TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT, Edward Jenner

 

I look at her face, and honestly, I just don't see whatever it was that captured his heart. They had the ultimate Age of Enlightenment cute-meet, but where he was a 38 year old endlessly curious bon vivant sociable genius, a doctor, a scientist and a poet, she had few friends and her only interest was religion. And at the age of 27, Catherine Kingscote must have thought, as her down turned mouth seems to indicate (above) that she had missed her chance to find a suitable husband.

And then on a fair September afternoon, his balloon landed in a meadow near her home, and two years later she married one of the greatest men – ever . He was to be the man responsible for saving hundreds of millions of lives by applying the scientific method to an obvious problem. Clearly Catherine must have had a secret appeal. And Edward Jenner was smart enough to recognize it.

Edward Jenner started life with a few advantages. He was born wealthy, but not so rich he didn't have to work for a living, just rich enough he never cared more about money than about people. He never patented his great discovery, because he didn't want to add his profit to the cost of saving lives. And maybe that was Catherine's influence. And maybe it was the humanity he'd always had. And maybe it was because when he was still a child, his own father had inoculated him against small pox.

The two most deadly diseases in the 18^th century were the Great Pox (syphilis) and the Small Pox (Variola – Latin for spotted). Reading the genetic code of Variola hints it evolved within the last 50,000 years from a virus that infected rats and mice, and then moved on to horses and cows and then finally to infecting people. 

It disfigured almost all of its human victims, leaving their features scared and pockmarked, even blinding some survivors. It killed half a million people every year – and 80% of the children who were afflicted. The chink in Variola's protein armor was that it had evolved into two strains, one which preferred temperatures of around 99 degrees Fahrenheit before it started dividing, and the second which preferred something closer to 103 degrees.

They called the lesser of these two evils the cow pox, and sometimes the udder pox, because that was where the blisters often showed up on infected milk cows. And it was the young women whose job it was to milk the cows who were the only humans who usually contracted the cow pox. 

They would suffer a fever, and feel weak and listless for a day or two, and, in sever cases have ulcers break out on their hands and arms. But recovery was usually rapid and complete, and there was an old wife's tale that having once contracted cow pox, the women would never suffer the greater evil of smallpox.  It was mucus from a cow pox ulcer which Richard's father had applied to his son's open flesh, in the belief it would somehow protect him from smallpox.

The working theory behind this idea was first enunciated by the second century B.C. Greek doctor, Hippocrates. Its most succinct version was “Like cures like.” Bitten by a rapid dog? Drink a tea made from the hair of the dog that bit you, or pack the fur into a poultice pressed against the wound. The fifteenth century C.E. Englishman, Samuel Pepys, was advised to follow this theory by drinking wine to cure a hangover. “I thought (it) strange,” he wrote in his diary, “but I think find it true.” 

In 1765 London Doctor John Fewster published a paper entitled “Cow pox and its ability to prevent smallpox.” But he was just repeating the old wife's tale, and offered no proof of his own. So the idea was out there. It only waited for someone smart enough to put the obvious to a scientific test.

In early May of 1796, Sarah Nelms, a regular patient of Doctor Edwards, and “a dairymaid at a farmer's near this place”, came in with several lesions on her hand and arm. She reported cutting her finger on a thorn a few weeks previous, just before milking her master's cow, Blossom.  Upon examining both Sarah and Blossom,  Edward diagnosed them both as suffering from the cow pox. 

And he now approached his gardener, Mr. Phipps, offering to inoculate ( from the Latin inoculare, meaning “to graft") his 8 year old son James, against small pox. The gardener agreed, and on 14 May 1796 Edward cut into the healthy boy's arm, and then inserted into that cut some pus taken directly from a sore on Sarah Nelms' arm.

Within a few days James suffered a slight fever. Nine days later he had a chill and lost his appetite, but he quickly recovered. Then, in July, 48 days after the first inoculation, Edward made new slices on both of James' arms. This time he inserted scrapings taken directly from the pustules of a smallpox victim. And this time what should have killed the boy did not even give the child a fever.  Nor did he infect his two older brothers, who shared his bed. 

