‘The House of St Barnabas-in-Soho Provides temporary accommodation and care for homeless women. For over one hundred years this “Penny Chute” has been used to raise funds. Please help us - put your loose change in the chute. Thank you.’ 28/01/12. Soho Square, Soho. The House of St Barnabas-in-Soho, established by Dr Henry Monro and Mr Roundell Palmer, first began operating as “The House of Charity” in 1846, before taking its current name in 1961. The objective was to provide refuge and accommodation for homeless people in and around Soho - and for 160 years it continued in this role. The House closed as a residence in 2006, and re-launched as a venue and Life Skills Centre. Since September 2009 The House of St Barnabas has been working in partnership with Quintessentially to host Quintessentially Soho at the House of St Barnabas, a not-for-profit members’ lounge. Revenue generated through Membership, Event Sales, the restaurant, lounge and bars, finances the charity in the delivery of its programme, while the operation itself acts as a unique resource for training and work experience opportunities. (Source) Click for high-res photo

‘The House of St Barnabas-in-Soho

Provides temporary accommodation and care for homeless women.

For over one hundred years this “Penny Chute” has been used to raise funds.

Please help us - put your loose change in the chute.

Thank you.’

28/01/12. Soho Square, Soho.

The House of St Barnabas-in-Soho, established by Dr Henry Monro and Mr Roundell Palmer, first began operating as “The House of Charity” in 1846, before taking its current name in 1961. The objective was to provide refuge and accommodation for homeless people in and around Soho - and for 160 years it continued in this role. The House closed as a residence in 2006, and re-launched as a venue and Life Skills Centre.

Since September 2009 The House of St Barnabas has been working in partnership with Quintessentially to host Quintessentially Soho at the House of St Barnabas, a not-for-profit members’ lounge. Revenue generated through Membership, Event Sales, the restaurant, lounge and bars, finances the charity in the delivery of its programme, while the operation itself acts as a unique resource for training and work experience opportunities. (Source)

‘Time and Talents Settlement, AD 1907’ 25/01/2012. Bermondsey Street, Southwark. Built as a hostel for the Time and Talents Association, as announced in the Arts and Crafts lettering in carved stone frieze that reads ‘TIME AND TALENTS SETTLEMENT’. The building is of purple brick with red brick and stone dressings.  The Time and Talents Association was an Anglican quasi-missionary organisation set up in 1895 by West End women to help young working girls and women, and was a prominent part of the 1880-1914 settlement movement.  Young women came in to Bermondsey from more prosperous areas and the building hosted clubs, district visiting and campaigning around issues of girls’ safety at work. (Source) Time and Talents began 1887 to help ‘girls of leisure and education’ to make use of their time and talents in the service of others. Developed by Minna Gollock, private secretary to Emily Kinnaird, one of the founders of the YWCA, its aim was: ‘To seek through fellowship, prayer and service to bring the Spirit of Christ into every part of life’. (Source) Click for high-res photo

‘Time and Talents Settlement, AD 1907’

25/01/2012. Bermondsey Street, Southwark.

Built as a hostel for the Time and Talents Association, as announced in the Arts and Crafts lettering in carved stone frieze that reads ‘TIME AND TALENTS SETTLEMENT’. The building is of purple brick with red brick and stone dressings. 

The Time and Talents Association was an Anglican quasi-missionary organisation set up in 1895 by West End women to help young working girls and women, and was a prominent part of the 1880-1914 settlement movement. 

Young women came in to Bermondsey from more prosperous areas and the building hosted clubs, district visiting and campaigning around issues of girls’ safety at work. (Source)

Time and Talents began 1887 to help ‘girls of leisure and education’ to make use of their time and talents in the service of others. Developed by Minna Gollock, private secretary to Emily Kinnaird, one of the founders of the YWCA, its aim was: ‘To seek through fellowship, prayer and service to bring the Spirit of Christ into every part of life’. (Source)

There are certain unhappy individuals who take no pleasure in London. Such are frightened by its immensity, a magnitude that emphasises the emptiness of the heart. The city is too big for them, a mere desert of bricks and mortar… This reserved, esoteric city, which discloses its secrets only to those worthy of its regard.

