Yorkshire Almanac Jane Carlyle tells husband Thomas how she rebelled against the brutal hydrotherapy meted out by Dr William Macleod at Ben Rhydding spa, Ilkley

20 July 1849: Jane Carlyle tells husband Thomas how she rebelled against the brutal hydrotherapy meted out by Dr William Macleod at Ben Rhydding spa, Ilkley

Jane Welsh Carlyle. 1894. Letters and Memorials. Ed. Thomas Carlyle and James Anthony Froude. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

To T. Carlyle, at Galway.

Benrydden: Friday, July 20, 1849.

Oh, my dear, I have been ‘packed!’ The Doctor proposed to ‘pack’ me for courtesy, and I, for curiosity, accepted. So at six in the morning, just when I had fallen into sound sleep, I was roused by a bath-woman coming to my bedside, in a huge white flannel gown, and bidding me turn out. I got on to the floor in a very bewildered state, and she proceeded to double back one half of my bed clothes and feather-bed, spread a pair of blankets on the mattress, then a sheet wrung out of cold water; then bade me strip and lie down. I lay down, and she swathed me with the wet sheet like a mummy; then swathed me with the blankets, my arms pinioned down, exactly, in fact, like a mummy; then rolled back the feather-bed and original bed-clothes on the top of me, leaving out the head; and so left me, for an hour, to go mad at my leisure! I had no sooner fairly realised my situation of being bound hand and foot under a heap of things, than I felt quite frantic, cursed my foolish curiosity, and made horrid efforts to release myself; thought of rolling to the bell, and ringing it with my teeth, but could not shake off the feather-bed; did ultimately get one of my hands turned round, and was thankful for even that change of posture. Dr. Nicol says the bath-woman should have stayed with me during the first ‘pack,’ and put a wet cloth on my head; that it was the blood being sent to my head that ’caused all this wildness.’ Whatever it was, I would not undergo the thing again for a hundred guineas. When the bath-woman came back at seven, I ordered her to take me out instantly. ‘But the doctor?’ The doctor, I told her, had no business with me, I was not a patient. ‘Oh! then you have only been packed for foon, have you?’ ‘Yes; and very bad fun!’ So she filled a slipper-bath to ‘put me to rights,’ and I plunged into that so soon as I was set loose, and she splashed pitcher after pitcher full of water on my head. And this shall be the last of my water-curing, for the present. I feel quite shattered still, with an incipient headache, and am wishing that Forster would come, and take us back to Rawdon.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Hydrotherapy can kill, really. Paddington Weighs In deals with a similar horror:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaEysHZapJw

For some reason I class hydrotherapy with hydrophobia.

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Comment

Hydrotherapy can kill, really. Paddington Weighs In deals with a similar horror:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaEysHZapJw

For some reason I class hydrotherapy with hydrophobia.

Something to say? Get in touch

23 January 1643: Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, captures Leeds from the Beast with the help of Psalm 68

30 May 1835: Alfred Austin, future poet laureate, “Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum,” is born into rural splendour at Ashwood, 48 Headingley Lane, Leeds

15 April 1779: The actor John Kemble asks a society girl to be quiet during a death scene at York and is hounded by the North Riding Militia

5 December 1832: James Benson (19) and his little sister, Irish strikebreakers, are set upon by a mob between Farsley and Stanningley

3 November 1694: Leeds’s borough treasurer is mandated to pay goldsmith Arthur Monjoy £61 for making the ceremonial mace

4 July 1858: Incipient water-baby Tom arrives at Malham Cove, discovered today by Charles Kingsley

25 January 1859: John Lumsden, Hull-based Scottish steam entrepreneur and future mayor, addresses the local Robert Burns centenary dinner

14 October 1769: The poet Thomas Gray travels from Skipton to Otley

22 May 1874: As ironworkers breach their employment contract to celebrate Whitsun, the Darlington Iron Company breaches it too by turning away those wishing to work