Over the next 20 years James Phipps would have pus from a small pox victims inserted under his skin twenty separate times. And not once did he ever contract the disease. He married and had two children. And when Edward Jenner died, James was a mourner at his funeral. The original boy who lived did not pass away until 1853, at the age of 65.

Edward Jenner (above) coined the word vaccine for his discovery, from the Latin 'vacca' for cow, as a tribute to poor Blossom, whose horns and hide ended up hanging on the wall of London's St George's medical school library. And that was the whole story, but, of course it wasn't, because it wasn't that simple, because nothing is that simple - certainly not the immune response system developed on this planet over the last four billion years, nor the stupidity of simple human beings.

Edward duplicated his procedure with nine more patients, including his own 11 year old son, and then wrote it all up for the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. And those geniuses rejected it. They refused to publish it because they thought his idea was too revolutionary, and still lacked proof. So Edward, convinced he was on the right track, redoubled his efforts. When he had 23 cases and the Society still refused to publicize his work, Edward self published, in a 1798 pamphlet entitled “An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, Or Cow-Pox”

By 1800, Edward Jenner's work had been translated and published world-wide. And a few problems were revealed. There was a small percentage of patients who had an allergic reaction at the vaccination sites, and eventually it would be decided not to inoculate very young children, as their immune systems were not yet strong enough to resist even the cow pox.

And without a fuller understanding of how the human immune system functioned, it was still impossible to know “to a medical certainty” (to use legal jargon) how the vaccine would affect specific patients. Still, the over all reaction was so positive that Edward was surprised by the reaction of the people he called the “anti-vaks”.

Opposition became centered on the Medical Observer, a supplemental publication by the daily newspaper, The Guardian.  After 1807, an under editor Lewis Doxat, it condemned Jenner's introduction of a “bestial humor into the human frame”. 

In 1808 its readers were assured they should presume “When the mischievous consequences of his vaccinating project shall have descended to posterity...Jenner shall be despised.” Edward was even accused of spreading Small Pox, for various evil reasons. 

The argument presented from the pulpit was that disease was the way God punished sin, and any interference by vaccination was “diabolical”.  

Under this barrage of fantasy and conspiracy the percentage of vaccinated children and adults in England still climbed up to around 76%.   But without 100% protection Variola found enough victims and survived. 

In January of 1902 there was yet another smallpox outbreak in England that killed more than 2,000 people.  But after that disaster, the doubters were finally silenced, at least in England, and vaccinations were required for all children.

About 500 million human beings world wide have died from Smallpox after Edward Jenner introduced his vaccine. But the last victim on earth was Rahima Banu, a 2 year old girl in Bangladesh, in 1975. At 18 she married a farmer named Begum, and they gave birth to four children (her again, below). And each of her children is living proof that while religion may save souls, science saves lives.  Science, not snake oil.

The scientists working for the World Health Organization issued a report on 9 December, 1979, which announced, “...the world and its people have won freedom from Smallpox.” Variola was finally extinct, wiped out to the last living cell, by the dedication of scientists and doctors and nurses working under their guidance. 

It was, as Jenner himself wrote after the first successful eradication of Smallpox on Caribbean islands, “I don’t imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this.” It is hard to believe there are still idiots today who question the value of vaccinations.   

Jenner's dear Catherine died of tuberculosis in 1815, and Edward followed her in January of 1823. And for his life – and her's – we all owe a great debt. He was like the bird in his poem “Address to a Robin”: “And when rude winter comes and shows, His icicles and shivering snows, Hop o'er my cheering hearth and be, One of my peaceful family: Then Soothe me with thy plaintive song, Thou sweetest of the feather'd throng!”

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BREAKING THE BANK IN MONTE CARLO

 

As I walk along the Bois Boolong, With an independent air 

You can hear the girls declare, "He must be a Millionaire." 

You can hear them sigh and wish to die, You can see them wink the other eye 

At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

I hasten to point out that no one has ever actually broken the bank in Monte Carlo. Should you be lucky enough to clean out the cash drawer of a croupier - which is what the term actually refers to -  his table is covered in mourning cloth until a new employee arrives with more chips. This is referred to as "Faire sauter le banque", or blowing up the bank. And it happens, occasionally.  

