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Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're continuing our trek through human

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Speaker 1: techno history, and we're going to begin with The flint Stones. Okay, uh.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever watched The flint Stones the old uh

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixties American cartoon, you're probably familiar with their

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Speaker 1: over the top cartoon world in which you know, you

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Speaker 1: have you have these cavemen, but they're also it's also

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Speaker 1: like a commentary to eliminated extent on nineteen sixties American culture,

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Speaker 1: and they live alongside dinosaurs and they utilize them to

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Speaker 1: power pretty much every aspect of their society. Is the

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Speaker 1: satirical element there. If I've only seen The flint Stones

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Speaker 1: Viva Rock Vegas, probably yeah, I think so, because they,

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Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, those live action adaptations did put

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Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on the dinosaur and pre star

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Speaker 1: creature based technology. Oh yeah, clearly. That's the big draw

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Speaker 1: of the series, is the curiosity what kind of dinosaur

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Speaker 1: is going to be playing the role of a toilet today? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because well, they didn't use dinos to power everything. For instance,

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Speaker 1: they did insist on footing their own ridiculous stone cars

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Speaker 1: around town. I love that they had a typewriter that

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Speaker 1: was a mere stone machine, kind of like a cross

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Speaker 1: between a typewriter and a stone xylophone or something. But

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Speaker 1: they also used, of course, that would be what is

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Speaker 1: it a lithophone? Actually it's not a there is a

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Speaker 1: name for a stone xylophone. But but it was of

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Speaker 1: course more complicated, ridiculously complicated. Uh, in the flint Stones.

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Speaker 1: But then they also used, just to name a few inventions,

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Speaker 1: the following uh. And let let's go back and forth

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Speaker 1: on these jokes, a sauropod powered construction crane device, a

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Speaker 1: stegosaur based fire truck, theropod based mobile stairs like the airport. Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: A small dinosaur that they used as a can opener up.

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Speaker 1: This one's really famous. And I know they used this

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Speaker 1: one in the live action film. A garbage disposal dinosaur

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Speaker 1: that just lives underneath the counter. I remember this. Actually

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Speaker 1: they were like the garbage disposals acting up and he

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Speaker 1: opens up the cabinets and like yells at it. But

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Speaker 1: they've also got a record player that's a turtle and hummingbird. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like the hummingbird is the needle, of course, and

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Speaker 1: the turtle was somehow spinning the record. Wait a minute,

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Speaker 1: where they're hummingbirds? And wait a minute. They were definitely

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Speaker 1: not humans coexisting with dinosaurs. Uh. They had a mammoth

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Speaker 1: based uh system of running water, didn't They also have

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Speaker 1: a tiny mammoth that was like the vacuum cleaner. They

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Speaker 1: used it to because the hose or maybe it's young.

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Speaker 1: I don't know how this worked. There was also a

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure it was a bird or terra saar

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Speaker 1: based camera. So like you hold up the camera to

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Speaker 1: take the picture and the small winged creature uses its

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Speaker 1: beak to then a chisel the image into a piece

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Speaker 1: of stone. That's funny that it's some kind a bird

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Speaker 1: as a dishwasher, it was like a pelican. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: looked a lot like a pelican. And then, of course,

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Speaker 1: if you need a kitchen knife, what are you gonna

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Speaker 1: do use a sawfish? Why not a rock? Why not

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Speaker 1: a like a flint stone. It's it's there in the

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Speaker 1: name the flint. Hilarious If it is an actual sword fish,

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Speaker 1: I guess, but that defeats the purpose. I mean, why

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Speaker 1: you would use an animal in place of a machine

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Speaker 1: is that an animal is complex and has moving parts

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Speaker 1: and can generate motive power if you just need a

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Speaker 1: knife or something. It seems like real stone age technology

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Speaker 1: would work just as well. Oh absolutely, um. And then

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Speaker 1: of course there's the added fact that they have a

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Speaker 1: pet dinosaur named Dino who is just there for companionship. Now,

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Speaker 1: all of this is ridiculous, and even today we watch

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Speaker 1: it and we laugh at it because it's a ridiculous

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Speaker 1: exaggeration of animal labor. Each dinosaur prehistar creature is highly specialized.

