would have stood on the right hand side of the image, about a third of the way along the block. Image: F. A. Coxhead, via Christchurch City Libraries, File Reference CCL PhotoCD 1, IMG0010.

Several advertisements for Sydenham House in the Press in 1863 and 1864 are of particular interest, as they mention Prince’s intention to take orders for dinner, tea and breakfast services etc. from England, all of which could be marked with the crest, initials or “other distinctive badge” of the purchaser, if they wished (Press 12/09/1863: 1, 22/10/1864: 6). These advertisements not only provide a tangible connection between our artefact and the historical record, but also a possible one between Charles Prince and the story of John George Ruddenklau, mayor,  proprietor of the City Hotel and the subject of one of our blog posts last year. J. G. Ruddenklau’s role in Christchurch’s early decades was also brought to our attention through a few personalised ceramic artefacts we found that were, coincidentally, decorated with exactly the same pattern as the Sydenham House bowl, along with Ruddenklau’s initials and the mark of the City Hotel. The latter was founded in 1864 and run by Ruddenklau until 1869: it’s not implausible to think that J. G. Ruddenklau might have ordered personalised china through Charles Prince in 1864 for his newly established hotel.

Fragments of a saucer, teacup and mask jug, decorated with the City Hotel pattern and the initials J. G. R.

Fragments of a saucer, teacup and mask jug, decorated with the same pattern as the Sydenham House bowl, the initials J. G. R and the name ‘City Hotel’. Image: J. Garland.

This notion of connectedness seems to be something of a theme with this artefact, and this story. It’s been fascinating, actually, researching Charles Prince and finding all of these connections – direct and indirect – between his life and business in Christchurch and other people, places and things in the city – both then and now. Initially, when I deciphered the mark on the bowl I thought that the Sydenham House mentioned must have been named after the suburb and was probably located in that general vicinity. As it turns out, it was the other way around: it seems to have been due to the fond recollections of Charles Prince’s china shop by a man named Charles Ellison that ‘Sydenham’ was first used for the local borough council in 1876 and, eventually, the actual neighbourhood south of Moorhouse Avenue (Christchurch City Libraries 2014).

Christchurch south

A view of Christchurch South, including the suburb now known as Sydenham. Image: Geoff Wilson, via Wikimedia Commons.

A similar connection is evident for Prince’s residence, Waltham House, which played a comparably crucial yet indirect role in the naming of Waltham (of special note to those of us at Underground Overground, as our offices are in Waltham). In 1866 a group of people placed an advertisement in the Press stating that a meeting of residents at that house had unanimously decided that the neighbourhood “of Colombo Street south and the Gasworks road, leading to Wilson’s bridge” should be called Waltham (Press 26/10/1866: 1). A letter to the editor placed four days later decried it as a hoax, and offensive to the “modest and rather retiring disposition of that gentleman” (although there doesn’t seem to be any word on it from the man himself; Lyttelton Times 30/10/1866: 3). Still, the name seems to have stuck and Charles Prince, teacher and shop owner, through no fault or intention of his own, left an indelible mark on the city of Christchurch. A reminder, perhaps, that sometimes our legacies aren’t always ours to determine?

We talk about six degrees of separation (two at most in New Zealand, right?), but sometimes I think we forget that it doesn’t just apply to people in the here and now – that it doesn’t just apply to people, full stop. Increasingly, as we uncover more and more of Christchurch’s past, literally and metaphorically, we’re finding connections between the lives of the city’s inhabitants in the objects, places and moments in time where their stories cross over. These things, these tangible connections between people, are the physical embodiment of the ever increasing network of human interaction that’s built the world we live in today. It’s incredibly cool to see those connections in Christchurch’s archaeological record and the role they played in shaping the city we see around us today.

Jessie Garland

References

Christchurch City Libraries, 2014. [online] Available at www.christchurchcitylibraries.com

Grey River Argus. [online] Available at www.paperspast,natlib.govt.nz.

