Dirty Dick, The Man Who Stopped Washing

This article originally appeared on The LondoNerD, an Italian blog on the secrets of London.

I have about an hour to complete my mission.
Just out of Liverpool Street Station, I look around waiting for my eyes to adapt to the glaring street. The light is harsh, quite oddly indeed as those London clouds rest on the Victorian buildings like oilcloth. Or like a shroud, I find myself thinking — a natural free association, since I stand a few steps away from those areas (the 19th-Century slums of Whitchapel and Spitafield) where the Ripper was active.
But my mission has nothing to do with old Jack.
The job was assigned to me by The LondoNerD himself: knowing I would have a little spare time before my connection, he wrote me a laconic note:

“You should head straight for Dirty Dicks. And go down in the toilets.“

Now: having The LondoNerD as a friend is always a sure bet, when you’re in the City. He knows more about London than most of actual Londoners, and his advice is always valuable.
And yet I have to admit that visiting a loo, especially in a place called Dirty Dicks, is not a prospect which makes me sparkle with enthusiasm.

But then again, this proposal must conceal something that has to do with my interests. Likely, some macabre secret.
For those who don’t know me, that’s what I do for a living: I deal with bizarre and macabre stuff. My (very unserious) business card reads: Explorer of the Uncanny, Collector of Wonders.

The collection the card refers to is of course made of physical obejects, coming from ancient times and esotic latitudes, which I cram inside my cabinets; but it’s also a metaphore for the strange forgotten stories I have been collecting and retelling for many years — historical adecdotes proving how the world never really ceased to be an enchanted place, overflowing with wonders.

But enough, time is running out.

Taking long strides I move towards Dirty Dicks, at 202 Bishopsgate. And it’s not much of a surprise to find that, given the name on the signs, the pub’s facade is one of the most photographed by tourists, amidst chuckles and faux-Puritan winks.

The blackboard by the door remarks upon a too often ignored truth:

I am not at all paranoid (I couldn’t be, since I spend my time dealing with mummies, crypts and anatomical museums), but I reckon the advice is worth following.

Dirty Dicks’ interiors combine the classic English pub atmosphere with a singular, vintage and vaguely hipster design. Old prints hanging from the walls, hot-air-balloon wallpaper, a beautiful chandelier dangling through the bar’s two storeys.

I quickly order my food, and head towards the famous restrooms.

The toilets’ waiting room is glowing with a dim yellow light, but finally, there in the corner, I recognize the objective of my mission. The reason I was sent here.

A two-door cabinet, plunged in semi-obscurity, is decorated with a sign: “Nathaniel Bentley’s Artefacts”.

It is so dark in here that I can barely identify what’s inside the cabinet. (I try and take some pictures, but the sensor, pushed to the limit of its capabilities, only gives back blurred images — for which I apologize with the reader.)

Yes, I can make out a mummified cat. And there’s another one. They remind me of the dead cat and mouse found behind Christ Church‘s organ in Dublin, and displayed in that very church.

No mice here, as far as I can tell, but there’s a spooky withered squirrel watching me with its bulging little eyes.

There are several taxidermied animals, little birds, mammal skulls, old naturalistic prints, gaffs and chimeras built with different animal parts, bottles and vials with unspecified specimens floating in alcohol that’s been clouded for a very long time now.

What is this dusty and moldy cabinet of curiosities doing inside a pub? Who is Nathaniel Bentley, whom the sign indicates as the creator of the “artefacts”?

The story of this bizarre collection is strictly tied to the bar’s origins, and its infamous name.
Dirty Dicks has in fact lost (in a humorous yet excellent marketing choice) its ancient genitive apostrophe, referring to a real-life character.
Dirty Dick was the nickname of our mysterious Nathaniel Bentley.

Bentley, who lived in the 18th Century, was the original owner of the pub and also ran a hardware store and a warehouse adjacent to the inn. After a carefree dandy youth, he decided to marry. But, in the most dramatic twist of fate, his bride died on their wedding day.

From that moment on Nathaniel, plunged into the abyss of a desperate grief, gave up washing himself or cleaning his tavern. He became so famous for his grubbiness that he was nicknamed Dirty Dick — and knowing the degree of hygiene in London at the time, the filth on his person and in his pub must have been really unimaginable.
Letters sent to his store were simply addressed to “The Dirty Warehouse”. It seems that even Charles Dickens, in his Great Expectations, might have taken inspiration from Dirty Dick for the character of Miss Havisham, the bride left at the altar who refuses to take off her wedding dress for the rest of her life.