Geoffrey Fletcher, 1962, The London Nobody Knows. (Link)

‘Bird Watching Gardens, SE1’ 23/01/2012, walking from home to work, listening to four NPR correspondents debate the merits of criticism on Pop Culture Happy Hour. Click for high-res photo

‘Bird Watching Gardens, SE1’

23/01/2012, walking from home to work, listening to four NPR correspondents debate the merits of criticism on Pop Culture Happy Hour.

‘Monty Python, Film Maker, Lived Here 1976-1987’ 21/01/2012, walking in between Food For Thought and Gosh! Comics. Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden. This was the location of the Monty Python production offices. Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin bought them for use in animation recording and as an editing suite for the Python films and other projects. (Source)

‘Monty Python, Film Maker, Lived Here 1976-1987’

21/01/2012, walking in between Food For Thought and Gosh! Comics. Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden.

This was the location of the Monty Python production offices. Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin bought them for use in animation recording and as an editing suite for the Python films and other projects. (Source)

(#4) Great Windmill Street: Dr. William Hunter On my way to a screening, I find myself enveloped by anatomy. Not simply the anatomy of the city - the taut sinews of side streets, armpit cul-de-sacs and clumps of matted green in the centre of Soho Square – but pure physicality. I purchase albums by Los Campesinos! and Nurse With Wound. The former sports a bloody knee on the cover, and NWW reflect their name in jagged, sometimes violent soundscapes. The latter is a compilation CD anyway: phantom limbs transplanted onto a new nervous system and sold for a wry 99p. As I hit Soho proper, crossing Shaftesbury Avenue despite the best efforts of Black Cab drivers to run red lights, I pass the Lyric Theatre, at the back of which is a plaque: ‘This was the home and museum of Dr. William Hunter. Anatomist. 1718-1783’ Hunter was born in Scotland, but he came to London in order to study at St. George’s Hospital, and later became the ‘Physician Extraordinary’ to Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III (and, for later note, patroness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, J.C. Bach and Joseph Haydn). He became a respected anatomist and obstetrician in his lifetime, and both lectured widely and published such treatises as On the uncertainty of the signs of murder, in the case of bastard children. Hunter’s collections are now held at the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, and are just as valuable for literary historians, as they are for anatomical scholars, with a library consisting of 10,000 printed books from the 18th century or earlier. Interestingly, London’s Hunterian Museum, housed at the Royal College of Surgeons, is a similar collection, but instead it is that of his younger brother, the arguably better regarded anatomist John Hunter (1728-1793), whose bust stands in Leicester Square. I’m not one to pick sides, but the younger Hunter’s museum houses the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the ‘Irish Giant’, who stood at an imposing 2.3 metres in height. I think that anyone would be impressed by that anatomy specimen. There’s a quirky humour in the juxtaposition. Hunter’s plaque lies on the edge of a London area almost defined by its anatomy in some eyes – legs, breasts, cocks – and, indeed, the Lyric Theatre is currently running a musical based on the work of Michael Jackson, a performer for whom his anatomy was, towards the end, more fascinating to most than his music. I attend a screening on Soho Square, at Twentieth Century House. The film is Crazy Heart, but thanks to an unfortunately placed embargo, I cannot attest to its anatomical properties. Instead, I’ll defer to Los Campesinos!, who know a little about hearts – be they beating, bruised, bleeding or broken. I’m leaving my body to science; not medical but physics. Drag my corpse through the airport and lay me limp on the left wing. Drop me a the highest point and trace a line around the dent I leave in the ground: that’ll be the initial of the one you will marry now I’m not around. That is from ‘In Medias Res’, the opening track from their new album Romance Is Boring. I bought my copy from Sister Ray Records, Berwick Street, but the album is also available elsewhere. Click for high-res photo

(#4) Great Windmill Street: Dr. William Hunter

On my way to a screening, I find myself enveloped by anatomy. Not simply the anatomy of the city - the taut sinews of side streets, armpit cul-de-sacs and clumps of matted green in the centre of Soho Square – but pure physicality. I purchase albums by Los Campesinos! and Nurse With Wound. The former sports a bloody knee on the cover, and NWW reflect their name in jagged, sometimes violent soundscapes. The latter is a compilation CD anyway: phantom limbs transplanted onto a new nervous system and sold for a wry 99p.

