London – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Organ-grinding tweets for March 2018

The latest barrel organ news from Hackney, London.

Section of London-Harwich in 1675, crossing the River Lea at Bow.

The Singing Organ Grinder’s tweet archive for February 2018

Another abundance of redundance. Featuring Russian, German and Italian puppetry, organ-grinding, and other nonsense.

A Dutch Polichinel on a buffalo in 1856 (2018-02-01 18:10).

Organ-grinding tweets for January 2018

More sofa-based antics of the Hackney street organist.

Another cheerful Bartolomeo Pinelli engraving, playing on the artist's inability to finish the work at hand: tutto finisce

The secret life of organ-grinders

Speculation in French revolutionary fiduciary currency, the murder of the great British ballad-singer, & a revised date (1802) for the start of the supposedly post-Napoleonic emigration of Italian puppeteers & organ-grinders

Napoleon, apparently in 1797, warbling lines <a href='https://www.lieder-archiv.de/es_kann_ja_nicht_immer_so_bleiben-notenblatt_300633.html'>apparently</a> written by Kotzebue in 1802:

Winchester is the centre of English civilisation

Sez Lucio Vicente López in Recuerdos de viaje (1881). This is apparently in part due to the Normans having invaded without women, thus enabling the maintenance of The Saxon Character. He’s wrong. Winchester is suspiciously continental, while Romsey is Ethelflaeda, who sang psalms while skinny-dipping in the Test, and lithe & lusty hooligans.

Thomas De Quincey on the sewers as a conduit for small boys from Winchester College to the downtown pubs

With his guide to the Ziph language, and with the death of a Savoyard organ-grinder’s white mouse, of which he was probably not the author in any sense.

The Mousie's Funeral, from <i>The Sunbeam</i> in 1882.

Whatever became of Christian Lehmann, pioneering Petersburg Shrovetide zookeeper, Pierrot, illusionist, showman?

Newly uncovered evidence shows that, following the fire which destroyed his Russian theatrical business in 1836, he and his family pursued a career in London and Europe, before repeating their Petersburg triumphs in the USA and Australia. Also, a very curious copyright case.