Subscribe now

In the second chapter of Alice we find our protagonist escaping from the pool of tears in the company of four birds:

It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite full of birds and animals that had fallen into it. There was a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.

This odd group have various adventures before going their separate ways, and we can figure out exactly who they are from a passage that was included in the original hand-written manuscript but not in the published book:

She sat for some while sorrowful and silent, but she was not long before she recovered her spirits, and began talking to herself again as usual: ‘I do wish some of them had stayed a little longer! and I was getting to be such friends with them—really the Lory and I were almost like sisters! and so was that dear little Eaglet! And then the Duck and the Dodo! How nicely the Duck sang to us as we came along through the water: and if the Dodo hadn’t known the way to that nice little cottage, I don’t know when we should have got dry again.

The four were her companions on that first boat trip up to Godstow where Carroll began telling the tale. Lory was her sister, Lorina (‘Ina’) and Eaglet her sister Edith. The Dodo2 was Lewis himself, most likely named in a manner to gently poke fun at his own stammer – in saying his real surname he would sometimes stutter “Do…do…Dodgson”. And finally, as readers of my previous piece will have already worked out, the Duck was Robinson Duckworth.3 Lest there be any doubt, Carroll inscribed the copy of Alice he gave to Duckworth “From the Dodo to the Duck”.

Besides Alice herself, arguably the most famous character in the books is the Mad Hatter. It seems likely that the author was inspired, at least in part, by the wonderfully named Theophilus Carter (1824–1904), a furniture dealer and cabinet maker who ran his own business on Oxford High Street. Generally described as an “eccentric” he was well known for standing in the doorway of his shop with a black top hat pushed back on his head and seemingly was known to locals as “The Mad Hatter”.

It is possible that before plying this trade he had worked as a servant in Christ Church College, and waited at Carroll’s table, but there is really no credible evidence to substantiate this. Writing to The Times in 1935 the Reverend W. Gordon Baillie claimed that Carroll brought Sir John Tenniel to Oxford to get a look at the man in order to base his illustrations for the book upon him:

Your correspondent, Mr. H.W. Greene, thinks that Theophilus Carter was unaware that he figured in “Through the Looking Glass” [sic] But all Oxford called him “The Mad Hatter,” and surely his friends, or enemies, must have chaffed him about it. He would stand at the door of his furniture shop in the High, sometimes in an apron, always with a top-hat at the back of his head, which, with a well-developed nose and a somewhat receding chin, made him an easy target for the caricaturist. The story went that Mr. Dodgson (“Lewis Carroll”), thinking T. C. had imposed upon him, took this revenge. In justice to the man’s memory, I may say that I possess a carved oak armchair which I bought from him, second-hand, 50 years ago. It is as good as ever, and the price was very moderate.

Next, let’s have a look at the Cheshire Cat. In my ignorance, before starting to research this piece, I had assumed that the notion of a grinning Cheshire cat had been purely the invention of Carroll. But no! The phrase had been around for decades before he used it, as shown by this entry in Francis Grose’s 1788 book A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

CHESHIRE CAT. He grins like a Cheshire cat; said of any one who shews his teeth and gums in laughing

Back to Alice’s cat. One possible candidate is Dr Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882) who in 1828, became Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, with a canonry at Christ Church, so would have been well known to Carroll and the Liddell family alike. He became one of the key figures in the Oxford Movement (which strove to maintain the Church of England’s continuity with the early church with a strong focus upon its sacramental life) alongside John Henry Newman and John Keble. So significant was his influence that the movement’s adherents were called ‘Puseyites’. Why might he have been the inspiration for the toothsome feline? Well, the evidence is pretty tenuous I have to say, but it is essentially based upon Alice referring to him as “puss”.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider.

Let’s move onto somewhat firmer ground. In Alice the Mock Turtle tells us about his old drawling [sic] master, the conger-eel:

“There was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.”

“What was that like?” said Alice.

“Well, I can’t show you myself,” the Mock Turtle said: “I’m too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.”

This alluded-to fish is based on none other than the great John Ruskin (1819–1900) who taught the Liddell children “drawing, sketching, and painting in oils”. He later also taught them woodcarving, a skill in which they gained great proficiency, the evidence for which can be seen to this day in the form of ‘Alice’s Door’ in St Friedeswide’s Church in Oxford. We have an account of Alice’s experience of being taught by Ruskin from this account by her son, published in 1932:

When much older, they went to the School of Art for drawing. This school was later taken over by Mr. Ruskin, who taught my mother to sketch. On one occasion he was telling her she had done a drawing very badly. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Alice. ‘Don’t be sorry, Alice, but don’t do it again,’ was Mr. Ruskin’s reply.

Not to be confused with the Queen of Hearts, there is another Alice royal, the Red Queen from Looking Glass. A clue to whom she might have been based upon can be gained from Carroll’s description of her:

The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm – she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the 10th degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses!

It seems probable that she was based upon Mary Prickett,4 later Mary Foster (1832–1920), the governess to the Liddell children.

Mary was born on the 3rd of January 1832 on Oxford’s Cowley Road, making her almost exactly Carroll’s contemporary. Her father, James Prickett, had worked as a wine merchant before becoming butler5 at Trinity College and she became governess to the Liddell children in 1855, aged 23. They met for the first time on the 3rd of November 1856, as he recorded:

Met Miss Prickett, the governess at the Deanery, walking with Ina, and settled that I would come over on Wednesday morning if it is fine. I also asked her to try and secure some of the Aclands coming over to be taken: there are five or six of them, and Southey says they are a beautiful family: I have only seen the eldest, Willie.

Little more than six months later, on the 17th May 1857, rumours had started to fly:

Took Harry Liddell to chapel, and afterwards walked back with the children to the Deanery. I find to my great surprise that my notice of them is construed by some men into attentions to the governess, Miss Prickett. I had a long talk with Joyce about it in the evening, and though for my own part I should give little importance to the existence of so groundless a rumour, it would be inconsiderate to the governess to give any further occasion for remarks of the sort. For this reason I shall avoid taking any public notice of the children in future, unless any occasion should arise when such an interpretation is impossible.

He did not, of course, end up cutting himself off from the children, otherwise Alice would not have been written,6 and Prickett remained in the service of the Liddell family until 1871. That year she married Charles Foster, a prosperous widower 24 years older than herself. He had been a substantial Oxford draper and was at that time a wine merchant. The couple went on to run the Mitre Hotel on Oxford High Street (which survives to this day as, err, an Italian restaurant) and did very well for themselves. Interestingly, Mary’s sister had already married Charles’s son, which meant that she was her sister’s step-mother-in-law, something that doubtless would have amused Carroll.

Speaking of the Queen of Hearts, did she have an inspiration from Carroll’s life? Sadly, probably not, though there has been some suggestion that Alice’s mother, Lorina ‘Ina’ Liddell could have been in his mind when he created her. It seems that she was a fairly formidable woman, and some say that she dominated her husband, the Dean of Christ Church, at least socially, much like the Queen dominated the King in the book. Indeed this verse about the couple circulated around Oxford at the time:

I am the Dean, this Mrs Liddell:
She plays the first, and I the second fiddle.
She is the Broad: I am the High:
We are the University.

I led the piece with a picture of the Walrus and the Carpenter. Were they, perchance, based upon real people? Almost certainly not. And we can be pretty sure about this because the carpenter nearly wasn’t a carpenter! Carroll recalls that the illustrator, John Tenniel:

…remonstrated against the walrus and the carpenter as a hopeless combination, and begged to have the ‘Carpenter’ abolished—I remember offering ‘baronet’ and ‘butterfly’7… but he finally chose ‘Carpenter’.

Tenniel did, however have some impact upon the poem. Originally it went:

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking hand in hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand

But the final, published version was:

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand

Why the change? Flippers. Tenniel, it seems, couldn’t figure out a way for a flipper-wielding beast to hold hands with the Carpenter!

Subscribe now

Let’s begin with the story of its author, Lewis Carroll, or to give him his real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He didn’t wish to be published under his real name to keep it separate from his professional life, and came up with four options, two that were anagrams of his name and two that played with the Latin-based transformations of his forenames:

1. Edgar Cuthwellis

2. Edgar U. C. Westhill

3. Louis Carroll

4. Lewis Carroll

He shared these with Edmund Yates, the editor of The Train magazine, in February 1856, and Yates, obviously, selected the fourth. Personally I find it fascinating that Alice could have been written by one “Edgar Cuthwellis”!2

Dodgson was born on 27 January 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, the third of eleven children and the eldest son. His father, also Charles Dodgson, was an Anglican clergyman who had distinguished himself at Oxford in mathematics and classics. His mother, Frances Jane Lutwidge, came from the same extended family, being a first cousin of her husband. In 1843 the family moved to Croft-on-Tees where Charles senior became a rector and life in the large household provided young Charles with the perfect outlet for the imagination that would populate his later works. He created illustrated family magazines, entertainments, and comic verses, all filled with complex wordplay.

School life was, alas, more challenging for him. Dodgson suffered from a stammer that would plague him until his death. Sometimes this involved silent blocks, when he could not get a word out. His friend May Barber later recalled him suddenly stopping in the middle of telling a story, with his mouth open but no sound emerging. He attended Richmond School, before going up to Rugby in 1846, an experience he disliked intensely later, writing: “I cannot say that I look back upon my life at a Public School with any sensations of pleasure.”

In January 1851 he went up to Christ Church College, Oxford, to study mathematics, and its buildings would be his home for the rest of his life. He gained a first-class degree in maths in 1854 and began working as a lecturer there in around 1856, a role he would continue in until 1881. He was ordained as a deacon in 1861, and preached numerous sermons, but never actually became a priest.

1856 was a hugely significant year for the 24-year-old for three reasons. First, he took up photography, a complex and cumbersome process at the time, and over the next 25 years would produce over 3,000 pictures – all of which he developed and printed himself – which demonstrated great skill in portraiture. Then in March he had his first work published under the name “Lewis Carroll” in The Train. It was a serious, melancholic, poem titled “Solitude”, very different in tone to his more famous works. Here is a taste of it:

I love the stillness of the wood:
I love the music of the rill:
I love to couch in pensive mood
Upon some silent hill.

Scarce heard, beneath yon arching trees,
The silver-crested ripples pass;
And, like a mimic brook, the breeze
Whispers among the grass.

Here from the world I win release,
Nor scorn of men, nor footstep rude,
Break in to mar the holy peace
Of this great solitude.

Finally, and most significantly, on the 25th of April he met the three daughters of his friend Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, for the first time. This is how he recorded the day in his journal:

Went over with Southey3 in the afternoon to the Deanery, to try and take a photograph of the Cathedral: both attempts proved failures. The three little girls were in the garden most of the time, and we became excellent friends: we tried to group them in the foreground of the picture, but they were not patient sitters. I mark this day with a white stone.4

The girls were Lorina Charlotte Liddell, known as “Ina”, who was six, going on seven; Edith Mary Liddell, just a toddler, around two years old; and most famously of all, Alice Pleasance Liddell, who would turn four nine days later.

In the years that followed Dodgson would go out on excursions with the children, inventing stories and games to pass the time, and he would also photograph them. Some of these pictures were formal portraits, others were vignettes or character studies, such as this one of the six-year-old Alice as “The Beggar Maid” taken in 1858.5

Some of their days out involved taking a rowing boat down the Thames (probably hired from Salter’s Steamers, a company that still exists to this day!) but on a couple of occasions they ventured upstream, possibly because it meant that the journey home was running with the current, rather than fighting against it. It was on a walk, rather than a row, upstream that Dodgson first encountered Godstow Abbey, and we know precisely when this happened because he recorded it in his journal entry of the 19th May 1857:

Walked with Skeffington6 to Godstow, where, oddly enough, I do not remember ever being before.

He obviously liked the place because he chose it as the destination for an upstream row some five years later on the 4th of July 1862. In the boat were Ina, Alice, and Edith (then 13, 10, and 8 respectively) along with 27-year-old Reverend Robinson Duckworth (1834–1911) an academic, priest, and friend of Dodgson’s who sometimes joined such trips. It was a glorious summer’s day, as described by Dodgson recalling it in 1887:

Stand forth, then, from the shadowy past, ‘Alice,’ the child of my dreams! Full many a year has slipped away, since that ‘golden afternoon’ that gave thee birth, but I can call it up almost as clearly as if it were yesterday—the cloudless blue above, the watery mirror below, the boat drifting idly on its way, the tinkle of the drops that fell from the oars, as they waved so sleepily to and fro, and (the one bright gleam of life in all the slumberous scene) the three eager faces, hungry for news of fairy-land, and who would not be said ‘nay’ to: from whose lips “tell us a story, please,” had all the stern immutability of Fate!

Alice too had similar memories:

Nearly all of Alice’s Adventures Underground was told on that blazing summer afternoon with the heat haze shimmering over the meadows where the party landed to shelter for a while in the shadow cast by the haycocks near Godstow. I think the stories he told us that afternoon must have been better than usual, because I have such a distinct recollection of the expedition, and also, on the next day I started to pester him to write down the story for me, which I had never done before. It was due to my ‘going on, going on’ and importunity that, after saying he would think about it, he eventually gave the hesitating promise which started him writing it down at all.

Except… the meticulous weather records taken by the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford tell us that the temperature that day got no higher than 20 degrees Celsius (68˚F) and that it was overcast7 with rain showers!

The weather is important, as it seems likely that it would made the girls more sullen and restive, and Dodgson therefore had to lean more heavily on his storytelling to keep them entertained. His journal entry for that day gives little clue that this day was the origin of a masterpiece:

Duckworth and I made an expedition up the river to Godstow with the three Liddells: we had tea on the bank there,8 and did not reach Ch. Ch.9 again till quarter past eight.

A later note, written on the opposite page, dated 10th of February 1863, does however speak to its significance:

On which occasion I told them the fairy-tale of “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”,10 which I undertook to write for Alice, and which is now finished (as to the text) though the pictures are not yet nearly done.

Duckworth later recounted both the creation of the story, and that it was such a hit that Alice demanded that it be written down:

I rowed stroke and he rowed bow in the famous Long Vacation voyage to Godstow, when the three Miss Liddells were our passengers, and the story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as ‘cox’ of our gig. I remember turning round and saying, ‘Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?’ And he replied, ‘Yes, I’m inventing as we go along.’ I also well remember how, when we had conducted the three children back to the Deanery, Alice said, as she bade us good-night, ‘Oh, Mr. Dodgson, I wish you would write out Alice’s adventures for me.’ He said he would try, and he afterwards told me that he sat up nearly the whole night, committing to a MS. book his recollections of the drolleries with which he had enlivened the afternoon. He added illustrations of his own and presented the volume, which used often to be seen on the drawing-room table at the Deanery.

It clearly required several trips for the complete story to be told, as a little over a month after the original expedition, on the 6th of August 1862, he recorded this:

In the afternoon Harcourt11 and I took the three Liddells up to Godstow12 where we had tea: we tried the game of “the Ural Mountains”13 on the way, but it did not prove very successful, and I had to go on with my interminable14 fairy-tale of “Alice’s Adventures”. We got back soon after 8.

A very enjoyable expedition, the last, I should think, to which Ina is likely to be allowed to come.15

It took Dodgson more than two years to hand-write and illustrate the first copy of Alice, sending it to its protagonist on the 26th of November 1864, with the dedication “A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer Day.” He noted in his journal:

Text (of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground) finished before Feb. 10, 1863. Pictures in M. S. finished Sept. 13 (Tu.), 1864. M. S. finally sent to Alice, Nov. 26, 1864.

An expanded version, now titled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with illustrations by John Tenniel, was printed for Macmillan in June of 1865, but the quality of the reproductions of the images was so poor that they were all returned. A reprint took place, and the book was finally published in November of the same year.

By this time, however, relations between the Liddells and Dodgson had cooled somewhat. On the 25th of June 1863 he had a day out with the girls, notably returning without any other adult chaperone. He considered it to have been a wonderful day:

About 10 o’clock Alice and Edith came over to my rooms to fetch me over to arrange about an expedition to Nuneham. It ended in our going down at 3, a party of ten. We had our tea under the trees at Nuneham, after which the rest drove home in the carriage — while Ina, Alice, Edith and I (mirabile dictu!)16 walked down to Abingdon-road station, and so home by railway: a pleasant expedition, with a very pleasant conclusion.

The next entry, for the 27th of June has Dodgson writing to Mrs Liddell requesting to photograph the children again, but it is only a snippet – the following page has been cut out of the journal. Clearly something very significant happened, as he writes in his entry for the 19th of December “It is nearly six months (June 25th) since I have seen anything of them, to speak of.” The following May saw him asking to be allowed another trip with the children, only to be rebuffed:

During these last few days I have applied in vain for leave to take the children on the river, i.e. Alice, Edith, and Rhoda: but Mrs. Liddell will not let any come in future — rather superfluous caution.17

Whole books18 have been dedicated to the various theories about what might have happened. A lot of speculation surrounds the fact that Dodgson liked to take pictures of young children, particularly girls, and in some cases (perhaps around 30 known) these girls were naked. Now you might think “Oh, it was the Victorian era, things were different then, that was quite normal” but Dodgson had to request explicit permission of the parents to take such pictures. In this letter, dated 28th of June 1876, he asks just that of the mother of nine-year-old Gertrude Chataway:19

If you should decide on sending over Gertrude and not coming yourself, would you kindly let me know what is the minimum amount of dress in which you are willing to have her taken? With that information, [I] will then be guided by her likings in the matter: children differ very much—with some that I know (Londoners chiefly) I would not venture to propose even taking off their shoes: but with a child like your Gertrude, as simple-minded as Eve in the garden of Eden, I should see no objection (provided she liked it herself) to photographing her in Eve’s original dress. And I think, if you were here and could see the photographs I have done of children in that primitive costume, that you would agree that it is quite possible to make such a picture that you might frame it and hang it up in your drawing-room.

But, much as I should myself like to have such a picture of her, if you at all object, or if she has changed her mind since I saw her (she was quite willing to be taken so, last September), of course I give it up, though I do not, once in a hundred cases, get so well-formed a subject for art.

Personally I am inclined to think that his interest in his subjects was artistic, rather than prurient. The Liddells had the picture of Alice as a beggar proudly framed on their wall, and, as mentioned above, the original copy of Alice was left for all to see years later. It seems pretty unlikely that had they suspected him of having an unhealthy interest in their child that they would have done so. But. But. But. In 1930 her sister Ina spoke to the biographer Florence Becker Lennon and, well, quite what she said is unclear, but we can get a sense of it from letters20 she subsequently sent to Alice:

I don’t suppose you remember when Mr Dodgson ceased coming to the Deanery?…I said [to Lennon] his manner became too affectionate to you as you grew older, and that Mother spoke to him about it, and that offended him so he ceased coming to visit us again – as one had to give some reason for all [social] intercourse ceasing. I don’t think you could have been more than 9 or 1021 on account of my age! I must put it a bit differently for Mrs. B.’s book.

Though in the preceding letter to Alice she wrote:

On thinking by myself, I think she tried to see if Mr Dodgson ever wanted to marry you!! She said he had such a sad face, and she thought he must have had a love affair…and it did not occur to me at the time what she perhaps was driving at!… I had no idea it was to be put in her book as from me!! However, thank goodness I am to see and correct it.

She also wrote, in the context of her conversation with Lennon, “I tremble at what I had said.” Was this discomfiture due to the revelation of some long-concealed secret? Or was it rather that she had, under pressure from a biographer, nearly seventy years after the events, come up with a spurious reason for “all intercourse ceasing”? I don’t have a dog in this fight; I am totally fine with separating the art from the artist. But I think that taking this as evidence that Dodgson had a sexual interest in Alice is placing oneself on shaky ground.

So what then really happened? We can get an idea from a note written by one of Dodgson’s nieces (which dates from around 1930) that details what was on some of the missing journal pages.

The key passage reads:

LC learns from Mrs Liddell that he is supposed to be using the children as a means of paying court to the governess — He is also supposed [by some?] to be courting Ina.

And the note at the bottom gives us a hint of possibly another explaination:

Does any one know what the “business with Lord Newry”22 was which put LC out of “Mrs Liddell’s good graces”?

The rumour that Dodgson had been romantically interest in the children’s governess, Mary Prickett,23 was not a new one, back in 1857 he mentions it in his journal entry for the 17th May 1857 (and then later adds a note making reference to the truncated June 27th 1863 entry):

Took Harry Liddell24 to chapel, and afterwards walked back with the children to the Deanery. I find to my great surprise that my notice of them is construed by some men into attentions to the governess, Miss Prickett.

I had a long talk with Joyce about it in the evening, and though for my own part I should give little importance to the existence of so groundless a rumour, it would be inconsiderate to the governess to give any further occasion for remarks of the sort. For this reason I shall avoid taking any public notice of the children in future, unless any occasion should arise when such an interpretation is impossible. (See June 27, 1863).

It is likely that we never know what really went on, and everyone has a theory. To me it seems unlikely that a resurfacing of old rumours about the governess could have caused such a schism. Perhaps he was seen alone on the train home with the girls, most notably the now fourteen-year-old Ina, and concerns were raised about the inappropriateness of this behaviour. Then there is the “business with Lord Newry” which seems most likely to have been a spat about the 1862 college ball, but possibly reflected a romantic interest that Newry might have had in Ina. Whatever the cause the relationship was not wholly severed, but it was significantly weakened. The idyllic days out ceased. Alice would go on to sit to be photographed by him again when she was eighteen, and a decade later loaned him the original Alice manuscript so that a facsimile edition could be produced.

Dodgson continued to have a brilliant career as a mathematician, and published many more works of what he would likely have termed “fairy-tale”. His enthusiasm for making up new stories for children on the fly remained undiminished also, as we can see from this letter written by one Mrs Bennie, wife of the rector of Glenfield:25

Next morning nurse took out our two little twin daughters in front of the sea. I went out a short time afterwards, looked for them, and found them seated with my friend [Dodgson] of the table d'hôte between them, and they were listening to him, open-mouthed, and in the greatest state of enjoyment, with his knee covered with minute toys. I, seeing their great delight, motioned to him to go on; this he did for some time. A most charming story he told them about sea-urchins and Ammonites. When it was over, I said, "You must be the author of ‘Alice’s Adventures.’” He laughed, but looked astonished, and said, “My dear Madam, my name is Dodgson, and ‘Alice’s Adventures’ was written by Lewis Carroll.” I replied, “Then you must have borrowed the name, for only he could have told a story as you have just done.” After a little sparring he admitted the fact, and I went home and proudly told my sister and brother how my genius had turned out a greater one than I expected. They assured me I must be mistaken, and that, as I had suggested it to him, he had taken advantage of the idea, and said he was what I wanted him to be. A few days after some friends came to Whitby who knew his aunts, and confirmed the truth of his statement, and thus I made the acquaintance of one whose friendship has been the source of great pleasure for nearly thirty years.

Dodgson never married, and died at his sister’s home in Guildford of pneumonia at the age of 65. But what of Alice? As she matured she displayed an interest in, and aptitude for, art. The John Ruskin taught her both drawing and woodcarving, and in December 1871, aged nineteen, she embarked on a European tour with her sisters, sketching the places they visited. In the 1870s she also posed for Julia Margaret Cameron, including portraits as figures from classical mythology.

In 1880, at the age of 28, she married the wealthy landowner and cricketer Reginald Hargreaves, and they went on to have three sons, Alan Knyveton,26 Leopold Reginald, and Caryl Liddell.

After the death of her husband in 1926 financial pressures forced her to sell the original manuscript of Alice that Dodgson had given her more than sixty years earlier. Towards the end of her life she found, much to her astonishment, fame. This was due in no small part to the fact that most people had no idea that Alice was based upon a real person. In 1932, she travelled to New York27 for the centenary of Carroll’s birth where Columbia University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Letters on 2nd May. Two days later, on her eightieth birthday, she was the guest of honour at a celebration attended by approximately 2,000 people.

In her acceptance speech for her doctorate she said:

I feel very greatly the signal honor which you have conferred upon me. I shall remember it and prize it all my life. I love to think that, however unworthy I am, perhaps Mr. Dodgson—Lewis Carroll—knows, and rejoices with me in this honor.

She goes on to lament how many stories were lost because “he [Dodgson] never wrote anything down.” Incredibly, you can hear a very crackly recording of her speech here. This is the voice of Alice in Wonderland. On a personal note, I have to say that having been writing these pieces for a few years now it is the most amazing thing I have ever found!

Her relationship with her namesake was somewhat equivocal though, as she wrote to her son, late in life:

But oh my dear I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland.

She died in 1934, at the age of 82 and while she was clearly the inspiration for the most famous character in the works of Lewis Carroll, she wasn’t the only one. In my next piece I will be exploring some of the others. I should also add that if you have enjoyed this, I cannot recommend the book Alice in Waterland by Mark Davies highly enough.

Subscribe now

Now there is, of course, a famous story about the invention of the sandwich (the one that gave them their name) that many of you will doubtless know. We will get to that in due course, but in the meantime let us go a bit further back in history. You can’t have a sandwich without bread, The earliest breadcrumbs (or more precisely charred pieces of unleavened things like bread) date back between 11,600 and 14,600 years, and were produced by Natufian hunter-gatherers in the Black Desert in what is now Jordan. Far older grinding stones, used to crush down seeds, have also been found with some Australian examples being an astonishing 60,000 years old. It isn’t certain that once crushed into a crude flour that these seeds were baked into breads – they could have been boiled up, for example – but it seems unlikely that at some point someone wouldn’t at least have tried baking up some dough. Which is a long-winded way of saying that bread is incredibly old.

Six thousand years ago bread was a core part of the diet of neolithic Egyptians, but it isn’t until the first century BCE that we get a reference to something that is, if not a sandwich per se, a type of hand-held bread snack. The Babylonian Talmud (albeit compiled several hundred years after the events that it describes) notes how Hillel the Elder would, during Passover, wrap lamb and bitter herbs in soft, flat, unleavened matzah bread – not a sandwich, but something basically the same as a modern wrap.

Around a thousand years later, in the 10th century, Abū Muḥammad al-Muẓaffar ibn Naṣr ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq complied the earliest known Arabic cookbook, and it contains an elaborate recipe for a bazmāward, a type of cooked wrap:

Take meat and pound it finely, as meat is pounded for laqāniq [sausages]. Add a little kidney fat, onion, fresh herbs and rue. Add ground coriander, black pepper, caraway, cumin, spikenard, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and cassia.

Break five raw eggs over the meat, add a little chopped garlic and onion, and pound everything together until thoroughly blended.

Take a soft sheet of ruqāq [very thin flatbread] and spread sheep’s caul fat over as much of its surface as possible. Spread the pounded meat mixture over the caul fat.

Take five hard-boiled eggs, shell them but leave them whole, and arrange them in a row along the meat mixture.

Roll the ruqāq up tightly around its filling. Truss the roll with clean intestines. Fasten it to four sticks of khilāf [willow] with thread so that the roll keeps its shape.

Lower it into the tannūr oven and set it upon a flat tile placed directly over the fire.

When it is cooked, remove it and cut it crosswise into slices; these pieces are the bazmāward. Arrange them on a serving dish and serve them with Nabataean murrī [a salty fermented sauce] or with mustard.

In medieval Europe we find bread being used as trenchers, essentially as plates. Food was served on large pieces of generally stale bread, and over the course of the meal it would soak up the fats and juices and to be eaten at the end of the repast (or, if one were rich, given to the dogs or the poor). I mean, one could argue that this is a form of open sandwich, but I think that this is really stretching the definition. For an early recipe for a true open sandwich we turn to Bartolomeo Scappi (1500–1577) a 16th-century celebrity chef who cooked for a number of Popes. In his 1570 book Opera we have this recipe:

To make crostate, that is, pan ghiotto, with pork jowl or ham

Once the bread has been cut in the manner described above [Take slices of bread baked a day previously, about the thickness of the back of a knife], fry it in butter or in rendered lard. Have ready pork jowl cut into slices, or ham, and fry it in a pan with finely chopped small onions and the tips of sage.

When these have been fried, add a little vinegar and cooked grape must—or sugar—together with pepper and cinnamon, and heat it through briefly.

Have the slices of bread arranged on a dish and moisten them with a little hot fat. Place the pork jowl or ham on top, together with the other ingredients, and serve hot.

The Dutch are famous to this day for their belegde broodje, their open-faced sandwiches, and this too has a storied history. The English naturalist John Ray (1627–1705) has this account of them from 1663:

The common people feed much upon Cabiliau (that is Cod-fish) and pickled Herrings which they know how to cure or prepare better than we do in England. You shall seldom fail [sic] of hung Beef in any Inn you come into, which they cut into thin slices and eat with Bread and Butter, laying the slices upon the Butter.They have four or five sorts of cheese, three they usually bring forth and set before you. (1) Those great round cheeses, coloured red on the outside, commonly in England called Holland cheeses. (2) Cumin-seed cheeses. (3) Green cheese, said to be so coloured with the juice of sheep’s dung.1 This they scrape upon buttered Bread, and so eat.