As I hit Soho proper, crossing Shaftesbury Avenue despite the best efforts of Black Cab drivers to run red lights, I pass the Lyric Theatre, at the back of which is a plaque:

‘This was the home and museum of Dr. William Hunter. Anatomist. 1718-1783’

Hunter was born in Scotland, but he came to London in order to study at St. George’s Hospital, and later became the ‘Physician Extraordinary’ to Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III (and, for later note, patroness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, J.C. Bach and Joseph Haydn).

He became a respected anatomist and obstetrician in his lifetime, and both lectured widely and published such treatises as On the uncertainty of the signs of murder, in the case of bastard children. Hunter’s collections are now held at the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, and are just as valuable for literary historians, as they are for anatomical scholars, with a library consisting of 10,000 printed books from the 18th century or earlier.

Interestingly, London’s Hunterian Museum, housed at the Royal College of Surgeons, is a similar collection, but instead it is that of his younger brother, the arguably better regarded anatomist John Hunter (1728-1793), whose bust stands in Leicester Square. I’m not one to pick sides, but the younger Hunter’s museum houses the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the ‘Irish Giant’, who stood at an imposing 2.3 metres in height. I think that anyone would be impressed by that anatomy specimen.

There’s a quirky humour in the juxtaposition. Hunter’s plaque lies on the edge of a London area almost defined by its anatomy in some eyes – legs, breasts, cocks – and, indeed, the Lyric Theatre is currently running a musical based on the work of Michael Jackson, a performer for whom his anatomy was, towards the end, more fascinating to most than his music.

I attend a screening on Soho Square, at Twentieth Century House. The film is Crazy Heart, but thanks to an unfortunately placed embargo, I cannot attest to its anatomical properties. Instead, I’ll defer to Los Campesinos!, who know a little about hearts – be they beating, bruised, bleeding or broken.

I’m leaving my body to science; not medical but physics. Drag my corpse through the airport and lay me limp on the left wing. Drop me a the highest point and trace a line around the dent I leave in the ground: that’ll be the initial of the one you will marry now I’m not around.

That is from ‘In Medias Res’, the opening track from their new album Romance Is Boring. I bought my copy from Sister Ray Records, Berwick Street, but the album is also available elsewhere.

(#3) Dawes Street: Dr. Charles Vickery Drysdale I last saw a particular girl – a girl born on the 29th of January 23 years ago – cycling eastwards down East Street into the night. As she pulled away and disappeared from view, I noticed on the corner facing me a closed-down Brook Cliniс. Just out of view, on the Dawes Street corner of the building, beamed a blue plaque, proclaiming: Dr. Charles Vickery Drysdale (1874-1961), a founder of the Family Planning Association, opened his first birth control clinic here in 1921. There is little to be found about Drysdale from a perfunctory glance over the Internet, apart from the facts plainly stated above. However, with a little digging, there are a number of interesting points. He was an advocate for contraception and birth control, professing views that were influenced by the social theories of Reverend Dr. Thomas Robert Malthus. Indeed, Drysdale served as both editor of the publication Malthusian between 1907 and 1916, and was President of the Malthusian League. While the neo-Malthusians were instrumental in the discussion of birth control and other secular matters, their ideology openly toyed with eugenics – with the reproduction of the working classes seen as a social problem. Here is a quote from Drysdale on the matter, which crystallises the simultaneously progressive and reactionary thinking: “(The Catholic Church) … can therefore only count on the support of the ignorant Irish Catholics, and not even them if birth control information penetrates to them … Rome has made no concessions … the State cannot lawfully forbid the marriage of the poor or the physically or mentally defective. Sterilisation is absolutely forbidden, and even segregation for the purpose of preventing marriage … Rome is fundamentally and unalterably opposed to eugenics.” (source) That aside, it is also noted that he was active in the movement to include women in the medical profession, teaching at the Female Medical College, which was established in London in 1864 as an off-shoot of the Female Medical Society. While it is sometimes hard to discern ideology and philosophy in this relatively liberated (UK-specific) society, full of “post-”s and “-isms”, it is startling to note how the (assumed) forward march of social policy has not always been compatible with our contemporary models of morality. Contraception and family planning are now individual issues, something discussed as part of female emancipation. It was not always so clear-cut. In the meantime, those looking for the Brook Clinic are advised to visit the Westmoreland Road centre. Click for high-res photo