Listen, should the original casino in Monte Carlo actually go broke, the residents would have to start paying taxes again, which they haven't done since 1869. I point this out so you can put Charles Schwab's behavior in context.

Thomas Edison (above, left) called his friend Charlie M. Schwab (above, center) a "Master Hustler". One of Charlie's public school teachers in the working class town of Loretto, Pennsylvania where he grew up described Charles as "...a boy who...went on the principle of pretend that you know and...find out mighty quick.” 

Later in his life Charlie attempted to explain himself this way; "Here I am, a not over-good businessman, a second rate engineer. I can make poor mechanical drawings. I can play the piano after a fashion. In fact I am one of those proverbial-jack-of-all-trades, who are usually failures. Why I am not, I can't tell you."

It was Charlie's (above, left) boundless self-confidence which quickly brought him to the attention of his prudish boss, Andrew Carnegie (above, right). Charlie ran one of Carnegie's mills, and became the old man's business advisor.

But, in February of 1901, J.P. Morgan bought all of Mr. Carnegie's steel mills and then combined them with those of nine other companies he had bought earlier and formed U.S. Steel. This gave Morgan -

with 231 steel mills, 78 blast furnaces, some 60 iron and coal mines, a fleet of ore barges, 1,000 miles of railroad track - a near complete monopoly, 79% of all steel sold in America.  

But Carnegie was had grown so fond of the 39 year old Charlie Schwab that, as part of the deal, he required that Charlie get $25 million in U.S. Steel stock, and be made President of the new company. It made sense. Except...even if Charlie was well qualified for the job, (and he was) Morgan did not like hiring anyone whose first loyalty was not to him. 

An intuitive judge of men, John Pierpont Morgan (above) knew who Charlie Schwab really was; a gambler. He enjoyed fast cars, fast women and roulette. While J.P. Morgan knew that Charlie had never lied to Carnegie, he also knew that Carnegie assumed that every person he liked was a Puritan, just like himself. And just a year after Charlie had overseen the formation of U.S. Steel, Morgan used Carnegie's myopia to defeat Charlie.

I, to Monte Carlo went, just to raise my winter's rent.

Dame Fortune smiled upon me as she'd never done before,

And I've now such lots of money, I'm a gent. Yes, I've now such lots of money, I'm a gent.

I'm the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo

Charlie arrived in France in January of 1902, for a "working vacation". He was accompanied by his wife Eurania, his doctor, and a fellow steel magnet. Stopping in Paris, he bought a roadster, and then drove the 430 miles south to Nice (in just 18 hours), where he met up with (amongst others) Henri Rothschild. According to Charlie, they "made a jolly party … racing all over the Riviera”. Their diversions included, said Charlie, four visits to the casino (above) 10 miles up the coast Azure at Monte Carlo.

In fact Charlie was having such a good time that he failed to notice the presence in the Hôtel de Paris (above) in Monte Carlo, where he was staying,  of several American newspaper reporters.

The story of his visits to the casino appeared in half a dozen newspapers on Monday, 13 January, 1902. The New York Sun trumpeted from Monte Carlo, " Charles M. Schwab is here and the lion of the day. (He) has been playing roulette...broke the bank this afternoon. He has had an extraordinary luck and repeatedly staked the maximum. ...the coupler pushed over to him $200,000, his winnings for the day....Mr. Schwab sauntered from table to table playing the maximums...." 

The New York Times editorialized, "A man who is at the head of a corporation with more than a billion dollars of capital stock...is under obligation to take some thought of his responsibilities...(and yet Charlie (above) had joined) the intellectual and social dregs of Europe around the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, and there (made)..a prolonged effort to ‘beat’ a game which to a mathematical certainty cannot be beaten” 

Reading all of this in his West Fifty-first Street mansion (above), Andrew Carnegie immediately cabled Charlie in Nice, "Public sentiment shocked...Probably have to resign. Serves you right." Then he sent a letter to J.P. Morgan, " I feel...as if a son had disgraced the family...He is unfit to be the head of the United States Steel Co.—brilliant as his talents are...Never did he show any tendency to gambling when under me, or I should not have recommended him...He shows a sad lack of...good sense...I have had nothing wound me so deeply for many a long day, if ever. Sincerely Yours, Andrew Carnegie."