In 1804 Nathaniel closed all of his commercial activities, and left London. After his death in 1809 in Haddington, Lincolnshire, other owners took over the pub, and decided to capitalize on the famous urban legend. They recreated the look of the old squallid warehouse, keeping their bottles of liquor constantly covered in dust and cobwebs, and leaving around the bar (as a nice decor) those worn-out stuffed and mummified animals Dirty Dick never cared to throw in the trash.

Today that Dirty Dicks is all clean and tidy, and the only smell is of good cuisine, the relics have been moved to this cabinet near the toilets. As a reminder of one of the countless, eccentric and often tragic stories that punctuate the history of London.

Funny how times change. Once the specialty of the house was filth, now it’s the inviting and delicious pork T-bone that awaits me when I get back to my table.

And that I willingly tackle, just to ward off potential kidnappers.

The LondoNerD is an Italian blog, young but already full of wonderful insights: weird, curious and little-knowns stories about London. You can follow on Facebook and Twitter.

Mater incerta

Jan27

In 2002 Lydia Fairchild, a 26-year-old woman living in Washington state, was already a mother of two kids, with a third one on her way, and without a steady job; she had decided to seek public assistance.
The procedure required her children to undergo DNA testing to confirm that their father was indeed Jamie Townsend, Fairchild’s former partner. It should have been a routine check, but some days later the woman received a strange call, asking her to come in the prosecutor’s office at Social Services.
And that is when her world almost fell apart.

Once she went in, the officers closed the door behind her and started drilling her: “Who are you?”, they kept asking her repeatedly, without her understanding what was going on.
The reason behind the relentless questioning was absolutely unpredictable: the DNA tests had proven that Jamie Townsend was actually the children’s father… but Lydia was not their mother.

Although the woman kept repeating that she had carried and delivered them, the results categorically excluded this possibility: the genetic profiles of her children were in fact made up for one half from their father’s chromosomes, and for the other half from the chromosomes of an unknown woman. Lydia Fairchild was facing the risk of having her kids taken away from her.
Before the woman’s despair, Social Services ordered a new test, which gave exactly the same results. Lydia showed no genetic link with her children.

During the following 16 months, things got worse. The officers launched court action to remove her custody rights, as this could turn out to be a case of abduction, and the state even had a court officer witness her third child’s delivery, so that DNA test could be run immediately after birth. Once again, the newborn baby showed no genes in common with Lydia, who then became a suspect of acting as a surrogate for payment (which in Washington state is considered gross misdemeanor).
Lydia Fairchild was living a true nightmare: “I’d sit and have dinner with my kids and just break out crying. They would just look at me like, ‘What’s wrong, Mum.’ They’d come get me a hug, and I couldn’t explain it to them, because I didn’t understand“.

Her lawyer Alan Tindell, though initially perplexed by the case, decided to investigate and one day stumbled upon a similar story that happened in Boston, as described in a paper on the New England Journal of Medicine: a 52-year-old woman, Karen Keegan, had undergone a hystological exam in view of a transplant, and the results had shown no link between her DNA and her children’s.
Quite often the solution for the most intricate mysteries turn out to be disappointing, but in this case the explanation was just as incredible.
The lawyer understood that, just like the mother the scientific paper was about, Lydia too was a chimera.

Tetragametic chimerism happens when two egg cells are fertilized by two different sperm cells and, instead of developing into two fraternal twins, they fuse together at a very early stage. The chimeric individual is equipped with two different genetic makeups, and can develop whole organs having different chromosomes from all the others. Most chimeras do not even know they are, because the existence of two cellular lines is not often noticeable; but they carry inside them for instance the liver, or some other gland, that should have been part of their unborn twin.
In Fairchild’s case, the “foreign” organs were her ovaries. Inside of them were hidden those unknown chromosomes that formed the genetic makeup of Lydias’s children, as was confirmed by the examination of the cells obtained via pap test.

Finally the court dismissed the case. In the court hearing, the judge openly wondered how reliable could DNA tests be, as they are even today held essential in forensic cases — but what if the criminal is a chimera?
Today Lydia Fairchild is back to her normal life, leaving this terrible adventure behind. And some years ago she gave birth to her fourth daughter; or, if you will, the fourth daughter of that sister she never had.

The New England Journal of Medicine paper mentioned in the post can be read here. To discover some less-known istances of chimerism, I suggest this articolo.

