Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. After we
Speaker 1: did our episode on John Cleaves Sims and his ideas
Speaker 1: of the Earth being hollow, somebody suggested that we do
Speaker 1: an episode on Andrew Cross. And I wrote all this down,
Speaker 1: including the fact that he thought he invented life from crystals.
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to totally depart from the document
Speaker 1: that I gave Holly for our outline to come in
Speaker 1: here because I just figured out who who suggested this.
Speaker 1: What was originally written in this outline was that I
Speaker 1: had gone looking in our email and our Facebook comments
Speaker 1: and our our Twitter mentions, being like, who suggested this?
Speaker 1: I wrote all this down and I did not write
Speaker 1: down their name. Literally sitting in this student oh, I
Speaker 1: was like, maybe it was a comment on our website.
Speaker 1: It was a comment on our website from Kumari. I
Speaker 1: hope I have said your name correctly. UM, I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry if I did not who left the comment? How
Speaker 1: about a podcast on Andrew Cross, who thought he created
Speaker 1: life in eighteen thirty six with his crystals and electricity
Speaker 1: because it's goofy. It is goofy. This was a joy
Speaker 1: to work on UM. It also just came together with
Speaker 1: remarkable ease, which is great because I was taken um
Speaker 1: a long weekend and I wanted I needed to get
Speaker 1: all my stuff done. Uh no shade at all to
Speaker 1: Kumari if we're having left this comment on our um
Speaker 1: on our website, but I will note we do not
Speaker 1: get notification of comments on the website at Miston history
Speaker 1: dot com. It is often weeks or longer before we
Speaker 1: ever see anything on there, and we also do not
Speaker 1: have the ability to turn the comments off because it's
Speaker 1: like a whole company wide thing to have the comments
Speaker 1: on there. So if you are going to leave a
Speaker 1: comment on our website, we're probably not going to see
Speaker 1: it in a timely manner and we may never respond
Speaker 1: to it. But my last minute, literally sitting here in
Speaker 1: the studio, oh maybe it was a comment on the website,
Speaker 1: it was it was um Crosses account of what really
Speaker 1: happened is a little bit more down to earth than
Speaker 1: thinking that he invented life, or not invented life, but
Speaker 1: created life with crystals and electricity. But it's still a
Speaker 1: delightful story. It's a lot of fun to work on.
Speaker 1: So thank you Kumari again. I hope I have said
Speaker 1: your name right. I have a good check because I
Speaker 1: literally made the connection just now. Yeah, thank you for
Speaker 1: for suggesting this. So. Andrew Cross was born on June
Speaker 1: seventeen at Fine Court in Broomfield, Somerset, England, and the
Speaker 1: manor house at fine Court was first built in the
Speaker 1: early seventeenth century, and then it was added onto over
Speaker 1: the years, so by the time Cross was born it
Speaker 1: had been his family's home for well over a hundred years.
Speaker 1: Andrew's mother was named Susannah and his father was Richard Cross,
Speaker 1: high Sheriff of Somerset. When Andrew was four, the family
Speaker 1: moved to France and they stayed there for the next
Speaker 1: four years. Andrew spoke both French and English by the
Speaker 1: time he got back home, but after that he really
Speaker 1: did not keep up with the French and he eventually
Speaker 1: lost it all. Although he studied Latin and Greek in school,
Speaker 1: he didn't really think he had much of an aptitude
Speaker 1: for languages. However, he did invent a new language with
Speaker 1: his younger brother, Richard, and the two of them made
Speaker 1: up a world that was populated by beings they called
Speaker 1: either hobble gs or hobble geese, we don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: which they made out of fur cones. And they imagined
Speaker 1: a whole society for the hobble geese, complete with its
Speaker 1: own legal system and a system of government, which is
Speaker 1: about as charming as you can get in my opinion.