Lyttelton Times. [online] Available at www.paperspast,natlib.govt.nz.

Press. [online] Available at www.paperspast,natlib.govt.nz.

Stay classy, Christchurch

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Class is a complicated concept, historically and in the present day. It’s difficult to define, somewhat ephemeral, and yet so clearly there in our societies and our cultures. For better or for worse, social stratification has been part of human life for a really long time now and it shows, in our material culture, in our buildings and in our landscapes.

As a consequence, class, much like gender, is visible in the archaeological record, although not without a whole lot of complications (as is always the way, really). If there’s anything I’ve learned while I’ve been researching this (other than how idiotically ambitious it was to try and write about class in a short blog post), it’s that class is one of those concepts that depends.

To start with, it depends on how we’re interpreting it, and on what kind of ideas and experiences we’re using to make sense of it. It’s very easy, when interpreting and talking about concepts like class, to project our own present day ideas back onto past societies, because they’re the frame of reference we’re working from. I know that our discussions about class here in the office over the past week have constantly touched on class as we understand it now, especially as we tried to untangle our thoughts about what it is and how it’s represented in our material culture.

It also depends on how we’re defining it: are we talking about a part of society which shares similar socio-economic characteristics – i.e. income, social values, social behaviour, consumer choices – or are we talking about a part of society explicitly defined by the way it contrasts with other parts of society. After all, the ‘lower classes’ are only so-called because of how they differ from the ‘middle classes’ and the ‘upper classes’, aren’t they?

A 'definition' of middle class from 1896. Image: Star

A ‘definition’ of middle class from 1896. Image: Star 18/07/1896: 3

Typically, from a characteristics perspective in Western society (and I’m being really general here), upper class denotes inherited family prestige and/or great wealth; middle class tends to refer to a combination of ‘white collar’ professions, comfortable incomes, a certain level of education and/or social manners; and lower or working class to blue collar jobs, lower end incomes, lower levels of education, etc. We’re certainly used to hearing these kinds of class definitions for Victorian society, if not for our own.  Even as I’m writing this, though, I find myself disagreeing, thinking of exceptions, of variations within these definitions. How accurate, how universal are these distinctions? I end up with more questions than answers (and more than a little brain melting).

It depends on how we’re looking at it. From an archaeological perspective, we interpret individual and group behaviour and activities through the physical remnants of people’s lives. This includes intangible concepts like class, which are represented in the things people buy and use and the differences in those things between separate social groups. These differences could be stylistic, they could be cost or value based, they could be functional. If we’re using ceramics, we could look at the differences in decorative techniques and patterns between households, the differences in the types and forms of teawares and tablewares that people owned, or the relative cost of those different objects.

Ceramics from Violet Cottage. Clockwise from top left: a tureen, a Fibre-decorated side plate, the base of a serving dish and a colander. Image: C. Dickson.


Ceramics from Violet Cottage. Clockwise from top left: a tureen, a Fibre-decorated side plate, the base of a serving dish and a colander. Ceramics like these can offer insights on the social status of their owners, through the variety of forms present, the decorative techniques and patterns used and the relative value of the vessels. Image: C. Dickson.

For example, archaeological studies elsewhere in the world have associated plain or minimally decorated tea and dinner sets with middle class Victorian households, for whom they’re not just aesthetically pleasing, but associated with ideals of gentility, domesticity and a kind of conformity with the fashions and ideals of their neighbours (Fitts 1991). Other studies have looked at the different types of ceramic vessels people owned: the more variety of types – i.e. the more elaborate and specialised the dinner set – the better off the household might be (Brooks 2002). Even more studies have looked at the relative cost of certain types of ceramic, to see if they might correspond to differences in the social status of households (Miller 1991). There’s always a danger here, though, of making broad, uncritical assumptions about social status or beliefs from artefacts (i.e. we have plain ceramics, therefore we have a middle class household). It definitely helps to have a good historical record for the site or assemblage:  the more historical context we have, the more we can use material culture to explore how people navigated and dealt with social classes, rather than just using it to identify a certain class.