Okay, so this is all well and good, but these aren’t proper sandwiches consisting of two slices of bread with a filling in between. We now come to the famous origin story of the sandwich, or at least the tale that gave them their name. Those of you who have read a number of these pieces may well now be expecting me to say that this, like many other famous tales of development and discovery, simply didn’t happen. Well, I have a surprise for you if so… this one is actually true! John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792) was a keen gambler, being particularly fond of cards. He didn’t want to waste valuable playing time through leaving the table to eat, nor did he want to get grease upon his cards, so he would request a snack that consisted of a slice of meat between two pieces of bread. Other players soon embraced this delicacy and were said to order “the same as Sandwich!” and the name stuck to this day.

As for when exactly the practice arose, we can’t be certain. We do know that it had properly taken hold by the 1760s because the historian Edward Gibbon (most famous for his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) wrote in his personal journal for the 24th November 1762:

I dined at the Cocoa Tree. That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom, in point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a Sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch.

The French traveller, Pierre-Jean Grosley, who was in the capital around the same time details the specifics of the origin story in his book A Tour of London published a decade later:

A minister of state passed four and twenty hours at a public gaming-table, so absorpt in play that, during the whole time, he had no subsistence but a bit of beef, between two slices of toasted bread… This new dish grew highly in vogue, during my residence in London: it was called by the name of the minister who invented it.2

There can be no doubt that Sandwich gave his name to the sandwich, but is it also the case that he invented it? Well, he certainly wasn’t the first person to put meat between two slices of bread. Nearly a century earlier we have a description of a fried sandwich in Hannah Woolley’s 1670 book The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet:

Take a rosted Kidney of Veal, cold and minced small, put to it grated bread, Nutmeg, Currans, Sugar and Salt, with some Almonds blanched and beaten with Rosewater, mingle all these together with beaten Eggs and a little Cream, then cut thin slices of white Bread, and lay this Compound between two of them, and so fry them, and strew Sugar on them, and serve them in.

Soon the word sandwich had reached sufficiently common parlance that it was being used in cookery books, such as in 1773’s The Ladies Assistant3 by Charlotte Mason.4

By 1804 we have multiple sandwich recipes in the 1804 book Culina Famulatrix Medicinae5 by Scottish physician Dr. Alexander Hunter (1729–1809) including these:

A Butterham.
TAKE any quantity of butter; work into it some made mustard, and having ready some thin slices of bread from a penny loaf, spread this composition upon them. Over each piece put a thin slice of Gloucester cheese, and upon it spread a layer of buttered mustard, and over that put a thin slice of ham, or meat of any kind. Cover all with a slice of bread buttered as at first. Then press the slices gently down to make them adhere, and with a sharp knife cut the bread neatly into mouthfuls. This is a Dutch Sandwich.

A Shrimp Sandwich.
PUT a layer of potted shrimps between two pieces of white bread and butter, and after pressing the Sandwich gently down, cut it with a sharp knife neatly round the edges. It is usual, before closing in, to spread a little made mustard over the meat.

Industrialisation, combined with the spread of the railways results in an explosion in sandwich consumption, as people needed cheap, simple, food that could be eaten on the go. The quality of the catering provided in railway station has been mocked for well over a hundred and fifty years in the UK. None other than friend of Histories Charles Dickens did so in a statical 1867 piece about a fictitious station “Mugby Junction”:

“Mugby Junction” was especially dedicated; and it seems appropriate that the readers of this journal should be introduced to the doughty champions who have grappled with and conquered the peculiar abuses we have so long inveighed against in vain.

The pork and veal-pies, with their bumps of delusive promise, and their little cubes of gristle and bad fat; the scalding infusion satirically called tea; the stale bad buns, with their veneering of furniture polish; the sawdusty sandwiches, so frequently and so energetically condemned; and, more than all, the icy stare from the counter, the insolent ignoring of every customer’s existence, which drives the hungry frantic—all these are doomed.

The men are rapidly teaching the public that better things are possible. Hearing, to our astonishment, that wholesome food, decently served, could now be obtained at certain railway stations.

In 1901 we see the first mention of that American classic, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Julia David Chandler claims to have invented it, but it seems highly likely that versions of it were around before then:

For variety, some day try making little sandwiches, or bread fingers, of three very thin layers of bread and two of filling, one of peanut paste, whatever brand you prefer, and currant or crab-apple jelly for the other. The combination is delicious, and, so far as I know, original.

Bread at this time was still being laboriously cut by hand which is why pre-sliced loaves were a game-changer for both commercial and domestic sandwich production. For this we have to thank Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880–1960) of St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1927 he succeed in making a machine that both sliced and wrapped bread. Unlike everyone that followed him he was unable to claim that his invention was “the best thing since sliced bread”, but I was delighted to discover that he said his achievement was “The greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped”!

You may have encountered discussions online, or, indeed, in person, where it is debated exactly what a sandwich is. Is, for instance, a hamburger a sandwich? Is a hotdog? You may therefore be interested to know that in the state of Massachusetts at least there is a formal definition of this food. As case was brought by a Panera Bread franchisee against the shopping mall it was located in claiming that as its tenancy was on the basis that it was the only sandwich shop allowed then a burrito establishment could not be opened nearby. The judge disagreed:

Relying on the dictionary definition requiring two pieces of bread with a filling between them, the court concluded that items like burritos, tacos, and quesadillas made with a single tortilla are not commonly understood to be sandwiches.6

However, that definition is not universally accepted. In New York, for instance, the definition of a sandwich is much broader:

Sandwiches include cold and hot sandwiches of every kind that are prepared and ready to be eaten, whether made on bread, on bagels, on rolls, in pitas, in wraps, or otherwise, and regardless of the filling or number of layers. A sandwich can be as simple as a buttered bagel or roll, or as elaborate as a six-foot, toasted submarine sandwich.

Some examples of taxable sandwiches include:

• bagel sandwiches (served buttered or with spreads, or otherwise as a sandwich);

• burritos

• hamburgers on buns, rolls, etc.;

• hot dogs and sausages on buns, rolls, etc.;

• open-faced sandwiches;

• wraps and pita sandwiches.

Which ever way you define them, sandwiches continue to be wildly popular. In the UK Brits chomp their way through more than ten billion of the things a year (and that is using the narrow “Massachusetts” definition of the dish). I have just contributed to this number, since starting this piece I have eaten another one…

Subscribe now

People have known for thousands of years that evaporating water (and, indeed, other liquids) has a cooling effect, but it wasn’t until really very recently that someone thought to actually study it. In 1755 the Scottish physician and scientist William Cullen (1710-1790) carried out the earliest known series of experiments into this phenomenon, as he reported in the 1756 paper Of the Cold produced by evaporating Fluids, and of some other Means of producing Cold:

A Young gentleman, one of my pupils, whom I had employed to examine the heat or cold that might be produced by the solution of certain substances in spirit of wine, observed to me, That, when a thermometer had been immersed in spirit of wine, tho’ the spirit was exactly of the temperature of the surrounding air, or somewhat colder; yet, upon taking the thermometer out of the spirit, and suspending it in the air, the mercury in the thermometer, which was of Fahrenheit’s construction, always sunk two or three degrees. This recalled to my mind some experiments and observations of M. de Mairan, to the same purpose; which I had read some time before… When I first read the experiments of M. de Mairan in the place referred to, I suspected that water, and perhaps other fluids, in evaporating, produced, or, as the phrase is, generated some degree of cold. The above experiment of my pupil confirmed my suspicion, and engaged me to verify it by a variety of new trials.

Inspired by the findings of his assistant, he then conducts a series of experiments himself:

I began by repeating the experiment with spirit of wine, and found, when I had taken the utmost care to have the spirit exactly of the temperature of the air, that constantly however, upon taking the thermometer out of the spirit, the mercury sunk several degrees, and indeed continued to sink so long as the ball of the thermometer continued wet with the spirit of wine. I found also, when the ball began to dry, and the mercury to rise again in the stem of the thermometer, that, if the ball was again dipped into the spirit, and immediately taken out, the mercury in the thermometer might be again observed to sink; and that thus, by repeated dippings, the cold produced might be rendered very remarkable. The cold produced was also observed to be still greater, when, between each dipping, the thermometer was moved very nimbly to and fro in the air; or if, while the ball was wet with spirit of wine, it was blown upon by a pair of bellows, or indeed if the air about the ball was otherwise any how put in motion… By taking these methods, I have, by spirit of wine, made the mercury in the thermometer sink from 44 degrees to below the freezing point; and, by employing some other fluids to be mentioned by and by, I have produced a sinking of the thermometer much more considerable.

The cause of the cooling effect is the phase change from a fluid to a gas: in a liquid molecules are held together by intermolecular attractions, to escape into the gas phase a molecule needs enough energy to overcome these attractions, what is called the latent heat of vaporisation. Put simply, when something evaporates it sucks heat out of its surroundings and uses that energy to separate the molecules. Cullen learned this through a series of experiments in which he discovered that more volatile liquids had a greater cooling effect, and that carrying out the test in a partial vacuum (created through the use of an air-pump) which lowers the boiling point of liquids and hence increases the speed of evaporation also resulted in more significant temperature reductions.

From the above enumeration I imagine it will appear, that the power of evaporating fluids in producing cold, is nearly according to the degree of volatility in each. If to this we join the consideration, that the cold is made greater by whatever hastens the evaporation, and particularly, that the sinking of the thermometer is greater as the air in which the experiment is made is warmer, if dry at the same time; I think we may now conclude, that the cold produced is the effect of evaporation.

Finally, he was able to create ice, the first recorded time this was done so with such a method:

In one experiment, before exhausting the receiver, the thermometer had stood at 50 degrees, and, after exhausting, we could judge very certainly that it sunk below 20. In another experiment made with the nitrous aether, when the heat of the air was about 53 degrees, we set the vessel containing the aether in another a little larger, containing water. Upon exhausting the receiver, and the vessels remaining for a few minutes in vacuo, we found the most part of the water frozen, and the vessel containing the aether surrounded with a thick and firm crust of ice.

A couple of years later, in 1757 and 1758, these experiments were repeated by none other than friend of Histories Benjamin Franklin! Franklin had heard about the discoveries from a Scottish scientist and carried out the work in Cambridge with the mathematician John Hadley:

By dipping first the ball of the thermometer into the ether, it appeared that the ether was precisely of the same temperament with the thermometer, which stood then at 65; for it made no alteration in the height of the little column of mercury. But when the thermometer was taken out of the ether, and the ether, with which the ball was wet, began to evaporate, the mercury sunk several degrees. The wetting was then repeated by a feather that had been dipped into the ether, when the mercury sunk still lower. We continued this operation, one of us wetting the ball, and another of the company blowing on it with the bellows, to quicken the evaporation, the mercury sinking all the time, till it came down to 7, which is 25 degrees below the freezing point, when we left off. Soon after it passed the freezing point, a thin coat of ice began to cover the ball. Whether this was water collected and condensed by the coldness of the ball, from the moisture in the air, or from our breath; or whether the feather, when dipped into the ether, might not sometimes go through it, and bring up some of the water that was under it, I am not certain; perhaps all might contribute. The ice continued increasing till we ended the experiment, when it appeared near a quarter of an inch thick all over the ball, with a number of small spicula, pointing outwards. From this experiment one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day, if he were to stand in a passage through which the wind blew briskly, and to be wet frequently with ether, a spirit that is more inflammable than brandy, or common spirits of wine.

Being the polymath that he was, Franklin then realised that sweating cooled people down due to its evaporation. As far as I have been able to discover, he was the first person to reach this conclusion:1

May not several phaenomena, hitherto unconsidered, or unaccounted for, be explained by this property? During the hot Sunday at Philadelphia, in June 1750,1 when the thermometer was up at 100 in the shade, I sat in my chamber without exercise, only reading or writing, with no other cloaths on than a shirt, and a pair of long linen drawers, the windows all open, and a brisk wind blowing through the house, the sweat ran off the backs of my hands, and my shirt was often so wet, as to induce me to call for dry ones to put on; in this situation, one might have expected, that the natural heat of the body 96, added to the heat of the air 100, should jointly have created or produced a much greater degree of heat in the body; but the fact was, that my body never grew so hot as the air that surrounded it, or the inanimate bodies immers’d in the same air. For I remember well, that the desk, when I laid my arm upon it; a chair, when I sat down in it; and a dry shirt out of the drawer, when I put it on, all felt exceeding warm to me, as if they had been warmed before a fire. And I suppose a dead body would have acquired the temperature of the air, though a living one, by continual sweating, and by the evaporation of that sweat, was kept cold.

Once it had been discovered that it was possible to create ice using mechanical means, one might have thought that this discovery would soon be utilised to produce the stuff on demand. In fact it took the best part of a century before artificial ice production took off in earnest. In part this was down to simple engineering. Sure, you could use a bucket of evaporating ether to freeze some water, but this would rapidly use a load of (fairly expensive) ether. In order for the approach to be commercially viable a closed-loop system was needed whereby the gaseous ether (or similar substance) was captured and recompressed back into a liquid. High-quality seals and pumps were required, and, additionally, a means of dispersing the heat released from the liquefaction of the vapours.

The other factor was that while harvested ice was expensive, it wasn’t that expensive and so it was commercially challenging to build and run the machines required (even if the engineering challenges had been overcome). At the turn of the 19th century, you could buy a pound (0.5 kg) of ice in London for 1d wholesale or 2d delivered to your door (£7-14 or $10-20 in today’s terms). For sure it was something of a luxury, but nothing like the extent to which, say, a pineapple was.

In 1805 the American engineer Oliver Evans (1755–1819) was the first person to describe how vapour compression refrigeration could work, but his designs were purely theoretical. It wasn’t until nearly 30 years later, in 1833, that someone actually built a machine that could make ice. The person to do so was Jacob Perkins (1766-1849), sometimes known as “The Father of the Refrigerator", who both patented and built a working ice-machine. Except while he was undoubtedly the brains behind the invention, it was his associate, John Hague, who had the engineering skills to turn it into a reality. They were assisted by an apprentice engineer, John Bramwell, who wrote about their creation almost 50 years after the events, in 1883:

A small machine of this kind was made for Mr. Perkins by Mr. John Hague, the engineer, and Mr. T. R. Crampton (now, like Mr. Loftus Perkins, a member of your Council) and myself, who were apprentices at that time to Mr. Hague, assisted in its manufacture.

It was intended to use sulphuric ether in the machine, but as a matter of fact, it was put to work with the volatile liquid arising from the destructive distillation of caoutchouc, and it succeeded in producing ice, and in doing so in the height of summer. The apparatus was a small one, carried on a wooden base—according to my recollection, some five feet long by two feet or two feet six inches wide.

At one end there was a jacketed copper pan, the interior of which held the water to be frozen, while in the jacket was the volatile liquid and its vapor. The pan was inclosed in a wooden box, containing powdered charcoal as a non-conductor. From the top of the jacket a pipe was led away to the suction valve of an air pump, fixed in the middle of the wooden base.

From the delivery valve of this pump a pipe proceeded to the top of a worm, contained in a worm tub, supported on the wooden base, at the end opposite to that where the jacketed pan was. The worm tub was supplied with water, from an inlet at the bottom, and the escape was by an overflow at the top.

A pipe, in continuation of the lower end of the worm, was connected to the under side of a valve box, in which was a valve loaded to about fifteen pounds to the inch, so that the vapor in the worm was subjected to this pressure, as well as to the cooling influence of the water, and by these means was brought back to a liquid condition. From the upper side of the valve box a pipe proceeded to the bottom of the jacketed pan, to convey the liquid to it, thus completing the circuit.

This machine didn’t, however, herald the age of mechanical cooling. Only a single device was constructed, the seals and the pump remained challenging, and the refrigerants used were highly inflammable. It took the Scottish-born, Australia-based publisher James Harrison (1816–1893) to make commercial ice-making a reality. In 1851 he developed a machine that used a compressor to force the refrigeration gas through a condenser and thus liquifying it (and releasing heat in the process) – the same approach that we use today. His machine could produce three tonnes of ice a day, and was patented and sold around the world.2

Okay, so we have machines making ice, but this is supposed to be a history of air conditioning; how do the two connect? Well, the ice the machines produced was used for air conditioning. The first approach was very simple, and initially suggested by Dr. John Gorrie3 in Florida in the 1840s as a means of cooling fever patients – hang a large basin of ice from the ceiling of a room and let the cool air disperse down. This then advanced to having a load of ice in front of mechanical fans which would blow the cold to the desired location. Ice-cooling became a big deal, with theatres and auditoria using it widely in the second half of the 19th century. The 1,400-capacity auditorium of Scranton High School, for example, could get through six and a half tonnes of ice in a single evening.

This had the downsides of having to schlep tonnes of ice around, and having to deal with the resultant meltwater, so it wasn’t long before people began to experiment with the idea of cutting out the middleman (middle-ice?) and simply cooling the air directly. This would both be clearly more efficient, and also it would help address another problem: humidity. The extent to which the temperature of the air feels hot depends upon the amount of water it contains. I have felt cooler in a desert at 40 degrees C (104F) with very low humidity than I have in a rain forest at 30 C (86F) where the air is literally dripping.

In 1903 the new New York Stock Exchange building opened with a system developed by Alfred R. Wolff which worked to both cool and dehumidify the air in the building. By cooling brine and pumping it through coils in the ventilation system it was able to drop the temperature by ten degrees Fahrenheit and reduce the relative humidity by thirty percentage points. A year earlier, however, saw the development of not only the first electrical air conditioning unit, but also the formulation of cooling as an engineering discipline. Willis Carrier (1876–1950) was an engineer at Sackett & Wilhelms, a Brooklyn printing plant when he was tasked to solve a problem. It wasn’t that the workers were too hot (I mean, they likely were, but the management weren’t that bothered) rather the air was too humid, causing paper to expand and contract which threw multi-colour printing out of register.

Carrier approached this challenge not from thinking “how cool do we want this room to be” but rather “What condition do we want this air to have, and how do we maintain it?”. In 1911 he presented his “Rational Psychrometric Formulae” which gave engineers the tools to calculate what happened when air is heated, cooled, humidified and dehumidified. In 1915, he and several colleagues founded the Carrier Engineering Corporation4 specifically to design and sell systems for industrial air conditioning.

In 1922 he made a further breakthrough with the centrifugal chiller. Previously refrigeration plants used reciprocating piston compressors but were large and relatively inefficient. Carrier’s solution, a rapidly rotating centrifugal compressor, made cooling much more economical, and soon shops, cinemas, and theatres could advertise themselves as “places to escape the heat”. One such system was introduced at New York’s Rivoli Theatre and 1925 and they reported that it increased their box office take by $5,000 (over $100,000 today) a week.

We are still not quite at the air-conditioning that we see today. The next major step was made by Frigidaire (“Frigid Air”, geddit?) in 1929 when they introduced a split-system room cooler for home and small shops. The large, noisy condenser unit was separated from the in-room device and placed outside where it could dump the exhaust heat. These units were however both heavy and expensive and didn’t really take off. 1932 saw the launch of window units, developed by engineers such as H. H. Schultz and J. Q. Sherman. You will almost certainly be familiar with these, they handily sit on the window ledge and pump the heat outside. They were (and still are) both ugly and fairly noisy.

Finally, in 1968, Mitsubishi introduced a system in Japan where a small compressor/condenser unit was mounted on the outside wall of the house and refrigerant was run through pipes to long, shallow units that could nestle just under the ceilings in rooms – very much what I picture5 today when I think about air conditioning. The heat has abated in the UK since I started writing this series, but I am sure it is bound to return, if not later this year then next. Sometime in the winter (when demand is likely to be lower) I am going to get someone round to quote me for air conditioning…

Subscribe now

In the days before mechanical refrigeration many of the methods of keeping homes cool were architectural. Across the ancient world dwellings were constructed around a central courtyard, with thick exterior walls that lacked windows or other openings apart from an entry door. While such a design was clearly defensive, it also helped to beat the heat. The rooms would face a shaded, often colonnaded, courtyard that would frequently have a pool of water in the centre.

In Persian architecture there is a more ingenious feature that dates back more than three thousand years. The bādgīr (بادگیر, usually transliterated badgir, bādgīr or baadgir) takes it name from the words bād, meaning “wind”, and gīr, meaning “catcher” — it is, you might have already guessed, a “wind-catcher.”2 It is a tower built above a building with openings that catch the wind and funnel it down into the rooms below.

This would produce a nice breeze, and shift the stultifying air from the home, but when combined with a qanat it could really create something akin to air conditioning. Everyone is familiar with the idea of a well – you dig a hole down until it hits the water table, it fills with water, and you then haul the water to the surface. There is obviously a lot of work involved in lifting all of that water up, and there is another potential problem – the water table may not be accessible in a place where you want to use the water.

One solution to this would be to use windmills or animals to pump the water up, and then have it flow down channels to where it is needed. But this still takes a lot of work and you are likely to lose a lot of your precious fluid through evaporation. The brilliant solution devised by the Persians was to find an aquifer on relatively high ground then dig a gently descending tunnel from it towards lower ground where it will eventually emerge. This means that your water will be moved simply by gravity, and it will arrive cool and without loss at the point it will actually be used. It took incredible feats of engineering to create these qanats – one near Yazd was reported to be almost 50 kilometres (30 miles) long.3 If you were wealthy enough then you could have a pool of cold qanat water in your home that was constantly refreshed. Construct your bādgīr in a sufficiently cunning way then the air it delivers would blow across the water, cooled both by its temperature and the evaporation of the liquid, and chill your home in the heat of the summer’s sun.

Just as one could build up into the sky as a means of cooling a house, one could also dig into the ground. As anyone who has walked into a cave on a summer’s day will know, the surrounding earth and rock will take a long time to warm up,4 even in the harshest of heat, and so will naturally be cooler than the surface. I saw some perfect examples of this when I visited the Roman ruins in Bulla Regia, an ancient city in what is today north-western Tunisia, earlier this year.5 Wealthy houses had an entire second set of reception and living rooms built underground in a style known as subterranean domus. You might be thinking that these were crude cellars, but they were nothing of the kind. They had columns, courtyards, frescos, and some of the most beautiful mosaics I have ever seen. Combined with ingeniously constructed light wells they would have been very salubrious places to spend an August afternoon.

I remember reading, as a child, about how ancient Egyptians kept their homes and palaces cool by hanging up large mats of rushes, soaking them with water, and having slaves waft air through them, creating a pleasant breeze. I was excited6 to include this little historical detail here, only to discover, to my great disappointment, that there isn’t robust evidence to support it. In south Asia, however, we find Khus mats – traditional cooling screens made from the fragrant roots of vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides). They were hung over doors, windows and verandas and repeatedly wetted with water. Hot, dry air passing through the damp mat was cooled by evaporation, while the vetiver roots released a distinctive earthy, woody fragrance. Servants might splash the screens throughout the day, or things could be so arranged as to allow water to drip over them continuously.

Of course if you want to be really cool during the hot summer months what you really need is some ice. The Persians, once again, displayed incredible ingenuity thousands of years ago to ensure they could have access to this precious commodity year-round. They achieved this through building yakhchālhā (یخچال‌ها, literally “ice houses/refrigerators.”) for perhaps as long as 2,400 years.7 You may be familiar with ice-houses that survive in the grounds of British stately homes, but a yakhchāl was not simply some kind of cold cellar; it was usually part of an integrated ice-making and storage system. A classic yakhchāl complex had three main elements:

1. A long, high shade wall, usually running roughly east–west.

2. Shallow freezing pools on the shaded northern side of that wall.

3. A deep insulated ice store, often covered an enormous mud-brick dome.

During winter, water – often supplied from a qanat – was allowed into the shallow pools in the evening. The wall prevented the low winter sun from warming the water during much of the day. On sufficiently cold, clear, nights8 a layer of ice would form on the pool, and it would then be broken up and transferred into the yakhchāl's underground chamber. Straw would often be packed around the ice to provide additional insulation and this, in concert with the very thick walls, and holding the majority of the ice below ground, meant that it could survive through the summer.

As I mentioned earlier, ice houses were common features in the grounds of grand houses across Europe and beyond. They were also to be found in most towns and cities, with the ice being either harvested locally during the winter months, or transported there from colder climes. The harvesting and shipping of ice was for a long time a fairly ad-hoc business. Farmers and labours would cut the stuff from local ponds, it would be put on the back of horse carts, often packed with straw, and it would slowly make its way to where it was needed. Suffice to say there was little standardisation to the resulting product – the cutters would judge the ice by eye, and hack it out using whatever axes, saws, chisels and crowbars they might have to hand – it was very much a cottage industry.

The problem with this approach was one of packing efficiency. The owner of an icehouse would want as much ice and as few gaps of empty space in their precious building as possible. Similarly, if one wanted to transport ice by cart, or railcar, or even by ship every inch of wasted space was costing you money. Furthermore, the more gaps you had between the ice blocks you had, the greater the surface area exposed to the air, and the faster the ice would melt. Finally, irregularly shaped blocks were difficult to stack safely. Ice-cutting was ripe for industrialisation, and the man to do it was Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth (1802–1856). Wyeth grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts where his father operated the Fresh Pond Hotel, close to, unsurprisingly given the name, Fresh Pond, a substantial body of clean water a few miles from Boston. By 1825 he was managing the ice-cutting operations of Frederic Tudor (of whom we will learn more shortly).

Frustrated by the lack of efficiency and poor quality of the traditional processes he devised a horse-drawn ice cutter (also known as an ice plough). Initially this consisted of two parallel iron runners or beams, spaced approximately the intended width of an ice block apart attached to which was a succession of steel cutting teeth. The teeth did not all project to the same depth; each successive tooth extended a little farther downward than the preceding one. As a result, rather than requiring one blade to gouge a deep trench through hard ice, the first tooth scratched a shallow groove, the next deepened it slightly, the next went deeper still, and so forth. While the cuts were deep, they didn’t go all of the way through the ice. After one pass had produced two straight parallel grooves, the cutter could be repositioned so that one part of the machine ran in an existing groove. That groove now acted as a guide rail, ensuring that the next cut was precisely parallel to the previous one. Once this had been completed across the whole ice field, the apparatus was turned by ninety degrees and the process repeated. The result was a perfect checkerboard of scored ice, from which rafts would be broken off, floated to the shore, and individual blocks separated using a crowbar, just as in the illustration above.

While Wyeth was clearly the engineering innovator, Frederic Tudor (aka Boston’s “Ice King”, 1783-1864) was the commercial visionary. At an early age he realised that a market for ice extended far beyond New England, and that far greater prices could be achieved if it were possible to ship it to tropical climes. In 1806 he purchased the brig Favorite and sent it off one the 1,500 mile (2,400 kilometre) voyage from Charleston, South Carolina to Martinique in the Caribbean, packed with ice from his father’s farm. The Boston Gazette reported at the time, “No joke. A vessel has cleared at the Custom House for Martinique with a cargo of ice. We hope this will not prove a slippery speculation.” Sadly for Tudor, it did turn out to be fairly slippery – most of the ice melted on the voyage and he made a loss on the venture. Undeterred, he sent his brother and cousin out to secure ice monopolies across the various Caribbean islands, offering terms like these:

We wish you to procure from the gov' of Cuba a grant exclusive in which we offer you either to take a conces' of half or procure the privilege for us & we engage to pay you one thousand dollars with reasonable charges, in obtaining it you, however, to determine which you will do & write to that effect as early as possible.

The early years of Tudor’s business were, to put it mildly, challenging, but by 1810 he made his first profit (only to make losses in a number of the subsequent years).9 One thing in his favour was that it was ships returning to the West Indies, having disgorged their cargos of fruit and sugar in the US, were often empty, so filling them with ice was fairly cheap. Wyeth’s10 invention of the ice plough was a game-changer, for the reasons detailed above, and enabled Tudor to triple his ice production. In September of 1833 when one of his ships sailed up the Ganges in India few of the locals believed that it really contained ice, yet of the 180 tonnes that had started the long voyage 100 had survived. India would become his most lucrative market, and Tudor constructed elaborate ice houses there to store his product. One of these survives to this day, as the Vivekanandar Illam in Chennai.

Ultimately however Tudor’s business collapsed, due to the rise of the subject of my next piece: mechanical refrigeration.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

On the 15th of August 1977 Ohio State University’s Big Ear telescope detected a radio signal, arguably the most intriguing one in all of human history. But no one at the time noticed.It wasn’t until a couple of days later when astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was reviewing the data captured during that observation window that it was noticed. He saw the alphanumeric code indicating the signal’s strength on the printout – 6EQUJ5 – and circled it. But this signal was so interesting, so potentially significant, that highlighting it in this way was not enough for him. He wrote a single word next to it to convey his reaction: Wow!

Subscribe now

What was so special about 6EQUJ5 that it should elicit such a response? First I’ll need to talk a bit about the Big Ear. The telescope could survey a single point in the sky for 72 seconds. If there was a steady signal transmitting from that point then, as the rotation of the earth swung the receiver through the signal, you would expect to see the power of that signal increase and then diminish as the scope entered the edge of the beam, then faced it full on, then slide out of it the other side. 6EQUJ5 was a record of that signal strength, and it perfectly represented just such a rise and fall. Or as the SETI Institute puts it:

The signal rose and fell as one would expect from a cosmic source fixed on the sky – moving into and out of the telescope beam as the Earth rotated.