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Speaker 1: So you know, either the humans of the flint Stones

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Speaker 1: just found the right animals to perform these very specific functions, uh,

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Speaker 1: or like us real life humans, they bred them to

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Speaker 1: encourage certain traits, traits who would make them ideal for

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Speaker 1: highly specific specialized tasks such as living under your sink

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Speaker 1: and eating all of your scraps. That's right. And to

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Speaker 1: explore this concept further today we're going to look at

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Speaker 1: a real historical example. Uh. Certainly not the only example

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Speaker 1: of an animal bred for a certain job within the

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Speaker 1: house providing some kind of motive power. Of course, we

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Speaker 1: know farm animals, draft animals. Pack animals have been doing

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Speaker 1: this kind of thing for millennia. But today we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be looking at a very strange specific case from history.

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Speaker 1: The turnspit dog, a breed of domestic dog that is

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Speaker 1: bred to run around a small wheel to power e rotisserie. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and this is this is this is amazing. I was

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Speaker 1: I had not heard of this before. So this was

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Speaker 1: like suddenly, It's like suddenly realizing the flint stones were

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Speaker 1: real to a certain extent. But but this is gonna

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Speaker 1: be a great episode as well, because it's not just

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Speaker 1: going to be about this dog. It's gonna be about

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Speaker 1: sort of two or three additional technologies that factor in

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Speaker 1: to this period in time in which dog labor was

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Speaker 1: used to help cook big chunks of meat. Right, So

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Speaker 1: I guess first we always asked the question here what

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Speaker 1: came before this invention? So obviously we should look at

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Speaker 1: the dog itself, and the dog in a way, if

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Speaker 1: you sort of, if you sort of squint, it is

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Speaker 1: sort of a human invention. I mean, obviously it's a

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Speaker 1: product of nature. So we like we didn't create you know,

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Speaker 1: canines generally, but the domestic dog and the domestic dog

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Speaker 1: breeds that exist have in many ways been guided by

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Speaker 1: human hands to greater and lesser extents. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: it's not you know, it's not necessary a situation where

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Speaker 1: a prehistoric uh you know, number of human society said

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Speaker 1: that is a good wolf creature out there. I have

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Speaker 1: a few pointers for what we might change in it,

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Speaker 1: but that is essentially the process that ends up taking place. So, yes,

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Speaker 1: before you can have a dog powered meat spinning grill machine,

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Speaker 1: you have to have a domestic dog. And in brief,

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Speaker 1: the domestic dog dates back an estimated twelve thousand years

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Speaker 1: to the Near East, before the cat, before the sheep,

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Speaker 1: before the goat, and before the horse. The dog maybe

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Speaker 1: man's best friend, and it is certainly one of his

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Speaker 1: oldest non human friends. It is the oldest recognizably domestic animal.

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Speaker 1: And we know they were used some eleven thousand years

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Speaker 1: ago in post glacial Europe by hunter gatherers, and they

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Speaker 1: were almost certainly used in hunting. Interestingly enough, it's sometimes

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Speaker 1: questioned why humans didn't actually domesticate the dogs sooner than this,

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Speaker 1: and one idea is that there was even more incentive

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Speaker 1: to domesticate these, you know, the wild wolf like creatures

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Speaker 1: into the domesticated dog in the post glacial world, because

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Speaker 1: you increasingly then had to track wounded animals that you've

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Speaker 1: wounded during the you know, the hunt through wooded regions.

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Speaker 1: Increasing a wooded regions is the forest return and a

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Speaker 1: dog's superior sense of smell could make a huge difference

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Speaker 1: in that task. So the dog was a pre farming

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Speaker 1: domestic species, and that's something that's really essential to note.

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Speaker 1: Because the cat, I think we've touched on this before.

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Speaker 1: If not an invention, then unstuff to blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: You know, the cat comes about as an investigated species

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Speaker 1: in the post farming world because of the post farming

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Speaker 1: surplus of food. Right, So in the in the post

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Speaker 1: farming world, you might have say stores of grain or

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Speaker 1: other foods in a settled location that you're not moving

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Speaker 1: around from, and those might attract to say rats or

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Speaker 1: something like that that would get into your grain, and

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Speaker 1: then the cat can follow the rats. Right. And then

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Speaker 1: these areas other species, many of them of course, our

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Speaker 1: food species that we domesticated so so as to uh

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Speaker 1: control them and not have to hunt them anymore. They

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Speaker 1: live with us, and we kill them when we desire

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Speaker 1: to kill them. But of course as great as dogs