A bone china jug from Christchurch, with sprigged decoration. Bone china, particularly plain or minimally decorated examples, have been considered characteristic of the middle classes elsewhere in the world (Fitts). Unfortunately, we don't yet know how this applies to a Christchurch context. Image: C. Dickson.

A bone china jug from Christchurch, with sprigged decoration. Bone china, particularly plain or minimally decorated examples, have been considered characteristic of the middle classes elsewhere in the world (Fitts 1991), and a reflection of certain middle class values, like domesticity, virtue and modesty. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know how this applies to a Christchurch context. Image: C. Dickson.

Context is hugely important when it comes to questions like this. More than anything else, I think, our understanding of social class depends on where and when we’re looking at it. Class is quite a fluid concept and reflects the various social, economic and cultural processes of different times and places. The characteristics of the different social classes in Christchurch, for example, are not the same as the characteristics of those classes in London, or even America, although they may be influenced by them. They’re not even the same as other cities in New Zealand. We’re operating in a very different social and historical context here: different background, different population demographic, different physical, social and economic environment. It’s been said that Christchurch’s upper class, or ‘elite’, was smaller and far more fluid than its British counterpart: here, the upper classes included professionals (lawyers, business owners, etc) who would elsewhere have been considered middle class (McAloon 2000: 193-221). It’s also likely that the so-called middle class of the city was larger than elsewhere and, again, more varied. Although, really, it’s hard to say.

You have to ask then, how did the idiosyncrasies (economic, political, cultural) of Christchurch society affect the definitions of classes in the city? Did it make the differences between what would elsewhere be considered the lower class and the middle classes less pronounced? Was there more mobility between the social classes here than elsewhere? Did people back then actively consider themselves to be middle or upper or lower class or are we just giving them our own labels? Were distinctions in the material culture of different social classes more or less obvious than in, say, England? And most of all, can we see this in the archaeological record?

The answer to the last one is yes, probably, but it’s going to take a while. At this stage, we haven’t excavated enough sites with known class contexts to make any meaningful interpretations of social status in 19th century Christchurch. Before we can start to explore how people in different social groups were using material culture we need to look a bit more at what those different social groups were and how we might be able to associate them with certain types of artefacts. And that requires lots of archaeological sites with good historical records, and the time to compare them all. It’s difficult, but not impossible, and certainly something we’re working on.

As of now, we really only have a few very, very preliminary observations on social status in Christchurch. We’ve noticed that a lot of the residential sites we’re digging up here have very similar artefact assemblages: this might reflect a less pronounced class distinction in the city, the prevalence of one particular social class (the middle) here, or that the material culture of Victorian Christchurch is just too uniform to be a good indicator of class. Alternatively, it might just reflect the sample of sites we’ve excavated so far. We certainly haven’t noticed the kinds of patterns here that have been commented on elsewhere: there’s not been much of a prevalence of plain ceramics here, or contrasts between assemblages with a wide variety of forms and those with just a few types. We have noticed some interesting correlations between the styles of buildings and the social positions or professions of their occupants, especially when it comes to the contrast between the public and private spaces within houses (next week’s post!). It’ll be intriguing to see how these observations change as time goes on and we gather more data. No matter what, it should be interesting!

Jessie Garland

References

Brandon, J. C., 2009. A North American perspective on race and class in historical archaeology. In Majewsk, T. and Gaimster, D., eds. International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, pp. 3-16. Springer, New York.

Brooks, A., 2002. The cloud of unknowing: towards an international comparative analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth century ceramics. Australasian Historical Archaeology 20: 48-57.

Fitts, R., 1991. The archaeology of middle-class domesticity and gentility in Victorian Brooklyn. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 39-62

McAloon, J., 2000. The Christchurch elite. In Cookson, J. and Dunstall, G., eds). Southern Capital Christchurch: Towards a City Biography, 1850-2000., pp. 193-221. Canterbury University Press, Christchurch.