Sculture tassidermiche – I

Dec22

In anni recenti, la tassidermia artistica (cioè non naturalistica) ha conosciuto un rinnovato interesse da parte di pubblico e critica. Come è noto, la tassidermia è l’antica arte di impagliare gli animali: della bestia viene conservata soltanto la pelle (ed eventuali unghie o corna), e a seconda delle dimensioni e della specie si seguono diversi procedimenti per ridare la forma più naturale possibile all’esemplare. La tassidermia ha conosciuto la sua fortuna con la nascita dei musei di storia naturale e, in un secondo tempo, con la diffusione nel ‘900 della caccia come sport. Ma in entrambi i casi quello che l’artista cercava di raggiungere era un risultato il più possibile vicino alla realtà, rendendo l’animale impagliato il più vivo possibile, replicando minuziosamente le pose che assume in natura, ecc. La tassidermia artistica utilizza invece le tecniche di imbalsamazione e preparazione per attingere a risultati non realistici – per creare insomma chimere, mostri e animali impossibili.

Questo tipo di tassidermia non è certo una novità: già il tassidermista tedesco Hermann Ploucquet aveva incantato i visitatori della Grande Mostra del 1851 con i suoi “animali comici”, animali impagliati in pose antropomorfe che si sfidavano in improbabili duelli. Ploucquet poteva contare fra i suoi “fan” più celebri la Regina Vittoria in persona.

Ploucquet è generalmente ritenuto la maggiore influenza per il tassidermista vittoriano Walter Potter, divenuto celebre per i suoi diorami di complessità e ricercatezza ineguagliate. Classi di scuola in cui gli studenti sono tutti coniglietti impagliati, rane imbalsamate che fanno esercizi di ginnastica (grazie a un meccanismo automatico nascosto che dona loro il movimento), cerimonie di nozze fra topolini, e altre situazioni surreali costituivano il fulcro del suo Museo delle Curiosità.

Ogni piccolo dettaglio, dai quaderni ai calamai, dai vestitini alle tazzine da tè era maniacalmente riprodotto, e ad ogni animaletto Potter regalava una diversa espressione facciale – una sfida con la quale si sarebbero dovuti confrontare tutti i tassidermisti a venire.

I diorami di Potter, per quanto complessi, sembrano comunque infantili e un tantino ingenui, soprattutto se confrontati alle opere dei moderni artisti di tassidermia creativa. Forse questo è il momento di ricordare che tutti gli artisti di cui parleremo sono propugnatori di una tassidermia “etica” e responsabile, vale a dire che per le loro composizioni utilizzano esclusivamente 1) animali trovati morti sulle strade 2) parti di scarto di macelli o di collezioni museali 3) animali domestici donati dai proprietari dopo una morte naturale. Molti di questi artisti sono attivi in programmi di protezione della natura, e collaborano spesso con le facoltà di biologia delle principali università.

Sarina Brewer, ad esempio, oltre che prendere parte a diversi progetti di storia naturale dell’Università del Minnesota, nel tempo libero si occupa anche di riabilitazione e cura degli animali selvatici feriti. Nonostante questa sua sensibilità verso gli animali, le sue doti di esperta tassidermista si esprimono spesso in modo macabro e grottesco: Sarina infatti costruisce chimere, esseri fantastici e immaginari nati dalla commistione di diverse morfologie animali.

Da più di 20 anni grifoni, arpie, gatti alati, strane e meravigliose creature prendono vita a partire da scarti di animali fra le abili mani della Brewer. Sarina crede che proprio in questo risieda la bellezza della sua arte: “io mi occupo della morte in maniera che i più reputano non convenzionale. Io non vedo un animale morto come disgustoso o offensivo. Penso che tutte le creature siano belle, nella morte così come nella vita, belle di fuori come di dentro. Il mio lavoro è un omaggio alla loro bellezza, perché quando le reincarno nelle mie opere, sto creando una nuova vita là dove prima c’era solo morte”.

Iris Schieferstein non lavora esclusivamente con la tassidermia, ma quando lo fa, i risultati sono sempre controversi e puntano il dito sul nostro concetto di realtà, di buon gusto, e sulla crudeltà esibita nel concetto di moda (un po’ come il britannico Reid Peppard di cui avevamo già parlato in questo famigerato articolo). I lavori della Schieferstein sono ibridazioni di forme, inaspettate sculture che confondono i piani di senso associando organico e meccanico.

Polly Morgan è londinese, classe 1980. Il suo lavoro è al tempo stesso disturbante e commovente: assolutamente spiazzante, persino scioccante a volte, ma sempre pervaso da uno strano e sottile senso di magia.

I suoi animali addormentati in speciali mausolei sembrano esseri fiabeschi, e ci pare di ravvedere un’evidente compassione, una vera e propria pietas nell’approccio che la Morgan adotta verso i suoi soggetti.