Speaker 1: In his own words, Andrew was quote a very happy boy, careless,
Speaker 1: and extravagantly fond of fun, and both boys were somewhat
Speaker 1: eccentric as they grew up. We're gonna get into Andrew's
Speaker 1: eccentricities in more detail. But as for Richard, as one example,
Speaker 1: he was really really into the metric system, so much
Speaker 1: so that his clocks were divided into ten hours instead
Speaker 1: of twelve. I have a number of questions about this, like,
Speaker 1: if you're running your household on ten hour clocks, do
Speaker 1: you just translate in your head to make sure you're
Speaker 1: on time for your engagements or all? Are you always
Speaker 1: not on time? We're going to have a talk about
Speaker 1: this in our Friday episode super because your foolish co
Speaker 1: host may have tried something similar as an adult. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. After the Cross Family got back from France,
Speaker 1: Andrew was enrolled in a school in Dorchester that was
Speaker 1: run by a reverend Mr. White, and then in when
Speaker 1: he was nine, he moved to a school in Bristol
Speaker 1: run by the Reverend Mr Samuel Sayer. In addition to
Speaker 1: his work as a teacher, Sayer wrote memoirs historical and
Speaker 1: topographical of Bristol in its neighborhood from the earliest period
Speaker 1: down to the present time. Andrew did not really enjoy
Speaker 1: his time at this school. He never felt like he
Speaker 1: had enough to eat, and he thought the food that
Speaker 1: they did have was terrible. He also didn't get along
Speaker 1: with Sayer or some of the other teachers. Plus being
Speaker 1: extravagantly fond of fun included getting into mischief and playing
Speaker 1: jokes and pranks on people, like when a classmate asked
Speaker 1: him for help translating some Latin, Andrew told him that
Speaker 1: what he wanted translated meant the stork is safest in
Speaker 1: the middle of the pond, when it really meant the
Speaker 1: middle course is safest, and say you're Apparently did not
Speaker 1: appreciate this particular brand of silliness. Some of the trouble
Speaker 1: that Andrew got into at school was also more serious
Speaker 1: than that. Andrew liked to make his own fireworks, and
Speaker 1: that's what he was doing. One day, while he was
Speaker 1: also studying his Virgil Sayer came and caught him and
Speaker 1: took what he was working on a way in Andrew's
Speaker 1: words quote, I watched where he put it. It was
Speaker 1: on the window sill of a room which was always
Speaker 1: kept locked. The window, though not glazed, had close iron
Speaker 1: bars through which nothing could pass. The case was hopeless.
Speaker 1: I could not recover my rocket mixture, but a happy
Speaker 1: thought struck me. I was resolved that no one else
Speaker 1: should enjoy the spoil, which I regarded as so valuable.
Speaker 1: I had a burning glass in my pocket, and I
Speaker 1: thought of Archimedes and the Roman fleet. The sun was shining,
Speaker 1: and I soon drew a focus on the gunpowder, which
Speaker 1: immediately blew up. It was well that the house was
Speaker 1: not set on fire. As for me, I was reckless
Speaker 1: of all consequences. At one point, some of the boys
Speaker 1: at school decided to go on strike to try to
Speaker 1: get longer holiday breaks. But beyond just refusing to go
Speaker 1: to class, they were inspired by the British troops fighting
Speaker 1: in the French Revolutionary Wars, so they also planned to
Speaker 1: take over the school armed with muskets. This plan was
Speaker 1: discovered and thwarted, thankfully before anybody carried it out, and
Speaker 1: although the ringleaders were expelled and other participants were flogged,
Speaker 1: Andrews somehow escaped notice. Aside from all of that, though,
Speaker 1: Andrew's love of science, and particularly of electricity, really blossomed
Speaker 1: while he was at Mr. Sayer's school. This might have
Speaker 1: had roots back in his home life. His father was
Speaker 1: actually friends with Benjamin Franklin. But while he was at
Speaker 1: Sayer's school, Andrews saw an advertisement for a lecture series,
Speaker 1: with the first installment being about optics and the second
Speaker 1: about electricity. He asked for permission to go and that
Speaker 1: was granted and things really took off from there. Soon
Speaker 1: he and some schoolmates were shocking people with a laden
Speaker 1: jar that they made from an apothecary's bottle. So a
Speaker 1: laden jar is a vessel that store static electricity, in
Speaker 1: this case probably a style uperd vile filled partway with
Speaker 1: water with a wire through the stopper, which you charge
Speaker 1: by touching the wire to something staticky. Before long, Andrew
Speaker 1: was writing home to ask for money to buy various
Speaker 1: electrical gadgetry. To be clear, this laden jar shocking would
Speaker 1: not have been dangerous, but it would have been annoying.
Speaker 1: Andrew's father died in eighteen hundred and he was sixteen,
Speaker 1: and about that time he started to experience what he
Speaker 1: described as nervous attacks, and they would recur regularly for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. While he had described himself
Speaker 1: in childhood is happy and careless, he grew up to
Speaker 1: be kind of a generally anxious person, with these attacks
Speaker 1: coming on suddenly and lasting for as long as thirty
Speaker 1: minutes at a time. In eighteen o two, Cross entered
Speaker 1: Brazenose College at Oxford, which he called quote a perfect
Speaker 1: hell on earth. Wine seemed to be the focal point
Speaker 1: of social life at the college, and he hated wine.