Miller, G.,1991. A revised set of CC index values for classification and economic scaling of English ceramics from 1787 to 1880. Historical Archaeology 25(l): l-25.

In which the emanation of effluvia is offensive to one’s senses

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Continuing on from last week’s blog, today’s post takes a look (or a sniff, if you will) at the aromas of everyday life inside a Victorian house. Smell is such an intrinsic part of human life, yet so fleeting that it can only be experienced directly in the present moment. The smells of the past, as Hamish mentioned last week, are only available to us indirectly, through written descriptions and the power of our imagination (itself based upon our own past olfactory experiences).

As far as the 19th century is concerned, many of the everyday scents and aromas experienced by people in Christchurch would still be familiar to us, even now. Others, however, have faded from daily life during the intervening decades as household products and technologies have gradually been replaced by modern, odourless, alternatives.

A lovely brass candlestick (used by Colonel mustard in the library, perhaps...). We think that the pieces of fabric stuck to the metal are just the remnants of the wrapping it was thrown out in, rather than a functional or decorative part of the candlestick itself. There's even a candle stub still visible inside the holder, near the base. Image: J. Garland

A brass candlestick found in Christchurch. Image: J. Garland

The smell of lighting, for example, is something that wouldn’t even register as a household smell now. Yet, in the 19th century, everything that produced light (with the exception of the sun, of course) – candles, kerosene lamps, gas lamps, wood or coal fires – would also have produced a smell.  Some of these have featured on the blog before, in the form of candle sticks and fireplaces found on Christchurch sites, but we’ve not really considered them in the context of their smell before.

Many of the fireplaces we’ve come across would not have ‘drawn’ well, meaning there would often have been coal or wood smoke in the room while they were lit. Kerosene lamps were notorious for their smell, to the point that advertisers made an effort to emphasise the less ‘distasteful’ smell of their own products (Wairarapa Daily Times 7/2/1913: 7). Candles were made from a variety of materials, from cheap tallow to spermaceti (a wax found in sperm whales) and paraffin wax, some of which gave off distinctive smells and some of which did not. Even ‘odourless’ candles, though, such as ‘sperm candles’, would still have contributed to the scents of the household through the smell of the wick as it was extinguished, or matches as it was lit.

Advertisements for household lighting and heat

Advertisements for household lighting and heat. Left to right: advertisement for gas lighting, which avoids the “soot, smell and sadness” of other lighting methods (Northern Advocate 6/8/1920: 4); advertisement for Apollo Sperm Candles (Evening Post 8/8/1903: 15); advertisement for clean Shell kerosene heaters (Wairarapa Daily Times 7/2/1913:7)

Article on the creation of an allegedly odourless 'super-cabbage'. Image:

Article on the creation of an allegedly odourless ‘super-cabbage’. Image: New Zealand Herald 21/5/1935: 4.

On the other hand, the smell of cooking – and food, in general – is one that we’re used to today, although perhaps not to the same extremes as in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  As well as the smell of coal ranges or cooking fires, people during the period seem to have been particularly concerned with the aromas of cooked vegetables and meat permeating through the house (Ashburton Guardian 31/3/1900: 4). Newspapers from the time are full of advice on how to prevent the smell of cooking from spreading, with noticeable emphasis on the smell of cooking cabbage, onion and other boiled green vegetables (North Otago Times 20/12/1906: 1; New Zealand Herald 5/07/1930:7). Of course, some of the cooking smells of the time must have been more palatable than others: the aroma of fresh bread or baking, for example, is unlikely to have provoked such negativity.