I patronized the tables at the Monte Carlo, Till they hadn't got a sou for a Christian or a Jew;

So I quickly went to Paris for the charms of mad'moiselle,

Who's the loadstone of my heart - what can I do, When with twenty tongues that she swears that she'll be true.

I'm the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

Realizing he had some how made a mistake, Charlie issued the obligatory press statement. “I have been on an automobile trip through the south of France with a party of friends. ..I did visit the Casino at Monte Carlo, but the statements of sensational gambling are false.” He insisted he had won no more than $36 on any occasion. But it did not matter whether he had won at the tables or not.

Charlie returned home on 16 February, 1902 (that's him, smiling), and now refused to even comment on the affair. That did not matter, either. Carnegie would never support him again. Morgan, never said a word in public about the affair. He did not have to. Now that Charlie was isolated from his mentor, he was easy prey for Morgan.

The next year, 1903, Charlie was forced to resign from U.S. Steel. And without his dynamic leadership, Morgan's monopoly lost half of its market share by 1911. Charlie went on to buy Bethlehem Steel (above), which he ran until shortly before his death, in 1939. Like all gamblers, he died broke. As Charlie himself said, "I have probably purchased fifty 'hot tips' in my career, maybe even more. When I put them all together, I know I am a net loser."

But what Charlie never did, as least publicly, was he never asked what all those New York reporters were doing at the Casino in Monte Carlo, on that particular winter weekend in 1902. If he had it might have occurred to Charlie that the man who actually broke the bank in Monte Carlo had been John Pierppoint Morgan (below). And he wasn't even there.

I stay indoors till after lunch, and then my daily walk

To the great Triumphal Arch is one grand triumphal march,

Observed by each observer with the keenness of a hawk,

I'm a mass of money, linen, silk and starch - I'm a mass of money, linen, silk and starch.

I'm the man who broke the bank of Monte Carlo

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LOVE IN A CLIP JOINT

 

I could say William Johnson died in the name of love. The object of his passion, Mrs. Jane Housden, may have believed the same thing. The official record tells us merely that these criminal Romeo and Juliets were charged with the murder of an innocent man in open court - something you don't see very often. So when you do, it inspires contemplation -  which follows.

The year was 1714, and the place was London. To describe life in this age as brutal and short is accurate, but a bit misleading. Average life expectancy was under 40 years of age, but that was because 12% of all children died before their first birthday. 

If you made it to thirty years of age in 1714 you could expect to live to be sixty, unless you lived in Newport Market section of London, where the overcrowding and lack of sanitation almost guaranteed you would still be dead by forty. But if you made it to sixty, even in Newport Market, you could expect to live till you were 72. There just weren’t very many who made it to sixty.

William Johnson (aka William Holloway) had been born in Newport Market. He was apprenticed as butcher (above), and then, because of his brains, became a surgeon’s assistant. 

By the age of 33 William's ambition moved him into the profession of footpath -  a thief who waylaid fellow pedestrians at gunpoint and robbed them. But William had a propensity for violence and had badly beaten several of his victims, and was suspected in at least two murders. Which may be why William also had the ambition to be a highwayman. With a horse he could make a quicker escape. But for that he would need a horse. And, alas, William did not have access to such a creature.

 Early in 1710 he stole a bay gelding, the property of Mr. Evelyn Pierrpoint, a member of the peerage and a leader in the House of Lords. Pierpont was very popular in upper crust social circles, and closely tied to the crown. Being thus connected, this theft of his horse was investigated with zeal, and it was not long before William was suspected and incarcerated for the theft.

It was not unusual for convicted thieves to be condemned to death, and on 4 June, 1711, in the Old Bailey Courthouse, William was so convicted. But because he plead guilty his sentence was commuted to transportation to America. Five weeks later, while William was confined in the pestilent Newgate Prison (above) awaiting shipment, he escaped. It was a singular achievement and as such it was a further insult to the honor of the upper crust that resulted in the arrest of William’s own lady love, Jane Housden, charged with her third “coining” offense.

