Saturday 25th September 1819
Saturday Sept 25th We remained at Aberdeen my Father was very unwell the whole of the day my brothers went to
the theatre in the evening, which is very small.
OBSERVATIONS & COMMENTS:
Father Unwell: We know from notes in his diaries that Alexander Copland suffered from chronic gout. Below is a Meissen porcelain statue of a husband with gout being nursed by his wife and child from the Wellcome Collection of images. The intense pain of gout could not be avoided by the family and this compassionate composition shows their little daughter looking up at her father’s anguish as she holds a bowl from which her mother fills a cloth with water or some lotion, perhaps of colchicum, to soothe her father’s pain.
Porcelain statue by Meissen in Germany of a man experiencing gout being nursed by his wife. "Science Museum, London" Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://wellcomecollection.org/works/c6a367b3/items
The Wellcome Collection provides an invaluable commentary on Gillray’s depiction of gout, below, written in the context of Lucy’s day: Gout is an intensely painful disease of the joints of the fingers and toes, and sometimes other joints. In traditional western medicine it is associated with the infusion or drip (Latin gutta, hence the English word gout) of wet humours (phlegm and/or blood) into the cavity of a damaged organ. Although it was regarded by many as incurable, there was a demand for treatments, which included a diet designed to rebalance the proportion of humours in the body as a whole, and bloodletting positioned to draw blood away from the gouty organ. Some students of gout theorized that there was a "morbid humour" specific to gout, and, a corresponding specific remedy which God had placed in the plant colchicum, the metal gold, or some other substance. In 1848, a year of revolutions in Europe, such a "morbid humour" was indeed identified as a naturally occurring chemical, uric acid. In another period of rapid change, the 1960s, a corresponding remedy was found when staff at the Burroughs Wellcome laboratories in the USA discovered the medicine allopurinol As Porter and Rousseau point out, Gillray's print The gout (1799) is unique in restricting its focus to the diseased organ. There are dozens of other Georgian and earlier prints of gouty people, but they all show the whole patient in a social context. Gillray's depiction isolates the painful organ from the tragi-comedy of manners surrounding the disease: the face of the sufferer, the furnishings of the room, and the friends offering comfort are all excluded, perhaps representing the ability of the disease to block out everything else from the victim's mind https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cnvaa8sc
1799: J Gillray The Gout - Coloured soft-ground etching by J. Gillray. Wellcome Collection-Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cnvaa8sc
Gout was considered to be an affliction of the wealthier classes and associated with rich food, especially liver, and alcohol, overindulgence in port being considered one of the popular primary causes. It was the subject of much lampooning by the caricaturists of the day, with the 1818 print by G Cruikshank depicting a man gorging himself on rich food and drink as a devil places hot coals on his foot. The picture on the wall of Vesuvius erupting represents the imminent contraction of gout.
1818: Introduction of the gout by G. Cruikshank, after Captain Simon Hehl. Wellcome Collection. Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/V0010850.jpg/full/760,/0/default.jpg
There was no cure, but the 1799 print below by Gillray ironically illustrates sufferers of the gout, the colic and the tisick (archaic for a cough) seeking solace from a bowl of punch.
1799: Gillray - Punch cure the Gout the Colic, - and the Tisick. A caricature by James Gillray first published by H. Humphreys on July 13th, 1799. https://antique-prints-maps.com/acatalog/ref1.php?imagefile=../largeimages/GilrayTisickCollic.JPG
Theatre Royal in Marischal Street, Aberdeen was opened in 1795 and was the first permanent Theatre to have been built in Aberdeen. The Theatre cost £3,000 to construct and could seat up to 600 people when it first opened under its original Manager Stephen Kemble. The Theatre was designed by Henry Holland, who had just completed the designs for the third Theatre Royal, Drury Lane which had opened a year earlier in 1794. The Aberdeen Theatre Royal was actually a conversion from a former house built by John Jackson, who had started its construction in 1788 but had become bankrupt before the building could be completed. Stephen Kemble bought the House in 1794 and with the aid of his subscribers, each paying £25, was able to roof over the original building and fit up the inside as a Theatre. Although Kemble had built the Theatre he didn't stay as its Manager for very long and soon a string of lesser Managers were trying there hand at running the Theatre. In 1799 someone called Bell was Managing it, then in 1802 Hamilton, and next a Mr. Beaumont, who was soon getting into trouble with rent payments and was replaced by Mr. and Mrs. Mudie who had the same problem by 1811. Later Managers were Fraser in 1812, and then Corbet Ryder who ran it until 1842. http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Aberdeen.htm Today the building is the Elim Pentecostal Church, who have a picture of the building on their website at http://www.elimaberdeen.com/ The picture below is taken from Google Street View, captured in March 2019, shows the size of the theatre that Lucy records as being very small.
Can you help us?
Old Regency Prints, Pictures an Coaching maps: Do you have access to any prints or pictures showing what town and country would have looked like when Lucy travelled through? Any illustrations of what she would have seen in 1819 will enliven our research.
New Pictures: Do you have any modern pictures of the streets, buildings, gardens and views that would enable us to see the changes that two centuries have wrought?