Advice on how to prevent cooking smells from permeating through the house. Images:

Advice on how to prevent cooking smells from permeating through the house. Images: Evening Post 21/4/1939: 6; Ashburton Guardian 31/3/1900: 4; New Zealand Herald 7/9/1929: 7

However, food smells wouldn’t have been limited to cooking. Without the refrigeration that we have today, even the storage of food in a house would have generated a variety of smells – some good (spices, perhaps) and some bad. We talked about a few of the foodstuffs that we’ve found on sites in Christchurch a little while ago. Some of these – the anchovy paste, for example – probably smelled quite pungent to start with, let alone after they’d been sitting in unrefrigerated storage for any length of time. In fact, many of the food-related artefacts we find, from vinegar bottles to Bovril to jars of ground cheese, would have had fairly distinctive aromas that we tend to forget about when we’re looking at them.

An Anchovy Paste jar found in Christchurch and accompanying recipe from 1904. Image: J. Garland, Otago Witness 17/08/1904: 67.

An anchovy paste jar found in Christchurch, and recipe from 1904. Image: J. Garland, Otago Witness 17/08/1904: 67.

Perhaps the most obvious difference between the household smells of then and now is, as it was with the smells of the outside world, related to the management of human waste, sanitation and personal hygiene. Last week, Hamish mentioned one site with a crudely made drain, which might have contributed to the smell of the sewer travelling up the pipe and into a house. We don’t know how common an occurrence this might have been in 19th century Christchurch, but we do know that the smell of human waste would have been a strong presence in houses anyway, thanks to the use of chamber pots – a multitude of which have been found on sites in the city.

Part of a chamberpot decorated with the May Morn pattern. Image: J. Garland.

Part of a chamberpot decorated with the May Morn pattern. Image: J. Garland.

For many 19th century households, the toilet (or privy) would have been located outside, separate from the main house or attached to the rear of the dwelling (Butcher & Smith 2010). While this set-up would have been fine for use during the day, chamber pots were common household items for use during the night, when it was too cold or too dark to stumble outside to the privy. Even when emptied frequently, the smell must have been fairly pervasive and less than pleasant.

An 1870s article describing the use of coffee as a disinfectant and de-odouriser. Image:

An 1870s article describing the use of coffee as a disinfectant. Image: Southland Times 3/6/1870: 3

However, there were a number of methods and products available in the 19th century to combat the more unpleasant household smells, products that would have themselves contributed to the overall aromatic signature of the Victorian Christchurch home. Examples of 19th and early 20th century cleaning products from Christchurch sites have featured here on the blog before. All of these would have provided a fairly strong assault on the nostrils, particularly the disinfectants like Kerol, Lysol and Jeyes Fluid (New Zealand Herald 22/1/1912: 8). Other methods of preventing ‘noxious odours’ in the home included the cooking tips mentioned above, the careful placement of flowers or floral scented sachets (lavender or rose, usually; New Zealand Herald 26/10/1912: 6), or the use of coffee as a “powerful means…of rendering animal and vegetable effluvia innocuous” (Southland Times 3/6/1870: 3).

 

 

Kerol bottle found in Christchurch, along with 1920s poem singing the praises of the disinfectant. Images: Colonist 24/02/1920; J. Garland.

Kerol bottle found in Christchurch, along with 1920s poem singing the praises of the disinfectant. Images: Colonist 24/02/1920; J. Garland.

Sadly, due to the constraints of space, in this post I’ve really only touched on the plethora of smells that would have defined a household in the 19th century. I’ve not mentioned the smell of the building itself (wallpapers, particular types of timber, the damp; Bruce Herald 23/10/1872: 9) or the smell of household animals or pets or many of the other scented household products (for better or for worse) that would have been in use (Evening Post 20/2/1930: 7). Not to mention the personal smells created by people themselves, from the smell of their clothing (washed and unwashed), the smell of leather shoes, individual perfumes or lack thereof, the smell of a person’s hair (which may have been washed with beetle juices!) or the soap that they used.

There are so many individual scents that make up the olfactory experience of our daily lives that it can be difficult to imagine that experience as a whole in the past, to combine all of the smells we’ve mentioned, this week and last, into an idea of what it was like to breathe in deeply in 19th century Christchurch. It can also be difficult to separate out the various smells that contribute to our own experience, especially the ones we’re so used to that we barely notice them anymore. You have to wonder if perhaps it was a bit like that for people in the 19th century as well: perhaps, so many of these smells were so common that they hardly registered in day to day life. For us, though, even imagining such smells has the power to make that daily life – those past scenes and experiences – more real, in a way that few other senses do.