SETI stands for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” – wait, so am I saying that this signal came from aliens? We’ll come on to that. Even more interesting than the power of the signal was its frequency – in 1998 Ehman gave a value for it of 1420.4556±0.005 MHz, which is incredibly close to the 1420.4058 MHz of the hydrogen line. What’s the hydrogen line? It is the radio emission produced when a neutral hydrogen atom undergoes a tiny change in the relative alignment of the proton’s and electron’s spins. It is something that any civilisation sufficiently advanced to create such a signal would know, and had previously been proposed as a plausible “hailing frequency” between different civilisations who know nothing about each other other than the fact that they are able to send or receive just such a signal.

The signal was not perfectly on the hydrogen line, but had the source been moving towards the earth at around 10km/s then the Doppler shift could have explained the variance. As to where the signal came from, the possible location is in Sagittarius (roughly northwest of the globular cluster M55). A 2022 paper identified a particularly interesting sun-like star within the possible beam area some 1,800 light years away, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that this was the origin.

The Big Ear had two feed horns, and having been picked up by one, it should have been picked up by the other some three minutes later (or earlier). But it wasn’t. Also, because of the computer systems at the time, we don’t actually know which of the horns detected it (hence the two possible source locations). Despite repeated attempts, it was never detected again. In a 1994 interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer Ehman said:

We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris.

Oh, so it was simply a signal from Earth bounced off something? That theory has more or less been ruled out now, including by Ehman himself. The consensus is that it came from somewhere in space. As to what might have created it, we will get onto that, but first we need to visit the lunchroom of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1950. The physicist Enrico Fermi was sitting with his colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York, when he blurted out “But where is everybody?” As Teller later recalled:

The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that, in spite of Fermi’s question coming out of the blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life.

The question framed what is now called “The Fermi Paradox”, which asks, given the vast number of stars and potentially habitable planets in our observable universe, why is there no clear evidence of extraterrestrial civilisations? A number of explanations have been proposed, and I will share a few of them now:

1. Life is rare, and intelligent life is exceptionally rare. There simply aren’t any other civilisations even vaguely close to us in astronomical terms. This is often called the “Rare Earth Hypothesis”.

2. Civilisations screw up before they can cross the stars, or broadcast strongly enough to them. Resources are drained, wars break out, diseases flourish.

3. The “Zoo hypothesis” – civilisations are aware of us, but are not revealing themselves so as to avoid messing with our development. Think Star Trek first contact principles. Related to that, there are already probes in our solar system, but we just can’t detect them.

4. The “Dark Forest” hypothesis – civilisations are out there, but they are not travelling, or transmitting, so as not to draw the attention of an even more advanced race which might destroy them.

5. Interstellar travel is simply much harder than we have previously presumed. This is the one that I am going to focus upon and suggest how it potentially might connect with the Wow! signal.

As a child I loved reading science fiction, and still do today as an adult. So many of these stories are predicated upon the concept that species can cross between the stars that to me, at least, growing up, it seemed that it would be inevitable that a suitable advanced civilisation would be able to do so – and if so, then where is everybody?

I don’t think that now, and the reason all comes down to energy. If you want to accelerate a mass of one tonne to 10% of the speed of light (enough to get you to the nearest star in about 50 years) then you would need to apply around 1.4 gigawatts of propulsive force to it for a decade (and then spend another decade slowing it down). In other words, you would need a propulsion system that has the energy output of a reasonably sized nuclear power station, and sufficient fuel to run it for 20 years, all weighing less than a mid-sized family car. And that would only be sufficient to get the engine to the star, it wouldn’t be carrying any payload, because more mass would require more energy, which would require a more powerful engine, and more fuel.

To say that this way beyond the scope of any technology that we currently possess is something of an understatement. Ah, but what about creating anti-matter drives? In theory such a thing is physically possible but currently wildly technically impossible (let’s not even get into wormholes through space and teleportation). One particularly detailed solution to this challenge was proposed in the 1970s, Project Daedalus. It theorised that a fusion engine on a ship weighing 54,000 tonnes could get a payload of 450 tonnes to Barnard’s star in around 50 years. It would achieve this by creating around 250 deuterium-helium-3 explosions every second for four years and would use magnetic nozzles to point the charged particles created in such a way as to drive the ship.

There are some problems with this. We have yet to create wholly net fusion energy (the reaction producing more energy than the whole facility consumes). Then there is the fuel, helium-31 is exceptionally rare on Earth (and, indeed, likely so on all rocky planets). There is a bit more on the moon, but you’d have to mine and process more than 100 trillion tonnes of lunar soil to extract enough for the ship (the original proposal suggested mining it from the atmosphere of Jupiter, which sounds pretty non-trivial to me).

But perhaps you don’t need an engine at all to power your ship? How about you have a solar sail in space, attach a probe to it, and fire a load of lasers at it from Earth and the photons bouncing off the reflective sail quickly accelerate the ship? That is the core concept of Breakthrough Starshot, which proposed accelerating a thousand 1 gramme probes to 20% of the speed of light using just a 4 metre diameter sail. There are a couple of problems with this idea though. To achieve it you’d have to fire 100 gigawatts (roughly the power consumption of a mid-sized country) of lasers at each sail for ten minutes. The sails would have to be essentially perfectly reflective to stop them vaporizing immediately. And if you could overcome all of that then you would have a one gramme probe, which couldn’t slow down on arrival, zipping past the star you are interested in at an incredible speed.

Perhaps I am fixating too much on speed. Maybe aliens would be happy to travel really, really, slowly across the stars, so instead of aiming for 10% of the speed of light, they are happy to settle for 0.1% of it. That would mean that for a close star the voyage time would be perhaps 5,000 years, and it could be that the nearest thing of interest would be 100,000 years away. We have no idea what alien psychology might be like, should it even exist at all, and they may well be happy to consign themselves to such vessels for generations – or freeze themselves or something – but that doesn’t alleviate all of the challenges. Put simply, things break down. The ship would be exposed to cosmic radiation and dust impacts. In the darkest of the void between the stars one cannot rely upon solar; you would need a power supply.2 None of this, again, is physically impossible, just very, very, technically challenging.

Okay, so they don’t send living beings at all, they send small, slow-moving, probes that have that common sci-fi trait, the ability to self-replicate. When self-replicating machines are proposed as a solution to a problem like this I think it useful to consider the following thought experiment. Imagine we have to send an autonomous probe to a pre-Anthropocene Earth and it has one task, to create a single iron nail from the resources of the planet. It would have to map likely landing sites from orbit, find, mine, and process the ore, then smelt it into a nail. This is probably not beyond our current technology level, but materially more challenging than, say, deploying the Mars Rover.

Now repeat that experiment, but this time the probe has to make an iPhone. Instead of sourcing one3 chemical element, you have to get hold of around seventy different ones, and honestly that isn’t the hardest part. You need to make the chips4 for it, which we do on Earth in fab plants that are among the most complex industrial facilities ever built. Hundreds of machines, upwards of a thousand processes, insane levels of precision and purity. But let’s say you can fit all of that on your probe. For it to be self-replicating it now has to be able to build a new fab plant (and so much more besides). And for it to spread to other planets, it then needs to be able to build and launch a new starship. Complexity begets complexity begets complexity begets complexity.5 The notion that such probes could be small is, with our existing understanding of technology, absurd.

None of this suggests that interstellar travel is impossible – rather that it is technically astonishingly challenging, and far beyond our current abilities. Ah, but those are our “current” abilities, look at the astonishing rate of technical progress we have made – surely it is likely that we will find better solutions to these challenges in the future?

While we have seen incredible technical developments over the last century, they have not been evenly distributed. Advancements in computing, robotics, and artificial intelligence have been breathtaking. When it comes to moving physical stuff around well, not so much. A jet engine built in 2025 is perhaps 30% more efficient than one built in 1975. The basic principles behind the internal combustion engines that still power the majority of our vehicles are the same as they were when the first such devices were built more than a hundred and fifty years ago. When it comes to space travel we have got materially better at building rockets that can land themselves and be reused, but the core propulsion technology has changed little in 60 years.6 The SLS rocket, for instance, uses RS-25 engines which use the core design of engines developed for the Space Shuttle in the 1970s.

While scientists and authors alike speculate about possible future advances, perhaps there simply isn’t a technical deus ex machina when it comes to space travel. We haven’t encountered another civilisation not because they don’t exist but because such an event would require so much time, so many resources, and so much risk, that it simply doesn’t make sense to even attempt it.

Now let’s return to the Wow! signal. Assuming that it wasn’t some random signal that somehow bounced off Earth, nor that it is a transmission from an alien civilisation, then what could have caused it? A number theories have been proposed. The most likely explanation is that a cold cloud of hydrogen somewhere in Milky Way might have been stimulated by an intense burst from a magnetar7 or soft gamma repeater8 and this briefly turned it into something like a natural radio laser, and that was the signal detected. Alternatively the signal could have been generated by a cloud of hydrogen enveloping a comet. This was once quite popular, but has now generally considered to be somewhat weak. There are other, generally considered less likely, options as well. None has been conclusively proved to have been the cause of the signal, but probably, one day, one of them (or something wholly new) will finally, if banally, provide the explanation that has been sought for almost fifty years.

But perhaps it won’t.

Perhaps the signal is artificial.9 Perhaps it was created by a civilisation that had reached the same conclusion that I have. That even though there might be other intelligent life-forms in the universe, they would never get to meet them. So instead they decided to dedicate their resources to sending a signal out into the cosmos. A signal that conveyed a single, simple, message:

You are not alone.

Subscribe now

We need to begin with the games being played in English public schools in the middle of the 19th century. For non-British readers it is worth noting that the world “public” here does not mean state-operated and open to all. These schools were – and are – the antitheses of such establishments: all-male boarding schools that charge significant fees for the privilege of attendance. On the pitches of these schools a variety of games called “football” were being played and in time they began to codify their rules. The earliest surviving “school code” were the Rugby School laws, approved on the 28th of August 1845. The game they describe is, unsurprisingly, very different to football and, err, very much like rugby. The earliest surviving rules for Eton College’s Field Game date from just two years later, and include the crucial clause “Hands may only be used to stop the ball”. They also had an offside rule (which they called “sneaking”)2 in order to prevent attackers simply hanging around their opponent’s goal waiting for a ball to be kicked their way.

Schools including Harrow, Westminster, and Shrewsbury similarly had their own versions of the game, and in concert these educational establishments did much to form the institutional nature of the sports They made football games regular events where matches were attached to the school calendar rather than confined to an occasional festival. With boys representing houses, forms or schools, they encouraged fixed sides, with collective tactics and enduring loyalties. And they also debated, agreed, and recorded, codes for the game and then old boys took their rules to universities, military units, churches, businesses and adult clubs.

There was, however, a problem. It still wasn’t easy for the schools to play against each other because the sides would be familiar with different sets of rules. What was needed was a melting pot to blend all of the variations together, and it turned out that Cambridge University was just the place for this to happen. Old boys of the various schools wanted to play football, and they needed a unified set of rules to do so, and these rules were created. The earliest surviving set dates from 1856, but it drew upon, now lost, codes from earlier decades:

Football wasn’t just the preserve of public school boys though, versions of the game were being played by factory workers and miners and railwaymen across the country. In 1855 in Sheffield the members of the local cricket club started having informal kick-abouts and enjoyed them so much that two members, Nathaniel Creswick and Willian Prest decided to set up a dedicated football club. The first meeting of Sheffield Football Club (the oldest, continuously operating independent football club in the world) took place on the 24th of October 1857 and it was clear that a codified set of rules was needed to govern their play. These were drawn up by Creswick and Prest and approved at the club’s AGM on the 21st of October 1858:

As you can see, this allowed for some handling of the ball and had no offside rule but they proved popular, and other teams soon adopted them. At the code’s height in 1877 there were 27 clubs making up the Sheffield Football association. This was not, however, the only game in town. Okay, it was the only game in Sheffield, but you get what I mean. Many clubs had sprung up in London as well and they too needed an agreed set of rules by which to play. Ebenezer Cobb Morley, captain of Barnes Football Club, argued that football needed an institution comparable to the Marylebone Cricket Club and in 1863 he wrote to the sporting press proposing just such a governing body. Representatives of London and suburban clubs met at the Freemasons’ Tavern in Great Queen Street on 26 October 1863 and formed the Football Association. Its stated objective was “establishing a definite code of rules for the regulation of the game”.3

It turned out that this wasn’t that straightforward. Rival factions debated whether “hacking” (deliberately kicking an opponent in the shins) and the use of hands should be allowed over the course of six meetings. The final laws were approved on the 8th of December 1863 and were as follows:

THE LAWS OF FOOTBALL

Drawn up by the London Association

LAWS

1. The maximum length of the ground shall be 200 yards, the maximum breadth shall be 100 yards, the length and breadth shall be marked off with flags; and the goals shall be defined by two upright posts, 8 yards apart, without any tape or bar across them.4

2. The winner of the toss shall have the choice of goals. The game shall be commenced by a place kick from the centre of the ground by the side losing the toss, the other side shall not approach within 10 yards of the ball until it is kicked off.

3. After a goal is won the losing side shall kick off and the goals shall be changed.

4. A goal shall be won when the ball passes between the goal posts or over the space between the goal posts, at whatever height, not being thrown, knocked on, or carried.

5. When the ball is in touch the first player who touches it shall throw it from the point on the boundary line where it left the ground, in a direction at right angles with the boundary line, and it shall not be in play until it has touched the ground.

6. When a player has kicked the ball any one of the same side who is nearer to the opponent’s goal line is out of play, and may not touch the ball himself, nor in any way whatever prevent any other player from doing so, until the ball has been played; but no player is out of play when the ball is kicked from behind the goal line.

7. In case the ball goes behind the goal line, if a player on the side to whom the goal belongs first touches the ball, one of his side shall be entitled to a free kick from the goal line, at the point opposite the place where the ball shall be touched.

If a player of the opposite side first touches the ball, one of his side shall be entitled to a free kick, but at the goal only, from a point 15 yards from the goal line opposite the place where the ball is touched.

The opposing side shall stand behind their goal line until he has had his kick.

8. If a player makes a fair catch, he shall be entitled to a free kick, provided he claims it by making a mark with his heel at once; and in order to take such a kick he may go back as far as he pleases, and no player on the opposite side shall advance beyond his mark until he has kicked.

9. No player shall carry the ball.

10. Neither tripping nor hacking shall be allowed, and no player shall use his hands to hold or push an adversary.

11. A player shall not throw the ball or pass it to another.

12. No player shall take the ball from the ground with his hands while it is in play, under any pretence whatever.

13. No player shall wear projecting nails, iron plates, or gutta-percha on the soles or heels of his boots.

Hang on a second, didn’t I just say that the peak of the Sheffield Code was in 1877, some 14 years later? Does that mean that both football codes were operating at the same time? Yes, and not just these two, there were others, most notably in Scotland. This obviously caused problems when teams from the different associations faced each other. Whose code should they follow, or should they follow an amalgamation of the two?

Despite these challenges the first Football Association Challenge Cup, better known as the FA Cup today, took place in the 1871–2 season, using the FA code, and it remains the oldest association football competition the world. The final took place on the 16th March 1872 where the Wanders beat the Royal Engineers 1:0.

I will spare you too much detail, but eventually a unified code combining parts of the Sheffield, FA codes with input from the Scottish club Clydesdale, was agreed, as reported in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent on the 24th April 1877:

A meeting of the Sheffield Football Association was held last evening at the Imperial Hotel, Castle street; Mr. Dickinson presiding. Mr. W. Peirce Dix, hon. secretary, rendered a report of his recent visit to the London Association meeting in the metropolis, and described the views which guided those present in arriving at the resolution submitted by the Clydesdale Club, and supported by the Sheffield Association. He referred to the excellent speech made by Mr. Alcock in support of the proposal, and said the result was highly gratifying to the Sheffield Association. It was then formally resolved, on the motion of Mr. W. E. Clegg, seconded by Mr. Skinner, that the Sheffield Association accept the Clydesdale amendment and the London Rules.

So we have got to the point where Britain has a single agreed set of football rules, but how then did these get propagated around the world and the game be adopted with such global fervour? In the last quarter of the 19th century, Britain (and its empire) accounted for around a quarter of the world’s GDP, and a similar share of its manufacturing output. British companies and British people were scattered across the globe building railways, running mines, and setting up a host of trading and manufacturing operations. And where they went, they took (often quite literally) football with them. They were also the first and only nation to have a codified, published, set of rules that could be distributed.5

Let’s start by looking at Brazil. For sure people had been kicking balls around there for a while, but the development of the formal game can be traced back to one Charles William Miller (1874-1953).6 He was born in São Paulo to a Scottish railway engineer father and a Brazilian mother of English descent. Educated in England, where he excelled at sports, he returned to the country of his birth in 1894 bringing along two footballs, a pump, some boots, and a set of rules from the Hampshire Football Association. On the 14th April 1895 he arranged the game that is seen as the symbolic beginning of organised football in Brazil. Teams representing employees of the São Paulo Railway Company and the São Paulo Gas Company played under association rules with Miller appearing for the railway side (which won 4–2). Miller went on to form the São Paulo Athletic Club, the first club in the country, and the first football league that survives to this day as Campeonato Paulista Série A1, the top-flight of Brazilian football.

In northern Italy, particularly in the cities of Turin, Genoa, and Milan British sailors and merchants introduced their version of the rules of the beautiful game. Edoardo Bosio, a Turin businessman working in textiles encountered the game in Nottingham and in 1887 founded the Torino Football and Cricket Club – the first association football club in the country. A few years later, on the 7th of September 1893 a group of British ex-pats founded Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club which competes in the top-flight of Italian football today as Genoa CFC. And then there is one of the most famous of all Italian teams, AC Milan. Have you ever wondered why the English name of the city is used, rather than the Italian Milano? Well, that is because it was founded by a bunch of Brits and Italians as the Milan Football and Cricket Club.7

The rise of football in Germany turned to be a little bit more challenging. The country prided itself on its physical-culture tradition of Turnen (organised gymnastics). This was seen to promote bodily discipline, collective order, patriotism, and national regeneration. Gymnastic societies – Turnvereine – performed regulated exercises, often in synchronised groups and under formal instruction. Football, however was seen to provoke competition, violence, and individual initiative. The detractors of the game used terms such as Fußlümmelei, approximately “football loutishness”, and referred to the game as an englische Krankheit – an “English disease”. Rules and kit made their way into the country though, usually in the hands of returning German teachers. Arguably the first game of Association Football in the country tool place in Lüneburg in August of 1875, at the Johanneum school, organised by teacher Wilhelm Görges and the Australian-born Richard Ernest Newell Twopenny.8

Now let’s turn to the winners of the first World Cup, in 1930, Uruguay. The country had strong commercial connections to Britain in railways, banking, meat packing, and other industries and as they did everywhere else the ex-pats set up their own sports and social clubs. The Montevideo Cricket Club9 was established in 1861 and whilst cricket was its principal purpose, its members also experimented with rugby and different forms of football. The club records a football match against the crew of a visiting vessel in 1878, while the first generally recognised match between two established Uruguayan clubs was played in 1881, between them and the Montevideo Rowing Club. The person who is considered to be the “Father of Uruguayan Football” comes on the scene a little later, and was the Anglo-Scot William Leslie Poole (1866-1931). He started working as a teacher in the English High School in 1885 an enthusiastically taught the game to his charges. One of them, Henry Candid Lichtenberger founded the first Uruguayan10 football team on 2 June 1886, the Club Albion which plays at to this day at the country’s highest levels. Poole, amongst other things, was the president of the nascent Uruguayan Association Football League (founded 1900) and played for the country itself.

All around the world you will find the echos of the British influence recorded in the names of teams. Wanders, Juniors, Albion, Old Boys and so on. I could write half a dozen more posts delving into the stories behind these, but I will end by considering one final country, Argentina, with whom it is fair to say England has a bit of football history. In seven hours time, as I write this, we will face them in the World Cup Semi Final, but were we responsible for introducing the sport to arguably our greatest nemesis? Obviously yes.

The generally accepted starting point for the official form of the game took place on the 9th May 1867 when two Yorkshire-born members of the British ex-pat community in Buenos Aires, Thomas Hogg and his brother James, convened a meeting to form the “Buenos Ayres Football Club”, with matches to be played at the ground of the local cricket club. An inaugural match was originally intended for 25th May, but bad weather caused its postponement and it was eventually played on 20th June 1867. Only sixteen players could be assembled, so the sides consisted of eight men each rather than eleven. They were distinguished by coloured caps – one side red, the other white – rather than by complete uniforms. The match lasted approximately two hours, and Hogg’s side reportedly won 4–0.

Thomas Hogg was somewhat pessimistic about the enthusiasm for the game, as this statement attributed to him attests:

This game will take a long time to spread even among British residents, but I intend to persist, because I consider it the best, easiest and cheapest pastime for middle-class youth, as well as for the common people.

Hogg was not wrong, the sport continued to be played, for sure, but didn’t really take off until the arrival of the Scottish educator Alexander Watson Hutton who established the Buenos Aires English High School in 1884. This soon became a nursery for football, and the boys who learned there took the game with them as they moved into the world of work. In 1893 Hutton helped establish the Argentine Association Football, the predecessor of the current Argentine Football Association.11 Lest you doubt the extent to which the British helped create the opponent that England will face tonight, a notice telling people about the formation of the body that today runs the national team was published in English:

Before I started researching this piece I have to admit that I would cringe slightly at the whole “football’s coming home” thing.12 Not because of its (till now, at least) misplaced optimism, but rather than it smacked a little of embarrassing jingoism. Was England really the “home” of football? Clearly not alone, as Scotland played a pivotal rule in formalisation and internationalisation of the game that is played today, but it is hard to deny that had it not been for Britain both codifying rules and and spreading the game around the world then things would be very different today.13 Perhaps another country would have created their own code, and popularised it, but more likely it seems multiple codes would have arisen, and no ready winner would have been emerged. Things may have coalesced in time, but it is difficult to believe that the sport would be followed – and played – at quite the same scale that it is today.

Will football “come home” this year? I don’t think so, England has to beat Argentina and then Spain, and the odds look to be against them. Obviously I could re-edit this piece once that I know the result, to create the illusion of foresight, but I promise that I won’t!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

A week or so ago I overcame my disinterest to join my friend Craig down the pub to watch an England World Cup match,4 perhaps only the second5 football game I have watched in its entirety in my 53-odd years, and that inspired me to dig into the history of the sport a bit.

I should start by talking a bit about the name of the game, as I know that it is a point of some contention between nationalities. American readers will doubtless refer to it as “soccer” only to be lambasted by the residents of other countries with words along the lines of “It’s football! You are the only country who thinks that name refers to American football!”. The reality is that the global competition taking place this year is “association football”, there are many other similarly-named sports, such as “rugby football”. It may shock some of you to learn that not only is soccer a valid name for the game, it may actually be more appropriate than the more generic “football”!

In the 19th century British public school boys had a tendency to abbreviate words and add “er” to the ends of them. So rugby became “rugger” and breakfast became “brekkers” – a tradition that continues to this day, most notably with the nicknames of English cricket players.6 Association football was initially shortened to “assoc”, which soon became “soccer”. The earliest reference to it in print comes from a letter from a pupil published in the 25 November 1885 issue of The Marlburian (the magazine of Marlborough College):

I can’t help thinking it a great pity that there has been no ‘Association’ on the Common this term. It must improve the forward play and is certainly a pleasant change occasionally from everlasting Rugby.

Rather than signing it with his own name, the letter was said to have come from “soccer”. Within days, the spelling “Socker” appeared in magazines connected with Radley College and Old Hall School, suggesting that the term was already well known and circulating orally among schoolboys. So please don’t hate on our American friends for using the word (for ease, in the rest of this piece I will use the word “football” to mean “association football”).

Back to the origins of the game itself. Humans have been kicking and throwing balls around with varying degrees of organisation for pretty much as long as the objects have existed. After all, what is the point of a ball is not to play with it? In ancient China there was the game Cuju (or ts‘u-chü) in which players from opposing teams attempted to kick a ball through an opening and into a hoop without using their hands, and also without it touching the ground. In this sense it was rather more akin to hacky sack than modern football. Not only was it popular as a means of recreation, it was also used as a training tool by the military, and it is in this context that we have the earliest reference to it, dating from around 300 BCE in the Zhan Guo Ce (《戰國策》, Strategies of the Warring States), there is a speech attributed to the diplomat Su Qin addressing King Xuan of Qi:

臨淄甚富而實，其民無不吹竽、鼓瑟、擊筑、彈琴、鬥雞、走犬、六博、蹹踘者。

Linzi is exceedingly prosperous and well supplied; among its people there are none who do not play the yu pipes, sound the se, strike the zhu, play the qin, fight cocks, race dogs, play liubo, or kick the ball.

And there is a nearly identical7 passage appears in Sima Qian’s Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), composed in the early first century BCE:

Linzi was very wealthy and full. Its people were all playing the yu flute and the se, plucking the qin and striking the zhu, fighting cocks and racing dogs, playing liubo and kicking the ball. In Linzi’s roads, carriage hubs struck one another, shoulders rubbed together; joined robes made curtains, raised sleeves made canopies, and flung sweat fell like rain. The households were rich, the people sufficient, their wills high and their spirits proud.

We have an even earlier description of people playing with a ball in Homer’s Odyssey (c. 700 BCE):

Then when they had had their joy of food, she and her handmaids, they threw off their head-gear and fell to playing at ball, and white-armed Nausicaa was leader in the song…The princess tossed the ball to one of the handmaids; the maid she missed, and cast it into the deep eddy, whereat they shouted aloud; and goodly Odysseus awoke.

Then there is another Greek description of a more formal type of ball play from Athenaeus, in the Deipnosophists (c. 200 CE) He tells us that the game known in his day as harpastum (also harpaston) had earlier been called phaininda:

The ball-game now called harpastum was formerly called phaininda, which is the kind I like best of all. Great are the exertion and fatigue attendant upon contests of ball-playing, and violent twisting and turning of the neck.

We don’t the specifics of this game but it appears to have involved things akin to the feinting and passing of the modern game as he goes on share a much earlier description by Antiphanes, a comic poet of the fourth century BCE:

He seized the ball and passed it with a laugh to one player, while he dodged another; he pushed it out of the way of a third, and raised another to his feet amid resounding cries of “Out,” “Too far,” “Right beside him,” “Over his head,” “On the ground,” “Up in the air,” “Too short,” and “Pass it back.”

This game was, however, much more like rugby than football. The name harpaston comes from the verb ἁρπάζειν (harpazein), “to seize”, “snatch” or “carry off”, so one could think of it as meaning “the snatched ball” or “the snatching game.” The ball is likely to have been relatively small, the easier to throw and catch, possibly leather stuffed with feathers, or a bladder of some sort. We have a nice description of play during Roman times from the a letter written by Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430 - 481/490) in the 5th century CE:

We soon split into two groups, according to our ages: one shouted for the ball, the other for the board-game, both of which were to be had. I was the leader of the ball-players; you know that book and ball are my twin companions. In the other group, the chief figure was our brother Domnicius, that most engaging and attractive of men: there he was, rattling some dice which he had got hold of, as if he sounded a trumpet-call to play. The rest of us had a great game with a party of students, doing our best at the healthful exercise with limbs which sedentary occupations made much too stiff for running. And now the illustrious Filimatius sturdily flung himself into the squadrons of the players, like Virgil’s hero ‘daring to set his hand to the task of youth’; he had been a splendid player himself in his younger years. But over and over again he was forced from his position among the stationary players by the shock of some runner from the middle, and driven into the midfield where the ball flew past him, or was thrown over his head; and he failed to intercept or parry it. More than once he fell prone, and had to pick himself up from such collapses as best he could; naturally he was the first to withdraw from the stress of the game in a state of internal inflammation, out of breath from exercise and suffering sharp pains in the side from the swollen fibres of his liver.8

It is in Europe of the middle ages that we see a much more football-sized balls being used, but again the games that were played with them were very different from our modern understanding of the game, and furthermore there were a number of different versions of them. The earliest reference we have to a ball being used as play-thing in Britain can be found in Bede’s De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time), completed in 725:

The Earth is truly situated in the midst of the whole universe, not merely circular in breadth like a shield, but rather like a ball, equally rounded in every direction; and in so great a mass, even the enormous differences between mountains and valleys add or subtract no more than a finger’s breadth does from a playing-ball

And a century later, in Nennius’s Historia Brittonum (compiled 829-830) we get the first mention of people actually playing with one:

And, on the advice of his magicians, he sent messengers throughout all Britain to see whether they could find a child without a father. And, after travelling through all the provinces and very many regions, they came to the Field of Elletus, which is in the region called Gleguissing, and some boys were playing a ball game.

By the 12th century ball games were widespread in Britain, and particularly played on Shroventide (Shrove Tuesday) as recorded by William Fitzstephen in his Descriptio Nobilissimi Civitatis Londoniae (c. 1174 – 1183):

After lunch, all the youth of the city go out into the fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree adolescents.