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Comment

My possibly mistaken impression is that some of the workers figured that they could have their cake and eat it – pretend they had been frustrated in their desire to work by their employer, and extract holiday pay for Whit Week. The arbitration award (included in op cit) by pioneering industrial arbitrator Rupert Kettle (succinct bio (Ward 1887) – see also his Strikes and Arbitrations (Kettle 1866)) is interesting:

I hold that the employers could not legally act upon the first notice, nor were any portion of the workmen legally competent to bind their fellows by themselves consenting not to work. The contract of hiring and service is an individual and several contract between the employers of the one part, and the workmen of the other part; and unless there is some express stipulation to the contrary in the contract the employer is bound to find work, and the workman to work for his employer, during the whole of every ordinary working day. When the Darlington Iron Works were closed on the 29th of May, any workman who attended there in the regular course of his duty might:
1. Have summoned under the Master and Servant Act, the person with whom his hiring contract was made.
2. Or, after holding himself at the service of his employers every working day until the next ordinary reckoning time, have demanded his full wages, and, if not paid, he might have recovered the amount by a civil action.
3. Or, the workman might treat the refusal to employ as a recession of the contract, and, therefore, rescind it on his part, so that the contract would be determined by mutual consent.
The workmen who are parties to this arbitration have chosen to take the last mentioned course. They went on Monday, by their agents, to the office of the Darlington Iron Co., and demanded to be paid up and allowed to leave the service. This demand was not complied with on the Monday, but, upon its being repeated on the following Wednesday, the discontented workmen were paid up and allowed to leave their employment. Payment and satisfaction was thus made of everything which could be claimed under the contract, and it was therefore rescinded by mutual consent.
I award that no further claim can be made by the workmen.

Under William Barningham’s ownership most of the workforce were apparently Irish immmigrants.

Whitsuntide in Lancashire:

The Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsuntide, was formerly kept as a high church festival, and by the people was celebrated by out-door sports and festivities, and especially by the drinking assemblies called “Whitsun-Ales.” One writer (inquiring whether the custom of “lifting at Easter” is a memorial of Christ being raised up from the grave) observes that, “there seems to be a trace of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the heads of the Apostles, in what passes at Whitsuntide Fair, in some parts of Lancashire; where one person holds a stick over the head of another, whilst a third, unperceived, strikes the stick, and thus gives a smart blow to the first. But this probably is only local.” “Whit-week,” as it is generally called, has gradually grown to be the great yearly holiday of the hundred of Salford, and the manufacturing district of which Manchester is the centre. This seems to have arisen from the yearly races at Manchester being held from the Wednesday to the Saturday inclusive, in that week. After the rise of Sunday-schools, their conductors, desiring to keep youth of both sexes from the demoralizing recreations of the racecourse, took them to fields in the neighbourhood and held anniversary celebrations, tea-parties, &c., in the schools. The extension of the railway system has led to “cheap trips” and “school excursion trains” during Whitsuntide; which are occasionally taken to Wales, the Lakes, and other great distances. Canal boats take large numbers of Sunday scholars to Dunham Park, Worsley, &c. Short excursions are made in carts, temporarily fitted with seats. It is customary for the cotton-mills, &c., to close for Whitsuntide week to give the hands a holiday; the men going to the races, &c., and the women visiting Manchester on Whit-Saturday, thronging the markets, the Royal Exchange, the Infirmary Esplanade, and other public places; and gazing in at the “shop windows,” whence this day is usually called “Gaping Saturday.” The collieries, too, are generally closed in Whit-week; and in some the underground horses are brought to the surface to have a week’s daylight, the only time they enjoy it during the year. The mills, coalpits, &c., generally have the requisite repairs of machinery, &c., made during this yearly holiday – those at least which would necessitate the stoppage of the work at another time (Harland 1867).

1899: Daily News 18 May 7/1 “Whit-week would be a very good time to close the schools.”