(#3) Dawes Street: Dr. Charles Vickery Drysdale

I last saw a particular girl – a girl born on the 29th of January 23 years ago – cycling eastwards down East Street into the night. As she pulled away and disappeared from view, I noticed on the corner facing me a closed-down Brook Cliniс. Just out of view, on the Dawes Street corner of the building, beamed a blue plaque, proclaiming:

Dr. Charles Vickery Drysdale (1874-1961), a founder of the Family Planning Association, opened his first birth control clinic here in 1921.

There is little to be found about Drysdale from a perfunctory glance over the Internet, apart from the facts plainly stated above. However, with a little digging, there are a number of interesting points.

He was an advocate for contraception and birth control, professing views that were influenced by the social theories of Reverend Dr. Thomas Robert Malthus. Indeed, Drysdale served as both editor of the publication Malthusian between 1907 and 1916, and was President of the Malthusian League. While the neo-Malthusians were instrumental in the discussion of birth control and other secular matters, their ideology openly toyed with eugenics – with the reproduction of the working classes seen as a social problem. Here is a quote from Drysdale on the matter, which crystallises the simultaneously progressive and reactionary thinking:

“(The Catholic Church) … can therefore only count on the support of the ignorant Irish Catholics, and not even them if birth control information penetrates to them … Rome has made no concessions … the State cannot lawfully forbid the marriage of the poor or the physically or mentally defective. Sterilisation is absolutely forbidden, and even segregation for the purpose of preventing marriage … Rome is fundamentally and unalterably opposed to eugenics.” (source)

That aside, it is also noted that he was active in the movement to include women in the medical profession, teaching at the Female Medical College, which was established in London in 1864 as an off-shoot of the Female Medical Society.

While it is sometimes hard to discern ideology and philosophy in this relatively liberated (UK-specific) society, full of “post-”s and “-isms”, it is startling to note how the (assumed) forward march of social policy has not always been compatible with our contemporary models of morality. Contraception and family planning are now individual issues, something discussed as part of female emancipation. It was not always so clear-cut.

In the meantime, those looking for the Brook Clinic are advised to visit the Westmoreland Road centre.

(#2) Gordon Square: The Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, and the Stracheys) Unforecast rain on purple shoes. Sharp turn right into Gordon Square to be presented with a brown circular plaque: ‘Here and in neighbouring houses during the first half of the 20th Century there lived several members of The Bloomsbury Group…’. Walking on to number 43, the patter morphs into the staccato of the old film Professor - hearing aid in ear - elaborating ‘In fact, Eisenstein’s film was first exhibited in London not far from here…’. He motioned out into the half-remembered November chill, letting Battleship Potemkin play in the background. ‘By the London Film Club, based near Regent Street, which was attended by Virginia Woolf, and other Bloomsbury writers.’ Later, a library-sourced volume reveals Woolf’s prescient handling of cinematic potential, in the 1926 essay ‘The Cinema’: ‘Yet if so much of our thinking and feeling is connected with seeing, some residue of visual emotion which is of no use either to painter or to poet may still await cinema. That such symbols will be quite unlike the real objects which we see before us seems highly probable. Something abstract, something which moves with controlled and conscious art, something which calls for the very slightest help from words or music to make itself intelligible, yet justly uses them subserviently - of such movements and abstractions the films may in time to come be composed.’ Part of cinema’s appeal, and part of its influence on Woolf’s own writing, was its mastery over time. Film creates continuity through a progression of images. It creates fluidity and transcendence, and the possibility for play, elision and experimentation. Quite the opposite of the fixity of paint on plate. Back to the late January drizzle, climbing university stairs to a seminar on Japanese cinema. Click for high-res photo

(#2) Gordon Square: The Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, and the Stracheys)

Unforecast rain on purple shoes. Sharp turn right into Gordon Square to be presented with a brown circular plaque: ‘Here and in neighbouring houses during the first half of the 20th Century there lived several members of The Bloomsbury Group…’.