Were these kids throwing the ball to one another like the Romans a thousand or so years earlier? It is hard to be certain, but it seems more likely that they were kicking it around. The earliest robust source for football being a game played, with, well, the feet, comes from a papal dispensation dating from May 1321. It was for Canon William de Spalding from Shouldham in Norfolk, absolving him of blame when one of his mates ran into him during a match and, err, stabbed himself to death in the process:

To William de Spalding, canon of Scoldham [Shouldham] of the order of Sempringham. During the game at ball, as he kicked the ball, a lay friend of his, also called William, ran against him and wounded himself on a sheathed knife9 carried by the canon, so severely that he died within six days. Dispensation is granted, as no blame is attached to William de Spalding, who, feeling deeply the death of his friend, and fearing what might be said by his enemies, has applied to the pope.

Pretty much as soon as the nation became football crazy, steps were taken to ban the beautiful game. Those carefree adolescents spilling out across the streets of London made a hell of a racket, so local merchants persuaded King Edward II to ban the sport in the city on 13th April 1314:

…there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils may arise which God forbid; we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future.

Edward III10 issued a broader ban in a proclamation on the 12th June 1365, but his had a more serious intent behind it – people were playing football when they should have been practising their archery:

We, wishing to provide an appropriate remedy for this, order you that in all places in your shire, as well within liberties as without, where you shall deem it expedient, you shall cause to be proclaimed that everyone in the shire, on festival days when he has holiday, shall learn and exercise himself in the art of archery, and use for his games bows and arrows, or crossbows or bolts; forbidding all and every one, on our command, to meddle in any way with throwing stones, wood or iron, handball, football, hockey, cock-fighting, or any other such idle games, under pain of imprisonment.

Not wanting to be left out, King James I of Scotland banned the game as well with his Football Act of 1424:

it is statut and the king forbiddis that na man play at the fut ball under the payne of iiij d. to the lorde of the lande als oft as he beis taintit (be the scheref of the land or his ministeris, gif the lordis will nocht punnysh sic trespassouris).

(It is decreed and the king forbids that any man play football under the pain of 4 d. to the lord of the land as often as he is convicted (by the sheriff of the land or his ministers, if the lords will not punish such trespassers))

Perhaps the most famous version of the game played around these times was mob football (also know as folk football). The rules, such as they were, were pretty simple. Two teams of unlimited players had to get an inflated pig’s bladder (or ball) to their team’s marker. These could be at either end of the town, or, when played between two villages, suitably far apart from each other on neutral territory. You could do so by any means necessary, short of murder, and unsurprisingly these games could get very violent indeed.

A version of this which continues to this day is the Atherstone Ball Game which claims to have been played pretty much continuously, every Shrove Tuesday, since 1199. The reality is that it is hard to substantiate the origin anything like that far back; nonetheless, their rules are fun:

• Stay on Long Street

• Don’t kill anyone

Despite claiming to be the “home” of football Britain was still having somewhat chaotic games whilst Italy had an incredibly detailed rule set for their version of the sport. Florence had the game Calcio storico fiorentino which is thought to have started in Piazza Santa Croce. It became known as the giuoco del calcio fiorentino or simply calcio, which is now the Italian word for “football”. The exact origins of the game are unclear, but it is thought to have possibly arisen out of military training exercises. We know that it was well-established by 1530, as on the 17th of February a game was defiantly played whilst the city was under siege.

We have an incredibly comprehensive set of rules and instruction from Giovanni de’ Bardi’s Discorso sopra 'l giuoco del calcio Fiorentino (1580). An overview of them follows, and whilst lengthy, I think that they are fascinating!

1. The theatre of the game should be a principal city square, suitable for noble women and the people to watch.

2. The field should be fenced: 172 braccia long, 86 braccia wide, and two braccia high.

3. The game is public, played by two sides of young men, on foot and without weapons.

4. The object is to make the inflated ball pass deliberately beyond the opposing end boundary.

5. A successful passage beyond the opponent’s end is a caccia (goal).

6. The side with more cacce wins; falli (fouls) count against the offending side, with the later Capitoli tradition making two falli equal one caccia.

7. After every caccia or fallo, the teams change places.

8. The players number fifty-four: twenty-seven per side.

9. Each side consists of fifteen Innanzi (forwards), five Sconciatori (halfbacks), four Datori innanzi (full backs), and three Datori a dietro (goal keepers).

10. Players should be fit gentlemen, generally eighteen to forty-five, of good reputation and trained in noble exercises.

11. The season runs from early January to March, with Carnival as the most solemn period.

12. The game should be played toward evening and should last only as long as the players can bear the sweat, blows and exertion - roughly one or two hours in Bardi’s phrasing.

13. Dress should be short and free: hose, doublet, cap and thin shoes; in formal games, the two sides wear different liveries.

14. In an ordinary game, two knowledgeable captains choose the sides on the field from the assembled players.11

15. In a liveried game, the sides are chosen privately beforehand, often trialled in two colours, and publicly announced.

16. Six experienced former players sit on a raised seat and judge disputes.

17. A neutral ball-man, dressed in both colours, starts play by striking the ball and keeps spare balls available.

18. The game begins with the ball placed in the centre and the thirty forwards run at it from a circle.

19. The Innanzi must carry the ball softly with their feet, keeping it close and advancing in three squads.

20. Forwards should not hurl the ball; ordinary handling is limited to setting it down to the feet or to special breakaway circumstances.

21. A deliberate throw or hurl of the ball, and deliberate sending of the ball over the ditch-side fence, constitute falli.

22. Forwards should meet blockers with extended arms rather than begin fist-fighting.

23. The Sconciatori must shield the Datori, disrupt enemy forwards, delay rather than simply hold them, and preserve the line’s order.

24. Sconciatori should not usually strike the ball, except in defined circumstances, especially the ditch-side player returning dangerous balls.

25. The Datori innanzi govern the ball by powerful strokes and should not retreat for balls belonging to the rear line.

26. The Datori should not send the ball among the spectators, because that chills the game by stopping play.

27. The Datori a dietro are the last guard and must stand deep enough to move forward to the ball, not so close that they must retreat.

28. When the ball is on a side’s own end fence, the whole side should give common aid, keep the ball low, and stop it being lifted over.

29. When fights break out, the nearest players should separate them, but the rest should not abandon the ball to watch.12

30. Players should not bear grudges after the game; bodily blows received in calcio do not touch honour.13

31. During changes of field, the winning flag should be carried high and spread, the losing flag lowered and wrapped.

32. The flags should not be torn.

33. The highest honour sought through the game is not merely sporting reputation but recognition as men fit for civic and military service.

The game underwent a revival in the 20th century, and is played annually in Florence to this day. In my next piece (which will drop tomorrow, Saturday 18th of July!) I’ll explore how these varied games ultimately resulted in the sport watched today by billions and how perhaps England can claim to be the home of football.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

The barrier of access to coffee doesn’t seem to particularly have been price – in the late 17th century a cup would cost about the same as two pints of beer. In central London today that would be around £151 ($20) which is much higher than a cup of Joe from Starbucks, but beer was relatively a lot cheaper 350 years ago! The lack of coffee drinking was in part due to the limited supply of beans, and also because it wasn’t, unlike tea, a drink that people had the inclination or equipment to brew at home.

When coffee was made, it wasn’t in a manner that we would necessarily find appealing today, basically, boil up the grounds and drink it without milk and unsweetened, as per these approaches described in John Nott’s The cook's and confectioner’s dictionary, or, The accomplish’d housewife’s companion published in 1723:

171. To make Coffee.
TAKE running, or River-water, boil it, and put to a Quart, either one, two, or three Ounces of Coffee, as you like it, and let it boil only so long, as till the Coffee falls down.

172. Another better way.
TAKE running, or River-water,2 put your Coffee in cold; mix it well with the Water, set them over the Fire, and let them warm, heat and scald, and boil together, till the Coffee sinks; then take it off, let it settle, and drink it.

173. Another the best way.3
WHEN you have drank off a Pot of Coffee, put into the Pot to the Grounds, as much Water, as you design to make the next time, and boil them together; then take the Pot off the Fire; and let it stand to settle a quarter of an Hour; then pour off the clear Liquor, cast away the Grounds, wash the Coffee-Pot, then put in the Coffee you would make next time, pour the Liquor in scalding hot, and let them stand to infuse, till you use it; then set it on the Fire, let them warm and heat leisurely, till it boils, till all the Coffee is well boil’d down, then let it settle and drink it.

The coffee this produced was often not great. If boiled too much it would become bitter, and even after allowing it to settle one could get a load of gritty grains in one’s cup. Often egg white or isinglass was added in order to clarify the drink (though I doubt that this improved the taste). A better approach was advocated by Humphrey Broadbent year earlier in The Domestick Coffee Man:

Put the quantity of powder you intend, into your pot (which should be either of stone, or silver, being much better than tin or copper, which takes from it much of its flavour and goodness) then pour boiling-hot water upon the aforesaid powder, and let it stand to infuse five minutes before the fire. This is an excellent way, and far exceeds the common one of boiling, but whether you prepare it by boiling or this way, it will sometimes remain thick and troubled, after it is made, except you pour in a spoonful or two of cold water, which immediately precipitates the more heavy parts at the bottom, and makes it clear enough for drinking.

Some, make coffee with spring water, but it is not so good as river, or Thames-water,4 because the former makes it hard, and distasteful, and the other makes it smooth and pleasant, lying soft on the stomach. If you have a desire to make good coffee in your families, I cannot conceive how you can put less than two ounces of powder to a quart, or one ounce to a pint of water; some put two ounces and a quarter.

In France, however, a decade earlier, a more superior beverage, filtered coffee, was being produced. The grounds were put into a fustian (cloth) bag and boiling water was then poured over the top. This approach, which became popular in France, but never really spread to America or Britain, was not without its own problems. The cloth fabric of the bag would absorb the oils from the coffee and, over time, become greasy and hard to clean. And cleaning was an issue – leave it damp and it could go mouldy, dry it out too much and the coffee oils could go stale and impart a nasty taste – so often the solution was to keep the cleaned bag immersed in water, which sounds like a bit of a faff. Finally, no matter how much care one takes with one’s bag, the rate of flow of fluid through it, and hence the intensity of the coffee, would inevitably change over usage and time.

Towards the end of the 18th century, again in France, we see the next major advance in coffee making. This was a pot, initially made of tin, but later of porcelain, which consisted of two chambers, one above the other. At the join between them sat the coffee chamber: a perforated metal or porcelain grid, sometimes with a second pierced plate or ‘rammer’ above it. Ground coffee was placed on or between the perforated surfaces; hot water was poured into the upper vessel; the water passed slowly through the coffee bed and collected in the lower vessel. These were known as ‘De Belloy’ (or ‘Du Belloy’) pots taking their name from Jean-Baptiste de Belloy de Morangles, Archbishop of Paris and later cardinal. It seems unlikely that he actually invented them, it seems more likely that this honour lay with François-Antoine-Henri Descroizilles, a Rouen chemist and pharmacist, and that De Belloy or someone in his circle popularised the device in Paris. Whatever the precise origin, they were hugely popular, and highly regarded, as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826) detailed in The Physiology of Taste:

A few years ago, everyone’s attention turned simultaneously to the best way to make coffee—a trend that stemmed, almost without anyone realizing it, from the fact that the head of government consumed a great deal of it.

Suggestions abounded: brewing it without burning the grounds or grinding them to dust, cold-brewing it,5 boiling it for forty-five minutes, using a pressure cooker, and so on.

Over time, I experimented with all these methods—as well as those proposed since—and, based on experience, settled on the Dubelloy method. This involves pouring boiling water over coffee placed in a porcelain or silver vessel perforated with tiny holes. You take this initial infusion, heat it to a boil, pour it through again, and the result is coffee that is as clear and delicious as possible.6

Among other experiments, I tried making coffee in a high-pressure kettle; the result was a brew heavy with extractive matter and bitterness—fit, at best, to scour a Cossack’s throat.

Savarin goes on to comment upon something I am all-too familiar with, the impact of the drink upon insomnia:

Doctors have expressed various opinions regarding the health properties of coffee and have not always agreed with one another; we shall steer clear of this debate to focus on the most important aspect: its influence on the organs of thought.

There is no doubt that coffee powerfully stimulates the brain’s faculties; indeed, anyone drinking it for the first time is certain to lose some sleep.

Sometimes this effect is mitigated or altered by habituation; yet there are many individuals for whom this stimulation persists, and who are consequently forced to give up coffee entirely.

Similar devices soon became popular in Britain, though they could both use a metal/porcelain filter or, as became more commonly the case, a cloth bag suspended in the top chamber. They revelled in the name ‘Biggins’, seemingly named after one George Biggin (died 1803) and inventor and scientist who, among other adventures, flew in one of Vincenzo Lunardi’s balloons on the 29th of June 1785. This flight is notable because the aeronaut alongside Biggin was Letitia Ann Sage, the first British woman to fly! Oh, and also because they had to be rescued from an angry farmer by a group of Harrow schoolboys upon landing.7

Biggins did a pretty decent job of making coffee, and remained in use for more than century, but in some places the old 17th-century approach to making coffee still persisted. In the USA, even in the mid-19th century, we find coffee being boiled up, as per the recipe in in a cookbook from 1840:

Allow half a pint of ground coffee to three pints of water. If the coffee is not freshly roasted, you should put in more. Put the water into the tin coffee-pot, and set it on hot coals; when it boils, put in the coffee, a spoonful at a time, (stirring it between each spoonful,) and add two or three chips of isinglass, or the white of an egg. Stir it frequently, till it has risen up to the top in boiling; then set it a little farther from the fire, and boil it gently for ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour; after which pour in a tea-cup of cold water, and put it in the corner to settle for ten minutes. Scald your silver or china pot, and transfer the coffee to it; carefully pouring it off from the grounds, so as not to disturb them.

It would seem that some Americans preferred this type of boiled coffee over the more refined European methods of production, most notably Mark Twain, who was very snitty about the continental drink in his 1880 book A Tramp Aboard:

To particularize: the average American’s simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak; well, in Europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. You can get what the European hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness. It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an American hotel.8 The milk used for it is what the French call “Christian” milk—milk which has been baptized.9

After a few months’ acquaintance with European “coffee,” one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream, after all, and a thing which never existed.

Next comes the European bread—fair enough, good enough, after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic;10 and never any change, never any variety—always the same tiresome thing.

The next technical innovation occurred in 1819, when the Paris tinsmith Joseph-Henry-Marie Laurens produced a coffee-making device in which boiling water was raised through a tube and delivered over the coffee, this invention the first coffee peculator. Multiple variations of these pots were in use across the 19th century but their use really took off in the USA with the version patented by Hanson Goodrich 1889 – a pot that could sit on a stove have and have the coffee recirculated:11

Before I get into the developments which led to the machines that we find in the coffee shops that we visit today, a quick digression about the adding of milk to the drink. As mentioned earlier, initially coffee was drunk black, and unsweetened though some experiments with adding milk took place surprisingly early:

About 1660, Nieuhoff, the Dutch ambassador to China, was the first to make a trial of coffee with milk in imitation of tea with milk. In 1685, Sieur Monin, a celebrated doctor of Grenoble, France, first recommended café au lait as a medicine. He prepared it thus: Place on the fire a bowl of milk. When it begins to rise, throw in to it a bowl of powdered coffee, a bowl of moist sugar, and let it boil for some time.

By the mid-18th century, café au lait (coffee with milk) had become commonplace in France, particularly as a breakfast drink, as Pierre Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d’Aussy recounts in his Histoire de la vie privée des Français, depuis l’origine de la nation jusqu’à nos jours (1782):

There is no middle-class home where coffee is not offered at dinner. No shop girl, cook, or chambermaid who does not have coffee with milk for breakfast. This taste, believe it or not, has even reached the lowest classes of the common people.12

Arguably the most famous coffee-with-milk drink, the cappuccino has a history that is perhaps older than one may expect, and it certainly long predates the modern version of the drink. The Viennese Kapuziner arose in the 18th century as a dark cup of coffee with cream added to it (and later sugar and spices). It takes its name from the cappuccio, the hood worn by Capuchin friars as, once mixed, it shared the same brown colour.13 For the drink to become the one globally loved today the final major development in coffee technology had to take place, the invention of high-pressure coffee-making which created the espresso.

The Italian coffeemaker Illy describes that acme of the drink as being created in the following manner:

A jet of hot water at 88°-93°C (190°-200°F) passes under a pressure of nine or more atmospheres through a seven-gram (.25 oz) cake-like layer of ground and tamped coffee. Done right, the result is a concentrate of not more than 30 ml (one oz) of pure sensorial pleasure.

The original version of this brew was, however, a little different from this. In 1884 one Angelo Moriondo of Turin patented a machine for the “economic and instantaneous” preparation of coffee. This wasn’t the counter-top device you will be familiar with today, rather it was a large boiler at a pressure of about 1.5 bars that first pushed water through the coffee grounds, before a secondary boiler drove steam through it to finish the job. It produced coffee en-masse for the Turin Expo. It seems to have been a success, but it never really caught on as Moriondo only built a couple of the machines, and they were used solely in establishments that he owned – he basically thought that they were so good, that they would bring customers flooding in.

Next up we have Luigi Bezzera of Milan who, in 1902, created essentially the first modern expresso machine. It would produce individual cups on demand and had the portafilter,14 the little bucket-type thing that the coffee grounds sit in. Again though the pressure in this device was low by modern standards, 1.5-2.0 bars.

It wasn’t until 1938, with Achille Gaggia that we finally got expresso with crema, the foam that sits atop a good expresso. He invented a machine that used hot water, rather than steam, pressure which could achieve 9 bars, and the company that bears his name manufactures coffeemakers to this day. There is more I could add to this history, the invention of instant coffee, the debate over who really invented the flat white, and so on but I fear continuing much further would try your patience. And beside, I could really do with a cup of coffee right now…

The story of European coffee begins with the capture of Constantinople but the Ottomans in 1453 because this turned the city into their imperial capital: a huge administrative, commercial, diplomatic, and cultural hub linking the Balkans, Anatolia, the eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Egypt, and eventually Yemen. This was followed by the conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1516–1517, which brought Syria, Egypt, the Hijaz connection, and much of the Red Sea commercial world into the Ottoman sphere. As we learned in my last piece, coffee drinking was well-established in Egypt at that point, particularly in Cairo and it wasn’t that long before the drink spread to Constantinople itself.

We can date very precisely when this great beverage arrived in the city, from a history written by İbrahim Peçevi (aka Peçevî İbrahim Efendi) – Tārīḫ-i Peçevī (“Peçevi’s History.”) which was probably written in the early 1640s, and is a history of the Ottoman Empire, with good details on the period from 1520-1640:

Before the year 1554, no coffee was seen, much less sold, at Constantinople. If ever it was so much as heard of, it was only when the Sultaness obtained an order to prohibit the use of it at Mecca, as we have already mentioned, from the accounts she had received from pilgrims or other travellers into Arabia, Egypt, or Syria. But in that year, which was near a hundred years from the time it was discovered by the Mufti of Aden, in the reign of Soliman the Great, son to Selim the First, two men, named Schems and Hekim, the one from Damascus, the other from Aleppo, set up each of them a coffee-house in that quarter of Constantinople called Takhtacalah, furnished with very neat couches and carpets, on which they received their company, which at first consisted mostly of studious persons, lovers of chess, trictrac, and other sedentary diversions.

And as the generality of the Turks soon came to relish this sort of meeting-place, called in their language Cahveh Kaneh, the number of them multiplied insensibly. They looked upon them as very proper places to make acquaintances in, as well as to refresh and entertain themselves at an easy charge, a dish of coffee costing but an aspre, which is not a halfpenny of English money. Young people near the end of their public studies, such as were ready to enter upon public posts; cadhis out of place, who were at Constantinople making interest to be restored, or asking for new employments; the muderis, or professors of law and other sciences; and, in fine, persons of all ranks flocked to them. At length even the officers of the seraglio, the pashas, and others of the first quality were seen to go openly to the coffee-house; and as this served to increase their reputation, so it multiplied the number of them to too great an excess.

These final lines are particularly important in showing just how socially transformational these coffee houses were. To use the terminology of the 21st century they were a novel urban space – non-domestic, non-religious, conversational, and comparatively open to men from different social ranks. For cultures where alcohol consumption was permissible taverns had served this function for centuries, but in those where it was banned there previously had been no such places.

Less than 20 years later we get the first Western European account of coffee by the German physician Leonhard Rauwolf who encountered coffee in Aleppo in 1573 (and published his account in 1582):

Among other things they have a good drink, which they hold in high esteem, called by them Chaube. It is almost as black as ink and is very useful in ailments, especially of the stomach. They are accustomed to drink this early in the morning, also in open places, before… before everyone publicly, without any hesitation, from deep earthenware and porcelain bowls, as hot as they can bear it. They often raise it to their lips, but take only small sips, and then pass it on, as they sit beside one another in a circle.

For this drink they use a fruit called Bunnu by the inhabitants. On the outside, in size and color, it looks almost like laurel berries, and is enclosed in two thin little shells. According to their old reports, it is brought from India. But since the fruit itself is light, and inside has two yellowish kernels separately enclosed in two little husks; and since, in its effect, name, and appearance, it is very similar to the Buncho of Avicenna and the Bunca of Rhazes in the Almansor, I shall consider it to be that, until I receive better information from learned men. This drink is very common among them.

For that reason there are many people in the bazaar who pour it out for sale, as well as many merchants who sell the fruit. Moreover, they also regard it as just as valuable and healthful as we among ourselves regard wormwood wine, or other herbal wines. Nevertheless, they would still prefer wine, if they were permitted it by their law, as was clearly seen under Emperor Selim, when he granted and allowed them wine: how they drank it, namely, that they came together daily, and when they sat together drinking, one did not merely drink one or two glasses of unmixed strong wine to another, but four or five little cups at once, of the kind that come to them from Venice; and they drank these down one after another so quickly and with such eagerness that, as I saw many times, they did not take enough time between them even to eat a bite or a few morsels.

Subscribe now

As to when coffee made its way into Western Europe, let’s just say that one can go down lots of rabbit holes attempting to answer that question! It probably arrived in Venice in or shortly after 1615 because that is when Pierre (Pietro) Delia Valle (1586–1652), a well known Italian traveler and author of Travels in India and Persia, wrote a letter from Constantinople to his friend Mario Schipano in Venice:

The Turks have a drink of black colour, which during the summer is very cooling, whereas in the winter it heats and warms the body, remaining always the same beverage and not changing its substance. They swallow it hot as it comes from the fire and they drink it in long draughts, not at dinner time, but as a kind of dainty and sipped slowly while talking with one's friends. One cannot find any meetings among them where they drink it not.... With this drink, which they call cahue, they divert themselves in their conversations.... It is made with the grain or fruit of a certain tree called cahue.... When I return I will bring some with me and I will impart the knowledge to the Italians.

We don’t know for sure if he carried through with this promise, but it seems likely that coffee was low-key drunk in the city for medicinal reasons not long after that. If we want a good, dated, account of coffee being drunk in Western Europe then we can do worse than look to my home town of Oxford. In a note added to his diary entry for the 10th of May 1637 (when he was admitted to the college), John Evelyn wrote that the following took place in Balliol:

There came in my time to the College one Nathaniel Conopios, out of Greece, from Cyrill, the patriarch of Constantinople, who, returning many years after, was made (as I understand) Bishop of Smyrna. He was the first I ever saw drink coffee; which custom came not into England till thirty years after.

The best guess for when this coffee-drinking took place is 1638–1639, possibly 1639, if Conopios came to Oxford as a refugee after the death of Patriarch Cyril Lucaris in June 1638. It was also Oxford that saw the first recoded coffee house in Western Europe1 opening, as the city’s greatest antiquarian, Anthony Wood, wrote about it in the year 1650:

This yeare Jacob a Jew opened a coffey house at the Angel in the parish of S. Peter, in the East Oxon; and there it was by some, who delighted in noveltie, drank. When he left Oxon he sold it in Old Southampton buildings in Holborne neare London, and was living 1671.

And that coffee shop is still there today! Okay, it isn’t, but there is a later building on the site which is now a cafe which trades upon this history:2

Four years later he writes about another establishment, just across the road from the first:

Coffey, which had been drank by some persons in Oxon 1650, was this yeare publickly sold at or neare the Angel within the east gate of Oxon; as also chocolate, by an outlander or a Jew.

And his coffee shop is still there too! Except whilst coffee has be sold very close to that site for more than 370 years, it seems that it has moved around a bit over that time. What we do know is that it is the location where, in 1768, Jeremy Bentham encountered the phrase “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” in a pamphlet and helped inspire his development of utilitarianism:

Somehow or other, shortly after its publication, a copy of this pamphlet found its way into the little circulating library belonging to a little coffee-house, called Harper’s coffee-house, attached, as it were, to Queen’s College, Oxford, and deriving, from the popularity of that college, the whole of its subsistence. It was a corner house, having one front towards the High Street, another towards a narrow lane, which on that side skirts Queen’s College, and loses itself in a lane issuing from one of the gates of New College.

This year, 1768, was the latest of all the years in which this pamphlet could have come into my hands. Be this as it may, it was by that pamphlet, and this phrase in it, that my principles on the subject of morality, public and private together, were determined.

Two years after the first coffee shop opened in Oxford, one did in London, and it was advertised with this brilliant hand-bill:3

In the decades that followed the number of such establishments exploded across the city, with their number likely in excess of 1,000 by the end of the 17th century. At the same time they spread all across the continent, most famously, perhaps, in Vienna which is noted for its coffee house culture to this day. According to legend, after they liberated the city from the second Turkish siege in 1683 a group of Polish-Habsburg soldiers found some sacks full of strange beans in a cellar. They initially thought it was camel feed, and wanted to burn them however the Polish king Jan III Sobieski gave them to one of his officers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki. Kulczycki, realising what they were (and conning the king out of a valuable product) brewed them up with some milk and sugar, and open the first coffee house in the city. Except the first coffee house in the city was actually opened in 1685 by an Armenian businessman named Johannes Theodat. Which is not such a good story…

As in Constantinople these houses provided a wholly novel space for people (well, men) to interact, gossip, read the latest newspapers and broadsides, and so on. As Henri Misson described the London coffee houses in 1698:

“You have all Manner of News there: You have a good fire, which you may sit by as long as you please: You have a Dish of Coffee; you meet your Friends for the Transaction of Business, and all for a Penny, if you do not care to spend more.

So noted were they for these kind of interactions that they became known as “penny universities” though some writers, such as the one who wrote this satirical verse in a 1667 broadside, felt that was perhaps overstating their function a little:

At Coffee-House when they are plac’d,
you’d scarce believe it true.

They know all that is Good or Hurt,
To bless ye, or to save ye;
There is the Colledge and the Court,
the Countrie, Camp and Navie;
So great a Universitie,
I think, there ne’re was any:
In which you may a Scholar be
for spending of a Penny.

A Merchant’s ‘Prentice there shall show
you all and every thing,
What hath been done, and is to do,
‘twixt Holland and the King;
What Articles of Peace will be,
he can precisely show;
What will be good for Them or We,
he perfectly doth know.

Here men do talk of every thing,
with large and liberal Lungs,
Like women at a Gossipping,
with double tyre of Tongues;
They’l give a Broadside presently,
soon as you are in view,
With Stories that you’l wonder at,
which they will swear are true.

The drinking there of Chockalat
can make a Fool a Sophie:
‘Tis thought the Turkish Mahomet
was first Inspir’d by Coffee,
By which his Powers did over-flow
the Land of Palestine:
Then let us to the Coffee-house go!
‘tis cheaper far than Wine.

You shall know, there, what Fashions are;
How Perrywiggs are curl’d;
And for a Penny you shall heare
all Novells in the world;
Both Old and Young, and Great and Small,
and Rich and Poore you’ll see:
Therefore, let’s to the Coffee all,
Come all away with me.

Exaggerated though the quality of eduction one might receive there might be, these were definitely places for the exchanging of ideas, and particularly political ideas. We have an example of this from the diary of Samuel Pepys, from the 23rd January 1663 where there is talk of a rising in the north:

Thence to Mr. Grant, to bid him come for money for Mr. Barlow, and he and I to a coffee-house, where Sir J. Cutler was; and in discourse, among other things, he did fully make it out that the trade of England is as great as ever it was, only in more hands; and that of all trades there is a greater number than ever there was, by reason of men taking more ‘prentices, because of their having more money than heretofore. His discourse was well worth hearing. Coming by Temple Bar I bought “Audley’s Way to be Rich,” a serious pamphlett and some good things worth my minding. Thence homewards, and meeting Sir W. Batten, turned back again to a coffee-house, and there drunk more till I was almost sick, and here much discourse, but little to be learned, but of a design in the north of a rising, which is discovered, among some men of condition, and they sent for up.

Not everyone was thrilled about such activities, chief amongst them King Charles the Second who was trying to main a somewhat rickety restoration monarchy. In order to reduce the risk of people scheming against him over a cup of Java on the 29th of December 1675 he issued “A Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee-Houses” requiring them to be shut down on the 10th of January, a scant two weeks later. He argued that he wasn’t doing so just because of people coming up with nefarious plots but also because tradespeople were chillaxing there when they should have been working!

