London: The Biography полностью

There is a museum south of the river, off the Walworth Road, which contains the “Lovett Collection” of London charms, amulets and relics. It is the true home of urban superstition, with a range of artefacts which suggests that the city has absorbed all the traditions of magic and ritual from both native and immigrant populations. From the East End came, in 1916, “five uneven shaped stones on a string”; these were, according to the museum’s catalogue, “hung on the corner of the bed to keep nightmares away.” In the same year was deposited a “greyish white tubular bottle sealed at each end with thread. Mercury inside.” This was used as a cure for rheumatism. A grey cat’s skin was employed as a remedy for whooping cough, and a “leather slipper painted gold” was a symbol of good luck. From Clapham arrived a pincushion in the form of a domino piece, marked with seven dots. From east London came a key attached to a rope, as a talisman to safeguard the wearer against witches, as well as a necklace of amber and other gems worn in 1917 “to bring good health.” Barking was the area in which to search for mandrake roots, which scream like a child when taken out of the ground. There are coins to bring wealth, iron pyrite acorns to prevent lightning strikes (the acorn from the tree of the thunder god), cows’ hearts and rams’ horns and donkeys’ shoes to act as charms. The museum also contains the head of a London magician’s wand or staff, engraved with Solomon’s seal; it was carved in the fourteenth century, and then lost in the depths of the river. As recently as 1915, it was common practice, in the East End, to cut off some of the hair of a sick child. The hair was placed in a sandwich, and given to the first dog that was encountered; the illness then left the child and entered the body of the unfortunate animal. In the East End, too, it was customary for women and female children to wear blue glass beads around the neck “as a preventive charm against bronchitis”; these necklaces were sold in hundreds of small shops, “usually presided over by an aged woman,” at the price of one halfpenny. It became a custom that the beads were eventually buried with the woman who had worn them. In the early twentieth century, too, young women all over London were visiting herbalists in order to purchase “tormentil root” or “dragon’s blood”-gum from a Sumatran tree-as love philtres.

In a suggestive book written by Edward Lovett, Magic in Modern London, published in 1925, it is reported that sharks’ teeth taken from the London clay were said to cure cramp. In Camberwell it was customary to cover a horseshoe with red cloth in order to ward off nightmares, while Mile End was known as the place where children could be “charmed” and healed. When market business was bad in the East End the trader would exclaim: “Ah! I expect I forgot to bow to the new moon!” It is appropriate, in a city of commerce, that it was customary to call out “money” at the sight of a falling star. Strangely shaped stones were placed on London mantelpieces as a “votive offering,” in the same manner that silver representations of limbs were hung in medieval city churches. A woman in Whitechapel told an investigator that, when moving house, it was customary to swing the cat around one room in order to induce it to stay. There are also interesting records of “cat sacrifice” in the walls of certain houses. Cauls in which children had been born were on sale for eighteen pence each as a safeguard against drowning but, at the time of the First World War, when the danger of death was very close, the price rose to £2. In London markets it was possible, until recent times, to buy neolithic stone axes or flint arrowheads as another precaution against thunderbolts.

London resembles a prison, and it is perhaps not surprising to discover that keys have always been an object of taboo. They were associated with magic and the presence of demons; thus “The art of lock-picking was known as the ‘Black Art,’” according to Peter Linebaugh in The London Hanged, and “the most common lock-picking tool was called a ‘charm.’” Keys were used to investigate suspected persons; the name was placed in the stem of a key and guilt was established if the key then moved or shook. The lodgings of prostitutes were often symbolised by “the drawing of a large key,” and many ladies of the night wore keys around their neck as a symbol of their trade.

There is a suggestive eighteenth-century passage, connected with the storming of Newgate Prison. One rioter came back to his lodging house and announced: “I have got the keys of Newgate.” At his subsequent trial, a fellow lodger was questioned by the magistrate about these keys. “You would not touch them for fear that they would contaminate you?” “I would not come near them.”

Patients at Bedlam who refused to swallow their drugs had their mouths opened by a specially designed metal key.