Speaker 1: He also hated his classmates, snobbery and classism, and later
Speaker 1: on he said quote I was less liberal at this
Speaker 1: time than at any other of my life. It took
Speaker 1: some years to rub off the prejudices of class which
Speaker 1: I had acquired at Oxford. Cross earned his degree in
Speaker 1: law in eighteen oh five, and he also inherited fine
Speaker 1: Court after his mother's death on July three of that
Speaker 1: same year. This was one of a long series of losses.
Speaker 1: Over a period of about five years. He lost both
Speaker 1: of his parents, a sister, an uncle, two close friends,
Speaker 1: and one of his household staff, who he described as
Speaker 1: quote a most faithful and attached servant. It's not really
Speaker 1: clear whether the grief over all of this led him
Speaker 1: to abandon law, but he did. He gave up law
Speaker 1: after two or three years. Instead, he established himself as
Speaker 1: a country gentleman at fine court, becoming absorbed in studying electricity, mineralogy,
Speaker 1: and chemistry. He also served as a magistrate, where he
Speaker 1: developed a reputation and for being quite liberal, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a lot of poetry. Cross became friends with George
Speaker 1: John Singer, author of Elements of Electricity and electro Chemistry.
Speaker 1: Like Cross, Singer was an amateur scientist whose family business
Speaker 1: involved making artificial feathers and flowers, but he was knowledgeable
Speaker 1: on the subject of electricity. He held public lectures and
Speaker 1: demonstrations that were attended by people like Michael Faraday. Cross
Speaker 1: and Singer did experiments together until Singer's death from tuberculosis
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventeen at the age of only thirty one.
Speaker 1: George John Singer had built a laboratory and lecture hall
Speaker 1: at his own home. But Andrew Cross's efforts to devote
Speaker 1: his home to research went even further. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that after we pause for a sponsor break. In
Speaker 1: eighteen oh seven, Andrew Cross became fascinated with crystal formations
Speaker 1: and Hollwell Cavern, which is a limestone crevice in room
Speaker 1: Field not far from where he lived. The entrance to
Speaker 1: this cavern has since been filled in, and in Crosses
Speaker 1: words quote, I felt convinced at an early period that
Speaker 1: the formation and constant growth of the crystalline matter which
Speaker 1: lined the roof of this cave was caused by some
Speaker 1: peculiar upward attraction, and reasoning more on the subject, I
Speaker 1: felt assured that it was electric attraction. Cross got a
Speaker 1: tumbler of water out of the stream that ran through
Speaker 1: the cavern, and he ran a current through it on wires,
Speaker 1: and eventually some crystals did start to form. This was
Speaker 1: the first of many experiments that he conducted in electro crystallization,
Speaker 1: which is when metals are deposited onto electrodes, eventually forming crystals.
Speaker 1: He would eventually start to experiment with electro refining, or
Speaker 1: extracting metals from their ores with electricity, which is also
Speaker 1: called electro winning. Electro Winning, which by the way, sounds
Speaker 1: like a great band name, was first developed by Sir
Speaker 1: Humphrey Davy, who came up in our John Cleves Simms
Speaker 1: episode Everything Connects in History. Yea. Davy was one of
Speaker 1: the people who thought John Cleve Sims did not know
Speaker 1: what he was talking about, because he he didn't. As
Speaker 1: Cross experimented, though, more and more of his home became
Speaker 1: devoted to this work over the next few decades. He
Speaker 1: installed six or seven furnaces for purifying metals. The estates, glassware,
Speaker 1: and china became laboratory vessels, and he purified the household
Speaker 1: silver for use in his experiments. He also strung up
Speaker 1: about a third of a mile of copper wire from
Speaker 1: poles and the tallest trees on the grounds, and he
Speaker 1: connected all that to about fifty laden jars in the
Speaker 1: organ loft of the music room. This setup became particularly
Speaker 1: dramatic in foggy or stormy weather. Sir Richard Phillips visited
Speaker 1: Fine Core and relate a conversation with Cross quote. He
Speaker 1: told me that sometimes the current was so great as
Speaker 1: to charge and discharge the great battery twenty times in
Speaker 1: a minute, with reports as loud as a cannon, which,
Speaker 1: being continuous, were so terrible to strangers that they always fled,
Speaker 1: while everyone expected the destruction of himself and premises. If
Speaker 1: the weather wasn't cooperating. Cross could also manually charge the
Speaker 1: laden jars by turning a device with a crank. Here
Speaker 1: is how a visitor described find court. During all this quote,
Speaker 1: here was an immense number of jars and gallipots containing
Speaker 1: fluids on which electricity was operating for the production of crystals.
