The historical sublime is very good fun

Today I want to talk about the historical sublime - one of my absolute favourite concepts! I don’t think it’s as widely discussed as it should be. 

This post is compiled from my notes on the historical sublime, from digging around in some of my favourite theoretical books and relevant articles, and from messages I sent in discussions of the historical sublime when a couple of my friends asked me about it. 

Basically, the historical sublime is the element of chaos and uncertainty in history. 

It’s all fun stuff like incongruities and ambiguities, incomplete bits, disruptions, stuff that just doesn’t make sense, things that put the frighteners up most historians - “the idea that the past has neither rhyme nor reason to it; that it is grotesque, or absurd, or sublime” (p.137 of On “What is History?” by Keith Jenkins) and “… the anarchic, unfixed and unfixable nature of reality - the sublime …” (p.218 of The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies by Alun Munslow).

When you encounter something that you can’t get at - when a person of interest vanishes from the historical record, or things can’t be explained, or something seems uncertain, or if you can’t quite make out what that image is or what that word says, or you’ve got something you can’t communicate in words and it’s more of a vibe, or stuff just gets weird, or anything similar - that’s the historical sublime. It gives us an opening for more imaginative engagement with our case studies, our favourite historical people, our chosen events and situations. In my opinion, more imagination leads to more fun!

It’s hard to pin down exactly what the historical sublime is (which fits with the sublime nature of it) and it’s a big thing in my PhD, so I went through a few books where the authors discuss it and I borrowed some of their words. (If you ask, I can get you the citations for all of them, if you want!)

From what I’ve seen, some historians like to believe that they can find The (Most Likely) Story of What Really Happened - which isn’t necessarily the case! 

The historical sublime forces us to confront the fact that we can’t find that - there’s always going to be bits we’ll never know, and a lot of what we think we’ve ‘found’ can be reinterpreted - so, unfortunately, most traditional historians usually just ignore the sublime. (On a related note, a lot of traditional historians don’t like it when they have to acknowledge that they don’t find stories but create them, based on their interpretations of evidence - but I won’t get tangled up in that right now.)

The historical sublime can also be used by historians (and people from other disciplines who like to explore and experiment with history) in communicating their work.

From what I’ve seen, the discipline of history is set up to favour histories that are neat and tidy, have discernible narratives, and appear to show meaningful connections between things in the past. When the historical sublime pops up - if historians start doing narratives without any particular structure, or random bits of something else thrown in, or other postmodern fun - the disciplinary mainstream can start to get a bit upset.

Here’s Hayden White: “We require a history that will educate us to discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinuity, disruption and chaos are our lot.” (p.50 of Tropics of Discourse by Hayden White) 

        I love the idea of the historical sublime as a method of empowerment! And, of course, anything that historians use can be taken into any other discipline or genre or way of working or anything else that you like! Interdisciplinarity is the future!

According to Alun Munslow, Hayden White uses the term “historical sublime” to mean 

“the celebration of the undiscoverable, possibly meaningless, and open-ended nature of the past. Such a meaninglessness is the only invitation that potentially oppositional and dissenting groups of historians may get to challenge certaintist (e.g. fascist) history. They, and we, empower ourselves when we can find no objective certainty in the past - in the sense of a factual correspondence of evidence with Truth - that can be used to validate the authority of those in power over us.”  

(p.12 of Deconstructing History by Alun Munslow)

        So what we’ve got here is a concept that can be used by less privileged people to challenge dominant historical narratives. It also encourages our attempts to reach/ imagine lost voices of the past - the people whose stories never survived. They’ve gone into the historical sublime. Dominant ideologies might want us to just forget about them.

Let’s have a brief poke at earlier ideas about the word “sublime”, before it started hanging out with the word “historical”. 

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the sublime was contrasted against concepts such as the picturesque and the beautiful. Those two are like when you encounter something that makes you go “That’s fantastic, I might have to paint that” whereas the sublime renders you awestruck and possibly a bit afraid but, like, in a good way. 

Thinking about the time when these concepts were really hot, “[Hayden] White argues that … [when history was developing as a discipline in the 19th century] narrative history took on the form of the ordered, the measured and the beautiful, as opposed to a view of a past that lacked these aesthetic proportions, so that the aesthetic tamed the irregularities and grotesqueness of the sublime.” (p.141 of Jenkins, On “What is History?”) 