Jessie Garland

References

Ashburton Guardian. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Bruce Herald. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Butcher, M. & Smith, I., 2010. Talking trash: classifying rubbish-bearing deposits from colonial New Zealand sites. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 1(1): 43-61.

Colonist. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Evening Post. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

New Zealand Herald. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

North Otago Times. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Otago Witness. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Southland Times. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

The archaeology of an archaeologist’s desk

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This week’s post is a bit different. It’s not directly about Christchurch archaeology, but it is about an archaeologist working in Christchurch. We’ve taken a bunch of photographs of one of the desks in our office and we want you to take a look at them and tell us what you think the material culture on that archaeologist’s desk tells you. Which is pretty much what archaeologists do every day, albeit with things we find in the ground, or in old buildings – that is, we look at objects (artefacts) and try and interpret people’s behaviour, thoughts, beliefs, etc, from them. And it’s what everybody everywhere does all the time. We make all sorts of assumptions about a person based on the clothes they wear, the car they drive and the house they live in, amongst many other things. It’s just that archaeologists put quite detailed research into understanding the artefacts they recover, and the context from which they are found – because, after all, the past is a foreign country.

Post your thoughts in the comments (yes, I know the equation thing is a pain, but you should see the spam we were getting), and we’ll get back to you early next week with all the details about that desk…

You can think about some basic things, like what they’ve been working on, or go a bit deeper, and consider how they work.

NB: The scale in the photographs is, quite literally, to give a sense of scale. It’s not part of the story!

The desk.

The desk.

DSC_2290

The pile of papers above, 'excavated'.

The pile of papers above, ‘excavated’.

DSC_2277DSC_2275

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The desk.

Public faces and private spaces: domestic pride and hygiene in the 19th century

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Today’s post continues the theme of the last one (a little), in terms of exploring the relationship between products and industries in the past and their connection with our lives today. It’s easy to scoff at some of the things we learn about the 19th century – like how backward the ideas were – but there are certain aspects of history that remind us how some human traits transcend time and generations. One such aspect of human behaviour that’s come to my attention recently, thanks to some artefacts we’ve found in Christchurch, is to do with cleaning the house, of all things. Specifically, how we can see delineations between public and private spaces in the products used by a 19th century household as much as we can see it in the actual physical structure of the house itself.

The object that triggered this train of thought was found recently, on a site in the Christchurch CBD. It’s a small ceramic pot, similar to others that we’ve come across before, that has the useful distinction of still having its label attached. This label identifies the original contents of the pot as Joseph Pickering & Sons’ “celebrated polishing paste”, for “cleaning and beautifying” a range of metal objects. The significant word here, I think, is ‘beautifying’. Products like this polishing paste had a very specific purpose, and that purpose had everything to do with appearance. After all, something is polished so that it can be seen, is it not? Shiny harness ornaments, gleaming silver and brass, burnished copper – they’re there to look good, and to make the people associated with them look good in the eyes of others. The virtue of keeping a clean house, and the reflection of that virtue on a person’s character, is not a new concept to any of us (even if we don’t always follow through as much as we should). Pickering’s polishing paste is a product that has everything to do with this concept, with that public face of a household or business and the social construct of domestic pride.

This pot of Pickering & Son's polishing paste was found on a site in Christchurch's CBD. The label reads:

This pot of Pickering & Sons’ polishing paste was found on a site in Christchurch’s CBD. Often, ceramic pots like this are identified as toothpaste pots. However, the  attached label on this one reads: “JOSEPH PICKERING & SONS / CELEBRATED POLISHING PASTE / For cleaning and beautifying brass, copper, tin, German Silver, Brittania metal goods, harness ornaments, carriage glasses, windows.” Another piece of the label was found inside the pot. Not all of it was legible, but what we could make out reads: “Directions of Use / Take piece of wet flannel or woolen cloth with  little of the …tion and rub well on the article to best… afterwards polish….cloth for ornamental….” Image: J. Garland.