Walking on to number 43, the patter morphs into the staccato of the old film Professor - hearing aid in ear - elaborating ‘In fact, Eisenstein’s film was first exhibited in London not far from here…’. He motioned out into the half-remembered November chill, letting Battleship Potemkin play in the background. ‘By the London Film Club, based near Regent Street, which was attended by Virginia Woolf, and other Bloomsbury writers.’

Later, a library-sourced volume reveals Woolf’s prescient handling of cinematic potential, in the 1926 essay ‘The Cinema’:

‘Yet if so much of our thinking and feeling is connected with seeing, some residue of visual emotion which is of no use either to painter or to poet may still await cinema. That such symbols will be quite unlike the real objects which we see before us seems highly probable. Something abstract, something which moves with controlled and conscious art, something which calls for the very slightest help from words or music to make itself intelligible, yet justly uses them subserviently - of such movements and abstractions the films may in time to come be composed.’

Part of cinema’s appeal, and part of its influence on Woolf’s own writing, was its mastery over time. Film creates continuity through a progression of images. It creates fluidity and transcendence, and the possibility for play, elision and experimentation. Quite the opposite of the fixity of paint on plate.

Back to the late January drizzle, climbing university stairs to a seminar on Japanese cinema.

“Robinson believes that, if he looked at it hard enough, he could cause the surface of the city to reveal to him the molecular basis of historical events…”

Patrick Keiller, London.

(#1) Craven Street: Herman Melville. A diverted bus route takes me up Craven Street, a steep, narrow lane that boasts three notable residents. Neither Heinrich Heine (German Romantic poet), nor Benjamin Franklin (American statesman, writer, inventor, star of Day of the Tentacle) have been given blue Heritage plaques. That respect has been only granted to Melville. A fitting service, given his relatively late-blooming reputation. His books - including Moby Dick - fell out of print during his own lifetime, only to be eventually hailed as among his country’s greatest artistic works. A book many recognise, but few have read. The plaque carries on this trend; while his work may remain in digital print for perpetuity, his reputation is maintained through this blank, prosaic index card of a memorial: ‘Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, lived here in 1849’. Print of a different kind was on my mind, as I strode into Charing Cross station, and purchased - handing over plastic money with knuckles split by the cold - a copy of The New Yorker. A long-form profile of writer Neil Gaiman by Dana Goodyear jumps off the pages: a form of engrossing journalism too elongated for web browsing. I anticipate the maturation of e-readers, so that this currently-endangered discipline can flourish once more.

(#1) Craven Street: Herman Melville.

A diverted bus route takes me up Craven Street, a steep, narrow lane that boasts three notable residents. Neither Heinrich Heine (German Romantic poet), nor Benjamin Franklin (American statesman, writer, inventor, star of Day of the Tentacle) have been given blue Heritage plaques. That respect has been only granted to Melville. A fitting service, given his relatively late-blooming reputation. His books - including Moby Dick - fell out of print during his own lifetime, only to be eventually hailed as among his country’s greatest artistic works. A book many recognise, but few have read. The plaque carries on this trend; while his work may remain in digital print for perpetuity, his reputation is maintained through this blank, prosaic index card of a memorial: ‘Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, lived here in 1849’.

Print of a different kind was on my mind, as I strode into Charing Cross station, and purchased - handing over plastic money with knuckles split by the cold - a copy of The New Yorker. A long-form profile of writer Neil Gaiman by Dana Goodyear jumps off the pages: a form of engrossing journalism too elongated for web browsing. I anticipate the maturation of e-readers, so that this currently-endangered discipline can flourish once more.