As far as I’m concerned, the past (and representations that we make about it) should be allowed to be wild and prolific in its sublimity, exuberant in its mysteries, while efforts to control it (such as attempting to insist on One True Story at the expense of others) should be scuppered. By not imposing a single narrative on the past, more people can be empowered to build their own past-based narratives! 

So there’s a kind of optimistic overview of the historical sublime. I need to do more research into it (I want to do a postdoctoral thing on it) but yeah! Enjoy!

How to cope with doing a thesis

I'm in the middle of doing my thesis and it is an absolute ride!

These things (not shown in any particular order) are all things that (usually) work for me - not everything works for everyone, but they might give you some ideas. 

(Also you might be doing a dissertation or a giant essay or something else arduous)

Stretch your damn hands

    Make sure you do it safely!

    Go on YouTube and look for wrist stretches, hand stretches, etc. You’re typing for a long time and it’s not doing you any favours. Here’s some stretch videos I've tried. (I'll keep updating that playlist as I try more!)

    Also stretch your neck and any other body parts that might get upset - stand up regularly - I’ve got a standing desk (actually an old teacher’s desk) - move about, dance, get the blood flowing.

    “But it’ll interrupt my glorious academic work!” Oh you silly twit. Stretching will take a couple of minutes, and your hands need to remain functional. Your health is worth more than some expensive letters after your name. Damaging yourself for the sake of achievement is not a good look.

[ALL CAPS SHOUTY BRACKETS]

    When I’m writing, when I don’t know something and I need to keep going but I can’t be bothered to leave the document/ break the flow/ try finding whatever missing piece of information, I use these. It’s just square brackets [SHOUT AT YOURSELF TO FIX THE SENTENCE OR WHATEVER] and continue like nothing’s happened. 

[INSTRUCTIONS FOR ME FOR LATER]

    Later, when you’re checking your draft and finding things to fix, these stand out!

Lists

 

    I go through each chunk/ chapter/ whatever of my thesis, and I make lists of the bits that need fixing. I do exactly the same when my supervisors read the thesis extracts that I send them - they give me feedback, which I turn into lists.

    Then I go through the lists - I usually tackle the easier stuff first - then that stuff is gradually eliminated, and the harder stuff ends up having easier bits - it’s all relative. 

Some days are better than others and that's ok

    I colour-code my lists so I know what I did and when I did it. This is just for my own amusement, and I can see how many things I crossed off at the end of each day’s work. I like a different colour pen each day! (If you haven’t got many pens, or don’t like the multicoloured look, you could make up a snazzy new pattern for crossing out every day - +|+|+|+, o0o0o0o, *∆*∆*∆*∆*, +x+x+x+ - whatever.)

This list is for things that need citing. When I've found something and shoved it in a footnote, I give it a 🛸 flying saucer. If I still need to find it, I give it a 👻 ghost.

    Sometimes you find a thing on your list that doesn’t even need doing! Some redundant paragraph that needs fixing - actually, it doesn’t fit there - rip it out! And that is quite satisfying. 

Saving stuff for later

    When you rip things out of your thesis (sentences, quotations, paragraphs, massive chunks, etc.) - save them! Make a new document and stick them in there. Sometimes you might need to refer to them later. It’s satisfying to hit delete, but very Not satisfying when you know you had something useful and you cannot find it anywhere FFS why, where the hell is it, If Only I’d Saved It [screaming]

I go into the Notes app, I search for the word "pulled", and I get all sorts of stuff!

    Similarly, every time I start a new draft, I make a duplicate of the current draft - which then becomes the old draft, and the duplicate becomes the new draft. I work on the new draft, and save the old drafts. 

Those documents beginning with the word "pulled" are full of bits I've pulled out of each chapter.

    And also back everything the hell up! My mum, who is a strong technophobe, knows that technology is not to be trusted, and regularly reminds me to back everything up. I keep backups on iCloud and on a USB stick.

    Regarding the bits that you’ve pulled out and saved: even if you don’t use them in your thesis, you’ve got the entire rest of your life to do stuff with them if you want. They could spark off your future publications. If you don’t use them, that’s ok - they’re just practice, like rough drawings in sketchbooks. 