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Speaker 1: can be and continue to be and in the in

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Speaker 1: aiding the hunt, we know that they can be bred

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Speaker 1: who specialize in a number of key tasks. And I

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Speaker 1: have a short list here that I thought we might

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Speaker 1: go back and forth on again, much like we did

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Speaker 1: with the dinosaurs of the Flintstones. So you can of

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Speaker 1: course breed a dog over many generations to fetch felled foul.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of a tongue twister, but yeah, you can see.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you shoot down a bird, you don't know exactly

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Speaker 1: where it went, but the dog can find it. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: the dog is still aiding in the hunt, but it's

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Speaker 1: a more specialized version of aiding in the hunt. Now

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Speaker 1: the other thing would be playing more of a role

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Speaker 1: we think of with cats these days, are ridding the

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Speaker 1: home area or the food storage areas of rats and

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Speaker 1: other vermin. Right. Another one is to aid in fishing specifically,

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Speaker 1: and this is one of the breeds you see this

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Speaker 1: with is the Newfoundland dog, which is a you know,

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Speaker 1: a kin to the Labrador retriever. The Labrador retriever fetches

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Speaker 1: felled foul, but the traditionally but the Newfoundland dog is

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Speaker 1: there to retrieve floats and ropes from dangerous icy waters. Now,

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Speaker 1: of course we see lots of shepherd ng dogs in

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Speaker 1: world traditions that they can help control the movements and

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Speaker 1: direction of flocks. Right. Um, a big scary dog with

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Speaker 1: a loud bark has long been used and uh and

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Speaker 1: and is still used to as as protection, either to

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Speaker 1: protect an individual or to protect property. Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: guess this would be part of a bigger thing. Is

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Speaker 1: just sort of like using dogs for violence or the

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Speaker 1: threat of violence. So dogs used in war or fighting

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Speaker 1: or in in in combat dogs. Unfortunately, sometimes dogs you

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Speaker 1: used to fight each other purely for sport, which is terrible,

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Speaker 1: or in other equally egregious kinds of bear baiting. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Another area, though that is not dark or not not

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Speaker 1: intrinsically dark, is tracking, because dogs mad dogs could be

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Speaker 1: used to track somebody or something for nefarious reasons, certainly,

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Speaker 1: but dogs can be used to track people to say,

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Speaker 1: to find uh say, fine individuals who have been buried

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Speaker 1: in an avalanche, that sort of thing. Right, And then

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Speaker 1: of course you've got the final version, the version that

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Speaker 1: many of us today probably know the best, which is

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Speaker 1: just pure companionship. Dogs are a good friend, They're a

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Speaker 1: good buddy, and this is where we get the final

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Speaker 1: form of the dog, the pug. Right. But while we

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Speaker 1: often think of other animals like horses, donkeys, cattle, and

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Speaker 1: stuff like this clearly as draft animals animals that are

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Speaker 1: used to pull loads, or as pack animals, animals that

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Speaker 1: are used to carry loads. Uh, animals that are there

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Speaker 1: to provide motive power. We don't often think of the

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Speaker 1: dog this way. And yet, nevertheless, the dog has been

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Speaker 1: used for these purposes in many ways around the world

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Speaker 1: all throughout history. And one of those ways is what

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today, pairing dogs for motive

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Speaker 1: power with a specific type of cooking technology, which is

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Speaker 1: the turnspit to the practice of using a dog to

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Speaker 1: turn a wheel like a hamster wheel to turn a

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Speaker 1: rotisserie in a kitchen. Right, I mean, but before we

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Speaker 1: really started researching this, the only example that would have

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Speaker 1: come to mind would be sled dogs, where the dog

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Speaker 1: is used for locomotion to pull a sled across snow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean there there are plenty of examples of people

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Speaker 1: using dogs to uh to pull carts and things like that. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and there carry a pack, yes, yes, exactly. But later

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Speaker 1: in the episode, we'll also talk about other types of

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Speaker 1: more treadmill based motive power that come from dogs. Another

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Speaker 1: important thing to note when we're talking about all these

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Speaker 1: different things that dogs have been bred floor and and

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Speaker 1: this is kind of this is one of those sort

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Speaker 1: of overstatements of the obvious, But the role changes the

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Speaker 1: form of the dog. So like when we're talking about

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Speaker 1: these dogs that are that were bred to you know,