It got me thinking about the other household products we find in archaeological sites and how they fit within this notion of public and private space in the home. With the exception of polishing paste, almost all of the other cleaning products we find are disinfectants. Products like Kerol, Jeyes Fluid & Lysol were all advertised primarily as disinfectants for the home (and on the farm, in some cases), although they also claimed medicinal properties among their applications. Kerol was advertised as a remedy for infantile paralysis (polio), due to its germ-killing properties (Wanganui Chronicle 24/03/1916: 6), while Lysol had some interesting (and disturbing) alternative uses (Evening Post 4/10/1930: 27). In the early 20th century, along with causing a number of deaths, it was marketed and used as a form of birth control and feminine hygiene product (Sanger 1917). Unfortunately for women, the extremely caustic and highly toxic disinfectant, which was applied by douching, created all manner of disastrous and highly painful health problems rather than solving them (Palmer & Greenberg 1936:142-146).

These astoundingly sexist advertisements for Lysol claim "in easily understood language", that good feminine hygiene can protect a woman's youth & vigor and save her marriage. Clockwise

These astoundingly sexist advertisements for Lysol claim “in easily understood language”, that good feminine hygiene can protect a woman’s youth & vigor and save her marriage. Clockwise from left: 1934 advertisement for Lysol; Lysol bottle base found in Christchurch; Lysol advertisement from 1930. Images: Museum of Women’s Health;  J. Garland; Evening Post 4/10/1930.

All of these disinfectants are associated with the gradual acceptance of germ theory during the late 19th century, along with the new understanding that personal and household hygiene formed an important aspect of individual health. For that very reason, as cleaning products, they form something of a contrast to Pickering’s polishing paste as products that sit firmly within the private sphere of household cleaning. Their ability to kill germs notwithstanding, disinfectants like these would have little to contribute when it came to presenting the public spaces of the household to guests and visitors. In fact, horrifying feminine hygiene aside, their use in the home hasn’t really changed during the past 100 years.

Kerol bottle found in Christchurch, along with 1920s poem singing the praises of the disinfectant. Images: Colonist 24/02/1920; J. Garland.

Kerol bottle found in Christchurch, along with 1920s poem singing the praises of the disinfectant. Images: Colonist 24/02/1920; J. Garland.

This is what I’m getting at, really. The products themselves may have uses that seem barbaric (douching with disinfectant, ouch), or ingredients that we wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, but the driving force behind their use hasn’t changed so much. The average household today might not have a lot of silver and saddlery to polish (to be fair the average household then probably didn’t either) but a bottle of furniture polish wouldn’t be unusual in most cleaning cupboards. Nor would glass cleaner, starch, or shoe polish, all of which are used more for the presentation of a clean house (or footwear) than for hygienic reasons. At the same time, although many solely ‘private’ products, like bleach or disinfectant, are common in modern households, so too are products that combine the appearance-based cleaning with the hygienic side of things. Anti-bacterial Spray & Wipe is an excellent case in point.

Perhaps that’s the real difference between then and now. There’s still the same drive to have a clean house, the same kind of domestic pride and same wish to be free from illness or disease: it’s just easier to fulfil now. More convenient. The people haven’t changed, not so much, but we’ve changed the world around us, one product at a time.

Jessie Garland

References

Colonist. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.

Evening Post. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.

Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health, 2014. [online] Available at http://www.mum.org/

Palmer, R. L. & Greenberg, Sarah K., 1936. Facts and Frauds in Women’s Hygiene: A Medical Guide Against Misleading Claims and Dangerous Products. Vanguard Press. 

Sanger, M., 1917. Family Limitation. [online] Available at http://archive.lib.msu.edu.

Wanganui Chronicle. [online] Available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.