Whereas it is most apparent, that the Multitude of Coffee-houses of late
years set up and kept within this Kingdom, the Dominion of Wales, and the
Town of Berwick upon Tweed, and the great resort of Idle and disaffected
persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous effects; as well
for that many Tradesmen and others, do therein mis-spend much of their time,
which might and probably would otherwise be imployed in and about their
Lawful Callings and Affairs; but also, for that in such Houses, and by
occasion of the meetings of such persons therein, divers False, Malitious
and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defama-
tion of His Majesties Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm; His Majesty hath thought it fit and necessary, That the said Coffee-houses be (for the future) Put down and Suppressed, and doth (with the Advice of His Privy Council) by this His Royal Proclamation, Strictly Charge and Command all manner of persons, That they or any of them do not presume from and after the Tenth day of January next ensuing, to keep any Publick Coffee-house, or to Utter or Sell by retail, in his, her or their house or houses (to be spent or consumed within the same) any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost perils.

And for the better accomplishment of this his Majesties Royal Pleasure, His Majesty doth hereby Will and require the Justices of Peace within their several Counties, and the Chief Magistrates in all Cities and Towns Corporate, that they do at their next respective General Sessions of the peace (to be holden within their several and respective Counties, Divisions and Precincts) recall and make void all Licenses at any time heretofore Granted, for the Selling or Retailing of any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea. And that they or any of them do not (for the
future) make or grant any such License or Licenses, to any person or persons Whatsoever. And his Majesty doth further hereby declare, that if any person or persons shall take upon them, him or her, after his, her or their License or Licenses recalled, or otherwise without License, to sell by retail (as aforesaid) any of the Liquors aforesaid, that then the person or persons so Offending, shall not only be proceeded against, upon the Statute made in the Fifteenth year of His Majesties
Reign (which gives the forfeiture of five pounds for every moneth wherein he, she or they shall offend therein) but shall (in case they persevere to Offend) receive the severest punishments that may by Law be inflicted.

Given at Our Court at Whitehall, this Nine and twentieth day of December 1675. in the Seven and twentieth year of Our Reign.

God save the King.

However he quickly back-tracked somewhat, due to pressure from business owners, and two days before the ban was due to come into effect the proclamation was watered down. The coffee shop owners said that they were very sorry that people had been saying nasty things about him in their premises, and that it would never happen again. Oh, and they would all swear oaths of allegiance to him. This seems to have done the trick:

Whereas His Majesty by His Royal Proclamation bearing date the 29th day of December last, upon the Reasons therein contained, did Command and Require all manner of persons, from and after the Tenth day of this instant January, to forbear to Sell or Vtter by Retail (to be spent within their respective Houses) any Coffee, Chocolate, Tea or Sherbett, and did give Directions to His Justices of the Peace, and the Chief Magistrates (within their respective Counties, Cities and Towns Corporate) not to grant any new Licences to that purpose, and to revoke Licences formerly granted.

And whereas since the issuing forth of the said Proclamation, several Retailers of the said Liquors, by their humble Petition on the behalf of them­selves and other Retaylers, did humbly Represent to His Majesty, That there are great quantities of Coffee and Tea at present in their hands, for which the Duties are already paid; besides what are already Shipped in parts beyond the Seas for England, and cannot be Remanded without great loss to the Owners thereof. And further, thereby, (confessing the former Miscarriages and Abuses committed in such Coffee-Houses, and expressing their true Sorrow for the same, and promising their utmost Care and Endeavour to prevent the like, for such time as they shall be permitted to Retail the said Liquors in their respective Houses) did humbly Beseech His Majesty, That He would be Graciously pleased to give them some further time for the Vending of the said Commodities, which would otherwise lie upon their hands.

And did further Offer, That if they might be permitted to continue to Retail the said Liquors (within their respective Houses) they would not onely take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, but also enter into Recognizances to His Majesty respectively, at the Sessions of the Peace to be holden in the respective Counties, Cities and Liberties where their Houses are to be.

It wasn’t just King Charles who had it in for coffee houses. As noted above, these were essentially male preserves that both helped strengthen even further the “old boys networks” and also took them away from their wives and partners. One (or possibly several, the authorship is unknown, just stated as “A well-willer”) woman was sufficiently irked by this that in 1674 she published The Women’s Petition Against Coffee.4 In it she satirically attempts to get men to shun coffee largely on the basis that it, ahem, impairs their performance:

That since ’tis Reckon’d amongst the Glories of our Native Country, To be A Paradise for Women: The same in our Apprehensions can consist in nothing more than the brisk Activity of our men, who in former Ages were justly esteemed the Ablest Performers in Christendome; But to our unspeakable Grief, we find of late a very sensible Decay of that true Old English Vigour; our Gallants being every way so Frenchified, that they are become meer Cock-sparrows, fluttering things that come on Sa sa, with a world of Fury, but are not able to stand to it, and in the very first Charge fall down flat before us. Never did Men wear greater Breeches, or carry less in them of any Mettle whatsoever.

There was a glorious Dispensation, ’twas surely in the Golden Age, when Lusty Ladds of seven or eight hundred years old, Got Sons and Daughters; and we have read, how a Prince of Spain was forced to make a Law, that Men should not Repeat the Grand Kindness to their Wives, above NINE times in a night: But Alas! Alas! Those forwards Days are gone, The dull Lubbers want a Spur now, rather than a Bridle: being so far from doing any works of Supererregation that we find them not capable of performing those Devoirs which their Duty, and our Expectations Exact.

The Occasion of which Insufferable Disaster, after a serious Enquiry, and Discussion of the Point by the Learned of the Faculty, we can Attribute to nothing more than the Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE, which Riffling Nature of her Choicest Treasures, and Drying up the Radical Moisture, has so Eunucht our Husbands, and Crippled our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent, as Age, and as unfruitful as those Desarts [sic] whence that unhappy Berry is said to be brought.

For the continual sipping of this pittiful drink is enough to bewitch Men of two and twenty, and tie up the Codpice-point without a Charm. It renders them that use it as Lean as Famine, as Rivvel’d as Envy, or an old meager Hagg over-ridden by an Incubus. They come from it with nothing moist but their snotty Noses, nothing stiffe but their Joints, nor standing but their Ears: They pretend ’twill keep them Waking, but we find by scurvy Experience, they sleep quietly enough after it.

A Betrothed Queen might trust her self a bed with one of them, without the nice Caution of a Sword between them: nor can all the Art we use revive them from this Lethargy, so unfit they are for Action, that like young Train-band-men when called upon Duty, their Amunition [sic] is wanting; peradventure they Present, but cannot give Fire, or at least do but flash in the pan, instead of doing Execution.

Despite these challenges coffee houses survived, and not only survived, they thrived. One could write a book (or several) about their impact upon society, but just in England alone they helped lead to the creation of the Royal Society and the modern insurance industry though Lloyds of London, which began life in Edward Lloyd’s coffee house. Jonathan’s Coffee House performed a similar service for securities. Brokers excluded from the Royal Exchange gathered in coffeehouses; John Castaing posted prices of stocks and commodities there in 1698. Eventually the activity helped form the London Stock Exchange.

In my final piece I will explore how coffee grew over the centuries that follow to become a daily staple in our homes and on our high streets.

If all this is making you thirsty, here’s a previous piece we’ve had on making the perfect brew – well, 17th-century style anyway:

Subscribe now

It is often the case when I write these pieces that I discover that incredibly familiar things are either much older than I expected (for instance, drinking straws) or much younger (French fries). Coffee falls into that latter category, somewhat to my surprise, as it has basically always been potentially available in the West, and didn’t need the Colombian Exchange to happen before we could start pouring it down our throats.

Coffee was, it seems, wholly unknown to the ancient Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. Or was it? We have this line from Plutarch, writing about the Spartans:

τῶν δὲ σιτίων ἐνδοξότατος ἦν ὁ μέλας ζωμός

Among their foods, the black broth was the most renowned

The English traveller and writer Sir Henry Blount (1602 - 1682) suggested that this broth could indeed be coffee:

They have another drink not good at meat,2 called Cauphe, made of a Berry as big as a small Bean, dried in a Furnace, and beat to Pouder [sic], of a Soot-colour, in taste a little bitterish, that they seeth and drink as hot as may be endured … it is thought to be the old black broth used so much by the Lacedemonians…

I have to say I find Sir Henry’s suggestion wholly fanciful. I can’t believe that the Spartans started their day with a cup of Joe and there aren’t more obvious, tangible, records of them doing so. Similarly given how coffee tends to enmesh itself into every society it encounters then why were the Greeks and Romans not sipping on Java? The general consensus is that this “black broth” was probably some kind of concoction made from pig’s blood, not the kind of thing that I would like to face first thing in the morning.

Besides (handily for me) we know exactly how coffee was discovered and it took place nearly a thousand years after Plutarch was writing. The story takes place in Ethiopia in the 9th century and brilliantly it involves dancing goats:

A young goatherd named Kaldi noticed one day that his goats, whose deportment up to that time had been irreproachable, were abandoning themselves to the most extravagant prancings. The venerable buck, ordinarily so dignified and solemn, bounded about like a young kid. Kaldi attributed this foolish gaiety to certain fruits of which the goats had been eating with delight.

The story goes that the poor fellow had a heavy heart; and in the hope of cheering himself up a little, he thought he would pick and eat of the fruit. The experiment succeeded marvelously. He forgot his troubles and became the happiest herder in happy Arabia. When the goats danced, he gaily made himself one of the party, and entered into their fun with admirable spirit.

One day, a monk chanced to pass by and stopped in surprise to find a ball going on. A score of goats were executing lively pirouettes like a ladies’ chain,3 while the buck solemnly balanced, and the herder went through the figures of an eccentric pastoral dance.

The astonished monk inquired the cause of this saltatorial madness; and Kaldi told him of his precious discovery.

Now, this poor monk had a great sorrow; he always went to sleep in the middle of his prayers; and he reasoned that Mohammed without doubt was revealing this marvelous fruit to him to overcome his sleepiness.

Piety does not exclude gastronomic instincts. Those of our good monk were more than ordinary; because he thought of drying and boiling the fruit of the herder. This ingenious concoction gave us coffee. Immediately all the monks of the realm made use of the drink, because it encouraged them to pray and, perhaps, also because it was not disagreeable.

I read a version of this story more than 45 years ago as a kid and I absolutely loved it4 – people drink coffee today because of a bunch of dancing goats! The younger me would have been saddened to learn, however, that it is not true at all. The first mention of Kaldi’s name occurs in the passage that I quoted above, which comes from William H. Ukers’s 1922 book All About Coffee which claims that it has been taken from an earlier French source (though I have not been able to track that down, and fear that he might simply have made this up).

It seems that this is a late 19th or early 20th century version of a similar story from 1671 in the book Discorso della salutifera beuanda cahue, ò vero Cafe’ del sig. D. Fausto Nairone Banesio maronita trasportato dalla latina, alla lingua italiana da Er. Frederic. Vegilin di Claerbergen Leouardiense Frisone (Discourse on the healthy drink of the Cahue, or true Cafe, by Mr. D. Fausto Nairone Banesio, Maronite, translated from Latin into Italian by Er. Frederic. Vegilin of Claerbergen, Leouardiense Frisian.):

…it must be said that this drink called Cahue, or Cafè, was discovered by accidental experience, as will be clear from what is about to be narrated.

For, according to the common tradition of the Orientals, a certain keeper of camels — or, as others say, of goats — complained to the monks of a certain monastery in the region of Ayaman, which is Arabia Felix, that his herds, not merely once in the week but throughout the whole night, were staying awake and leaping about beyond their usual habit. The prior of that monastery, led by curiosity, judged that this must come from the pastures. Carefully examining, together with his companion, the place where the goats or camels had been feeding on the night when they were leaping about, he found there certain little shrubs, on whose fruits, or rather berries, they had been feeding.

He wished to test for himself the powers of this fruit, and so, boiling them in water, he soon found by experience that the drink made from them aroused wakefulness at night. From this it came about that he ordered it to be used daily by the monks for their night vigils, so that they might be readier to attend the prayers of the night. And because, from this daily drink, they experienced day by day various and very healthful effects for human well-being and good bodily condition, this new kind of drink, by chance and by the marvelous providence of God, gradually spread through that whole region, then in the course of time through other provinces and kingdoms of the East, with such wholesomeness that it reached even western regions, and especially European lands.

Therefore they say that the first discoverers of this drink were the aforementioned Christian monks, having learned it from the keepers — so to speak, the nurses — of goats or camels. The Turks themselves, as they are generally accustomed to do, admit this; and in gratitude to them, and from devotion of spirit, they pour out prayers for them, especially those Turks who are the preparers and distributors of this drink. For these men have their own daily prayers for Sciadli and Aidhrous, because they assert that these were the names of the aforementioned monks.

A great abundance of these little shrubs is found in Arabia Felix. They bear fruits like cacao, but split lengthwise like the stone of a date, and they are divided two by two within the same husk.

Interestingly this version changes the monks from being Muslims to Christians (possibly due to the biases of the author) however it seems that this tale is a version of an even older one. عمدة الصفوة في حل القهوة (which transliterates to ʿUmdat al-ṣafwa fī ḥill al-qahwa and roughly means “The mainstay of the elite concerning the permissibility of coffee.”) was written by Zayn al-Dīn al-Jazīrī (also Abd al-Qādir al-Jazīrī) around 1558 (but likely drawing on earlier works) and here the story is as follows:

Other accounts of coffee’s origin exist, but they are not equally reliable. One such account, reported by Nairon, says that a camel driver - or, according to others, a goatherd - complained to monks in Arabia that his camels or goats remained awake all night on certain days of the week and leaped about contrary to their usual behaviour.5 The prior or abbot of the monastery, curious to know why these animals were so wakeful and lively, observed them with a companion at the place where this happened. Finding that they had been eating the fruit of certain shrubs, he boiled the fruit in water and discovered that the drink excited wakefulness. He ordered his monks to drink it so that they might more easily attend the divine office at night. Then, when the monks found from daily use that the beverage had several good effects on health, it spread gradually through the country and then through the provinces of the East.

al-Jazīrī is very skeptical of this story (and also notes that it has been appropriated by the Christians):

The author gives little credit to this story. Nairon cites no authority for it; he merely calls it the common tradition of the Orientals. In plain terms, that means that it is a tale current among common people, not a report on which sensible persons should rely. Moreover, it is easy to see that the tale is a fable based on the true origin already reported by Abd al-Qadir from earlier authorities. Eastern Christians appear to have been pleased to claim honor from it. The prior or abbot and his companion are, in this interpretation, Jamal al-Din al-Dhabhani and Muhammad al-Hadrami; the monks are the dervishes who spent the night in prayer with them.

There is another reason to reject the monastery version. Nairon cannot sustain the claim that such monks existed in Arabia Felix at the relevant time. There may have been monks there before Muhammad, for history teaches that there were Christians as well as idolaters in Arabia in that earlier period. But after Muhammad, Arabia Felix became Muslim. Nor can the monks in question be the monks of Mount Sinai, for Mount Sinai lies in Arabia Petraea, not in Arabia Felix. If coffee had been introduced in the age of such monks, ancient Arab and Persian historians and poets would surely have mentioned it.

So where does coffee come from? The beans that are ground for us each day come from two species of plant – Coffea arabica (better known as arabica) and Coffea canephora, (aka robusta). Recent genomic work has found that arabica is the result of an ancient (between 350,000 and 610,000 years ago), natural, hybridisation between C. canephora and C. eugenioides in or near Ethiopian forests and it seems likely that the first humans to consume coffee dwelt in the same woods. Due to a lack of written records it seems likely that people were partaking of the black stuff (or, more likely, chewing on the berries) for hundreds or even thousands of years before the first accounts that we can find today.

For the earliest history of coffee embedding itself in society we turn once again to al-Jazīrī who in the following passages is talking about the mid-1400s to the mid-1500s:

The first great spread of coffee, according to the report the author transmits, took place in Yemen. Its early appearance is connected with the shaykh, the imam, the learned and saintly man Jamal al-Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Said, known as al-Dhabhani [died around 1470], so called from Dhabhan, a town in Yemen. He was attached to Aden, where he held a significant legal office and gave fatwas. At some point he travelled to Persia. There he saw men from his own country drinking coffee. At first he did not inquire closely into the reason for their practice or the benefit they drew from it.

When he returned to Aden, his health was disturbed. Remembering what he had seen, he tried coffee and found benefit in it. Beyond the restoration of health, he noticed certain special properties: it dispelled heaviness caused by vapors rising to the head; it gladdened and enlivened the spirit; it brought joy; it helped loosen the bowels; and above all it prevented sleep without causing the discomfort that often accompanies sleeplessness. This last property was of special importance to him. He had turned to devotion, and he associated with Sufis or dervishes. He and they took coffee together at the beginning of the night and spent the night until morning in prayer, remembrance, and other exercises of strict devotion. It gave them freedom of mind and alertness of spirit in exercises that others had not been able to sustain in the same way.

Because Jamal al-Din al-Dhabhani was a man of position and reputation, his example gave coffee credit in Aden. Soon he and his dervishes were not the only ones who used it. Men of the law who loved reading adopted it; artisans who needed to gain time for their work adopted it; travellers who had to journey by night in order to avoid the heat of the day adopted it; and finally the whole city of Aden adopted it. Those who did not need to keep vigil, or who did not seek wakefulness, drank it by day in order to profit from its other benefits.

If this account is accurate, then we can date the start of the spread of coffee in the Yemen (from where it would then expand across the Islamic world, into Western Europe and across the globe) fairly accurately, as the accounts relating to Jamāl al-Dīn al-Dhabḥānī are generally agreed to be relating to the 1450s, and it would seem that he was pivotal in the development of the drink:

This, then, is the first origin of the widespread public use of coffee. It had existed before, for there were people who drank it without ill effect, and perhaps without clearly understanding its advantages. But it remained obscure until Jamal al-Din al-Dhabhani - a discerning man capable of recognising the excellence of a precious drink - brought it into public favour. He was joined in this by Muhammad al-Hadrami, another weighty doctor from Hadramawt, who drank it and supported its use.

Coffee then spread to Mecca, but it wasn’t long before it ran into a few problems as (once again)6 al-Jazīrī recounts:

In the year 917 AH, corresponding to 1511 CE, coffee suffered a fierce blow at Mecca. Khayr Beg, governor of Mecca under Qansuh, the sultan of Egypt, was leaving the sanctuary after evening prayer when he saw a circle of men seated there with a lantern, drinking coffee in preparation for keeping vigil through the night and reciting praises connected with the birth of Muhammad. He was surprised to see people drinking in that form in the very sanctuary, which Muslims so greatly venerate. Since he had not yet heard of coffee or of the way it was taken, he first believed that they were drinking wine.

When the coffee-drinkers noticed that the governor was observing them, they put out their light, which increased his curiosity. He sent some of his men to them and had them brought before him to account for their action. His astonishment grew when he saw that they had a pot and cups. What they told him - that the drink was common in Mecca and publicly sold in places where people gathered to take it - did not satisfy him, especially when he learned that in such places people also played, sang, and danced. All this led him to suspect that coffee intoxicated; and even if it did not intoxicate, he judged that it gave occasion for actions intolerable in Islam. He therefore forbade the men to drink it further, ordered them to disperse to their homes, and commanded that such assemblies should not be held again.

Khayr Beg didn’t want to be seen to be banning the drink simply on a whim, so he took steps to ensure that there was a formal basis for its prohibition:

Early the next morning Khayr Beg summoned the officers of justice, the most famous doctors of the law from the orthodox schools, several devout men, and many notables of Mecca. When they had assembled, he related what he had seen and the disorder that he had learned coffee was causing in the city. He added that he was resolved to interrupt its course, but that he did not wish to act without consulting them. He had called them in order to communicate his design and ask their opinion.

In order for the drink to be banned, it had to be proved harmful to health. Luckily there were some people on hand willing to make that case:

There were then at Mecca two Persian brothers, both doctors, learned in logic and Muslim scholastic theology, and also practicing medicine. They were not, however, very skilled in medicine, and one of them had already written against coffee, perhaps because it took away from them many patients. Since they were considered the leading physicians of Mecca, Khayr Beg, urged also by his imam and disposed to suppress coffee entirely, called them and explained the matter.

The two physicians gave the same opinion. They asserted that the bunn of the husks, from which the Meccans prepared coffee, was cold and dry, and that by these two qualities it was very harmful to health.

Most of the doctors, through weakness or complaisance toward the governor, gave their opinion orally in conformity with that of the two physicians and their supporters. Only one defended coffee with warmth. Although he was a professor of theology and jurisprudence and had the authority of mufti, the false zealots, unable to answer his arguments, heaped insults upon him and treated him as unfaithful to his religion because of his firmness.

The condemnation of coffee therefore passed. It was declared a drink forbidden by the law. The sentence was drawn up at length, in emphatic terms, to express the triumph supposedly won by extirpating the abuse that had slipped in. It was signed by several doctors, and the governor made it into a dispatch and sent it to Sultan Qansuh. At the same time, Khayr Beg had proclaimed in the public squares and crossroads of Mecca not only the prohibition of selling coffee, but the prohibition of drinking it, whether in public or in private, under penalty of the punishment incurred by those who violate the Muslim religion.

The crackdown then began:

In execution of this prohibition, the officers of justice forced the coffeehouses to close and searched out all the coffee they could find - especially the husk coffee used there - both in the coffeehouses and in the merchants’ stores, and burned it. Authority prevented coffee from being taken in public, and some were punished for contravening the ban. But Khayr Beg could not prevent private use. Many who drank it did not believe they were violating the law, because the condemnation had not passed unanimously in the assembly. They said that the doctor who opposed the condemnation had no weaker reasons for approving coffee than the others had for condemning it. Nevertheless, when one Muslim was caught drinking it at home, he was severely punished and paraded through the public squares on an ass as an ignominious example.

Luckily for morning routines of billions of people today, it didn’t hold:7

The governor’s rigorous prohibition did not last long. Sultan Qansuh received his dispatch and did not approve his indiscreet zeal. On the contrary, he was astonished that Khayr Beg had dared to have coffee condemned in Mecca while people in Cairo found it beneficial and while Cairo had doctors more capable than those of Mecca of deciding whether Muslims might use it. He therefore ordered him to revoke the ban. As for the disorders, he should use his authority to prevent them. The sultan added that if a thing were to be forbidden merely because it was used in a manner offensive to religion, then one would have to include among forbidden things even the water of the well of Zamzam if someone drank it in an irreligious way.

And things didn’t end well for the governor either:

Khayr Beg had the displeasure of seeing his high-handed undertaking fail. The people of Mecca even believed themselves avenged, for the following year his successor arrived with orders to make him account for his extortions. He was beaten to death while being forced to reveal where his money was; and his brother, to avoid the torture, killed him himself.

Nor for those two doctors:

The two Persian physicians who had contributed most to the prohibition of coffee also came to a bad end. Seeing that they had lost their credit in Mecca and were regarded only with contempt and indignation, they banished themselves and withdrew to Cairo. Some time afterward Sultan Selim I, emperor of the Turks, entered Cairo after the conquest of Egypt. The two men were convicted of making imprecations against him and were put to death.

Coffee was now firmly established in the Islamic world, and in my next piece I’ll explore how it spread into Europe, and what happened when it did.

Subscribe now

The answer may surprise you – it could be argued that, astonishingly, we had the fax machine1 before we had the French fry – but let’s start by delving into some of the myths about their origin, before trying to get to the truth of the matter. It is often said that Thomas Jefferson, who lived in Paris between 1784 and 1789, introduced the fry to the Americas sometime around the start of the 19th century. Indeed some people claim that he actually invented this famous dish.2 Jefferson loved his food, and brought back many French recipes upon his return to the USA, written in that language, some in his own hand. It is believed that some, or possibly all, of these recipes were dictated by Adrien Petit, Jefferson’s maître d’hôtel (which negates the idea that Jefferson was the inventor of them). The one that is of significance to us refers to “pommes de terre frites à cru, en petites tranches” – definitely fried potatoes, but, crucially “en petites tranches”, in little slices. These were not fries, but rather the earlier form of fried potato which could be cooked more quickly and in less oil (but also had a greater tendency to both stick to themselves and the surface of the pan).

There is stronger evidence that this is how Jefferson ate his fried potatoes from The Virginia House-wife, a recipe book published in 1824 by Mary Randolph, kinswoman to the great man:

Peel large potatoes, slice them about a quarter of an inch thick, or cut them in shavings round and round, as you would peal a lemon; dry them well in a clean cloth, and fry them in lard or dripping. Take care that your fat and frying-pan are quite clean; put it on a quick fire, watch it, and as soon as the lard boils and is still, put in the slices of potatoes, and keep moving them till they are crisp; take them up and lay them to drain on a sieve; send them up with very little salt sprinkled on them.

Where then can we find the first reference to fries being served in England or America? Some might suggest that the answer might lie with great friend of Histories Charles Dickens! In The Tale of Two Cities (1859) we have the following line:

Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil…

Given that ‘chips’ is the British word for ‘fries’ this seems pretty compelling perhaps, but the words that follow it belie this theory. These potatoes were cooked in “...some reluctant drops of oil” – this was not a vat of fat in which batons were cooked, rather a shallow pan where slices could be fried in the bare minimum of that expensive oil. There is further evidence that chips at this time didn’t mean fries, but rather something more akin to crisps (aka potato chips) from a recipe entitled ‘Potato Chips’ in The English Cookery Book: uniting a good style with economy...,3 edited by J.H. Walsh and published in the same year:

Wash and peel some potatoes, then pare them, ribbon-like, into long lengths; put them into cold water to remove the strong potatoe [sic] flavour; drain them, and throw them into a pan with a little butter, and fry them a light brown. Take them out of the pan, and place them close to the fire on a sieve lined with clean writing paper to dry, before they are served up. A little salt may be sprinkled over them.

Trying to find the first reference to proper baton fries in English has been a surprisingly lengthy task, and I do not claim that my findings are wholly robust, but nonetheless, here we go. I started by going back further in time, to The Cook’s Oracle4 published in 1817, where there are numerous fried potato recipes, but, sadly, none that are fry-like:

Cold Potatoes fried.—(No. 102.)

Put a bit of clean dripping into a frying-pan: when it is melted, slice in your potatoes with a little pepper and salt; put them on the fire; keep stirring them: when they are quite hot, they are ready.

Obs.—This is a very good way of re-dressing potatoes

Potatoes fried in Slices or Shavings.—(No. 104.)

Peel large potatoes; slice them about a quarter of an inch thick, or cut them in shavings round and round, as you would peel a lemon; dry them well in a clean cloth, and fry them in lard or dripping. Take care that your fat and frying-pan are quite clean; put it on a quick fire, watch it, and as soon as the lard boils, and is still, put in the slices of potato, and keep moving them till they are crisp. Take them up, and lay them to drain on a sieve: send them up with a very little salt sprinkled over them.

There is even a recipe for whole fried potatoes:

Potatoes fried whole.—(No. 105.)

When nearly boiled enough, as directed in No. 102, put them into a stew-pan with a bit of butter, or some nice clean beef-drippings; shake them about often (for fear of burning them), till they are brown and crisp; drain them from the fat.

Obs.—It will be an elegant improvement to the last three receipts, previous to frying or broiling the potatoes, to flour them and dip them in the yelk [sic] of an egg, and then roll them in fine-sifted bread-crumbs; they will then deserve to be called POTATOES FULL DRESSED.5

As a bit of a change from all of those fried slices of potato, I also found an early recipe for what I think is best described as a potato hash:6

To Fry Potatoes for Breakfast or Supper.—No meat or bacon is required to be eaten with these; in Somersetshire it forms the only breakfast dish of the peasantry, many of the middle classes, and is frequently seen at the tables of the wealthy, throughout the year. If potatoes are left from dinner, these will do; if not, boil some the day before frying, but if overboiled [sic] they will not be good; when cold, chop them very fine, as fine as for suet, but not mash them; sprinkle a little salt over; for a vegetable-dish full of potatoes, have in a frying-pan about two tablespoonfuls of dripping or bacon-fat, made boiling hot; put in the potatoes, stir them about well; when hot through, put them together with the knife or spoon (but not press them) into about the size of the dish they are to be served on; now let them brown for ten minutes; then, when brown, place the dish on the top, and turn them over; serve them hot, with hot plates.

Eventually I found this in an 1883 recipe book published by the Chicago Herald Cooking School:

Could these be modern French fries? The description is a bit unclear, it may be that these are simply another iteration of the thin sliced strips previously described. Not good enough, I fear. A bit later, in 1894’s Practical Gastronomy7 by Charles Herman Senn we get a recipe for straw fries:

Very thin strips of potato, shape and size of matches, fried a light brown colour in clarified butter

At last, in Auguste Mario’s 1910 book Easy French Cookery: Containing over 300 Economical and Attractive Recipes from a Celebrated Chef’s Note-Book we have the following which is unequivocally a description of fries as we know them!

234. FRENCH FRIED POTATOES (Pommes frites). Cut some potatoes in strips of about 1½ inch long and ½ inch thick, and cook as for Straw Potatoes.

But this does seem shockingly late; could we go earlier?8 We could, and we can, and we shall, because in Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book from 18809 we have this:

Pare small uncooked potatoes. Divide them in halves, and each half in three pieces. Put in the frying basket and cook in boiling fat for ten minutes. Drain, and dredge with salt. Serve hot with chops or beefsteak. Two dozen pieces can be fried at one time.