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Speaker 1: to catch rats and to chase vermin, we're often dealing

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Speaker 1: with dogs that are that are small in stature that

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Speaker 1: can chase the rat into its hiding places. Likewise, the

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Speaker 1: dogs that are used for tracking and in many cases

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Speaker 1: involving the hunt as well, are often some of the

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Speaker 1: absolute best smellers and are just you know, ideal for

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Speaker 1: tracking and and in all of this too, we get

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Speaker 1: into the problem of the modern world sometimes where someone

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Speaker 1: will have a pure bred dog, a dog that has

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Speaker 1: been whose evolution has been hijacked too, you know, for

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Speaker 1: the specific function, and then it finds itself as a

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Speaker 1: pet without a without necessarily having an avenue for that

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Speaker 1: special power that it has been given through selective breeding.

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Speaker 1: So I mean a lot of times it's funny that

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Speaker 1: people will have a dog for a pet, and they

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Speaker 1: don't even realize what the that dog breed that their

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Speaker 1: pet is was was originally bred for. And so they

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Speaker 1: may notice behavioral characteristics of the dogs that come through

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Speaker 1: without knowing why that dog is like so attuned to

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Speaker 1: chasing after my certain little moving objects, or why that

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Speaker 1: dog has to sniff everything. Yeah, I've I've heard though

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Speaker 1: of specific cases where, especially urban dogs, um have you know,

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Speaker 1: their owners will make an effort to find outlets, like

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Speaker 1: find a place where they can herd a single sheep

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Speaker 1: around and use that energy, or these groups that will

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Speaker 1: go through. I think it's New York. I heard a

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Speaker 1: radio I think it's an NPR story about this, where

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Speaker 1: people with traditionally vermin hunting dogs will get together and

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Speaker 1: basically go on a big rat chase the streets, you know,

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Speaker 1: because that's that's what the dog wants. Right. So we've

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Speaker 1: read plenty of breeds for different tasks, but I guess

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Speaker 1: we should turn to the other half of the equation here,

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Speaker 1: leading to the turnspit dog, which is the Rotisseriy. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the rotissory. So if you've been to the supermarket, I

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Speaker 1: think you know the basic idea here because you've probably

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Speaker 1: seen rotisserie chickens, right, but this this, uh, it's a

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Speaker 1: chicken on a spit, and usually they're like multiple spits,

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Speaker 1: creating this whole carousel of rotisserie chickens. And they're moving

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Speaker 1: under some sort of heat source, you know, being a

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Speaker 1: lamp or some sort of actual you know, heating element.

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Speaker 1: But you've probably also seen it if you've ever seen

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Speaker 1: like the spit for donor kebab or for euros. These

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Speaker 1: are traditionally done where there's a heat element on one

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Speaker 1: side and there's a bunch of you know, seasoned meat

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Speaker 1: that's on a spit that constantly rotates. And the idea

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Speaker 1: what the constant rotation is to provide even heat. Right,

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Speaker 1: meat is skewered and then placed over or adjacent to

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Speaker 1: a heat source. But then what happens if you don't

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Speaker 1: turn it. You're gonna get one side of the meat

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Speaker 1: that's hideously burned and one side of the meat that

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Speaker 1: is perhaps undercooked. Even you but it's not what you want.

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Speaker 1: You want uniform heating around the meat and within the meat.

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Speaker 1: And this method actually still works. One of their Robert,

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Speaker 1: do you ever encounter steak world, you know this whole

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Speaker 1: world world wisdom and false wisdom about what you're supposed

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Speaker 1: to do or not do with steaks. It can be

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Speaker 1: it can be a treacherous pass So used to when

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Speaker 1: I when I still ate beef and I would grill.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes I had I had, I would look in a

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Speaker 1: grilled book and there would be a lot of wisdom

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Speaker 1: there about how to do it. And then you go

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Speaker 1: on the line and there might be, you know, wisdom

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Speaker 1: that set the opposite. Yeah, exactly. There's also a lot

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Speaker 1: of like you know, dad wisdom kind of stuff that

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Speaker 1: about this. One of the one of the steak myths

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Speaker 1: that people often say is you should only turn your

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Speaker 1: steak once. You know, you put it on the grill

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Speaker 1: one side, let it go halfway on that side. Flip

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Speaker 1: it once and let it go halfway on that side. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that is not good wisdom. You can turn a steak