Regular breaks

    When I get my teeth into something, I push hard. When I started the PhD, I was taking no breaks, and I was courting burnout. Now, I make sure I have two days off a week (which are for Me and nobody/ nothing else). My pattern each week is work for three days, day off, work for two days, day off. The days off allow my brain to settle/ stew, and I come back fresher.

    If you have an intense stint, or you’re coming up to finishing a list, once you’re done, Leave It Alone. Just leave it for a week. Let your brain settle. Do something else - if you can’t leave the entire damn PhD alone (like me), there’s plenty of other stuff you can do: relevant reading, go over some older work and evaluate it, make new work, make blog posts/ other content about your work, etc. Resist the temptation to go back to your thesis! 

    Meanwhile, somewhere in your head, your brain is making connections and doing other incredible brain stuff (don’t ask me) and, when you come back to your thesis, you’ll be able to look at it with better clarity. 

    My therapist told me about the fertile void which is (sometimes) when you take a break which helps you come back with more energy. You’re not just hurtling from one thing to another - you’re able to process stuff. 

    Taking breaks is good for you!

Communication/ rants

    Other people’s viewpoints are incredibly useful! Even just a brief chat with your mate (make sure you ask them if they’re willing to hear thesis misery) can lead you to “Hang about, that’s a good point and I’ve seen literature on that, I need to stick that in”.

    A really good thing that my dad pointed out: the thesis is the hardest piece of writing I’m ever going to do. Once it’s over, I can do anything I like.

Looking at the document is Hard

    Sometimes I have these horrid psychological blocks where I can’t even open up the thesis document. Sometimes, I can open it, but I can’t look at the words - it’s weird, it’s like it makes me feel ill, but like not physically? It’s like Bad Vibe [indistinct groaning] I can’t describe it in words.

    There’s several things you can do here. (Or several things that I can do. I dunno if they’d work for anyone else, but they might be worth a try.)

• Break time. Leave it alone. Try again later.
• Stretch!
• Do something else PhD-flavoured: read a chapter of that book (you never know when an author’s gonna save your arse), go trawling for papers on your university library website/ JSTOR/ ResearchGate/ Academia.edu/ T&F/ wherever else, have a vague no-pressure think about some postdoctoral stuff or ideas for further research (write it down and you could stick it in your conclusion later), whatevs.
• Do something else PhD-flavoured but sideways: for example, if you’re doing something with a specific historical case study, find music or recipes contemporary with that. I like reading magazines and educational materials contemporary with my lot (but I have to stop because I find it all hilarious and it turns into a distraction).
• Remember your achievements! You started [however many] years ago and now you’re Here. Look at your older work - this is something else I love, I get out old sketchbooks and look at my old drawings, and yeah, they’re alright, then I get out my newer stuff and believe myself to be an absolute genius because of how much I’ve improved. (And I intend to keep improving.)
• Choose one tiny thing to fix. One small citation, or a fragment of a footnote, or something. Just do that. This can give you a bit of momentum to do another tiny thing, which is excellent! If not, never mind and congratulations! You just improved your thesis! Every tiny thing is still progress!
• Leave your desk! Time for a walk! Or something else that helps you calm down/ gives your brain time to reload!

Change the font/ paper colour/ highlight colour/ whatever

    Words still difficult? Does it all look the same all the damned time? This tricks your brain into thinking that you’re looking at a new/ different piece of work.

I've got used to reading stuff on this background

Oh my days, it's completely different! (Haha my brain fell for it, and now I can get on with my work)

    The good people of Reddit have more on this.

Break it into chunks

    A huge massive thesis document can get overwhelming. Chop it up - have a few documents, perhaps one each for the introduction, chapters, conclusion, etc. Put it back together again later.

I like to print mine out and annotate them

    If you print them out, sometimes it's easier to compare your sections rather than switching between windows on a screen. Also it's fun to pretend that you're a detective and you've got to deal with reports. 

Don’t be a perfectionist (especially at the start)

    Get stuff written down/ drawn/ whatever! If you have an idea, get it down before you forget it! Write really rubbish stuff in your first draft - don’t mess about trying to get the perfect turn of phrase or whatever - that can be fixed later. Loads of mine has broken sentences, things written how I speak in real life, all sorts of nonsense, immediately followed by [SQUARE BRACKETS REPHRASE LATER GET CITATION WHATEVER] and all that sort of thing. Here’s some good words from Neil Gaiman. 

