Babbage’s Street Nuisances

A list of things that annoyed a Victorian intellectual…

In Passages From The Life Of A Philosopher (1864), Charles Babbage explained that “every moment of my waking hours has always been occupied by some train of inquiry. In far the largest number of instances the subject might be simple or even trivial, but still work of inquiry, of some kind or other, was always going on”. This is a fine example of the boundless and breathtaking energy characteristic of so many of the great Victorians. There was never any rest for Babbage – “every moment”, “always”. Yet this tireless mental activity was not taking place in some cloistered sanctum. Living in London, Babbage had to put up with what he called “street nuisances”. Helpfully, one train of inquiry was to list them, and their sources:

During the last ten years, the amount of street music has so greatly increased that it has now become a positive nuisance to a very considerable portion of the inhabitants of London. It robs the industrious of time; it annoys the musical man by its intolerable badness; it irritates the invalid; deprives the patient, who at great inconvenience has visited London for the best medical advice, of that repose which, under such circumstances, is essential for his recovery, and it destroys the time and energy of all the intellectual classes of society by its continual interruptions of their pursuits.

Instruments of torture permitted by the Government to be in daily and nightly use in the streets of London:

Organs
Brass bands
Fiddlers
Harps
Harpsichords
Hurdy-gurdies
Flageolots
Drums
Bagpipes
Accordians
Halfpenny whistles
Tom toms
Trumpets
Shouting out object for sale
Religious canting
Psalm-singing

I have very frequently been disturbed by such music… after twelve o’clock at night. Upon one occasion, a brass band played, with but few and short intermissions, for five hours.

Encouragers of street music:

Tavern-keepers
Public-houses
Gin-shops
Beer-shops
Coffee-shops
Servants
Children
Visitors from the country
Ladies of doubtful virtue
Occasionally titled ladies; but these are almost invariably of recent elevation, and deficient in that taste which their sex usually possess.

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About Author Profile: Frank Key

Frank Key is a London-based writer, blogger and broadcaster best known for his Hooting Yard blog, short-story collections and his long-running radio series Hooting Yard on the Air, which has been broadcast weekly on Resonance FM since April 2004. By Aerostat to Hooting Yard - A Frank Key Reader, an ideal introduction to his fiction, is published for Kindle by Dabbler Editions. Mr Key's Shorter Potted Brief, Brief Lives was published in October 2015 by Constable and is available to buy online and in all good bookshops.

6 thoughts on “Babbage’s Street Nuisances

  1. Worm
    June 8, 2012 at 09:10

    visitors from the country are a pernicious menace

  2. george.jansen55@gmail.com'
    George
    June 8, 2012 at 14:09

    A programmer/sysadmin I knew once punched it out with a street vendor during a disagreement about the volume at which the latter played his boom box. This happened right under the office windows, with quite a few of his co-workers rooting for the vendor. I thought of him as carrying on the work of Charles Babbage.

    The truly odd thing about street music now is the electronic accompaniment that most of them bring along, at least in downtown Washington.

  3. hooting.yard@googlemail.com'
    June 8, 2012 at 14:29

    Bloody harpsichordists on the Old Kent Road disturbing my concentration again!

  4. Worm
    June 8, 2012 at 15:51

    one can only imagine the problems that occur in a thoroughfare with an unregulated build up of organs and fiddlers

  5. nigeandrew@gmail.com'
    June 8, 2012 at 17:18

    He’s so right about titled ladies of recent elevation…

  6. Gaw
    June 11, 2012 at 20:58

    It reads like an outline for so many why-oh-why columns one sees in the newspapers, which I shall now think of as a load of old babbaging.

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