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Speaker 1: as many times as you want if you're grilling it,

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Speaker 1: and that actually helps the steak cook more evenly. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, by constantly turning it, you are not letting

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Speaker 1: the heat build up too much on one side and

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Speaker 1: overcook that side. Okay, Well, like a similar thing I

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Speaker 1: do when I do grill, I tend to do veggie grilling,

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Speaker 1: and so I'll do like a grill basket and I'll

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Speaker 1: just make sure I I stir it up. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: the same principles actually, I think would apply pretty well

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Speaker 1: to vegetables. Probably the more you stir them, the more

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Speaker 1: evenly cooked they're going to be. But in this case,

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Speaker 1: we're continuing to talk about big hunks of meat. The

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Speaker 1: bigger the better on a spit turning, uh, so as

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Speaker 1: to have that uniform cooking. But here's the thing. You've

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Speaker 1: got to turn that spit, and the most basic way

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Speaker 1: to do that is to turn it by hand. Now,

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Speaker 1: of course, later it's no spoiler to say that eventually

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Speaker 1: machines are going to come into play and do it,

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Speaker 1: because again, you've been to the grocery store, you've seen

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Speaker 1: machines turning rotisserie chickens. You know that that is coming. Um. However,

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Speaker 1: the rotisserie, you know, was very much in vogue in

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Speaker 1: the medieval world, and we see plenty of illustrations of

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Speaker 1: their use, both both in you know, their terrestrial setting

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Speaker 1: depictions of everyday medieval humans engaging in rotisserie cooking. But

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Speaker 1: then you also see lots of these imagined realms of

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Speaker 1: hell to where if you see a big elaborate depiction

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Speaker 1: of eternal damnation, there's almost certainly going to be some

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Speaker 1: individual spitted on a on a long skewer and then

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Speaker 1: turned over a fire. Right, the culinary traditions of the

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Speaker 1: time come through in our imaginations of torment right now.

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Speaker 1: The word ROTISSERII. The rotisserie concept itself, of course, is

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Speaker 1: not too complicated, but the word comes goes back to

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Speaker 1: France in around fourteen fifty years so, which is ironic

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Speaker 1: because while all there were versions of of turnspit roasting

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Speaker 1: or rotisserie all over Europe from the medieval period and

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Speaker 1: probably some earlier than that, but especially beginning in the

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Speaker 1: medieval period, I've read that it is most common in

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Speaker 1: Great Britain, that is, where spit roasting was an extremely

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Speaker 1: popular form of cooking. That like in the European continent

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Speaker 1: and elsewhere in the world, people would be more likely

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Speaker 1: to use like ovens enclosures to cook inside if they

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Speaker 1: were going to do a roast of meat at all

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Speaker 1: or anything like that. Apparently, for some reason, English culture

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Speaker 1: was just not into the ovens for roasting. They liked

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Speaker 1: the open flame and the constantly turning spit. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: absolutely both. I think the main sources we turned to

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Speaker 1: in this yeah, they center almost exclusively on England. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that's where we look at the documentation of the of

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Speaker 1: the spit and all of these additional details about how

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Speaker 1: the practice changes. Well, I think that's for two reasons.

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Speaker 1: Number one, spit roasting in general seems a more popular

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Speaker 1: form of cooking in Great Britain. And then beyond that,

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Speaker 1: where spit roasting is done, it seems like the dog

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Speaker 1: was a more popular way of doing it in Great

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Speaker 1: Britain than it was elsewhere. Now, one of the sources

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Speaker 1: that I I used in in my research here is

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Speaker 1: an excellent book by one B. Wilson called Consider the Fork,

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Speaker 1: a History of how We Eat and Uh. And you know,

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Speaker 1: one thing that's important is even though we have this

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Speaker 1: cartoony and perhaps even flint Stonian idea of meat spitted

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Speaker 1: above a fire and roast in turned, I think this

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Speaker 1: is how the Ewoks were attempting to to to consume

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Speaker 1: the heroes in Star Wars, right, maybe, I mean they've

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Speaker 1: got them hanging from a stick. It would be kind

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Speaker 1: of awkward actually spitted. I guess they weren't spitted there

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Speaker 1: would be a lot of like tumbling and falling around

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Speaker 1: the ropes they were hanging from. So I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: how well that would work for somebody I thought they

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Speaker 1: were going to eat somebody. I thought that they were

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Speaker 1: going to eat them. Yeah, I just don't know if

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Speaker 1: they would have turned to them. I think they probably

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Speaker 1: would have just burned them on one side and then

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Speaker 1: they do all right. Well. Well, one thing that that B.