Finally, definitively French fries in an 19th-century English-language source! There may well be earlier references that I have been unable to track down, and, of course, people were certainly eating fries in the Anglophone world before anyone thought to capture that fact in writing, but it seems pretty certain that they are something that has only been around there for less than 200 years. Today global consumption is in the ranges of 20-30 million tonnes of the things with the average American eating around 58 pounds (26 kilos) of fries. You may expect me to say that I will be having chips for tea tonight, but honestly, after all this research, I think that I am going to take a break from them for a while…

Subscribe now

As with crisps we have a very clear story for the origin of the fry. In 1984 the Belgium journalist and historian Jo Gérard published an article describing how he had found a family manuscript dating back to 1781 which described how, in winter, the good people of Namur would fry up potatoes in the absence of fish:

Les habitants de Namur, Andenne et Dinant ont l’usage de pêcher dans la Meuse du menu fretin et de le frire pour en améliorer leur ordinaire, surtout chez les pauvres gens. Mais lorsque le gel saisit les cours d’eau et que la pêche y devient hasardeuse, les habitants découpent les pommes de terre en forme de petits poissons et les passent à la friture comme ceux-ci. Il me revient que cette pratique remonte déjà à plus de cent années

The inhabitants of Namur, Andenne and Dinant are accustomed to catching small fish in the Meuse and frying them to improve their ordinary fare, especially among poor people. But when frost seizes the waterways and fishing there becomes hazardous, the inhabitants cut potatoes in the shape of little fish and fry them like that. It comes back to me that this practice already goes back more than a hundred years.

How lovely, my life is made so much easier when something has a clear origin story! Except no one else seems to have ever seen this manuscript and it remains unfindable to this day. Many people, particularly French writers on the matter, suspect that he made it up as a means of establishing Belgium primacy for a dish which has become inexorably linked to their national culture.

So what is the real story? Well, it turns out that actually fries were invented by Teresa of Ávila (better known as Saint Teresa, 1515-1582) or at least that is one of the myths that one might stumble across online. It seems pretty clear that she was eating potatoes (at a fairly early date in Europe) but we can’t say for sure if they were fried, nor what shape they took had such frying occurred. There is the text of a letter that she sent on the 19th of December 1577 to María de San José which includes the passage:

Jesús sea con vuestra reverencia siempre, mi hija. La suya recibí, y con ella las patatas y el pipote y siete limones. Todo vino muy bueno; mas cuesta tanto el traer, que no hay para qué me envíe vuestra reverencia más cosa ninguna, que es conciencia.

Jesus be with you always, my daughter. I received your letter, and with it the potatoes, the barrel, and seven lemons. All the wine was very good; but it costs so much to bring it, that there’s no need for you to send me anything else, for that is conscience.

And an earlier letter, from 26th of January of the same year, shows that she both ate and enjoyed potatoes, but, alas, still has no description of how they were cooked:

Dios se lo pague, mi hija, amén, amén, amén; y las patatas, que vinieron a un tiempo, que tengo harto mala gana de comer, y muy buenas llegaron; y las naranjas, que regocijaron a algunas enfermas.

May God recompense you for it all, my daughter. Amen, amen, amen. Also for the potatoes which came at a time when I had no appetite, but arrived in good condition, and the oranges, which were a treat to some of the sisters who were out of health.

I have to confess that I have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole attempting to find the earliest reference to fried potatoes. A possible contender is a passage from Cautiverio feliz, y razón individual de las guerras dilatadas del reino de Chile (Happy Captivity, and Particular Account of the Protracted Wars of the Kingdom of Chile) which was written by Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán (1607–1682) sometime in the late 17th century, but not published until 1863. There is no mention of fries in the original edition, but a 2001 critical edition of the book contains the following passage, relating to an event that took place in 1629:

…porque las mujeres casadas del presidio y sus maridos, cual envió la sopa todavía con muchos huevos fritos por encima, cual el guisado de pescado seco, y otros, el marisco de choros secos machas ostiones y otros géneros; unas enviaban las papas fritas y guisados, otras los porotos y garbanzos, y el capitán y cabo que tenían dispuestos otros cinco o seis potajes, y por postre unos buñuelos bien sazonados con azúcar y canela.

…because the married women of the garrison and their husbands sent various dishes: one sent soup still topped with many fried eggs, another a stew of dried fish, and others shellfish of dried mussels, clams, oysters, and other kinds; some sent fried potatoes and stews, others beans and chickpeas, and the captain and the corporal had another five or six dishes prepared, and for dessert some fritters well seasoned with sugar and cinnamon.

If this is correct, then Chile can lay claim to being the earliest known location of fried potatoes, but they were unlikely to be the fries that we know today. Early fried potatoes were cut into slices, partly because it enabled them to be cooked faster and more significantly it used a lot less fat or oil. It is easy to forget, living in the time that we do where vegetable oil is probably the cheapest available foodstuff in terms of cost per calorie, that fat and oil used to be much scarcer and more expensive. Poor people would have cooked with animal fats, for sure, but only in small quantities. It would have been highly unusual to have a sufficient amount to fill a pot large enough to cook fries in, and even if you could there was no real reason to do so when you could sauté slices instead.

Recipes such as this one from 1811’s Le Cuisinier impérial, ou l’art de faire la cuisine et la pâtisserie pour toutes les fortunes by A. T. Raimbault are typical of the period:

Pommes de terre frites : Vous les pelez toutes crues et les coupez en tranches

Fried potatoes: Peel them all while raw and cut them into slices

It certainly didn’t make a lot of sense to have a large pot of oil that was used at home only to cook dinner for your family. If you were into mass catering however, things were a little bit different. While oil was relatively costly, potatoes were cheap, took little preparation, and could be swiftly fried en-masse. Towards the end of the 18th century fried potatoes became a popular street food in France, most notably in Paris in the theatre districts and around the Pont Neuf. The earliest written references I can find about the practice come from the 1830s, such as this one from Le Gastronome, 28 November 1830:

C’est admirable ! à voir le peuple de Paris et ses pommes de terre frites au soleil, et ses marchandes de harengs tous chauds, et ses poires cuites au four, on croirait qu’il vit pour manger, et cependant c’est tout au plus s’il mange pour vivre

It’s admirable! Seeing the people of Paris with their sun-fried potatoes, their vendors selling piping hot herring, and their baked pears, you’d think they lived to eat, and yet, at best, they eat to live

And it is from the same publication, less than a year later (28th April 1831), that we crucially find a description of potatoes being cut into batons, rather than simply slices:

Nobles pommes de terre frites, chères au comité de salut public, j’admire vos diverses métamorphoses ! D’abord, c’est l’enveloppe terreuse que râcle un couteau ébrêché... ce ne sont pas des beignets : on coupe les longues dans leur longueur, les rondes dans leur rondeur, puis dans cet état de crudité elles vont pêle-mêle au fond de la tôle noircie changer de goût et de couleur.

Noble fried potatoes, beloved of the Committee of Public Safety, how I admire your many transformations! First, your earthy covering is scraped away with a nicked knife… these are no fritters: the long potatoes are cut lengthwise, the round ones cut into rounds, and then, still raw, they are thrown together into the bottom of a blackened metal pan, where they change both flavour and colour.

Why, almost 200 years ago, was there a movement away from frying sliced potatoes to the batons that we now consider to be French fries? After all, as noted above, thin slices cook more rapidly and in less oil than thicker sticks? There are probably two factors that came into play. The first is that sliced potatoes are, due to their large surface area, much more likely to stick both to each other and to the base of the pan in which they are being cooked. As a result they required more attention and stirring. The second is that it is, as we have all doubtless experienced, very easy to pick up and eat a rectangular stick of fried potato with one’s fingers.

We have a lovely demonstration of this in a lithograph by Honoré Daumier printed in Le Charivari from the 19th February 1842 showing an an actor from the Funambules theatre hustling to the stage door eating what are clearly fries:

The text underneath reads:

... there is a moment that fills you with passion! and in a little while you must be ablaze with love ... and say, Zaphisa [?], share my treasures and my throne; come, come and lose yourself in pleasure and abundance!’ — all while your stomach sounds like fried potatoes!”

So by the mid-19th century we clearly had French fries, as we would consider them, being eaten in France, but what about the Anglophone world? In Part 2 I will be exploring that history, including the claim that Thomas Jefferson introduced French fries to America and the development of that oh-so-British dish,1 fish and chips.

Subscribe now

In my first piece on time I explained how the duodecimal (base 12) system was probably an obvious choice for ancient peoples, rather than the base ten that we might otherwise think is instinctual. The three joints on each of our four fingers allowed for easy tallying up to the number 12, through the tapping of the thumb on the appropriate juncture. This twelve, when splitting both day and night, then logically led to the system of 24 hours with which we are all too familiar. That makes sense, or at least it makes a kind of sense – we can see how it came about. But having done so, what would then have motivated people to break those hours into a collection of sixty minutes? And then, further divide those each of those minutes into sixty seconds? Put simply, where the hell did the number sixty come into all of this?

To answer this question we have to go back a long way. A very long way, more than 5,000 years. The sexagesimal (base 60) system was first used in ancient Mesopotamia in accounting and calculation before, it seems likely, even the first cuneiform writing systems were developed. Quite why the number 60 was chosen is unclear, but it seems as though there are a couple of factors that come into play. The number 60 can be divided by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20, and 30 – in other words one can easily make useful factors from it. Another possible reason is that prior to its adoption both base 10 and base 12 were in use. Rather than select one over the other using base 60 is something of a compromise, being the lowest number that has each of them as a factor.

The system employed wasn’t a pure base 60 system (there were not 60 distinct symbols for the numbers) but to all intents and purposes it was used as one. The numbers were made up of a collection of different cuneiform marks:

Now it may seem to you that this was a cumbersome number system to use, but the Babylonians were incredibly adept at employing it. A clay tablet (with the catchy name YBC-7289) dating back an incredible 3,600-3,800 years shows it being deployed to calculate the square root of 2, accurately, to six decimal places. This has been described as “the greatest known computational accuracy… in the ancient world.” Furthermore the tablet is fairly small and round, and it is thought that it is something a student would have held in their hand – basically the equivalent of a notebook to be used in a lecture. Now without wishing to sound arrogant, I am pretty good at maths (“math” for our American readers) and I could work the same thing out with a pencil and paper, but I wouldn’t find it particularly easy and it would take me some time.

How though did we get from gifted mathematicians using clay tablets to having 60 minutes in an hour today? A key link in this chain is the Greco-Roman mathematician and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 – 160s/170s). He used the ancient Babylonian system of base 60 (likely because of its easy divisibility)1 to subdivide degrees into 60 parts, and thence 60 smaller parts. He describes this in his work Almagest which was translated into Arabic in the 9th century (for use by Arabic astronomers) before being translated into Latin in the 12th century. We know that a Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona existed by about 1175, and in it we have (amongst others) this line:

…ergo, quia iam ostensum est quod chorda AB est cifre et 47 minuta et 8 secunda secundum quantitatem qua diameter est 120, erit chorda AG minus parte una et duobus minutis et 50 secundis secundum quantitatem illam, tertiis pretermissis…

…therefore, since it has already been shown that chord AB is zero and 47 minutes and 8 seconds, according to the scale in which the diameter is 120, chord AG will be less by one part and 2 minutes and 50 seconds on that same scale, the thirds being omitted…

The “minutes” and seconds come from the Latin “partes minutae primae” and “partes minutae secundae” meaning “first diminished parts” and “second diminished parts”. Each of those original phrases got shortened in a different way over time. The first to “minutae” giving us “minutes” and the second, to, you guessed it “secundae” giving us “seconds”. Okay, so Ptolemy was using minutes and seconds, but that was to divide angles and suchlike, not time – who first decided to split up hours in the same manner?

The earliest known person doing so was the Khwarazmian Iranic scholar and polymath Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (c. 973 – c. 1050). We find evidence of this in The Chronology of Ancient Nations (al-Āthār al-bāqiya), written around the year 1,000:

He takes that portion of hours, minutes, seconds, etc. which corresponds in the tables to each of these numbers of great and small cycles

It would, however, be another 400 or so years before such divisions could be practically used in timekeeping because, as we learned in the last piece, early mechanical clocks were simply not that accurate. Not only were they not very good at keeping time, they were also big - they consisted of a drum from which a weight on a rope would hang, that would slowly turn as the weight descended. The game-changer in both clock size and accuracy came with the invention of the spring clock.

We don’t know exactly when this development took place, nor who was responsible for it, but it probably happened around the year 1400, inspired by crossbow-winding technology. The way these new clocks worked is as follows:

• A long strip of steel, the mainspring, would be coiled inside a drum called the barrel

• Winding the clock tightens the spring and stores energy in it

• Stop winding and the spring tries to relax, releasing energy, and turning the barrel

• The barrel then drives the gear train, escapement, and regulator, thus driving the clock hands.

This alone is not enough though: the mainspring doesn’t pull with the same force all of the time. It is at its strongest when it is fully wound, and weakens as it runs down. The earliest spring clocks were inaccurate as a result, but this was resolved with the addition of the fusee. The fusee is a cone-shaped, grooved pulley that is connected to the barrel with a length of chain. When fully wound the chain is at the top of the cone, with the smallest radius, As it gradually winds down the chain descends down the cone on what are effectively larger and larger wheels. The lower pull of the weakened spring is offset by the increased torque multiplier of the larger wheels – think of gears on a bike. It is probably easiest to show this rather than try to explain it further:

And here is another one in a spring-driven machine designed by Leonardo Da Vinci in around 1490:2

The difference that this made to the size of clocks can easily be seen in what is thought to be the oldest surviving spring-clock. This glorious contraption was made for Philip the Good,3 Duke of Burgundy, in around 1430:

The sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this clock still only had an hour hand; whilst minutes were known about at this point, the clocks lacked the accuracy to measure them properly. It also didn’t really matter as such measurements had no real utility value – people were not using time measured that accurately to order their lives. The earliest reference we have to a clock with minutes shown on a dial is from an illustration of one in a manuscript by Paulus Almanus in 1475 but this still lacked the all-important hand. The generally accepted first instance of this is a clock made in 1577 by Jost Bürgi to allow for precise astronomical observations. Such devices were rarities however; well into the 17th century town clocks in England would only have an hour hand.

Weirdly the second hand may have come first, as one can be found on a clock dating from 1560, but rather than being a meaningful indicator of time, it would simply spin around the dial as a ready way of seeing if the clock was actually working or not. Again, even with these innovations the clocks were not accurate enough to meaningfully display such small divisions of time. Really accurate time measurement came with the invention of the pendulum clock by Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 1695) which happened on Christmas Day 1656.4 Galileo had come up with the idea of using a swinging bob to measure time some years earlier, but it was Huygens who came up with the mathematical formula that related pendulum length to the duration of the swing. Specifically he calculated that for a one-second movement the pendulum had to be 39.1 inches (approximately 99.4 cm) long.

In the centuries that followed numerous inventions drove both the accuracy and miniaturisation of clocks, with both things famously combining to allow for the correct calculation of longitude. There was however still something about the way people measured time that was very different from today. Okay, perhaps “measured” is the wrong term; “set” would be better. Until very recently in historical terms, time would vary from one town to the next. The reason for this was simple – each would set their clocks to the solar noon of their location. People wanted to know what the accurate time was for where they lived, they operated by local time. Time shifts by around four minutes per degree of longitude, so in my home town of Oxford, roughly 1.25° west of London, the solar time is around five minutes behind that of our capital city. To this day the bell “Great Tom” in Christ Church college (which you may remember was cast from the bronze of the Osney Abbey bell) chimes each evening at 9:05, respecting the original local time.

The fact that different towns, even ones fairly short distances apart, had different times didn’t really matter until the middle of the 19th century. If you were to meet someone at noon, then obviously it would be noon where they lived, and the fact that this might have been a few minutes earlier or later than the place you had come from was a trivial concern. What changed things was the introduction of both the telegraph and particularly the railways. If you were writing the timetable, would you set the time of a train’s arrival to the time from the place it had come from or the place that it had arrived at? Choose the first and people would be confused by the arrival time being out of kilter with the local clocks; choose the second and the duration of the train journey would be wrong. In Britain in the 1840s the railway companies began using Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the standard across their networks (my local train company, Great Western Railway, did so in November 1840, for example).

This standardisation of time was very much a thing driven by private enterprise, the railway networks and telegraph companies, rather than the government. Just because they were all using GMT didn’t mean that the locals were. This meant that there were decades where one had to think for a moment when deciding when to leave the house to catch a train. The time on the timetable would of course be GMT but that of the one on your mantelpiece could be showing the local time. Gradually convenience led to increasing adoption of GMT across the board, but it wasn’t until 1880, with the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880 which required that expressions of time in Acts, deeds, and legal instruments were to be read as Greenwich Mean Time across all of Great Britain, that standard time was required by law.

The next challenge was international in nature. Standardising time within one country was hard enough, but global navigation, telegraphy, and commerce required agreement on a prime meridian and on a shared system for counting time. This culminated in the International Meridian Conference held in Washington in October 1884 where delegates were gathered specifically to consider a common prime meridian and a universal day. The conference adopted the meridian of Greenwich as the prime meridian for longitude and recommended a universal day beginning at midnight at Greenwich. Why Greenwich? Well in part it was due to Britain’s global power at the time, but also because of its maritime and scientific clout. The majority of the world’s shipping already reckoned longitude from Greenwich so this approach was pretty much the de facto standard before it was formally agreed.

The final piece of standardisation concerned the units of time themselves. For a long time, the second was effectively tied to the Earth’s rotation via the mean solar day: 1 second was treated as 1/86,400 of a day. But astronomers and physicists discovered that the Earth’s rotation is not perfectly uniform – basically not all days are quite the same length. Before 1960 the second had been defined as a fraction of the mean solar day, but irregularities in Earth rotation made this unsatisfactory. In 1960 the second was redefined astronomically using the tropical year 1900, however this was still not accurate enough for the modern age. In 1967, the General Conference on Weights and Measures redefined the second in atomic terms, as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation corresponding to the hyperfine transition of caesium-133.

There was still a final problem to solve. Civil time still needed to stay reasonably aligned with day and night, which depend on the Earth’s actual rotation. But atomic time runs uniformly, whereas Earth rotation drifts slightly. The compromise was Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). UTC runs at the same rate as International Atomic Time but differs from it by an integral number of seconds. What that practically means is the insertion of leap seconds, the first of which was inserted on 30 June 1972 to keep UTC within 0.9 seconds of UT1, a form of time based on the Earth’s rotation.

When I started researching this series, I didn’t think that I would cover history all the way from clay tablets to atomic clocks. But I absolutely love the fact that some of the most precise devices in existence today are measuring something whose definition can be traced back to 5,000-year-old cuneiform characters!

Subscribe now

We have a lovely example of just how foreign hours were to most people at that time (and thanks to Mary Catelli for bringing this to my attention!) from a fragment of a lost play Boeotia (The Boeotian Woman) which was probably written by Plautus (c. 254 – 184 BC):

Par ut illum di perdant, primus qui horas repperitquique adeo primus statuit hic solarium;qui mihi comminuit misero articulatim Diem!nam <unum> me puero Venter erat solarium,multo omnium istorum optumum et uerissumum.ubi is te monebat, esses, nisi quom nil erat.nunc etiam quom est non estur, nisi Soli lubet.itaque adeo iam oppletum oppidum est solariis, maior pars populi aridi reptant fame.

May the gods ruin the fellow who first invented hours, and moreover the one who first set up a sundial here; poor me, he tore Day to pieces for me, limb by limb! When I was a boy, Belly was your only sundial, and by far the best and truest of them all. When he reminded you, you’d eat, unless there was nothing there. Now even when there is something there one doesn’t eat, unless Sun sees fit. What’s more, the town is now so full of sundials, the majority of the population creep around dry from hunger.

Move on a thousand years, to the start of the second millennium, and things have not really changed very much at all. In researching this piece I have been surprised (though upon reflection probably shouldn’t have been) to discover quite how relatively recent “our” form of timekeeping really is. Unequal hours still persisted, and work was driven by light, rather than a clock. One thing that was different was that more people would have at least been aware of which (unequal) hour it was, even if that did nothing to modify their behaviours. Christian institutions, such as the Benedictines, had very structured days, with activities taking place at specific times. Monks and nuns would have been frequently made aware of what the hour was by the ringing of bells, and these aural time-signals would have been heard by the people living outside the institutions’ walls.

In the Rule of St Benedict we see clearly how, due to unequal hours, the time of, for example, dining, varied over the course of the year:

From holy Easter until Pentecost
let the brothers take dinner at the sixth hour
and supper in the evening.

From Pentecost throughout the summer,
unless the monks have work in the fields
let them fast on Wednesdays and Fridays until the ninth hour;
on the other days let them dine at the sixth hour.
This dinner at the sixth hour shall be the daily schedule
if they have work in the fields
or the heat of summer is extreme;
the Abbot’s foresight shall decide on this.

Thus it is that he should adapt and arrange everything
in such a way that souls may be saved
and that the brethren may do their work
without just cause for murmuring.

From the Ides of September until the beginning of Lent
let them always take their dinner at the ninth hour.

In Lent until Easter let them dine in the evening.
But this evening hour shall be so determined
that they will not need the light of a lamp while eating,
Indeed at all seasons
let the hour, whether for supper or for dinner, be so arranged
that everything will be done by daylight.

The notion of splitting the day into 24 equal hours had actually been around for more than a thousand years in Europe by that time (and longer in China, as we saw in my last piece). And whilst it wasn’t being used in day-to-day life we know that people like the Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician Hipparchus (c.190 - c.120 BCE) were using it in their work. In his Commentary on Aratus and Eudoxus he wrote about using equal hours for astronomical observation:

Χωρὶς δὲ τῆς ἐν ταῖς συνανατολαῖς καὶ ⟨συγκατα-⟩ δύσεσι θεωρίας εὔχρηστον εἶναι νομίζω καὶ τὸ παρακολουθεῖν ἡμᾶς, τίνες τῶν ἀπλανῶν ἀστέρων ἀπέχουσιν ἀπʼ ἀλλήλων κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς ὡριαῖα ἰσημερινὰ διαστήματα. τοῦτο γὰρ ἡμῖν εὔχρηστόν ἐστι πρός τε τὸ τὴν ὥραν τῆς νυκτὸς ἀκριβῶς συλλογίζεσθαι καὶ πρὸς τὸ τοὺς ἐκλειπτικοὺς τῆς σελήνης χρόνους καὶ ἕτερα πλείονα κατανοεῖν τῶν ἐν ἀστρολογίᾳ θεωρημάτων.

But apart from the theory of the East and the West, I think it is useful to observe which fixed stars are separated from one another by successive equinoctial hourly intervals. For this is useful for us both for determining accurately the hour of the night and for understanding the times of lunar eclipses and many other astronomical matters

We also have a nice example from Ptolemy’s Geography (c. 150CE) where he notes the length of the longest day in equal, rather than seasonal, hours:

Paphos has its longest day of 14,25' equinoctial hours, and varies eastwards from Alexandria one quarter of an equinoctial hour.

In terms of actually using “modern” hours to organise one’s whole day the first European of note that we know did so was none other than the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great (849-899). The Welsh monk Asser describes him doing so in his The Life of King Alfred (written in 893 and is a rare, detailed example of a first-hand account of a notable person from that period):

After long reflection on these things, he at length, by a useful and shrewd invention, commanded his clerks to supply wax in sufficient quantity, and to weigh it in a balance against pennies. When enough wax was measured out to equal the weight of seventy-two pence, he caused the clerks to make six candles thereof, all of equal weight, and to mark off twelve inches as the length of each candle. By this plan, therefore, those six candles burned for twenty-four hours, a night and a day, without fail, before the sacred relics of many of God’s elect, which always accompanied him wherever he went.

Sometimes, however, the candles could not continue burning a whole day and night, till the same hour when they were lighted the preceding evening, by reason of the violence of the winds, which at times blew day and night without intermission through the doors and windows of the churches, the sheathing, and the wainscot, the numerous chinks in the walls, or the thin material of the tents; on such occasions it was unavoidable that they should burn out and finish their course before the appointed hour.

The king, therefore, set himself to consider by what means he might shut out the wind, and by a skilful and cunning invention ordered a lantern to be beautifully constructed of wood and ox-horn, since white ox-horns, when shaved thin, are as transparent as a vessel of glass. Into this lantern, then, wonderfully made of wood and horn, as I before said, a candle was put at night, which shone as brightly without as within, and was not disturbed by the wind, since he had also ordered a door of horn to be made for the opening of the lantern. By this contrivance, then, six candles, lighted in succession, lasted twenty-four hours, neither more nor less. When these were burned out, others were lighted.

The use of what were then very expensive candles for accurate timekeeping was pretty much the preserve of kings. In order for equal hours to take hold in the general population you needed to come up with better ways of measuring time. The Chinese had been already using equal hours (or equal double hours, to be more precise) for more than a thousand years at this point. To measure and report these hours they developed water1 clocks of the most astonishing complexity. The Chinese polymath Su Song (蘇頌, 1020-1101) built a clocktower which, though water driven, used both an escarpment and a chain-drive. This enabled a highly regulated clock to be constructed, as Su Song himself explained:

The chain drive is 19.5 ft long (5.9 m). The system is as follows: an iron chain with its links joined together to form an endless circuit hangs down from the upper chain-wheel which is concealed by the tortoise-and-cloud (column supporting the armillary sphere centrally), and passes also round the lower chain-wheel which is mounted on the main driving-shaft. Whenever one link moves, it moves forward one tooth of the diurnal motion gear-ring and rotates the Component of the Three Arrangers of Time, thus following the motion of the heavens.

He later wrote in his memorial:

According to your servant's opinion there have been many systems and designs for astronomical instruments during past dynasties all differing from one another in minor respects. But the principle of the use of water-power for the driving mechanism has always been the same. The heavens move without ceasing but so also does water flow (and fall). Thus if the water is made to pour with perfect evenness, then the comparison of the rotary movements (of the heavens and the machine) will show no discrepancy or contradiction; for the unresting follows the unceasing.

The motion gear rings and upper drive wheel each had 600 teeth, which broke the day into increments of 2 minutes and 24 seconds (which, as we learned in my previous piece, allowed the 12 shí and 100 kè that they day was broken down into to be meshed mathematically). The resulting device was a thing of both mechanical and aesthetic beauty and contained 133 different clock jacks to indicate and sound the hours.

Water clocks similar to, but less elaborate than, the Chinese ones were in use in medieval Europe. For example, according to Jocelyn de Brakelond, in 1198, during a fire at the abbey of St Edmundsbury (now Bury St Edmunds), the monks “ran to the clock” to fetch water (so it must have held enough of the stuff to be useful in fire-fighting). But the real game-changer was the invention of the fully mechanical clock. For a device that would achieve such ubiquity it may come as a surprise to learn that we know neither who invented it nor even roughly when it was invented. What we do know is that between 1280 and 1320 there was an increase in the number of references to clocks and horologes in church literature, which suggests that there were more of these devices being installed in religious institutions. What we don’t know for sure is whether this was an expansion of water clocks or if perhaps a new invention, the fully mechanical clock, had entered the scene. In 1283, for example, a large clock was installed in Dunstable Priory, and whilst no trace of it now remains, the location, behind the rood screen, would have been too small for it to have been a water clock, so it was probably a mechanical one.

A decade earlier in Norwich Cathedral there is a reference to a payment for a mechanical clock in what was then the priory but it turned out to be not that great at keeping regular time, so in 1308 a new one was commissioned. The costs of the replacement device (sadly destroyed in a fire in the 17th century) we have recorded in wonderful detail:

Clock – For one plate of metal bought, 4½d. Sounds purchased, 16d; for making five images, 20s. Item, boys making heads, 3s. In wages of Master Robert, 30s. Andrew and Roger, carpenters, are also mentioned as employed at this period. The total of the expenditure, between Michaelmas and Christmas, amounted to £4. 19s 8¼d.

In the Compotus for 1323, several entries occur under the head Orologium. Payments of wages to Andrew the carpenter, to Robert, to Roger de Stoke; with the following payment for the latter for carriage of his clothes and tools, 8s. For a hose of Latoun, 4s. 7½d.

Also to Master Adam, the sculptor, for making twenty-four little images, 11s. Also for 200 Caen stones, 22s. Also to John, blacksmith, for ironwork for the clock, 3s. 9d, Also delivered to Robert of the Tower, for making of the great dial, 10s; and so much in danger of being lost, because from his poverty he was unable to perfect the work, nor was any thing to be obtained from him. Total, £6. 13s. 9¼.

The oldest surviving mechanical clock is probably the one in Salisbury Cathedral which dates from 1386 (though this title is somewhat disputed and fought over!).

What was the innovation that enabled these clocks to be constructed? I am not particularly mechanically minded so I am going to explain this in fairly simplistic terms. These early mechanical clocks worked like this:

• A drum or barrel around which a rope or chain was wound

• A heavy weight was attached to the end of the rope/chain

• As the weight descends, so it would turn the drum

• The turning of the drum would drive a set of gears inside the clock, which would process the time.