Bulk and cut

    Basically, stealing and adapting part of a strategy that some people use in training, and applying it to word count. This article explains more on the physical side. (I’ve never seriously done it in my own training, partly because I don’t fully understand it - I just use it as a metaphor.) In a bulk phase, you’d take on surplus calories, and in a cut phase, you’d aim to be in a deficit - apply that to words.

    Surplus: bulk the thesis up - I pack it full of words, I fill it with almost-stream-of-consciousness writing, I pile in loads of spicy quotes from elsewhere.

    Deficit: after leaving it alone for a bit, I cut it down. I go in and streamline it.

    Never mind if the words in your bulk phase are silly - get the word count up. There will be rubbish in there - this is where it diverges from the physical version, where you’re only meant to eat good stuff in your bulk phase, but in a thesis, just slam everything in there. You’re after the word count target.  

I like to think that I'd be a nicer trainer than this. Sometimes I shout at my thesis and make it lift books.

    When you’re bulking your thesis up, you can see the word count rising massively, and this feels great! When you’re cutting it down, you know that you’re getting rid of any unnecessary stuff and you’re improving the quality of the thing, and this also feels great!

One rep at a time

    Even adding one citation, fixing one sentence, etc., is something - you’ve done something and improved your thesis. Even if you later pull that bit out (save it for later!) you’ve still gained experience at learning what works and what needs improvement.

    This is a thing I learnt from lifting - if it's super hard, just focus on one rep at a time. (Make sure it's decent - maintain good form, don't swing your dumbbells, etc.) Then another one. Then another one. Before you know it, the timer goes off and you can rest!

    In thesis terms, focus on one tiny bit at a time. Are you editing/ proofreading? Here's a sentence. Tighten it up. Move onto the next one. Then the next, and the next, and - suddenly, you're at the end of the section and you've done some quality work!

Decent playlist

    I find that music (or lack thereof) influences what I make, whether it’s images or words. I’ve got specific playlists for drawing different characters or vibes. Same with the thesis - I like EDM with no/ few words. (Current fave: No Mana's What's Your Wifi.) Some people prefer video game soundtracks, which are designed to be motivating but not distracting. 

    Also, when you need a break, stick your favourite songs on and have a dance! Alternatively, before you start, listen to music that gets you hyped and makes you want to fight your thesis - currently I'm enjoying Blind Channel's Balboa (violent pop/ sort of nu-metal, nicely aggressive with very relevant lyrics about overcoming challenges) and Kasabian's Switchblade Smiles (electronicky indie-ish rock, slow build that increases in intensity, generally uplifting vibe).

Alrighty, that's some of my best Hot Thesis Secrets! Hopefully there's something useful in here that can help you push through. COME ON YOU CAN DO IT 💪

(I’m not saying how to cope with writing a thesis - not all of us do 100% written thesiseseseses that is a silly word, and I hate “thesi” because it sounds pretentious, and I hate the plural “theses” because it’s begging for a poo joke, although I suppose there is a great deal of satisfaction in finishing, ok never mind)

Some stuff about William Shaw's Bowes Academy, 1814-1840 (from a talk I gave in March 2020)

I just realised I haven’t got a blog post about the case study itself! That being the historical thing I’m investigating, and making my drawn experiments around - it’s William Shaw’s Bowes Academy, which he ran from 1814 to 1840. 

This is a lightly trimmed and mildly edited version of the talk I gave to CDHAS in March 2020, with most of the illustrations, and with extra images! 

Test drawings of Dickens, based on a few extant portraits. 

You’re heard of Charles Dickens, right? Have you read/ watched an adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby? Remember Dotheboys Hall, the dodgy boarding school run by villainous schoolmaster Wackford Squeers?

That fictional school was based on some actual schools. These ran from c. 1750 to c. 1850, with a few stragglers either end, mainly in Teesdale on the North Yorkshire/ County Durham border. 