Speaker 1: But you were startled in the midst of your observations
Speaker 1: by the smart crackling sound that attends the passage of
Speaker 1: the electrical spark. You hear also the rumblings of distant thunder.
Speaker 1: The rain is already splashing and great drops against the glass,
Speaker 1: and the sound of the passing sparks continues to startle
Speaker 1: your ear. Your host is in high glee, for a
Speaker 1: battery of electricity is about to come within his reach,
Speaker 1: a thousandfold more powerful than all those the rooms strung together.
Speaker 1: You follow his hasty steps to the organ gallery and
Speaker 1: curiously approached the spot. Whence the noise that has attracted
Speaker 1: your notice you see at the window a huge brass
Speaker 1: conductor with a discharging rod near it, passing into the floor.
Speaker 1: And from what knob to the other sparks are leaping
Speaker 1: with increasing rapidity and noise. Rap rap rap, bang bang bang. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: your host does not fear. He approaches as boldly as
Speaker 1: if the flowing stream of fire were a harmless spark.
Speaker 1: Here comes the big no surprise moment. Many of his
Speaker 1: neighbors did not particularly care for all of this. Cross
Speaker 1: was nicknamed the Wizard of Broomfield, and at one point
Speaker 1: he was speaking in a meeting ahead of an election
Speaker 1: and local farmers were booing him. When an outsider asked
Speaker 1: what was wrong, someone replied, quote, why don't you know him?
Speaker 1: That's a Cross a Broomfield, the thunder and lightning man.
Speaker 1: You can't go near his cursed house at night without
Speaker 1: danger of your life. Them as have been there, have
Speaker 1: seen devils, all surrounded by lightning, dancing on the wires
Speaker 1: that he has put up around his grounds. At the
Speaker 1: same time, though, there were local people who thought his
Speaker 1: experiments had curative properties, and her account of his life
Speaker 1: and work, Cross his second wife, Cornelia, described the case
Speaker 1: of a local man who was paralyzed on one side
Speaker 1: of his body and also had a salivary gland issue. Quote.
Speaker 1: After being electrified twice a week for six weeks, he
Speaker 1: was so much better that he could walk to find
Speaker 1: court and the complaint in the throat was entirely removed.
Speaker 1: I'm making a grimacing face. Another gem from Cornelia about
Speaker 1: their booming, flashing property quote, we were never troubled with
Speaker 1: burglars at fine Court. We will get back to Cornelia
Speaker 1: in a bit. Since they got married later on in
Speaker 1: Andrew's life, his first wife was Marian Hamilton's, daughter of
Speaker 1: Captain John Hamilton's. They got married in eighteen o nine,
Speaker 1: relatively early into crosses time as a gentleman scientist. They
Speaker 1: would go on to have seven children together over the
Speaker 1: next ten years, although three of those children died when
Speaker 1: they were still children. Their oldest child, John, was born
Speaker 1: in eighteen ten. Cross seems to have been really deeply
Speaker 1: fond of his wife and children and very traumatized by
Speaker 1: those three deaths. At the same time, though, in terms
Speaker 1: of family, he'd been on his own aside from a
Speaker 1: couple of younger siblings for four years before he got married,
Speaker 1: and he just wasn't used to having a regular home life,
Speaker 1: and along with all of his experiments and made things
Speaker 1: a little bit chaotic. Ada Lovelace became friends with both
Speaker 1: Andrew and his son John. Aida and John actually had
Speaker 1: a romantic relationship that was also tangled up with her gambling.
Speaker 1: She summed up the atmosphere at Fine Court this way,
Speaker 1: quote the dinner hour was an accident in the day's arrangements.
Speaker 1: Even though they were living in a seventeenth century manor house,
Speaker 1: which suggests a lot of wealth, the Cross family's lifestyle
Speaker 1: wasn't particularly extravagant compared to other people in a similar situation.
Speaker 1: They did have problems with cash flow, though, and Cross's
Speaker 1: words quote, my family were learned and honorable men as
Speaker 1: long as I can look back. But they had the
Speaker 1: happy knack of turning a guinea into a shilling, and
Speaker 1: I have inherited that faculty pretty strongly. Cornelia described him
Speaker 1: as quote injudicious in his expenditure. Apart from his friendship
Speaker 1: with George John Singer, Andrew Cross was intellectually actually pretty isolated.