There was, however, a problem. If there was nothing to restrain them the gears would spin freely. In order to prevent this there was the key invention, the verge escarpment which worked like this:

• The last toothed wheel in the gear train was called the crown wheel

• As the wheel turned a tooth of the wheel presses on one pallet

• That push rotates the verge and foilot

• As they rotate, the first pallet moves clear

• The tooth of the crown wheel escapes

• The wheel advances until a tooth on the opposite side

• The second tooth now pushes the verge out of the way

• The cycle then repeats

This means that the rotation of the crown wheel progresses in consistent, uniform steps. Now I realise that this description may not make much sense (it didn’t to me until I saw it)2 so here is a little animation showing how it worked:

Or if this helps more, here is a one of the earliest existing drawings of a verge escapement, in Giovanni de Dondi's astronomical clock, the Astrarium, built 1364:

Whilst these clocks kept time, they didn’t necessarily keep good time (as the replacement of the one in Norwich shows). In part this was because they were hard to accurately construct and configure, and in part due to their design. The speed of the rotation of the drum was dependent upon the force of the weight pulling down on it, and the radius of the drum itself. When freshly wound all of the rope (or chain) would be wrapped around the drum.As time went on, and the rope descended, there would be less and less of it so the radius of the drum would diminish.

A surprising feature of many of these early clocks is that they lacked a face. They signalled the time by ringing bells upon the hour. For most people back then a clock wasn’t something that one looked at, it was something one heard. Those that did have faces would only have a single hand, showing the slow progression of the hours. Indicating minutes was simply not a thing. In my final piece I will (at last!) explain how we started using minutes and also look at how time became standardised around the world.

Subscribe now

The concept of breaking up the day into 24 segments probably arose in Ancient Egypt probably around the start of the New Kingdom 3,500 years ago. As you might have guessed there is some uncertainty about this but we know that they were doing so at this point due to the discovery of an ancient sundial. This shows the day being divided into 12 sections, and the night was similarly divided into 12. You may be wondering, why 12? After all, we have ten fingers and ten toes and now pretty much everyone uses base-10 in their day-to-day lives. One long-held theory is that each of your four fingers has three joints, so you can easily count up to 12 on one hand by tapping them with your thumb. 12 is also easily divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6.

When it comes to specifically measuring time there is another explanation. The Egyptians defined a set of 36 stars which could be used to segment the heavens into equal slices. Of these 18 were used to track the passage of time, and of those 3 each were assigned to dawn and dusk leaving the appearance of 12 stars to break the night into “hours”. Having broken the night up into 12 chunks it then seemed pretty logical to do the same for the day, hence 24 hours.2

These hours were, however, very different to the ones that we use today. The day (meaning period of light) was separated into 12 equal parts however the length of the day, and hence the hours, would vary significantly by season.3 This means that the ancient concept of time was very different to the one that we are familiar with today. The “time” of, for example, the third hour would be radically different in December when compared to June (though obviously noon and midnight would be the same).4 The timings of the hours in Ancient Rome would have looked something broadly like this:5

It may seem strange to us that time was measured, but inconsistent over the year, and could still be of use, but it was quite straightforward. If you arranged with someone to meet at “the third hour tomorrow” they would know exactly when you meant. People would use measured hours to organise their days to an extent, but which hours they chose would vary over the course of the year. We have a nice example of this from a letter Pliny wrote, describing how the bathing time of one of his friends varied:

When he is told that the bathing hour has come – which is the ninth hour in winter and the eighth in summer – he takes a walk naked in the sun, if there is no wind. Then he plays at ball for a long spell, throwing himself heartily into the game, for it is by means of this kind of active exercise that he battles with old age. After his bath he lies down and waits a little while before taking food, listening in the meantime to the reading of some light and pleasant book.6

One of the most common means of measuring time, as already mentioned, was something we are doubtless all very familiar with – the sundial. As you know they consist of a flat plate (or dish) and a gnomon7 which casts a shadow upon it. As the sun moves over the course of the day, so the shadow moves across hour lines, enabling the time to be easily read. For a sundial to measure time correctly, it has to be configured to the location of its use. A sundial’s geometry has to match the latitude of the place, because the Sun’s daily path across the sky changes with latitude. The gnomon is typically set parallel to Earth’s axis, so its angle to the horizontal depends directly on local latitude. Sometimes though people, err, forgot about this point, as Pliny once again records:

Marcus Varro records that the first public sundial was set up on a column along by the Rostra during the First Punic War after Catina in Sicily had been taken by the consul Manius Valerius Messala [263 BC], and that it was brought from Sicily thirty years later than the traditional date of Papirius's sundial. The lines of this sundial did not agree with the hours, but all the same they followed it for 99 years, till Quintus Marcius Philippus who was censor with Lucius Paulus [164 BC] placed a more carefully designed one next to it, and this gift was received as one of the most welcome of the censor's undertakings. Even then however the hours were uncertain in cloudy weather.

As Pliny noted, sundials are great so long as the sun is shining so what did people do when it was cloudy, or nighttime? The answer is through the use of waterclocks, the oldest known example of which is the approximately 3,400-year-old Karnak clepsydra. This is a stone vessel with a hole at the bottom through which water dripped out, with tapered sides to ensure that the rate of dripping would be constant as it emptied out. Down the sides is a series of 12 marks or “false holes” – to tell the time you just had to look where the water level was in relation to those holes. Ah, but hang on, how would that work given that the length of each hour would vary over the course of the year? Simple, there were 12 columns of marks, one for each month of the year (Egyptians had been dividing the year into 12, 30-day months and five feast days since around 4,500 years ago).8

Obviously there would be some variation within a month, but this was deemed accurate enough for ensuring that religious rites took place at the correct time. Suffice to say it was no small challenge to accurately taper the clock and calibrate for it to be of use, but devices such as this seem to have worked exceptionally well. We also have a good idea of who the person was with the smarts to invent this as the tomb of an Egyptian court official, Amenemhet, dating back more than 3,500 years has an inscription upon it reading:

I was the one who devised the water-clock (clepsydra) for the measurement of the hours of the night.9

Water clocks of this nature were also used to measure precise intervals of time, such as in Roman courts of law, where the advocates had strict limits placed upon the extent to which they could speak, though it turns out that one could haggle for more time as Pliny (yet again!) explains:

However, as soon as I had pulled myself together and collected my thoughts, I began my address, and though I was nervous I was on the best of terms with my audience. I spoke for nearly five hours, for, in addition to the twelve water-clocks — the largest I could get — which had been assigned to me, I obtained four others.

The technology of water clocks soon developed far beyond simple clay jars, floats were used that could more directly indicate the time or even play sounds as Vitruvius recorded in his Ten Books on Architecture (late 1st century BCE):

Hence, Ctesibius, observing that sounds and tones were produced by the contact between the free air and that which was forced from the pipe, made use of this principle in the construction of the first water organs. He also devised methods of raising water, automatic contrivances, and amusing things of many kinds, including among them the construction of water clocks. He began by making an orifice in a piece of gold, or by perforating a gem, because these substances are not worn by the action of water, and do not collect dirt so as to get stopped up.

Water clock innovation was also taking place in China. Around the year 200 BCE they moved away from vessels that had water flowing out of them, and replaced them with ones that filled with water, with a float indicating the time. Measuring time with water could be problematic though. It would evaporate, would expand and contract with temperature and even freeze if the temperatures fell sufficiently low in the winter. This latter problem was addressed by keeping the water heated with burning torches, until the year 976 when the engineer Zhang Sixun hit upon the idea of replacing the water with mercury. Some clocks were thus designed to work with water in the summer, and mercury in the winter.

The Chinese were also doing something that the European’s weren’t – they were dividing their days into consistently equal, rather than seasonal, hours. More than two thousand years ago they divided their days into 12 double hours called shí (時) that were named with the Twelve Earthly Branches: zǐ, chǒu, yín, mǎo, chén, sì, wǔ, wèi, shēn, yǒu, xū, hài. Alongside shí, the day was also divided into kè (刻), literally “marks,” probably referring to marks on a clepsydra or sundial. For long stretches of imperial history, a day was treated as 100 kè, so one kè was 1/100 of a day: about 14 minutes 24 seconds. Because 12 shí and 100 kè do not divide neatly into one another, traditional Chinese systems often used smaller intermediate fractions. One important one was a subdivision equivalent to 1/600 of a day, about 2 minutes 24 seconds which let the 12-shí and 100-kè systems mesh mathematically.

So there were several pretty good ways of measuring time two thousand years ago, but they weren’t exactly portable were they? What did people do when they were out and about, or did they simply not worry about time too much? You may have seen a scene in a historical comedy where someone is asked the time and they pull up their sleeve revealing a sundial strapped to their wrist. This is obviously a gag, but interestingly it isn’t that far from the truth! Vitruvius, writing in the late 1st century BCE describes in the context of many sundial innovators how they left instructions for making “portable pendulous dials”:

Berosus the Chaldean, was the inventor of the semicircle, hollowed in a square, and inclined according to the climate. Aristarchus the Samian, of the Scaphe or Hemisphere, as also of the discus on a plane. The Arachne was the invention of Eudoxus the astrologer, although some attribute it to Apollonius. The Plinthium or Lacunar, an example of which is to be seen in the Circus Flaminius, was invented by Scopas the Syracusan. The sort called Πρὸς τὰ ἱστορούμενα, by Parmenio. That called Πρὸς πᾶν κλίμα,º by Theodosius and Andrias. The Pelicinon by Patrocles. The Cone by Dionysodorus. The Quiver by Apollonius. The persons above mentioned not only invented other sorts; but the inventions of others have come down to us, such as the Gonarche, the Engonatos, and the Antiboreus. Many also have left instructions for constructing the portable pendulous dials.

And one dating from around the year 250CE can be seen in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. For sure, it wasn’t something to be worn on the wrist, but it was basically the ancient equivalent of a pocket watch:

“Hang on a minute!”10 you may be thinking “why hasn’t he mentioned hourglasses yet?” Surely they are one of the oldest means of measuring time?” So that is what I assumed as well before researching this piece, but what I learned was quite surprising. It seems that hourglasses are actually not really that old at all. There is a relief on a sarcophagus from Villa Albani in Rome dating from around 350 CE (or perhaps 120-130 CE) which shows something that looks a bit like an hourglass but beyond that possibility the earliest visual representation we have can be seen in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good Government, painted in 1338–1339, where the figure of Temperance holds an hourglass.

Obviously they must have been invented prior to that point, but it seems unlikely that they had been in use for a thousand years without any other mention of in literature or representation in art. The earliest written reference we have dates from around the year 1345, mentioned in a receipt of Thomas de Stetesham who was the clerk of the King’s ship La George:

The same Thomas accounts to have paid at Lescluse, in Flanders, for twelve glass horologes (" pro xii. orlogiis vitreis "), price of each 4¹⁄₂ gross', in sterling 9s. Item, For four horologes of the same sort (" de eadem secta "), bought there, price of each five gross', making in sterling 3s. 4d.

Despite having numerous ways to measure it, ancient peoples clearly had a very different relationship with time than the one we have today. You were very unlikely to have many set events at specific times of the day, arrangements would be much more general, other than in formal legal, government and military situations (and even then, as we have learned, the clock in Rome was wrong for nearly a century). The standardised measurement of time was also very unevenly distributed. Only a handful of incised sundials survive from the Roman era,11 for example. If you lived outside of a significant urban centre you simply would have had no access to the measuring of time. People in rural villages would probably have known about the division of time into hours, but they would not have used that system. Rather their days would have been structured around natural indicators of time – sunrise, noon, sunset etcetera. They didn’t have access to time, but they also had no need to know what the time was, their lives were ordered by nature rather than a clock.12

In my next piece I’ll explore some other ways of measuring time, including the use of scent, as well as digging into how we ended up with minutes and seconds.

Subscribe now

It turns out that the practice of throwing shapes with your hands to settle disputes or win friendly bets is both much older than I would have imagined and a surprisingly recent arrival in the West. The earliest mention of a game like this can be found in the book written by Xie Zhaozhe (alive around the year 1600) which describes it as being played during the later Han Dynasty (947- 951 CE):1

In the Later Han, when various generals and high ministers gathered at banquets, they played a “hand-gesture command” (shǒushìlìng, 手勢令). Its method was: the palm represented a “tiger’s breastplate”; the finger joints, “pine roots”; the thumb, a “crouching owl”; the index finger, a “hooked halberd”; the middle finger, a “jade pillar”; the ring finger, a “submerged dragon”; the little finger, “surprise troops”; the wrist, the “three Luo”; and the five fingers, “strange peaks.” But I do not know how its rules were actually used. Nowadays, children in the lanes have a game of grabbing the middle finger—could that not preserve its leftover idea? Yet for generals and ministers to do this was already quite improper; and that Shi Hongzhao, because he did not understand it, drew his sword and cursed at others is even more laughable — eventually it opened the way to a calamity of family slaughter. Alas!

Clearly this version is more complex than the three-choice set that exists today, and as noted in the text, we don’t know how it was played. Li Rihua (1565–1635) also recorded a description of something similar in Note of Liuyanzahi (probably compiled around the time of his death in 1635) and makes it clear that this was a popular drinking game:

In common drinking [games], people use their fingers—bending and extending them and ‘contending’ (matching/striking) with each other—this is called huoquan (豁拳), also called huozhitou (豁指頭). It works by watching from a distance how many fingers a person extends or retracts, using hidden tactics and competing for speed. I very much dislike it, because it becomes a gateway, little by little, to changing seats and noisy shouting.

By the 1600s the game had travelled from China to Japan, and this is where the now familiar set of three moves developed (though as we shall see, they have different names in the many iterations of the game). As a group they are called sansukumi-ken (ken of the three who are afraid of one another). From the 18952 book Korean games with notes on the corresponding games of China and Japan by Stewart Culin we find a description of the game we know today:

The same name, Ken, is applied in Japan to a large number of games played by two persons with the hands and fingers. One of the commonest of these games is Ishi Ken, or "Stone ken', usually called Janken, In Ishi Ken the fist is called ishi, "stone”; “the open hand”, kami, "paper," and the extended index finger and thumb, hasami, "scissors" The players extend their hands simultaneously. Stone beats scissors, as scissors will not cut stone. Paper beats stone, as paper will wrap up stone, and scissors beat paper, as scissors cut paper. Janken is often used to decide who shall perform some duty or task. Thus, jinrikisha men play it to determine which is entitled to a passenger. In this case it is customary to cry "one, two, three," which is uttered as a thrice-repeated hissing sound before each decisive movement of the hand.

I am a little sad that this is the version I learned, rather than Reptile Ken which Culin goes onto describe:

MushiKen, or " Reptile Ken'' is played like Janken, The thumb is called hebi, "snake”; “the forefinger”, kairu, "frog"; and the little finger, namekuji, "slug." The snake beats the frog, the frog the slug, and the slug the snake.3

Some versions of the game involved more than just the hands. Tora-ken (Tiger-ken) involves Watonai (a warrior hero popular in early 18th century Japanese theatre) who beats the Tiger, who beat’s Watonai’s mother, who in turn beats Watonai. The standard set of three, but the players would enact their selection using their entire bodies – crouching for the tiger, standing tall as the warrior, and stooping as the aged mother. You may be wondering how readily this could be played, as surely it would take time to adopt the various positions, clueing the selection the player was making? It seems that the answer was that the players would make their choices on either side a screen, which would be pulled away to reveal the outcome as shown in this woodcut of 1809:

If you wanted to do something more than simply decide who buys the next round, or has to down a shot, then there was a more grown-up version of the game that uses both hands as Culin once more explains:

These may be regarded more as play than as serious games. Such is not always the case with the following game of Ken commonly known as Kitsune Ken, or “Fox Ken.” In Kitsune Ken, the two hands slightly bent forward and raised to the ears is called kitsune, “fox”; the two hands placed on the thighs in the respectful posture, shdya, “the headman of a village”; and the extended forefinger, teppo, “gun.”

In this game kitsune beats shdya, because the fox can deceive the man ; the shdya beats teppo, because the gun may not shoot the magistrate, but the teppo beats the kitsune, because the gun kills the fox. There are a great variety of positions in which the hands may be placed to represent the figures in Kitsune Ken, no less than twenty-five4 different attitudes being used for kitsune, and ten, it is said, for shdya,

This wasn’t simply a game, it was a full-on spectator sport:

Kitsune Ken is said to be more properly called To Hachi Ken, after an itinerant quack doctor named To Hachi,5 some two hundred years ago, when the game was very popular. Instruction is regularly given in Hachi Ken by teachers of the game, who are usually schoolmasters. In Tokyo matches are held at places devoted to the game, such as the Kotobuki Tei. The announcement is made by circulars and an admission is charged. Many hundred spectators assemble, and from 70 to 120 contests are held during the day and evening. A structure, shi hon bashira, “four posts,” consisting of a square pavilion, supported by four bamboo posts, is erected for the players. This pavilion is similar, only smaller, to that used in wrestling, and the posts are colored in the same manner – green, red, white, and black – to represent the four seasons.

The players sit opposite to each other at the sides of the pavilion, within which a small narrow table, ken dai, is placed, upon which they rest their elbows. Two umpires, called Gyoji and Mukogyoji, who have fans, gumbai, like those used by umpires in wrestling sit on the other sides. At the corners are four men called Toshiyori, “Elders,” who watch the game. They are usually experts who have retired from contests. They are appealed to when a controversy arises. They are called respectively: Asakusa, Shiba, Kanda, and Kojimachi, Toshiyoti, from the four principal wards of Tokyo, which they are supposed to represent. Small prizes are given, such as inexpensive watches or kimono (coats) to the successful players.

It is hard to say exactly when awareness of the game began to spread from Japan to the West, but it seems likely that the 1910 book Home Life in Tokyo by Jukichi Inouye played a role:

There is a curious diversion called the game of ken, or fists, which, its name notwithstanding, has nothing to do with pugilism. The principle of the game is that there are three positions of the hands or fingers, each one of which beats one and is beaten by the other, of the remaining two. The game is played with one or two hands. That played with both hands is called the fox-ken; its three positions are the putting of the open hands with the palms outward close to the temples in imitation of the fox, the stretching out of the right arm with the hand closed while the left hand is brought to the breast, which represents the huntsman with a gun, and the placing of both hands on the knees to show the staid manners of the village headman. The fox may bewitch the headman as that animal is popularly believed to possess magical powers, but may be killed by the huntsman, who, however, must not shoot the headman; thus, the fox beats the headman, who beats the huntsman, who, in his turn, beats the fox.

The game is played by two persons, who must move their hands with uniform rapidity, for the game is spoilt if either side moves more quickly or slowly than the other. It is a favourite game at convivial parties, especially if one of the parties is a geisha, though it is not so popular now as it used to be. The person who beats the other three times running is declared the winner, and the defeated party has, as forfeit, to drink a cup of sake.6 The stone-ken is played with one hand; in this the closed hand represents a stone, the open hand a piece of paper, and two fingers or a finger and the thumb spread out a pair of scissors; the stone may be wrapped in the paper, but is proof against the scissors, which may, however, cut the paper. This ken is played less often as a game than for deciding in a case where one would toss a coin in England, for tossing up is unknown in Japan.

Certainly by 1916 it was well known enough to get name-checked in The Campfire Girls go Motoring by the wonderfully named Hildegard G. Frey. Here it is called “John Kempo” a phonetic Anglicisation of the standard chant じゃんけんぽん (jankenpon, often rendered jan-ken-pon) — the cry used to start rock–paper–scissors in Japanese.

As there didn’t seem to be much difference between them we played ‘John Kempo’ and the northern route won, two out of three.

Hang on, you7 might be thinking, surely the game came to the USA much earlier, for it is sometimes called Rochambeau? So yes, it is claimed that the even more wonderfully named Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), the French army officer who played a key role in achieving the American victory at the siege of Yorktown played the game and gave his name to it. Specifically it is said that he, George Washington, and Cornwallis (the British commander) used it to determine who would be the last to leave Cornwallis's tent after the signing of the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. There is, alas, no historical evidence to back this up. The earliest association I can find between his name and the game dates from 1936.

The game is, when you think about it rather odd. The best strategy is to have no strategy at all, to make purely random selections, hard though this might be. That way you can ensure that you don’t provide any clues to your opponent as to what your next move is. In theory a person with sharp eyes, and even sharper reflexes, can guess the shape you are going to make as your hand comes forwards, and rapidly pre-empt it, but really is a form of cheating, I think. And if that approach is allowed, then it turns out that humans can be defeated every single time by, appropriately enough, a Japanese robot with cameras and micro-second reaction times. You can watch a video of it doing just there here!

Subscribe now

To this day a festival takes places each year in Ypres, Belgium, called Kattenstoet1 which is devoted to cats. There is a cat parade, people dress up (oftentimes as cats), there are simply massive floats that look like cats. “Hang on,” you might think, “you don’t seem to be making a very good case here, you are talking about an adorable cat celebration!” Well, yes, today it may seem to be an adorable celebration of all things feline, but the origin of the tradition is much more gruesome. You see, kattensteot ends each year with someone dressed as a jester throwing toy cats off the top of the belfry2 of the cloth hall down to the square below.

Originally real, live, cats were thrown from the tower to their death or serious injury on the ground. It is unclear exactly how the tradition started. One theory is that over the winter the cats helped protect the wool that was stored in the call by keeping down the mouse population. In the spring the wool was sold, the cats were no longer needed so obviously the only thing to do with them was take them up to the top of the tower and throw them off. An alternative explanation is that cats were associated with witchcraft, and by killing the cats one was also killing evil spirits. We will learn more about cats and witches in a minute, but in case you think that I am being unfair to the good people of Ypres by mentioning a gruesome tradition from the ancient past, this might shock you. The last time that real cats were thrown from the top of the tower was 1817, little more than two hundred years ago.

Why did the Europeans hate cats? Well, to put it simply they thought that they were evil. For sure, they were handy to have around for killing mice and suchlike, but they really couldn’t be trusted at all. Why was this? Well, in Christian teachings the act of a cat playing with a mouse was often likened to the say in which the devil would play with a sinner before ultimately casting them down to a eternity of damnation and torture in hell. In 1484 Willian Caxton wrote in his Royal Book:

The devyl playeth ofte with the synnar, lyke as the catte doth with the mous.

Cats were not simply considered to be allegories of the devil, some also believed that they actually were a facet of the great Satan himself, taken beastial form to represent him on Earth, do dire deeds, and be worshiped by witches and heretics. The concept of cat-as-the-devil can be traced back to the 12th century and St Bartholomew of Farne. Obviously he wasn’t actually a saint at that point,3 but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that he used to fight against the devil, really quite often. In these battles the devil would take the form of a mouse. Or a lion. Or a bull. Or an ape. Or (finally) a cat. Now it may seem a little odd that only the cat got associated with the devil as a result, but the reason seems to be that the whole “cat playing with a mouse is like the devil playing with a sinner” thing had already set people against them.

Around the same time that Bartholomew was fighting a devilish cat the Welsh writer (and later archdeacon of Oxford) Walter Map was stoking the anti-cat fire. In his book De nugis curialium (which roughly translates as “Trinkets for the Court”) he wrote about the heretical activities of the Publicans4 and the Patarines. Anyway, Map wrote of the devil-worshiping practices of these heretics. In them the devil would appear to them in the form of a black cat. After he had appeared the Satanists would then, err, extinguish all of their lamps and fumble around in the dark until they could get their hands on the cat. Having grasped the feline, sorry, the devil, they would demonstrate their devotion to him by, um, kissing him under the tail. Whatever these people actually believed I have to say that you have to be pretty dedicated to kiss a cat’s bum to prove it. Whilst this probably sounds totally absurd it was very bad news for cats, and also for humans (particularly women) who liked cats. De nugis curialium, and manuscripts like it, played a role in defining medieval notions of witchcraft, and cats were very much a part of it.

The practice of “black cat bum kissing” astonishingly appears multiple times in the literature of the period. A few decades later Willam of Auvergne wrote in Tractatus de fide et legibus of Cathars and Waldensians taking turns to kiss the bottom of a black cat described as being the size of a small dog (possibly he could have just said “a cat the size of a large cat”). Alan of Lille wrote of the Cathars:

Vel Cathari dicuntur a cato, quia, ut dicitur, osculantur posteriora catti, in cujius specie, ut dicunt, apparet eis Lucifer5

Not long afterwards the devilish nature of cats acquired an official status that was to haunt them for centuries to come. The German preacher Konrad von Marburg claimed to have uncovered a Satanic cult that worshiped a diabolical black cat. “Uncovered” in this context needs to have the slight caveat that the people involved confessed to their behaviour when tortured to the point of death, so maybe it wasn’t totally true. It was, however, good enough proof for Pope Gregory IX to establish the Papal Inquisition, and to issue the decree Vox in Rama which called for a crusade against such heresy.

This decree goes into some detail about the rites of the heretics. A ceremony that involved meeting a giant toad, and kissing a skinny white man, ended with a statue of a black cat coming to life. This living statue-puss would walk backwards towards the participants with its tail raised in the air so that the master of the sect, and any new initiates, could kiss it on the bum. From then on cats in general and black ones in particular, were considered to be highly suspicious.

The specific connection between witches and cats dates from around the same time. Gervase of Tilbury, a favourite of King Henry the Second, wrote in his Otia Imperialia6 of witches who flew through the air at night and could change their shape to take on the form of a cat. Unluckily for the cats, he also claimed that if a witch was wounded when in the shape of a cat, her injuries would remain when she retook human form. This basically gave people free rein to abuse cats, on the off-chance that some were transformed witches who they could identify later on by looking for injured women. It pretty much goes without saying that in a culture where there were high levels of spousal abuse it wasn’t going to be that hard to find women with cuts and bruises and so the process appeared to confirm its own validity.

There is an extensive list of folk tales that tell some form of the “woman and cat sharing injuries story”. From the Netherlands there is the story of a cat that has a pan of hot butter thrown over it, only to reappear as an old woman, covered in burns the following day. In both Norway and Germany tale is told of a cat that had its paw cut off, only for the following day the miller’s wife to be missing a hand.7 And other versions also exist from Wales, Austria, and the USA where the woman isn’t necessarily the miller’s wife, but the whole severed paw/hand thing happens.

Things really came to a head in 1486 when Heinrich Kramer published the Malleus Maleficarum.8 This was basically an all-purpose guide that taught you all about witches and what to do with them.9 It was a prime text in the witch trials that, over the following centuries, resulted in around 50,000 people (mostly women, mostly over the age of 40) being burned at the stake. In the book Kramer restates the “women as cats” myth with a story in which a man beats off an attack from three cats, only to be thrown in prison a short time later, accused of assaulting three “matrons of the town”. Things are looking bad for this chap – he is facing a sentence of death, when the wise magistrates realise that of course there was some devilish connection between the women and the cats and he is quite innocent of the crimes of which he has been accused. As for the fate of the women, the book does not recount, but Kramer makes it perfectly clear that they were in no-way innocent bystanders – they had to have formed a pact with the devil. I find it hard to imagine that things worked out well for them…

You may be thinking that such absurd (and utterly horrendous) beliefs are artefacts long consigned to Europe’s past. If so, you may be in for a shock. The last victim of a witch-hunt in England, was “Dummy” the Witch of Sible Hedingham,10 in 1863. Yes, Victorian England with its railways, telegraphs, industry, and science. And witch hunts. Poor Dummy was an elderly deaf-mute man. He worked as a fortune teller, and was accused by one Emma Smith of cursing her with a disease.11 A drunk mob threw him in a brook, beat him with sticks, and he died as a result. Smith and a friend of hers who led the mob were caught, tried, and convicted of causing his death.12 That isn’t even the last killing of a witch. In Ireland, in 1895, Bridget Clearly was beaten and burned to death by her husband because he believed that his “real” wife had been taken away by fairies and replaced her with a witch. And in 1997 - yes 1997 - two Russian farmers killed a woman and injured five members of her family because they believed that she had used folk magic against them.13

Rumours abound that centuries of cat persecution in Europe ultimate came back to bite the humans who carried it out. It has been claimed that the reduced numbers of cats allowed rats and mice to flourish. The rats in particular were hosts for the fleas that carried the bubonic plague that ravaged the continent on multiple occasions from the 14th to 18th centuries. The evidence to back up this theory really doesn’t exist though. It is possible that the demonisation of cats reduced their numbers sufficiently for there to be slightly high numbers of rats around, but the impact is likely to be trivial. Despite the church and various obsessed citizens taking issue with cats (and the people who lived with cats) there were still a hell of a lot of cats around.

One reason we can be sure of this is actually due to the outbreak of the Black Death in London in 1665. In order to slow the spread of the disease the mayor ordered the killing of all of the cats and the dogs in the city (as it was thought, wrongly, that they were, at least in part, responsible for transmitting it). This was an estimated total of 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats. Given that the population of London at the time was around 460,000 people that works out at more than one cat per household on average. To put this in context, there are thought to be 580,000 cats living in London today, with a human population of nearly 9 million people. There were a lot more cats per head of the population 350 years ago even though we don’t think that they are manifestations of the devil any more.

Franz Helm of Cologne an artillery master14 in the first half of the 16th century wanted to make things even worse for cats. Five hundred years ago there weren’t really such things as artillery battles – two forces opposing each other on the opposite sides of a field and firing things at each other. No, artillery was used to overcome besieged cities, by smashing holes in their defences or setting them on fire. Helm was an expert in this field, and in 1625 a collection of his works was published as the influential Armamentarium principale oder Kriegsmunition und Artillerie-Buch.15 In this tome he critically assessed all of the existing means of attacking cities (including many detailed in 1420’s Feuerwerkbuch)16 as well as suggesting a number of innovative means of attack.