They advertised at middle-class parents, typically in London. The parents often had certain aspirations for their offspring, which are reflected in the classical and commercial curriculum offered by these schools. Classical subjects were what the upper classes taught their kids (stuff like Latin and Greek) while commercial ones would be all the things you'd need if you were going to go into a profession or become a merchant or something. This was usually stuff like book-keeping, maths, geography, sometimes French, that sort of thing. The youngest boys at these places were usually about six, but the top of the age range was 21 - once you’re 21, you’re legally an adult, and you’re responsible for yourself, and you can’t be kept anywhere.

(There were some schools for girls, but not many, and their subjects usually focussed on things that helped them run a household, were useful when entertaining, or looked cool at parties. A bit of reading, dancing, sewing, and so on - and sometimes drawing!)

Let’s imagine it’s the early nineteenth century, you’re a middle-class parent, you’ve got a son who needs an education, and you’re reading the Times. You spot this advert.

That screenshot is a bit hard to read, so here's the transcript:

EDUCATION, by Mr. SHAW, and able ASSISTANTS, at BOWES ACADEMY, near Greta-bridge, Yorkshire. Youth are carefully instructed in the English, Latin, and Greek languages, writing, common and decimal arithmetic, bookkeeping, mensuration [measuring], &c., and are provided with board, clothes, and every necessary, at 20 guineas per annum each. No extra charges whatever. No vacations. N. B. The French language 2 guineas per annum extra. Further particulars may be known on application to Mr. Timberlake, 25, Great Marylebone-street; Mr. Annison, 10, Bedford-court, Covent-garden; and Mrs. Young, Plough-yard, Crown-street, Soho. Mr. Seaton, agent, 91, Whitecross-street, St. Luke’s, will give the most respectable reference to parents who have been at the above seminary since last July, seeing their sons. Mr. Shaw attends at the George and Blue Boar, High Holborn, from 12 to 2 o’clock daily, where cards of particulars may be had.

Fantastic! This is exactly the sort of thing you'd have been looking for. He seems sharp, professional, and to-the-point. This particular advert dates from January 1823, but it’s typical of Shaw’s adverts.

(In today’s money, 20 guineas is about £1200. As a nineteenth century person, you’d have heard of Greta Bridge because it’s on the Great North Road, one of the main coaching routes, and your letters would have gone through there if they were off to Scotland. “No vacations” isn’t as alarming as it sounds to us in the twenty-first century - people believed that holidays interrupted kids’ learning, as well as being a bit impractical with all the logistics of bringing them home from school and sending them back again in a few weeks.)

This is Bowes Academy, run by William Shaw from 1814 to 1840 - my case study. This is peak Yorkshire school: Shaw was active when the schools were at the height of their popularity, and his establishment was in the epicentre of the geographical area. His school is also one of the better documented establishments, and, at the height of his influence, had between 260 to 300 boys.

Shaw was born in 1782, allegedly in London, and his family may have originally been from Teesdale, but I haven’t been able to track them down yet - there’s quite a few William Shaws in the records. We don’t know anything about his early life.

Horatio Lloyd, one of Shaw’s old boys who attended in the early 1820s and grew up to become an actor, described the schoolmaster in his memoirs, published in the 1880s.

“A sharp, thin, upright little man, with a slight scale covering the pupil of one of the eyes. Yes. There he stands with his Wellington boots and short black trousers, not originally cut too short, but from a habit he had of sitting with one knee over the other, and the trousers being tight, they would get "ruck'd" half way up the boots. Then the clean white vest, swallow tailed black coat, white neck tie, silver-mounted spectacles, close cut iron-grey hair, high crowned hat worn slightly at the back of his head - and there you have the man.”

So here he is, in the inn, and it looks like some other parents and guardians have already left their kids with him. Let’s follow the schoolmaster, about 250 miles or so up the Great North Road to his establishment, and we’ll see what daily life might be like for them.

Comparison between an image of Bowes Academy from c. 1840, and one of my photographs of the place from 2015 (since lost due to iCloud deciding that it does what it wants).

The boys got up in the morning, rolled out of bed, and were given an old quill pen - which they used for catching fleas. All you do is put the open end of the quill over a flea, which jumps up and gets trapped, and then all the quills are gathered up and burnt. The accommodation is a bit basic, but the establishment is very reasonably priced. 

Next they went downstairs into the yard to wash at the pump. It was probably a bit of a scrum - there’s around 280 other lads wanting to wash, too. Then they would have dried themselves at one of two towels on rollers, but the bigger boys weren't very good at sharing, and snatched the dry part of the towel away from the younger ones.

