BEHIND THE MUDLARK
Letterpress, Dentures and Thames Curiosities.
It was a very early get up for Roman Found to catch the super low February Thames Tides. Si Finds had very kindly offered to take us out for the day and so we found ourselves being thrown into the rush of the London Underground at an ungodly morning hour. What was going to come up out of the dark sticky Thames mud?
LETTERPRESS TYPE
PERIOD: 1440 - 1970 LOCATION: RIVER THAMES, UK MATERIAL: LEAD
Letterpress Type Haul
Ever since she went on her first mudlark it has been Letterpress Type that has been right at the very top of Ellie’s own bucket list. An avid printmaker at heart, the idea of finding lost fonts and letters on the shores of the Thames itself was something that spoke directly to her creative mind. Before this mudlark she had only been around people finding type and never actually found any for herself but under Si’s careful guidance she was like a rat in all that muck plucking out type piece after type piece her eye so honed in on those little rectangular shapes that she could simply not stop finding it. A mudlarking addiction unlocked, and a very impressive haul indeed.
London was the centre of the print trade since the 15th Century, a time where the only way of printing the written word was through the use of letterpress. Printing through letterpress was a very lengthy and skilled process that started with the art of ‘compositing’; arranging and ‘setting’ all of the individual pieces of type to form words and sentences that could then be printed from. Prior to the invention of letterpress and the printing press the only way of spreading information was through writing and word of mouth; this meant there was a poor level of literacy that was mainly contained within the more educated and upper classes. Letterpress made information more readily available to all, spreading education and starting to break down the barriers between the classes.
The beginnings of this printing trade in London were all mainly centred around St Paul’s Cathedral, you may know the name Fleet Street as this was where most of the printing industry was based. The creation of libraries and literature through this art of printing created the demand for more literature that only exacerbated the printing industry with the number of printing firms in London alone increasing from 75 individual firms in 1724 to over 400 by 1855. All of these firms meant one thing, that literally thousands and thousands of individual pieces of lead type would have been in use in London and this type didn’t last forever. Being made of lead the type would eventually wear out and this was one of the reasons for the type being cast into the River Thames. For centuries the River was seen as a helpful waste removal service, one of the largest contributors for its foreshores being the longest archaeological site in Britain.
Another rather interesting reason for letterpress ending up in the River Thames was as a result of feuds in the printing houses. You may have heard of the rather famous Doves Type that so often gets mentioned, especially in the mudlarking world.
The Doves Type was a very famous and fabled typeface that found itself trapped in a war caused by the financial collapse of the Doves Press. One of the warring partners of the Press during this collapse managed to legally possess their greatest asset, the Doves Type. For as long as he lived the typeface was only to be used in publications controlled and printed by him but as his health failed and he was faced with the thought of this typeface being out of his control after his ever increasingly approaching death he took radical action and started systematically dumping the typeface into the River Thames under the cover of darkness. Completely eradicating all traces of this typeface and making it impossible to replicate. One of the most famous of all typefaces that can be discovered on the shores of the Thames, we will have to scrutinise every letter very carefully to see if any fit the bill …
DENTURES
PERIOD: 1840s-1940s LOCATION: RIVER THAMES, UK MATERIAL: VULCANITE AND PORCELAIN
Dentures
Possibly the scariest finds of the day but Lucie’s top favourite discovery are this rather alarming set of dentures. Thankfully made from vulcanite and set with porcelain teeth these upper dentures date to the later portion of the 19th Century and weren’t a recent loss!
The vulcanisation process was developed during the 1840’s and brought with it a bit of a revolution for the production of dentures. Prior to vulcanite, false teeth were a luxury that were only available to the wealthy as there was simply no available suitable base material to produce them apart from using gold or carved ivory. This meant that if you were unlucky enough to have dental pain or problems before the late 19th Century and you didn’t possess a large amount of wealth then extraction was the only option available for you.
Claudius Ash was the man who first used this new rubber compound to form dentures and it was his company Ash & Sons that were the leading manufacturer of these rather revolutionary dentures and the most likely producer of Lucie’s latest find. Not only were vulcanite dentures cheap and readily available to the masses but as vulcanite starts out as a soft material before being vulcanised it was able to be moulded precisely to the patients gums and palate making for a much better fit, they could also contain suction cups removing the fear of impromptu denture loss.
This wonder material vulcanite was an accidental invention during some experimentation by GoodYear that really did bring about a revolution to several industries, not just in dentistry.
