Spurious Contraptions & Other Steampunk Oddities

Virote_Considon said:
Wouldn't it be available on IPlayer?
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In the US most current videos are restricted by the BBC. I almost always get a "not available outside of Britain" message. Streams of the radio stations are not restricted. I don't understand why there's a regulatory difference, but there is.
 
I get the same here in Buenos Aires. WMG, EMI, Sony, etc. are constantly blocking videos, music etc. because of 'copyright issues'.
 
Plotinus said:
Yes, iPlayer videos can only be watched in the UK, much as Hulu (the US equivalent) is available only there.
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Hulu is funded by the government & administered by presidential appointees? I hope I don't have to start paying an annual fee for a website I never use. :p
 
Argentinian standard practice is that it's legal until someone comes with a court order, manages to find my place, manages to find me in there at the time, and makes me read the order. :mischief:
 
Came across a blog about a box that only unlocks at a specific geographic location & guides you toward that location in a general way. (click picture for link)



Reminded me immediately of the South-Pointing Chariot. (click picture...)



There's at least a UU there. Put them together & maybe even a GW.






Also: Steampunk Iron Man won the Marvel Costume Contest at the New York Comic Con 2010.

:coffee:
 


New & Upcoming Steampunk books:
Flaming Zeppelins - I've read one of these stories. Way over the top & a lot of fun.
Steampunk Bible If you're familiar with Jeff VanderMeer you know what to expect.
Steampunk'd anthology of original stories edited by Martin H. Greenberg
Steampunk Prime: A Vintage Steampunk Reader stories written between 1880 and 1914
Steampunk: Victorian Futurism on the current artistic movement
Visualising Steampunk about visual design (as in concept art for films)
Fuel For The Boiler: A Steampunk Cookbook as my cousin used to say "what thee heck!?"
​
 
Catching up on Fun Stuff, last first:

This list dictates a trip to the bookstore, at last. Just to look, as I'm short of that kind of cash.

Re: the picture in post 161, first published October 1888, a month after the death of Annie Chapman, the fourth of the Whitechapel Murders. Quite a bit to write about it. First, the picture of the suspect is that of the man described by Emily Marsh and by one of the Sons of George Lusk as having asked for Lusk's address just prior to Lusk's receiving the "From Hell" letter, from JTR, i.e., a tall bearded man with a soft hat and long overcoat. Lusk was also one of the co-founders and Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee depicted in the illustration!

There is, however, another eyewitness description: that of Elizabeth Long, who described a tall man wearing a deerstalker cap and long overcoat talking to Annie Chapman shortly before her murder. The cap is an unusual detail as deerstalkers were rarely worn in urban streets.


Annie Chapman

The plot thickens: even more startling is the fact that the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887, a year before the Whitechapel murders, but the first illustration (by Sidney Paget) of Holmes in a deerstalker cap didn't appear until the publication of the story "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" in 1893. Watson tells us in A Study in Scarlet that Holmes moved to 221B Baker St in 1881.

So what was Holmes role in the Ripper Murders? Why are they never mentioned in the stories despite ample evidence that he was actively consulting at the time? Did he participate? Did he investigate? Was it the only case he couldn't solve? Or did he solve it, only to discover that the truth could never be revealed?

Spoiler :
Postscript: The man described by Lusk's son reportedly spoke with an Irish accent; in a letter published in the Daily Telegraph Sept. 10, 1888 (two days after Chapman's murder) announcing the formation of the Vigilance Committee and addressed to the Home Secretary, the Committee asks that a reward be offered for the murderer which would "convince the poor and humble residents of our East-end that the government authorities are as much anxious to avenge the blood of these unfortunate women as they were the assassination of Lord Cavendish and Mr Burke."

Burke and Cavendish were victims of the 1882 Phoenix Park Murders in which the murderers slashed the throats and chests of their victims with surgical knives. The whole thing was tied to the issue of Irish home rule. Although both politicians generally supported home rule, the murders were pinned on a little-known Irish Republican group called the Irish National Invincibles.

The Phoenix Park Murders occurred just days after the signing of the Kilmainham Treaty made between the government of William Gladstone and Irish Nationalist Leader Charles Stewart Parnell. The Treaty was widely viewed as a repudiation of the Coercion Acts authored by William Forster, then Chief Secretary for Ireland. The Coercion Acts allowed the brutal repression of poor Irish tenant farmers, earning Forster the nickname "Buckshot". Forster had Parnell arrested in October 1881, but when Gladstone announced the Kilmainham Treaty May 2, 1882, Forster resigned; Lord Frederick Cavendish was named to replace him and was killed in Phoenix Park just four days later. The murders finally doomed the cause of Irish home rule; Gladstone's minister Lord Hartington was the older brother of Cavendish and turned against the cause, eventually splitting with Gladstone and forming the Liberal Unionist Party which joined with the Conservatives to defeat Gladstone in 1886. It set back the cause of Irish Home Rule 28 years and the ensuing Plan of Campaign led to further escalation of the land war including the Mitchelstown massacre in 1887.