Speaker 1: One of his closest longtime friends was John Kenyon, who
Speaker 1: had been one of his classmates at Mr Sayer's school,
Speaker 1: and while Kenyan was interested in Crosses experiments, science was
Speaker 1: really not his calling. Their overlapping interest was poetry. Kenyan
Speaker 1: wrote poetry himself, and he was a distant cousin of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Barrett Browning. At one point before her marriage, he
Speaker 1: brought Andrew Cross to visit her. He also supplemented Robert
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's income and left the money when
Speaker 1: he died in eighteen fifty six. So Cross did talk
Speaker 1: about his work in public, but not really all that
Speaker 1: often and somewhat reluctantly. On December eighteen fourteen, he gave
Speaker 1: an address at garner In's Lecture Hall, and it is
Speaker 1: possible that Mary Shelley, who at the time was Mary Godwin,
Speaker 1: attended this lecture. She references it in her diary, but
Speaker 1: her notes about it are also kind of vague. She
Speaker 1: writes about going from place to place looking for Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson Hogg, but not finding him at any of those places,
Speaker 1: before saying quote, go to garner In's lecture on electricity,
Speaker 1: the gases and the Phantasmagoria. Return at half past nine.
Speaker 1: Shelly goes to sleep, so it's not a hunter sent
Speaker 1: clear whether garner ends was one of the places she
Speaker 1: was looking for hog and she was just noting the
Speaker 1: topic of the lecture that night, or if she actually
Speaker 1: attended the lecture herself. Either way, though, sometimes people point
Speaker 1: to this diary entry as evidence that Cross was an
Speaker 1: inspiration for Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheists, which
Speaker 1: was published four years later. In eighteen thirty six, Cross
Speaker 1: reluctantly agreed to speak at the annual meeting of the
Speaker 1: British Association for the Advancement of Science that was being
Speaker 1: held in Bristol. He had intended to go to the
Speaker 1: meeting simply as an observer, but he was persuaded to
Speaker 1: talk about his experiments with electro crystallization. It turned out
Speaker 1: that people were fascinated. John Dalton, who we just covered
Speaker 1: on the show, was in attendance, and he told Cross
Speaker 1: he had never before listened to anything so interesting, and
Speaker 1: all this attention made Cross fairly uncomfortable, though, and his
Speaker 1: words quote, I slipped away out of it all and
Speaker 1: he went home before the meeting was over. It was
Speaker 1: not long before he was getting even more attention, though,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: After the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six. A lot of the response to
Speaker 1: Andrew Cross's work was pretty positive, but he did have
Speaker 1: some detractors. On January thirty one of eighteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: he wrote a letter to a newspaper called The Atlas,
Speaker 1: in which he responded to what he described as an
Speaker 1: attack by a doctor Ritchie. I could not find the
Speaker 1: text of this article, but Ritchie apparently criticized Cross for
Speaker 1: framing his work as discoveries when other people had discovered
Speaker 1: these things many years before. Ritchie also described Cross as
Speaker 1: work in a way that just wasn't very accurate. Cross.
Speaker 1: His tone is kind of along the lines of you
Speaker 1: were there at the meeting, Dr Ritchie, and you could
Speaker 1: have just asked me if you had questions, instead of
Speaker 1: writing this incorrect article mischaracterizing me and my experiments, which
Speaker 1: I do because I love them. In this response, Cross
Speaker 1: framed his work as observations, not discoveries. His letter ended quote,
Speaker 1: p S. I should have sent this answer long since,
Speaker 1: but have been prevented by severe illness. I must beg
Speaker 1: in future to decline engaging in scientific warfare with anyone
Speaker 1: having neither inclination nor time for that kind of amusement.
Speaker 1: But Dr Ritchie's article that he was responding to you
Speaker 1: was just the tip of the iceberg. Not long after
Speaker 1: he spoke at the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
Speaker 1: Andrew Cross became famous in a way that he really
Speaker 1: did not expect and also really did not want. He
Speaker 1: had been experimenting with a piece of porous volcanic rock,
Speaker 1: which he was using because of its perosity rather than
Speaker 1: because of its compass Asian. He kept this rock electrified
Speaker 1: with a voltaic battery, and he had placed it in
Speaker 1: a fluid that was saturated with black flint and potassium carbonate.
Speaker 1: In his words quote, on the fourteenth day from the
Speaker 1: commencement of this experiment, I observed through a lens a
Speaker 1: few small whitish excrescences or nipples, projecting from about the
Speaker 1: middle of the electrified stone. On the eighteenth day, these
Speaker 1: projections enlarged and struck out seven or eight filaments, each
Speaker 1: of them longer than the hemisphere on which they grew.