In order to set fire to well-fortified cities that were impregnable to other forms of attack Helm proposed the use of the “rocket-cat”. Now you may think that is some kind of mistranslation, or misunderstanding. Surely he didn’t propose using cats with rockets attached to them? Nah. He did. He totally did. How did the “rocket-cat” work? Helm usefully explains what to do in the text:

Create a small sack like a fire-arrow ... if you would like to get at a town or castle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and thereafter let the cat go, so it runs to the nearest castle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignited.

Thankfully there is no evidence that anyone ever actually followed Helm’s advice. It has been pointed out that whilst you may be able to strap a load of burning stuff and explosives to the back of a cat you sure as hell can’t control where they are going to run to. The poor, freaked-out, animals are just going to go crazy and run in all directions. Quite possibly into your own camp, setting that on fire instead.

Well, at least more recent military minds don’t have such bat-shit crazy ideas about using wild animals as incendiary devices! Hold that thought for a second. During the Second World War the United States military came up with something called the “bat-bomb”. The concept was simple. Take a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat. Actually, take a thousand of them. Stick them into a large bomb casing. Oh, wait, before you do they attached a 14 gramme (0.5 ounce) timed napalm incendiary bomb to each bat. Then drop the bat-bomb over Tokyo (where many houses were made of wood and paper). As the bomb wafts down on its parachute the bomb casing would spring open, releasing (and, presumably, rudely awakening) the bats. The bats (a little bleary-eyed) would head to the nearest places to roost. The bombs would detonate, Tokyo would burn to the ground. Simple.

The man behind the bat-bomb was a dental surgeon named Lytle S. Adams who believed that bats were created:

…by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life.

President Franklin Roosevelt was well aware of this plan, and said of Adams:

This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into.17

This wasn’t just some crazy theoretical exercise. The USA actually built and tested bat-bombs. In the first test the bats were accidentally released early and roosted under a fuel tank. Which they ignited. Incinerating the test range. Ultimately the project got canned because it was decided that nuclear weapons would be more effective.

I have tried to find some positive medieval European descriptions of cats and it has been a bit of struggle. There is this from 1397 in De proprietatibus rerum (“On the properties of things”) by Bartholomaeus Anglicus which starts okay, but then, err, gets pretty bad:

He [the cat] is a full lecherous beast in youth, swift, pliant, and merry, and leapeth and reseth on everything that is to fore him: and is led by a straw, and playeth therewith: and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth slyly in wait for mice: and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and reseth on them in privy places: and when he taketh a mouse, he playeth therewith, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fighting for wives, and one scratcheth and rendeth the other grievously with biting and with claws. And he maketh a ruthful noise and ghastful, when one proffereth to fight with another: and unneth is hurt when he is thrown down off an high place. And when he hath a fair skin, he is as it were proud thereof, and goeth fast about: and when his skin is burnt, then he bideth at home; and is oft for his fair skin taken of the skinner, and slain and flayed.

Although it took centuries, views did begin to change and this is perhaps best signified by the 1727 book Les Chats by François Augustine de Paradis de Moncrif (1687-1770). This is probably the first book dedicated exclusively to cats and whilst it is in part a satire upon the French upper classes at the time it is nonetheless clear in its affections for our feline friends. It ends, as I now shall as well (in part, at least), with the 1558 poem Épitaphe d’un chat by Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560):

Now living makes me angry;

And so, Magny, that you may know,
Why I am so distraught,
It is not for having lost
My rings, my money, my purse;

And why is it then? Because
I have lost for three days
My possessions, my pleasure, my loves.

And what? Oh, grievous memory!
My heart almost bursts,
When I speak of it, or when I write of it:
It is Belaud, my little gray cat:
Belaud, who was by chance
The most beautiful work that Nature
Ever made in matters of cats:
He was Belaud, the death of rats,
Belaud, whose beauty was such,
That it is worthy of immortality.

Subscribe now

Evidence has been found of cats living around humans in China around 5,300 years ago. It is not clear that they were what we would consider to be domesticated cats, but the handful of bones recovered from an ancient refuse pit indicate that they were smaller than wild cats and much more likely to be similar to the domesticated cats that were living in Egypt at the same time. It is possible that the practice of keeping cats spread from Africa to Asia, or that it emerged independently in both places – we simply can’t be sure. Certainly by around 2,000 years ago cats were widely kept in ancient China and held in considerable regard. This has caused some people to wonder why the cat is not one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. There is a myth that says the animals were chosen by the Jade Emperor by holding a race – the first 12 to finish would be selected. As the cat was nocturnal and would normally be sleeping during the day when the race was going to be held it asked its friend the rat to wake it before the race was due to start. The rat, alas, broke its promise leaving the cat happily snoozing, and in so doing gained a place in the zodiac itself. When the cat finally awoke it was, to put it bluntly, very cross with the rat, and swore vengeance upon it and all of its enemies. And that is why, to this day, cats are ferocious hunters of rats.

Cats spread to Japan via China, possibly as early as the sixth century, and were likely first presented as gifts to members of Japanese nobility. The kanji character for the Japanese word for cat neko (猫) looks like the Chinese word kone: “likes rats”. They were certainly well established in the Imperial Court more than a thousand years ago. We can be sure of this because of the diary of Emperor Uda who ruled Japan from 887 through 897. The entry that he wrote on the 11th March 889 is titled For the Love of a Cat and I think that it is one of most beautiful love-letters to a cat ever written:

On the 6th Day of the 2nd Month of the First Year of the Kampo era. Taking a moment of my free time, I wish to express my joy of the cat. It arrived by boat as a gift to the late Emperor, received from the hands of Minamoto no Kuwashi.

The color of the fur is peerless. None could find the words to describe it, although one said it was reminiscent of the deepest ink. It has an air about it, similar to Kanno. Its length is 5 sun, and its height is 6 sun. I affixed a bow about its neck, but it did not remain for long.1

In rebellion, it narrows its eyes and extends its needles. It shows its back.

When it lies down, it curls in a circle like a coin. You cannot see its feet. It’s as if it were circular Bi disk. When it stands, its cry expresses profound loneliness, like a black dragon floating above the clouds.

By nature, it likes to stalk birds. It lowers its head and works its tail. It can extend its spine to raise its height by at least 2 sun. Its color allows it to disappear at night. I am convinced it is superior to all other cats.2

Uda was not the only Japanese emperor to be fond of felines. Emperor Ichijo who reigned a century later owned a beast that he named Myoby no Otodo, which translates as Chief-Lady-in Waiting-of-the Inner Palace – a very fancy title indeed! Myoby no Otodo had more than just a title – she had actual, human, ladies-in-waiting to tend to her needs,3 and the emperor instructed his tailor to make tiny suits of clothing for her and her kittens. That is very sweet (I should note that this happened in the year 999 when the emperor was only 13 years old) but if Myoby was like the cats I have known then I think she was probably a bit pissed off at being made to play dress-up.

Now, you may be thinking “hang on, surely commoners (that is “working folks”) couldn’t be allowed to live in the Imperial Court of Japan?”. Okay, so you probably weren’t, but if you had been you would have been quite correct. In order for his beloved cats to live in the court Emperor Ichijo decreed that cats were not allowed to work, and they were officially part of the aristocracy, specifically the “Fifth Order of the Court”. This life of feline leisure astonishingly lasted more than six hundred years until 1602. At that time rats and mice were causing a serious threat to Japan’s crucial silk trade (they like to eat the silk worms) and so the government was forced to act. A decree was issued that made it illegal to house or feed cats, or to sell them or give them as gifts. Pretty much overnight cats were cast out of their comfortable homes and forced to fend for themselves, which must have been a bit of a shock to the kitties concerned. It would certainly have been very tough for them, but as far as the government was concerned the law worked. Without humans to feed them the cats decimated the rodent population and saved the silk trade.

These imperial cats were very distinctive in that they had very short bobtails, and they exist to this day as the Japanese Bobtail breed. This distinctive feature is the result of a genetic mutation in the cats originally brought over from China. At least that is what scientists will tell you based upon their DNA analysis and suchlike. The real reason is somewhat different. Originally Japanese cats had long tails, just like all of the others. Then disaster struck. Many years ago a cat was curled up by a fire on a cold winter’s day. A bit too close to the fire it turned out… Its tail caught alight and the poor kitty ran in panic through the city, accidentally setting fire to many buildings in the process. The emperor, seeing his magnificent capital reduced to ashes, was furious. He decreed that all cats should have their tails chopped off to ensure that it never happened again.4

Another legendary Japanese cat is more fondly remembered. You may well have seen a small model cat in a shop or restaurant window (or indeed a home) with its paw raised. There are also battery and solar powered versions where the paw bobs up and down waving. It actually isn’t waving at you – the Japanese gesture to beckon is made by holding up the hand, palm down, and folding the fingers back and forth. That is why this is the Maneki-neko, the “beckoning cat”. Maneki-neko are believed to bring their owners good luck and there are a number of stories about why this may be the case. One is that its gesture is similar to the movement a cat makes when it is washing its face, and there is an ancient Japanese belief that when a cat washes its face a visitor is soon to arrive (I should note that if a visitor arrived every time the cat I live with washed its face there wouldn’t be any room left in my home). This belief possibility originated from an old Chinese proverb that says that when a cat washes its face then rain is coming. Why is rain going to bring visitors (and, indeed, be lucky)? Well, if you run a shop or inn, rain is good for business as people will come inside to shelter from it. Statues of cats washing their ears that are more than 1,500 years old have been found in China, and these could be the earliest forms of Maneki-neko.

There are a couple of alternative stories that may explain why this beckoning cat is considered to be lucky. One is that the 17th century samurai Li Naotaka was caught in a torrential storm and took shelter under a tree. Looking out through the rain he saw a cat sitting in a nearby temple, waving its paw in a beckoning manner. Intrigued he headed over to the temple to find out why the cat was calling him over (or maybe because he just wanted to give the kitty a quick fuss, the story is unclear on this point). When he got to the cat the tree he had previously been sheltering under got struck by lightning, were it not for the cat, he would have surely died! Another tale tells of a poor shopkeeper who took pity upon a stray, starving cat and shared his meager supplies of food with it. To thank him the cat would sit in his window and beckon in customers and the business flourished as a result.

The reverence with which cats were held in Japan is maintained to this day, most notably on the island of Tashirojima. In the 18th century the silk was, like many other places in Japan, a hugely important industry, and as we have learned cats were vital to saving this trade from the attacks of rats and mice. Being an island there was no way for cats to naturally migrate to the area, so they were imported by the industrious locals and allowed to flourish. In addition to silk production, fishing was an important industry on Tashirojima and this worked out well for the cats. Not only were there lots of scraps of fish lying around, the fishermen believed that the cats brought them good luck, and that the behaviour of the cats could be used to predict the weather and the locations of fish. In order to help bring in a good catch the fishermen would ensure that the cats were well fed.

Tragedy struck one day when a cat was killed by a falling rock whilst the fishermen were working. The men were so upset that they buried the cat and raised a shrine to it – a Nekoj-inja. Over the years more shrines were built for cats and as a result there are now more than ten on this tiny island. As the fishing and silk industries slowed, so the population of the island reduced and it is now home to around 70, generally older, humans. The story is somewhat different for the cats, they are now believed to number more than 500, so many in fact that Tashirojima is now known as “Cat Island”. Most of these cats are what we would term feral, but that does not mean that they are unloved and poorly cared for. The islanders continue to feed them and tend to their needs, with a special team of volunteers called Nyanko Kyouwakoku. That whole notion of cats bringing good luck and wealth? Well, for the people of Tashirojima it looks like it is true. Thousands of tourists visit the island each year to see their amazing cats! And what about cats predicting what is going to happen in the seas, surely that can’t be true too? Well, probably not in the way that the sailors thought hundreds of years ago, but something happened fairly recently that suggests that cats can sense things in nature that are invisible to us. In 2011 the island was struck by the tsunami caused by the Tohoku earthquake (don’t worry, both cats and humans got through it okay). Before the waters arrived a number of the cats were seen to be behaving very strangely, yowling at things that weren’t there and generally being very stressed out. Were they trying to warn the humans who had looked after them for so long? I’d like to think that perhaps they were.

The respect shown to cats in the Middle East is in part a result of how highly they are revered in Islam, and the prophet Muhammad was known to love the creatures. His favourite cat was named Muezza and there are numerous stories about her. One tells how she bowed to the prophet one day as he returned from the mosque, he stroked her three times in return and gave her the power to always land on her feet if she fell. In another she was sleeping on the sleeve of his robe when the call to prayer sounded. Rather than move and wake the cat Muhammad instead cut the sleeve off his robe allowing her to continue to sleep peacefully. One of Muhammad’s companions was known as Abu Hurairah which literally translates as “Father of a Kitten” a name bestowed due to his huge affection for felines. Abu Hurairah once said that Muhammad declared that a woman who starved a kitten and didn’t even give it water was destined to go to hell. Another companion of the prophet, Abu Saeed reportedly owned a cat who once saved Muhammad from a poisonous snake. There is also said to be a connection between the markings on cats and Islam. Muhammad petted the cat that had saved his life from the snake and left four dark lines on its forehead. Similarly the “M”-shaped marking on the heads of tabby cats is said to arise from him gently resting his hand on Muezza.

Because cats are so obsessed with washing themselves they are considered in Islamic tradition to be ritually clean which means that they are free to enter people’s homes and even mosques. Indeed cats are so clean that water they have drunk from is permitted to be used for wudu, the ritual washing of the body. It isn’t just Japan that has places dedicated to cats. In Aleppo, Syria, there used to be a compound known as Jami al-Qitat which translates as “Mosque of the Cats”. It is said to have been built as a cat hospital by a wealthy merchant, Osman Pasha, in 1730 to thank the feisty felines for ridding his granaries of rats and mice. Now, you might be thinking that might have been a couple of rooms and a handful of cats. If so, you are way off in terms of scale. Victorian travellers reported hundreds, sometimes even thousands of cats being fed each day on a special feeding ground. There was also a special nursery for kittens and a hospice for elderly cats to live out their final days in comfort. Osman Pasha left sufficient funds in his will to ensure that the operations could continue for decades after his death. This may sound like a lovely thing to you, but European visitors in the 19th century found it, well, pretty appalling. One traveller expressed surprise at the fact that the Muslims of Aleppo refused to drown kittens (as that was common practice in Europe at the time) and commented:

How strange it is, that Christianity should be harder towards animals than the inferior religions, just as slavery is worst among Christian nations.

In ancient Perisa the attitude to cats was somewhat different. In Zoroastrian mythology they were said to have been the unholy product of sex between the human woman Jamak and a devil. Far from being the epitome of cleanliness they were classed as a hated “wolf species”. It was said that if a cat ate from a bowl it would still be unclean even if it had been washed seven times. Were a cat to urinate in water then it would kill all of the fishes in the sea. It wasn’t just fish that they could kill – if a person ate food that had been touched – even fleetingly – by the whiskers of a cat they would then waste away and die.

Despite all of these stories it seems that cats were much loved by the Persians and, as in many other places, played a valuable role in keeping down the populations of rats and mice. According to legend, this fact was once used for political advantage. King Khosrow II who ruled Iran from the late sixth and early seventh centuries sent an evil man named Ray to be the governor of the city of his rival Bahram Chobin. Once settled, Ray ordered all of the cats in the city to be killed, which led to a massive explosion in the population of rats and mice. So much so that the people were forced to flee the city. The tale goes on to say that the city was ultimately saved by the Queen, who gave a playful kitten to Khosrow and in so doing persuaded him to let the cats return.

Much like their contemporaries in Japan, Persian royalty at the end of the first millennium were very attached to their feline friends. Prince Rukn al-Dawla was noted for his adoration for his cat-friend. So much so that when people wanted to petition him for favours they would tie their requests around the neck of his cat because in that way he was sure to see them. One Sufi sheik was also said to love his cat so much that he had tiny shoes5 made for it so that it could sleep on his prayer carpet without its claws damaging the costly material.

Persian cats, those glorious balls of floof, have their own creation myth. The great hero Rostam6 is said to have once saved a magician from a gang of thieves. The magician wanted to repay the man who had saved his life, but Rostam told him that he had everything he desired in the world. The magician took that as a challenge, and decided to create something that the great hero had no idea that he desired. He sat by the fire and took up a handful of smoke, a pinch of fire, and reached up to grab the brightest star in the sky. He mixed them all up together and then opened his hands and there sat a perfect Persian kitten. Its soft fur was like a cloud of smoke, its eyes glinting like starlight, and its tiny pink tongue like a tongue of flame.

In my final piece in this mini-series I’ll be exploring the history of cats in medieval Europe (spoiler, it wasn’t great for much of time) including a hare-brained scheme to use them as a weapon of war…

Subscribe now

The first cats are believed to have appeared a little over 30 million years ago, with the earliest known ‘true’ cat found in the fossil record being Proailurus who lived around 25 million years ago in Europe and Asia. The now extinct Proailurus was not much larger than the average domestic cat of today, weighing in at around 9kg (20 pounds), and it is believed that they were the ancestor of all of the cat species living on the Earth today.

The domestic cat is Felis catus, a member of genus Felis along with the Sand Cat, the Chinese Mountain Cat, the Black-footed Cat, the African Wildcat, the Jungle Cat and the European Wildcat, all of whom genetically diverged from a common ancestor at various times over the course of the last four million years. Some of these species are still sufficiently genetically similar that they can cross breed with each other – indeed cross-breeding with domestic cats is a significant threat to the survival of the European Wildcat.

So when did cats and humans start living together? In 2004 archeologists working on a dig site on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus found the skeletons of a cat and human buried together in a grave that was 9,500 years old. Now, you may be thinking “Well, that doesn’t prove that cats and humans were living together; someone could have simply chucked the dead cat in when they were filling in the grave?” Leaving aside the fact that that would have been a pretty odd thing to do the cat hadn’t simply been thrown into a hole. Its body had been laid out in its own tiny grave, a mere 40 cm (one and a half feet) away from the human, and it had been aligned in the same westward direction as the human body. This was a considered, deliberate act. The fact that the cat was only around eight months old also raises the (depressing for cat-lovers) possibility that the cat had been killed when its human had died so that the two could be laid to rest together.

Then there is the fact that cats are not native to Cyprus – they would have to have been brought there by humans on boats. Could some cats have snuck aboard a boat, unnoticed? That seems pretty unlikely – 9,500 years ago boats were dug-out canoes or small vessels of woven reeds so there wouldn’t have been much space for a cat to conceal itself for the duration of the voyage. This ancient grave cat was not a domestic cat as we would know it; rather it was a tamed African wildcat. Nonetheless it can lay claim to the oldest known house cat.

We can be pretty sure then that cats (albeit not the species we know today as the domestic cat) and humans have been living together for the best part of 10,000 years – possibly much longer. Dogs, on the other hand, have definitely been living with humans for more than 14,000 years, and possibly as long as 36,000 years. (In case you were wondering, goats, pigs, sheep and cattle are believed to have been domesticated 10–11,000 years ago; horses 5,500 years ago). As we mentioned earlier, there is still something weird about the domestication of cats. Most of the other animals we have domesticated already lived in either packs or herds. Pack animals have dominance hierarchies with obvious leaders. Put simply, if a human can supplant the alpha dog then the other dogs will follow them. Pack animals were already used to living in large groups, their migrations mostly driven by the hunt for fresh grazing. If you provide them with sufficient food then you can corral and control them fairly easily.

Cats are very different beasts. They are primarily solitary hunters who come together to mate. As anyone with an outdoor cat knows they are very territorial and will challenge any other puss who wanders onto their home turf. It is highly unlikely that ancient humans caught and trained cats to be useful companions. What seems most likely, as we suggested at the beginning, is that as humans developed agriculture and established settlements, and (most importantly) grain stores, so they also created the ideal conditions for mice to live and thrive. The first ‘domestic’ cats would have hung around the edges of those early villages and towns, preying on mice, rats, and other vermin. Initially they would have been wary of humans. We know that today’s European wildcats, even if raised by humans from kittens, are both nervous of, and aggressive towards, people. Then evolution would have kicked into play. If a random genetic mutation arose that made a cat less fearful of humans then the beasts that possessed it would likely have a better chance of survival than those who didn’t. Why? Well they would have hung around the grain stores for longer, continuing to hunt, while others had fled at the approach of the villagers. They would have started venturing into houses to hunt down the rodents that lived there, and also been able to feast upon discarded scraps. They would have been better able to find warmth and shelter during storms and winter months.

There is good evidence to suggest that domestic cats have evolved to like (well, perhaps not always ‘like’ – let’s say ‘tolerate’) human company. If you cross breed a European wildcat (who, as mentioned above, really don’t like humans) with a domestic cat then the resulting offspring will be much more relaxed around people. Our ancestors would have readily seen the benefit in having these furry creatures wandering around, though perhaps they saw more in cats than simply their utility. Put simply, cats just look cute to us, and probably always have. To be more specific, cats have flat faces with little snubby noses, large eyes, a high forehead, all very similar to something we have evolved to find super-cute: a human baby.

The ancient Egyptians are, of course, famous for their worship and veneration of cats. The earliest evidence of this relationship dates from the First Dynasty of Egypt almost 5,000 years ago when the cat-headed goddess Mafdet was worshiped. Mafdet was known for protecting the pharaohs against poisonous animals such as snakes and scorpions, a role that real-life cats would most likely have performed. She was also reputed to tear the hearts out of criminals and drop them at the feet of pharaoh, much as a cat will present a dead mouse to their human today.

Mafdet was not the only cat-related god in the Egyptian pantheon. She was followed by Bastet (better known in the West as Bast). Originally Bast was a fierce lion-headed, warrior, goddess but over the course of a couple of thousand years she mellowed somewhat and became represented more in the form of a domestic cat – or as a woman with the head of a domestic cat. In this new form she was a goddess of fertility and pregnancy probably because cats were seen to be good mothers to their kittens, taking great care over feeding and protecting them. It is also likely that because cats have lots of kittens they were seen to be particularly good animals to worship if you wanted to have lots of children. For similar reasons the mother goddess Mut was also sometimes depicted as a cat (or being with a cat).

Why were the Egyptians so crazy about cats? Well, for starters they lived in a place that had lots of small, venomous animals and cats were very good at hunting down and killing these. Of course, the cats would have been doing this out of a sense of self-preservation, but it is easy to imagine that the Egyptians could have also seen this as the cats protecting humans. Much more importantly though, cats kill rats and mice. Grains such as wheat and barley were a major part of Egyptian agriculture and if you grow grain, then you need somewhere to store it once it has been harvested. Every village would have had a grain silo of some kind, as did temples and palaces. Some stores that have been excavated in recent years are vast and would have held tonnes of grain.

Although the regular annual flooding of the Nile river was well understood and forecast by the Egyptians, there would occasionally be poor years when crop yields were much lower, so maintaining large stores of grain was essential to prevent famine. There is even a story in the Old Testament whereby Joseph made a tidy profit by building up such supplies and selling them during a famine:

...he gathered up all the food of the seven years when there was plenty in the land of Egypt, and stored up food in the cities ... And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured. “So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians.”

Where you have large amounts of grain sitting around for years it is pretty likely that you are going to get large numbers of rats and mice. After all, the closest human equivalent to being a mouse in one of those grain silos is being at an all-you-can-eat buffet that lasts for eternity. As with the earlier domestication the first Egyptian cats probably started hanging around because it was an easy way to get a meal. It wasn’t long before their value was noticed and the locals began to actively breed and house them. This relationship between humans and cats soon became more than simply utilitarian, and developed into one of affection. Crown Prince Thutmose (alive approximately 3,350 years ago) was the eldest son, and original heir apparent, of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. We don’t know very much about this life, but we can be pretty sure that he loved cats. Alongside his sarcophagus was one containing his cat, Ta-miu1 – this is probably the oldest cat name that we are aware of. Even older cat-tombs have been found, some with small pots that are believed to have originally contained milk for the cats to lap at in the afterlife.

Egyptian cats were subject to great protection by law – killing or injuring one was a serious crime, indeed the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus tells the story of a Roman citizen who was lynched by an Egyptian mob around 60 BC for (accidentally) killing a cat:

And whoever intentionally kills one of these animals is put to death, unless it be a cat or an ibis that he kills; but if he kills one of these, whether intentionally or unintentionally, he is certainly put to death, for the common people gather in crowds and deal with the perpetrator most cruelly, sometimes doing this without waiting for a trial. And because of their fear of such a punishment any who have caught sight of one of these animals lying dead withdraw to a great distance and shout with lamentations and protestations that they found the animal already dead. So deeply implanted also in the hearts of the common people is their superstitious regard for these animals and so unalterable are the emotions cherished by every man regarding the honour due to them that once, at the time when Ptolemy their king had not as yet been given by the Romans the appellation of “friend” and the people were exercising all zeal in courting the favour of the embassy from Italy which was then visiting Egypt and, in their fear, were intent upon giving no cause for complaint or war, when one of the Romans killed a cat and the multitude rushed in a crowd to his house, neither the officials sent by the king to beg the man off nor the fear of Rome which all the people felt were enough to save the man from punishment, even though his act had been an accident. And this incident we relate, not from hearsay, but we saw it with our own eyes on the occasion of the visit we made to Egypt.

Despite these laws it seems as though there must have been some loopholes when it came to the killing of cats. Mummified cats were often given by pilgrims as offerings to their gods. And when I say often, I really mean often. In just the single cemetery of Beni Hasan in central Egypt more than 200,000 mummified cats were found. Most of these were then shipped to Liverpool ground up, and used as fertiliser.2 There is no way that these were all cats who died peacefully in old age of natural causes. They would have been bred, and then killed, to supply the pilgrim industry. Given their beliefs about human mummification it is quite possible that the people involved thought that this was okay, as the cats would be heading to some glorious cat afterlife.

That isn’t to say that cats were not much-loved in ancient Egypt. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that when a cat died all of the (human) inhabitants of the house would shave off their eyebrows to show that they were in mourning. Once their eyebrows had grown back this period of grief was considered to be formally over. This may seem a little extreme, but wait till you hear what he reports they do when the household dog dies:

And in whatever houses a cat has died by a natural death, all those who dwell in this house shave their eyebrows only, but those in whose houses a dog has died shave their whole body and also their head.3

Perhaps the most extraordinary Egyptian cat story relates to the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC when King Cambyses the Second of Persia invaded Egypt seeking that country’s throne.4 As the two armies faced each other, with battle about to commence, Cambyses ordered his troops to… bring forward armfuls of live cats (while they were Persian cats they probably weren’t Persian cats as we would know them today). and put them on the ground in front of them. The Egyptians, so fearful of injuring the cats, refused to fire their arrows at the enemy and were brutally defeated. Full disclosure, it wasn’t just cats that the Persians used, but I like to think that they were the most important animals:

When Cambyses attacked Pelusium, which guarded the entrance into Egypt, the Egyptians defended it with great resolution. They advanced formidable engines against the besiegers, and hurled missiles, stones, and fire at them from their catapults. To counter this destructive barrage, Cambyses ranged before his front line dogs, sheep, cats, ibises, and whatever other animals the Egyptians hold sacred. The Egyptians immediately stopped their operations, out of fear of hurting the animals, which they hold in great veneration. Cambyses captured Pelusium, and thereby opened up for himself the route into Egypt.

– Polyaenus, Stratagems, Book 75

The Roman and Greek empires coexisted with that of Egypt for many centuries, so you might have expected them to have adopted similar attitudes towards cats. Not the whole “worshipping them as gods and executing people who kill them” part of it, but certainly the “having them around to kill rats and mice” thing. In reality house cats were very rare in ancient Greece and Rome. It has been suggested that there was an Egyptian law that forbade the export of cats and that soldiers were even sent out to retrieve kitties that had been smuggled to other countries. Despite this being asserted as a fact in a number of places online I have been unable to track down a reliable source for it. It may be true, for sure, but I kind of doubt it.

A good reason for suspecting that there was no prohibition on the export of cats is that we know for a fact that there were domestic cats in ancient Greece at least as early as the mid-fifth century BC. Two coins from that era have been found showing the Iokastos and Phalanthos, the founders of Rhegion and Taras, playing happily with their pet cats.

These two seemed to be unusual in their feline affections. Rats and mice were a problem for the Greeks and the Romans, much as they were for the Egyptians, but they sought to address it by keeping pet weasels6 and ferrets. In the remains of the city of Pompeii, which was destroyed in AD79, hardly any cat bones have been found. Those that do appear to be from strays, they weren’t yet being kept as pets. As the centuries passed however it became clearer to the Romans that cats were simply better and, I would argue, nicer, to have around to solve rodent problems and they replaced weasels in the household.

Rats weren’t just a problem in Roman homes, they were also a problem for the Roman army – eating food stores and chewing through equipment. And it seems likely that legions travelled with cats, or at least allowed cats to settle with them. At Hadrian’s wall, the very northern limit of the Roman Empire, cat bones have been found at sites of forts such as Vindolanda. In my next piece I’ll explore the history of cats in Asia and beyond, including possibly the most perfect description of a cat ever recorded, written over 1,100 years ago, but for now I’ll leave you with a picture of the cat who currently shares my home.