But most alarmingly before the vulcanite dentures porcelain teeth weren’t favoured for denture production as without having anything firm to be set into they were liable to chipping and cracking during use, so what was used instead? Well the terrifying answer was actual human teeth that were taken from corpses or sometimes sold by the lower classes as a way of making a quick buck. A large portion of these teeth were gruesomely gathered from battlefields and it would have been rather common to have a set of dead men's teeth smiling back at you. So we should be ever thankful to the engineers and scientists at GoodYear for messing around with that rubber.
BOTTLE STOPPERS
PERIOD: 1870s-1970s LOCATION: RIVER THAMES, UK MATERIAL: VULCANITE
Bottle Stopper
Bottle stoppers are one of Roman Found’s favourite artefacts to find out mudlarking, field walking or generally just scavenging about. There is simply something about their tactile forms combined with the chance of finding some embossed type that just might reveal a little bit of their history and story.
The internal thread method of sealing bottles was invented by Henry Barrett in the 1870’s and was used mainly for ale and mineral water bottles bringing about a new breed of bottle stopper from the previous glass and cork ones, a vulcanite bottle stopper.
These new vulcanite screw stoppers fitted much more tightly and securely than their glass counterparts as well as being much cheaper to manufacture and they became the industry standard for a century. But as well as effectively sealing and bottling liquids the stopper also became an important advertising tool as it was easily moldable and you can often find them stamped or embossed with the names of the brewery they came from originally. Often these breweries are no longer in existence so it’s a lovely throw back to some lost social history from the banks of the Thames.
It was a bottle stopper breeding ground on this latest mudlark with Ellie discovering 5 examples, all sadly void of any brewery names, but Lucie was the lucky stopper hunter discovering two examples that still bear their companies names proudly.
CLAY PIPES
PERIOD: 16TH - 20TH C LOCATION: RIVER THAMES, UK MATERIAL: CLAY
Clay pipes
Since the very first settlement on the River Thames the River was chosen for its crucial route of passage, the perfect port for trade from this little isle. As the British Empire expanded the Thames became the harbour for the import and export of all manner of goods and produce from all far reaches of the empire. One of these products was tobacco.
Tobacco was first introduced to Britain in the 16th Century and since then the tobacco industry only boomed. First introduced as medicinal, (medicinal!?), the pipe bowls were tiny, made to reflect the expensive cost of tobacco at the time. But as the industry developed so did the clay pipe industry with bowls becoming larger and larger and much more elaborate, especially in the 19th Century reflecting the great social popularity of smoking.
Just as Ellie couldn’t stop finding letterpress type Lucie had her eyes locked into these 19th Century decorated pipes. One of these decorated pipes was embossed with RAOB and a Buffalo Face signifying The Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes, a rather quirky and unusual clay pipe as they were made by masons. The RAOB were founded in 1822 and are one of the largest fraternal organisations in the United Kingdom that still exist today.
“Our basic desire is to defend the weak, help the unfortunate and render assistance to those in difficulty or need.” - The RAOB
Decorated pipes were made for all reasons from the masonic to royal commemorations, advertising purposes and even to reflect particular people from history for comedic or political purposes. The options are practically limitless on what’s going to turn up next so they can be one of the most exciting types of common artefacts to turn up on the shores of the Thames.
FARNLEY BRICK
PERIOD: 1840s - 1880s LOCATION: RIVER THAMES, UK MATERIAL: CLAY
Farnley Iron Co Brick
Probably the largest and heaviest item we discovered on the foreshore was this lovely Farnley Iron Co Brick. Maybe not a glamorous object but one that contains a fascinating social history as we just can't help ourselves being drawn to the items that have been embossed by companies and businesses of the past.
This particular example of brick dates from the 1840s - 1880s and was produced by the Farnley Iron Works Company which was established in 1844 by the Armitage brothers in Leeds.
The Armitage Brothers inherited the Farnley Estate and Hall in the 1840’s and became entrepreneurs, exploiting the rich deposits of high quality iron, coal and fireclay that resided beneath the property. This rich source material became known as making the ‘best Yorkshire Iron’ but it was the rather vast resources of fireclay that they discovered that the company was best known for as it is estimated that they probably produced more bricks than they ever did of iron! In fact this was very much the route the company took and by 1889 they evolved into the Leeds Fireclay Company.
In 1893 alone they exported 500,000 bricks for construction in America! Perhaps it is one of these large exports that was lost off the boat into the Thames?
All in all a very successful mudlark packed with endless amounts of social history that could keep us researching for days! The Thames is one of the most fascinating sites to mudlark and is always worth the early get up to catch the best lows and get that nose stuck into the mud.