The pump from imagined viewpoints, July 2018.

Time for breakfast! It’s hasty pudding - the recipes I’ve found suggest that it was usually just flour and water, sometimes with a bit of salt or butter. Apparently a lot of oats were used at Shaw’s place, so I imagine some of those would have ended up in the mixture. I’ve tried the ultra-cheap flour-and-water version of it, and it’s not that bad. 

Having looked at some contemporary teaching books, school would probably have begun with a collective prayer, and then the first lessons of the day. This may have been reading, probably followed by writing in copybooks.

Here’s what part of the schoolroom might have looked like. Shaw would have got the best desk - some of the contemporary teaching books recommend that the master’s desk goes on a podium. Here’s Charles Mackay, Shaw’s head usher - in today’s school, Shaw would be the headteacher, and the ushers would be equivalent to the ordinary teachers, so Mackay could have held a position similar to assistant head. He’s also teaching. Some of the other ushers were older boys, who will go into the profession and become schoolmasters themselves. 

At dinner, the boys would usually have had meat and potatoes, but there was bread and milk on Thursdays, some sort of flour and water dumplings on Fridays, and something described by William Jones (remember that name) as “black potatoes with a bit of butter” on Saturdays. Once dinner was over, they probably back to lessons until teatime. The boys most often have brown bread, with watered-down milk. On Sunday, they had something called broth, but which the boys knew as pot-skimmings, and sometimes there were maggots in it. I told you it was cheap! 

I’m not exactly sure what they’d have done in the evenings, but I’d imagine they would be encouraged towards more scholarly pursuits - contemporary authors of educational books seemed most impressed when kids spent their free time in reading or doing something else improving. 

Then they were off to bed. Four or five of them slept in a bed - although Mackay swore there were never more than three in a bed, and, if he knew that there was, he’d have had them moved - and, in the middle of the dormitory, there was a big tub, which today would be referred to as a public convenience. William Jones said it was flowing all over the room.

Drawings from photographs I took on a trip to Barnard Castle, September 2019. 

Sometimes the boys would have enjoyed days off, and they’d have wandered across the moors, and Mr. Shaw would instruct them not to come back until sunset. Sometimes they smuggled food away from their meals, and saved it for a picnic later. When they wanted money, the boys would look for things to sell; sometimes they caught young jackdaws, trained them to speak, and then took them to Barnard Castle (the market town four miles up the road) to sell as pets. 

Hold on a minute - how do we know so much about life at Shaw’s place? We’ve got a few sources, including quite a lot that show the establishment in a positive light, but one of the most valuable was the evidence given in a couple of trials involving William Shaw in 1823. 

The first trial was brought against Shaw by the parents of William and Richard Jones. Young William had been seven when he and his then ten-year-old brother Richard first went to the Academy in 1819 - now it’s 1823, William is completely blind, and Richard can only see in strong light.

So what happened to them? The conditions at the Academy were basic, sanitation was unsanitary, food wasn’t quite up to scratch, and there was a fair bit of overcrowding. The place was an ideal breeding ground for ophthalmia.

Its full name back then was Egyptian ophthalmia, since it was allegedly brought back by soldiers returning from the Battle of the Nile in 1798, but it’s now known as trachoma. (That link is to the World Health Organisation; at the time of writing, it doesn't contain any graphic images.) Trachoma is highly contagious, particularly in crowded circumstances, such as in a school where everybody’s sharing beds and towels, and washing in standing water, and not receiving the best nutrition. The more you get infected, the higher your likelihood of losing your sight - which is exactly what happened to a few people at the Academy, including William Shaw himself. If we remember what Horatio Lloyd said earlier, Shaw had a slight scale over the pupil of one of his eyes - this is a result of the ophthalmia.

Interestingly, according to a medical journal of the time, commenting on the trials, there was an ophthalmia epidemic in the village of Bowes itself, but I’ve yet to track down more on that.

A couple of panels from the first page of Disorder. 

Head usher Charles Mackay gave evidence on Shaw’s behalf, and said he became aware that some of the boys had something wrong with their eyes in August 1820. In November, Henry Benning, the local apothecary and surgeon, was called in to look at the boys’ eyes, and was consulting until at least a year later.