At the other end of the criminal hierarchy from highwaymen were clippers. In a world without trustworthy paper currency, every coin was literally worth its weight in silver or gold. In England the foundation unit of currency was the “Pound Sterling”, which was minted from 16 ounces of real silver, with a few other metals added to increase it's endurance. This meant that merchants could short change their customers with the simple application of a metal file. Many “honest” shopkeepers rented out their cash boxes overnight to clippers, and many a shop’s customers found their change shaved of 2 or 3% of its face value, thus inspiring the descriptive phrase, “a clip joint” as a shop where you were cheated. This was the reason coins came with a date stamped on them. The longer a coin was in circulation the less reliable was its face value.

In the 1690’s the English Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. William Lowndes, wrote “it is a thing so easy…even women and children…are capable of the act.” The act was filing off silver from a coin, melting the filings and pouring them into a counterfeit mold. It was not uncommon for a raiding constable to discover “a woman sitting beside the fire finishing a pile of counterfeits with a knife and file, while her husband occupied himself with...other coining tools.” It was estimated at the time that a pair of crooks …could produce twenty-five pounds of silver filings in a day - and this when a family could live quite comfortably on fifty Pounds a year.

Mrs. Jane Housden (aka Jane Newsted) had been arrested in 1701 for “coining”, and given a pardon. She was arrested again on 9 September, 1710, and pardoned again on 6 June. But officials  had warned Jane that that if she were arrested a third time for the same offense, there would be no pardon; which made it very serious when Jane was arrested once again on 13 August, 1714. I suspect that this time Jane’s arrest as bait for a trap. From informers the authorities knew that Jane had often alerted William to wealthy travelers. (about 20% of all women in London worked at least part time as prostitutes.)  And they knew that Jane was William’s mistress. A warrant had been prepared in advance for William’s arrest, signed by Lord Chief Justice Parker, himself, just in case William should appear at Jane's trial.

The date was Wednesday, 10 September, 1714.  Driven by passion and or love William slipped into the central court room at the Old Bailey with two loaded pistols in his coat pocket. He waited at the “Door at the hole”, where under guard, visitors were allowed to pass food, drink and money to prisoners waiting in the docket. He managed but a few whispered words with his Jane before a constable and a turnkey came forward to arrest him..

The instant they attempted to clap him in handcuffs, William drew a pistol. The turnkey leapt upon him, knocking the gun from his hand. Both men tumbled to the floor, the turnkey knocked silly. Jane seized the weapon, but another constable knocked her to the ground. Enraged, William fought to his feet, and leveled the second weapon. The constable jerked William’s arm up and drove a shoulder into his waist, as the head turnkey, Richard Spurling, raced forward to help. In the struggle, the gun went off, firing over the Constable’s head, but striking a bystander, Mr. Spurling,  in the chest (above), killing him instantly.

The judges, shocked at the interruption, decided there was no point in continuing Jane’s trial for coining, and immediately tried her and William for the murder of poor Mr. Spurling,  A jury made up of witnesses to the murder was impaneled. The case was argued by other witnesses to the murder. The verdict was guilty for both defendants, delivered by even more witnesses to the murder. The punishment was set by yet a third group of witnesses to the murder, as death -  all while the corpus delicti was still coagulating on the floor. It had been a singular day in the Old Baily.

This time there was no pardon and no escape. At 9:00 on the morning of 19 September, 1714, William and Jane were loaded into a cart along with their hangman and the prison chaplain. Lead by constables and followed by a squad of soldiers, the sad procession passed up Holborn Street, then St. Giles Road, to Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street), with several stops along the way at pubs where the condemned were encouraged to imbibe. Finally they reached the traditional site of execution, where a large crowd waited, at a spot where there once had stood a tree.

As the old poem went, “I have heard sundry men oft times dispute, Of trees, that in one year will twice bear fruit. But if a man note Tyburn, 'will appear, That there’s a tree that bears twelve times a year.” And there, from a rude gibbet, a rough wooden beam, William and Jane, hopefully blind drunk, danced together at the end of their ropes, slowly strangling to death. The prison chaplain read Pslam 51 3; “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” There was very little comfort in that passage, but then comfort was not the point.

The sin, in this particular case, was that William Holloway had murdered a man in open court, in front of witnesses, and Jane Housden had been foolish enough to love him. They were both sins that were to be repeated untold times over the next 300 years, and probably for another 300 after this.  

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