Speaker 1: On the twenty sixth day, these appearances assumed the form
Speaker 1: of a perfect insect standing erect on a few bristles
Speaker 1: which formed its tail. Till this period, I had no
Speaker 1: notion that these appearances were other than an incipient mineral formation.
Speaker 1: On the twenty day, these little creatures moved their legs.
Speaker 1: I must now say that I was not a little astonished.
Speaker 1: After a few days, they detached themselves from the stone
Speaker 1: and moved about at pleasure. He went on to write, quote,
Speaker 1: in the course of a few weeks, about a hundred
Speaker 1: of them made their appearance on the stone. I examined
Speaker 1: them with a microscope and observed the smaller ones appeared
Speaker 1: to have only six legs, the larger ones eight. Cross
Speaker 1: thought the most likely explanation for this startling occurrence was
Speaker 1: that airborne mites had deposited their eggs on his equipment,
Speaker 1: which was exposed to the air, but that didn't explain
Speaker 1: why the mtes seemed able to survive in an environment
Speaker 1: that should have killed them. Later on, he also acknowledged
Speaker 1: that the early stage of these creatures formation was nearly
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from the early stages of crystal formation, so he
Speaker 1: might have just been mistaken. Beyond that, he said quote,
Speaker 1: I have never ventured an opinion on the cause of
Speaker 1: their birth, and for a very good reason I was
Speaker 1: unable to form one. He talked over what he had
Speaker 1: seen with some other scientists and he sent some samples
Speaker 1: to Richard Owen. Owen was a biologist, comparative annomist, and
Speaker 1: a paleontologist. He's act lee the person who coined the
Speaker 1: term dinosaria. He also very vocally criticized Charles Darwin's work
Speaker 1: on evolution. Owen said that these were cheese mites, which
Speaker 1: are arachnids from the genus a Carus. Cross called them
Speaker 1: a Carus calvanicus. Cross never intended to publicize this find anywhere,
Speaker 1: but at some point he either mentioned it to or
Speaker 1: was overheard by William Bragg of the Somerset County Gazette.
Speaker 1: Bragg published an article on December thirty one, eight thirty six,
Speaker 1: titled Extraordinary Experiment. Although Bragg's article did not make this claim,
Speaker 1: soon papers all over Britain and Ireland were printing sensationalized
Speaker 1: reports that Andrew Cross of Somerset had used electricity to
Speaker 1: create life. So to be clear, Andrew Cross did make
Speaker 1: some far fetched claims during his lifetime, like he told
Speaker 1: a story about being bitten by a cat that died
Speaker 1: that day of hydrophoe b A, which is rabies. About
Speaker 1: three months later, Cross had a worrying combination of symptoms.
Speaker 1: He was thirsty, but his throat spasmed when he tried
Speaker 1: to drink water, and he had a pain that started
Speaker 1: in his hand and worked its way up to his
Speaker 1: elbow and shoulder. Convinced that he was going to die
Speaker 1: of hydrophobia, he went shooting and intentionally exerted himself, and
Speaker 1: thanks to his physical exertion and mental focus, he was
Speaker 1: better in three days. He wrote quote. I mentioned the
Speaker 1: circumstance to Dr King Lake, and he said he certainly
Speaker 1: considered that I had had an attack of hydrophobia, which
Speaker 1: would possibly have proved fatal had I not struggled against
Speaker 1: it by a strong effort of mind. You cannot cure
Speaker 1: rabies with exercise and positive thinking, which just never occur
Speaker 1: to me to be like, I think I might have rabies.
Speaker 1: You know what I should do? Go shooting. That's going
Speaker 1: to help um. As an anxious person, I can totally
Speaker 1: see my elf being like, oh no, this thing is
Speaker 1: happening to me. Uh. We we don't really know if
Speaker 1: Dr King Lake really did think that he had somehow
Speaker 1: staved off an attack of rabies, or if if King
Speaker 1: Lake was humoring him, that's right, dear, you cured yourself.
Speaker 1: But even though he had this whole story about the
Speaker 1: cat and the rabies, um, he did not say that
Speaker 1: he had used electricity to create life. He steadfastly maintained
Speaker 1: that not only had he never made that claim, he
Speaker 1: had never said anything that a reasonable person could interpret
Speaker 1: that way. He really didn't know for sure why mits
Speaker 1: had hatched in his experiment. I mean, he had that
Speaker 1: kind of best guest of like maybe some mights put
Speaker 1: their eggs on there, but he definitely did not think
Speaker 1: he had created them or given life to them with electricity.