Working out Sir William Adams' face (later known as Sir William Rawson) based on his portrait. 

In December 1820, William Jones had written home mentioning his eye trouble. Turns out that he was only one of several infected boys - in one of the rooms that another lad, James Saunders, was quarantined in, there were about fourteen or fifteen of them. This was 14 or 15 particularly bad cases out of approximately 280 - there will be other cases within the rest of the school population, but this is just over 5%.

In March 1821, the Jones brothers went home. Shortly after this, Sir William Adams - the most renowned eye doctor in the land, and the Surgeon and Oculist Extraordinary to none other than King George IV when he was Prince Regent - was called in. Shaw seemed willing to part with any amount of money in an attempt to sort out the problem. He could afford it - even if about 80% of the boys’ parents could afford to pay the 20 guineas fees, that’s over £4700; he also had properties throughout the village, and he was getting rent from these, and he also ran a farm.

At some point, according to Benning, Shaw’s life was despaired of - the stress of the situation had an impact on his health. (This is the incident that I explore in Disorder! Still trying to get the conclusion finished.)

In his defence, there is evidence that suggests Shaw personally tried to help the boys, or at least to cheer them up - not least because he lost an eye himself to the disease, which he could only have done if he’d have been infected multiple times, likely from contact with other victims. According to Lloyd, Shaw would sometimes play the flute for the entertainment of boys who were unwell. (I don’t know if Lloyd was there at the time of the epidemic because he’s very imprecise with his dating, but he did mention Shaw’s damaged eye.)

Screenshot featuring Benning, from the current draft of the introduction to Disorder. 

According to a couple of witnesses, the care shown by William and Bridget Shaw was practically parental. They tried to help, and they got one of the servants to constantly attend to the ill boys. Some years after the trial, Shaw actively invited parents to visit the school, showing that they had nothing to hide.

Even during the Jones brothers’ stay, the school was accepting visitors - admittedly, Shaw would come into the schoolroom and ask the boys who didn't have jackets or trousers (because they were being mended) to hide under the tables - but the conditions were not that exceptional for an early nineteenth century boarding school. 

Back to the trial. The jury retired for half-an-hour, came back again, and declared that they’ve found Shaw guilty. The judge summed up, and the verdict was that Shaw had to pay £300 damages to the Joneses. (In today’s money, this is over £17000.)

The day after the Jones vs. Shaw trial, the schoolmaster was back in court - another family, the Ockerbys, brought an action against him for neglect, as three of their sons lost their sight under Shaw’s care. During the trial, Shaw had a brief word with his defence team, and pleaded guilty. The trial was over quite quickly, and the Ockerbys received £300.

Preliminary designs for Mrs. Ockerby and one of her offspring. 

All went quiet for a few years. I’m not sure to what extent the ophthalmia trials affected Shaw’s business, but he did not shut down - it’d take something much bigger than a trial reported in the newspapers to deter people from sending their kids to him. Some people were quite sympathetic towards him - the court, including the judge, all agreed that they’d learnt that he’d done his best with regards to the boys’ education, morals, clothes, and food - it’s just the healthcare that was slightly lacking.

However, at some point around 1830, relations between William Shaw and Charles Mackay broke down. Some sources suggest that Mackay chose to leave, while others say that Shaw fired him. We don’t really know exactly what happened.

Either way, he was out. Since he had the relevant teaching experience, he took off to Barnard Castle and set up a day-school for local kids. Some of them could even have been the offspring of boys he taught in the earlier days of his career! He taught here around 1838, when a Mr. Browne and his friend visited the area.

Mr. Browne was looking for details about local schools - he claimed to know a widow in London whose son required a reasonably priced education. Mr. Browne and his friend may have been particularly interested, for some reason, in more scandalous stories of horrors and such. Mr. Browne was not who he said he was.

Mr. Browne was, in fact, Charles Dickens. His friend was the real Mr. Browne - Hablot Knight Browne, the illustrator, better known as Phiz - and they were doing an undercover investigation. There was no widow, and no small boy - but there was an idea that Dickens had about exposing the purported horrors of the Yorkshire schools. 