Although Charles Parnell had denounced the Phoenix Park murders, in March, 1887 The Times began a series of articles accusing Home Rule League leaders of supporting murder and outrage in Ireland. In particular, they printed a letter from Parnell to a fenian leader that included "Though I regret the accident of Lord F Cavendish's death I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts". Parnell denounced the letter as a "villainous and barefaced forgery". On that very same day the Perpetual Crimes Act, a reinstitution of the Coercion Acts, was debated and passed in the House of Commons.

After much argument the Government finally set up the Parnell Commission to investigate the letters sent to the Times. They were to begin their proceedings September 14, 1888, four days after the Vigilance Committee sent it's letter to the Daily Telegraph and exactly one week after the death of Annie Chapman.

It was only a few weeks later (Sept 27) that the Central News Agency received the "Dear Boss" letter that referenced statements made by Lusk and from which the name "Jack the Ripper" comes. On Oct. 16, Lusk himself reported that he'd received a small box with a kidney inside and the "From Hell" letter. That was three days after the "Vigilance Committee" picture was published.

The following February, 1889, an Irish journalist, Richard Piggott, admitted to the Parnell Commission that he'd forged the Parnell letters. He then fled to Madrid and shot himself in the head.

Despite the fact that the only witness descriptions of the potential murderer describe a man speaking with an Irish accent, and despite the exaggerated "theater Irish" in the 'From Hell' letter, the public seized on statements that suggested that the murderer was Jewish, and violent anti-semitic riots ensued.

To the best of my knowledge, no connection between the Phoenix Park Murders, Lusk, and the Parnell forgeries has ever been made.....
 
Balthasar said:
So what was Holmes role in the Ripper Murders? Why are they never mentioned in the stories despite ample evidence that he was actively consulting at the time? Did he participate? Did he investigate? Was it the only case he couldn't solve? Or did he solve it, only to discover that the truth could never be revealed?
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At the very least there are the interpretations in Murder By Decree and Shadow Of Reichenbach Falls. I find a much richer (and more steampunkish) interpretation of the possible connections (extending to the vampyric) in Supping With Panthers (US title: Slave Of My Thirst). No canonical names are mentioned, but the protagonist is a doctor who had served with the military in the Northwest Frontier & returned with troublesome wounds both physical & psychological.
 
Michael Dibdin's The last Sherlock Holmes story is the best version of Holmes-and-Ripper that I know of. In some ways it makes more sense of Holmes himself, and especially of The adventure of the final problem (which in itself is really rather silly), than Conan Doyle does.
 
Plotinus said:
Michael Dibdin's The last Sherlock Holmes story is the best version of Holmes-and-Ripper that I know of. In some ways it makes more sense of Holmes himself, and especially of The adventure of the final problem (which in itself is really rather silly), than Conan Doyle does.
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Glad you mentioned Dibdin. I stuck to only mentioning stories I've actually seen/read.


EDIT: The best explanation for Holmes' bee obsession in his retirement, imho, is to be found in "The Horror of the Many Faces" (on-line text). It may also explain the Ripper connection, and why his solution was never announced.
 
Blue Monkey said:
Glad you mentioned Dibdin. I stuck to only mentioning stories I've actually seen/read.
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Definitely look out for it. It's many years since I read it and I spent some considerable time leafing through it again after posting that comment. It's really quite brilliant, with a re-interpretation of Holmes that's so convincing you'd almost think Conan Doyle intended it himself.

Conan Doyle is actually referred to (though doesn't appear) as a character; it's narrated by Watson in the standard way, but we're told that the published Holmes stories are written by Conan Doyle in a semi-fictionalised way based on Watson's notes of the genuine cases. Holmes doesn't approve:

What is not known is Holmes's response to A.C.D.'s 'A Study in Scarlet'. I must admit that I felt at once that the title was not going to meet with my friend's approval. His own suggestion, duly passed on by me, had been 'Towards a Definitive Praxis of Applied Criminal Anthropology: Some Notes on the Stangerson-Drebber Murders of 1881'.
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Also, Watson wondering whether or not to go home:

221B or not 221B? That was the question...
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Just wittily written, and as I say, not just a brilliant pastiche of Conan Doyle but doing something very interesting with the character that drives you back to the original stories.
 
I've been watching some of my favorite Yuletide films. Other than the 5 million versions of Dickens' Christmas Carol, can anyone think of a steampunkish holiday film? Here's three clues (increasingly obvious) to the closest I could come up with:

Clue 1
Spoiler :


Clue 2
Spoiler :


Clue 3
Spoiler :
 
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