Speaker 1: For the next few years, though, Cross faced on going
Speaker 1: accusations of blasphemy and atheism. Because of this misreporting of
Speaker 1: his work and the rumors that followed. People called him
Speaker 1: a Frankenstein and a disturber of the piece of families.
Speaker 1: Cornelia Cross later wrote quote, after disavowing all intention to
Speaker 1: raise any questions connected with either natural or revealed religion,
Speaker 1: he went on to observe that he was sorry to
Speaker 1: see that the faith of his neighbors could be overset
Speaker 1: by the claw of a mite. Other people tried to
Speaker 1: replicate cross as results, but only one, William Henry Weeks
Speaker 1: of Sandwich, had any success, and that happened in eighteen forty.
Speaker 1: Weeks had placed his experiment under a bell jar in
Speaker 1: Mercury to seal it off from the external air, and
Speaker 1: he said that quote five perfect insects formed on novembert one,
Speaker 1: after more than a year of the experiment running. So
Speaker 1: we had started the experiment in eighteen forty and then
Speaker 1: reported this eighteen forty one. He named the might a
Speaker 1: Carus CROSSII after Andrew Cross. Cross and Weeks were both
Speaker 1: threatened with violence, and they were not the only people
Speaker 1: caught up in this media storm. Another was Michael Faraday,
Speaker 1: who was falsely reported as having confirmed Cross's experiment in
Speaker 1: February of eighteen thirty seven. Not only had he not
Speaker 1: done this, he also had not tried to. As all
Speaker 1: of this was happening, several members of Cross's family were
Speaker 1: seriously ill. His wife Mary Anne died in eighteen forty six,
Speaker 1: and his brother Richard died just four days later. Andrew
Speaker 1: was absolutely bereft, and he went to London, where he
Speaker 1: spent most of the next four years. As the house
Speaker 1: and grounds of Fine Court fell into disrepair. While he
Speaker 1: was in London, he met Cornelia Augusta Hewitt Berkeley, who
Speaker 1: was a fan of his work. In her words, quote
Speaker 1: when young, I had always been intensely interested in Mr
Speaker 1: Cross's experiments in electrical science. I had cut out scraps
Speaker 1: from the newspapers that made mention of his discoveries, so
Speaker 1: that it was with no common feelings that I looked
Speaker 1: upon the man whose power, in wielding that mysterious agent electricity,
Speaker 1: had so excited my imagination. She goes on to say
Speaker 1: that she was disappointed that at their first meeting he
Speaker 1: didn't talk about electricity. Perhaps he was hungry. I love that.
Speaker 1: Andrew and Cornelia got married in eighteen fifty he was
Speaker 1: sixty six and she was twenty three. They went back
Speaker 1: to find Court, where they had a son in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two, followed by two more children, bringing his total
Speaker 1: surviving children to ten. Cornelia helped Andrew with his experiments
Speaker 1: and observation. He tried to use electricity to purify seawater
Speaker 1: and restore spoiled foods to wholesomeness, and make a hangover
Speaker 1: cure by electrifying wine and beer. When he published his work,
Speaker 1: he did so through the Electrical Society, which took a
Speaker 1: more populist egalitarian approach than many of the more formal
Speaker 1: acade amic societies. In eighteen fifty one, the Crosses went
Speaker 1: to the Great Exhibition in London at Joseph Paxson's Crystal Palace,
Speaker 1: which we've covered previously on the show. They also went
Speaker 1: on a tour of England, coming back to find Court
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty five. On May eighteen fifty five, Andrew
Speaker 1: Cross had what he called a paralytic seizure. It was
Speaker 1: probably a stroke that paralyzed part of his body. He
Speaker 1: died on July six, in the same room where he
Speaker 1: had been born. On his deathbed, he changed his will
Speaker 1: to leave his property to his wife rather than his
Speaker 1: oldest son, John, but she then gave the estate to
Speaker 1: John and his family. Andrew Cross is buried in the
Speaker 1: churchyard at the Church of Saint Mary and All Saints
Speaker 1: in Broomfield. Cornelia had an obelisk erected in his memory there.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty seven, Cornelia published Memorials Scientific and Literary
Speaker 1: of Andrew Cross the Electrician, which discussed her late husband's
Speaker 1: life and work, including men of his poems and correspondence
Speaker 1: and a complete account of the experiment with the mites.