He’d heard all sorts of nasty things - there’s some tale about a child with an abscess that his schoolmaster tore open with an inky penknife, and the wound got infected and the boy died - now, that’s not true, and the boy in question actually operated on himself with the knife and the ink, and was called John Crosse Brooks and grew up to become the Vice President of the Society of Antiquaries, and died in 1897 - but Dickens had this idea that the Yorkshire schools are all pits of despair and he wanted to sort them out.

Working out Phiz's face based on extant images of him. 

He spoke to a few locals, including a solicitor who tried to change the subject every time the schools were mentioned, but then advised against sending any child to any schoolmaster - at least, that’s what Dickens said - to be honest, I’m not pleased about his research methods. All this undercover business would never get past the research ethics committee at my university. 

At some point, Dickens and Phiz got to hear about William Shaw, and decided to pay him a visit, hoping to look round his school and get some ideas for this story that Dickens was cooking up. Shaw, however, had heard a rumour that there was an undercover journalist from London sniffing round. He didn't want to be dragged through the press like he was in 1823, and politely refused to allow them to see his school.

But Dickens and Phiz had seen enough. In March 1838, the first instalment of Nicholas Nickleby appeared, and the reading public was introduced to Wackford Squeers, villainous schoolmaster and proprietor of Dotheboys Hall. Here’s Wackford’s advert from Chapter 3:

"Education. — At Mr. Wackford Squeers's Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire. Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages, living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr. Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen's Head, Snow Hill. N.B. An able assistant wanted. Annual salary £5. A Master of Arts would be preferred."

Here’s the first illustration featuring Wackford Squeers, and here’s how Dickens described him in Chapter 4 of Nickleby:

“Mr. Squeers's appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two. The eye he had was unquestionably useful, but decidedly not ornamental, being of a greenish grey, and in shape resembling the fanlight of a street door. The blank side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle size; he wore a white neckerchief with long ends, and a suit of scholastic black, but his coat sleeves being a great deal too long, and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable.”

Wacko is a horrid vicious fellow and I love drawing him. 

Wackford Squeers, what a name - familiar initials, W. S. - doesn’t he resemble somebody we know? There was only one schoolmaster in Yorkshire who had one eye, who wore all black, who was a bit short and peculiar. Ex-pupils saw this illustration in print-shop windows and saw an over-exaggerated Mr. Shaw, and parents (the same middle-class people who could afford to send their sons to schools in Yorkshire could also afford Dickens’ shilling-a-go instalments of his latest novel) thought they recognised him in the text. Even Phiz’s son, some years later, got confirmation from the illustrator himself that his depiction of Squeers was Shaw turned up to eleven. 

Anyway, the fallout from the release of Nicholas Nickleby had a very bad impact on William Shaw and his family. The Yorkshire schools were gradually fading out of popularity, but to be publicly shredded by a popular author, intent on what he would call exposing injustices - that was it.

Parents demanded that their sons return home.

The Academy closed in 1840, some time between January and June.

Bridget Shaw died on November 4th 1840, apparently of a broken heart as a result of the closure of the school. She’d been married to William for nearly thirty years.

Headstone marking the grave of William (c. 1782 - 1850) and Bridget (1784 - 1840) and their son, another William, who I refer to as Will (1813 - 1837).

So that’s the end of Shaw’s Academy. A version of William Shaw, and a version of his school, survive in popular culture. There’s a pervading perception of him as a monstrous Dickensian villain, but that discounts his complexity - indeed, seeing any historical person as one-sided, to caricature them as either all good or all evil, denies their humanity.

Any of the people I have introduced to you in this post - to be honest, they were all doing their best under the circumstances they found themselves in.

It’s easy to stand here in the twenty-first century and look at the consequences of their actions and pass judgement on them - we have the benefit of hindsight, and can say things like “Shaw should have done more for the boys with ophthalmia” - but it’s important to remember that they had no idea what would happen next. When we stand here and look at the past, we’re actually looking at some people’s futures. If somebody in a hundred years did it to us - “I'm from the future so I know better and you shouldn't have done that” - we wouldn’t like it.

That’s part of what I want to do - I want to remind people that the people we study in history are exactly that: people. Like us, they have their own lives and experiences. Some of these have been forgotten, but if we can bring even one or two hints of these experiences back, which I hope to do by drawing them, we enrich our understandings of them, and, by extension (and a lot of thinking), our understandings of ourselves.