Speaker 1: In two she published Red Letter Days of My Life,
Speaker 1: which included her recollections about the scientists and writers and
Speaker 1: thinkers that she could come to know during their marriage.
Speaker 1: Most of the manor house at Fine Court is no
Speaker 1: longer standing. It was largely destroyed in a fire in
Speaker 1: eight but the library and music room are still there,
Speaker 1: as well as a gardener's cottage and a church. Some
Speaker 1: of the structure still standing on the property are used
Speaker 1: as office space, including for organizations like Somerset Wildlife Trust,
Speaker 1: and visitors can stay at the gardener's cottage. It is
Speaker 1: primarily a nature preserve with walking trails in a tea
Speaker 1: room with a tea room currently only take out due
Speaker 1: to the COVID nineteen pandemic. We have made some references
Speaker 1: to Andrew Cross's poetry, and I thought we would end
Speaker 1: on one of his poems. This is called the Three
Speaker 1: Trenches three thirdling trenches round my heart. I throw to
Speaker 1: keep at bay each intermeddling foe within the first the
Speaker 1: world may enter free, whatever their sect, opinion, or degree,
Speaker 1: safe or the next. I greet a fair array, serenely smiling,
Speaker 1: as a summer's day to pass. The third alas how
Speaker 1: few contrive and of those dearest few, how few survive.
Speaker 1: That is Andrew Cross. This is one of those topics
Speaker 1: that if I had a do over in a time machine,
Speaker 1: I would have saved this for like a tour show,
Speaker 1: because it's so fun. It's very very fun. Uh do
Speaker 1: you have fun email? I do? Is it fun? It
Speaker 1: is fun? Fun? Is it fun? This is from Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Jennifer says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I got so excited
Speaker 1: while I was listening to the recent scurvy episode. I
Speaker 1: went down a history rabbit hole a few months ago.
Speaker 1: Didn't know how to write in about it. It's a
Speaker 1: long story, but I was watching a cooking show and
Speaker 1: the recipe called for black currents. I was intrigued because
Speaker 1: they looked delicious and I had never heard of them before.
Speaker 1: It turns out, in the early nineteen hundreds of the
Speaker 1: US banned the cultivation, sale, and transportation of currents. They
Speaker 1: can carry a fungus that is destructive to the white pine,
Speaker 1: so currents were banned to safeguard the timber industry. That
Speaker 1: basically eliminated currents from the American diet. Another interesting fact,
Speaker 1: during the Blackades in World War two, currents were one
Speaker 1: of the only vitamin C rich fruits that could be
Speaker 1: grown locally in Britain. Churchill encouraged people to cultivate black
Speaker 1: currents and it kept the population from getting scurvy. Current
Speaker 1: flavored soda and candy are still popular in the UK today.
Speaker 1: I love the show. It was my first podcast ever
Speaker 1: and it opened me up to the podcast world. My
Speaker 1: love of history has grown so much because of you guys.
Speaker 1: Thanks for reading. Thank you for sending this Ale Jennifer.
Speaker 1: I got it this morning and I was like, why
Speaker 1: have I had no confusion about what currents are, even
Speaker 1: though I don't know that I have ever actually eaten them.
Speaker 1: And the answer quickly came into my mind that in
Speaker 1: Anne of Green Gables, and is supposed to give Diana
Speaker 1: Berry raspberry cordial, but instead she accidentally gives Diana Berry
Speaker 1: Marilla's black current line, and then Diana gets very drunk,
Speaker 1: and it is a big source of the tension in
Speaker 1: that part of the book. And so I think sometime
Speaker 1: in my childhood I was like, what is what is
Speaker 1: black current line? And I found out that they're like
Speaker 1: little they're like a little berry. Um. I looked into
Speaker 1: it because I was like, wow, I did not know
Speaker 1: all of this about their being banned in the US.
Speaker 1: I just sort of assumed that they were something that
Speaker 1: didn't grow locally. That's not true at all, Like they
Speaker 1: were grown a whole lot in New York and New
Speaker 1: England until this whole problem with the with the fungus
Speaker 1: which is actually a rust and the band, like the
Speaker 1: federal band was rolled back before I was born, but
Speaker 1: there were still a lot of state level bands. It
Speaker 1: is still not a commonly grown crop in the US
Speaker 1: at all, Like more than of the current crop in
Speaker 1: the world is grown in Europe. So um, that was
Speaker 1: an interesting tidbit for me to start my morning off with.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much Jennifer for sending this email.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcast, we're at History Podcast that I
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Speaker 1: social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll find
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