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Speaker 1: Wilson points out is that the spit was typically located

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Speaker 1: next to a fire and not over it for most

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Speaker 1: of the cooking. You would only position it more over

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Speaker 1: the fire towards the end to toast it, sort of

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Speaker 1: like in an oven. Now you might you know, you

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Speaker 1: might bake something and then broil it to the last

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Speaker 1: you know, few minutes to get it a little crispy

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Speaker 1: on top. Right, then that makes sense putting it next

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Speaker 1: to the fire. I think you could get gentler, more

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Speaker 1: even heat throughout right. And a lot of times in

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Speaker 1: England we're talking about open hearth cooking too, so that

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Speaker 1: just makes more sense. Right the fire is in the

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Speaker 1: fireplace and then your eu rotisserie is positioned in front

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Speaker 1: of the fireplace. But for open hearth cooking. You have

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Speaker 1: to understand that this means the kitchen, especially near the fireplace,

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Speaker 1: is going to be a sweltering environment, and somebody's got

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Speaker 1: to turn that spit. And according to be Wilson, before

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Speaker 1: we put the spit dogs to work turning the spit,

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Speaker 1: we used turnspit boys. Yes, it's it's, it's, it's, it's,

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Speaker 1: it's it's hilarious and at the same time it is

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Speaker 1: so disturbing. So only only during the sixteenth and seventeen

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Speaker 1: centuries did the dogs take over the work really, uh,

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Speaker 1: and they took over the work from human children. She

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Speaker 1: includes a quote from biography John Aubrey, who said, quote

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Speaker 1: in olden times, the poor boys did turn the spits

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Speaker 1: and lipped the dripping pans, Oh boy, the dripping yeah.

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Speaker 1: And Be describes this as perhaps the worst of the

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Speaker 1: many quotes soul destroying jobs in the rich medieval kitchen.

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Speaker 1: Here's a passage from their book quote by the reign

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Speaker 1: of Henry the Eighth, the king's household had whole battalions

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Speaker 1: of turnspits, charring their faces and tiring their arms to

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Speaker 1: satisfy the royal appetite for roast capin's and ducks. Venison

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Speaker 1: and beef crammed in cubby holes to the side of

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Speaker 1: the fireplace. The boys must have been near roasted themselves

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Speaker 1: as they labored to roast the meats. Until the year

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Speaker 1: fifteen thirty, the kitchen staff at Hampton Core worked either

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Speaker 1: naked or in scanty, grimy garments. Henry the Eighth addressed

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Speaker 1: the situation not by relieving the turnspits of their duties,

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Speaker 1: but by providing the master cooks with a clothing allowance

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Speaker 1: with which to keep the junior staff decently clothed and

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Speaker 1: therefore even hotter. That's horrible, I mean this, this lines

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Speaker 1: up with everything I've read that the turnspit role was

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Speaker 1: essentially the lowest rank in the kitchen. It was the

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Speaker 1: last job you'd want to have because it's like, it's

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Speaker 1: not only sweltering hot, hard work, it's also incredibly dull

401
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Speaker 1: and repetitive. You know, you're not getting much of variety.

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Speaker 1: You're just standing there by a really hot fire, turning

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Speaker 1: a crank at a steady pace for hours and hours

404
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Speaker 1: at a time. It's kind of it's like Conan the Barbarian,

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Speaker 1: you know, running the mill exactly. Yeah, because it's very

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Speaker 1: important that the crank had to be turned at a

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Speaker 1: steady rate. You couldn't have the person turning the crank

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Speaker 1: take a break for a few minutes and go do

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Speaker 1: something else, because then the meat would burn on that side,

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Speaker 1: So you had to keep it turning. Yeah, so it's yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's grueling, just monotonous manual labor here and uh

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Speaker 1: and even though it's not even just the big kingly houses,

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Speaker 1: even lesser houses used them and they were they were

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Speaker 1: actually seen as acceptable well into the eighteenth century in England.

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Speaker 1: And uh and uh. Also in Scotland, b rights that

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Speaker 1: Scottish highlander John McDonald born seventeen forty one, he was

417
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Speaker 1: an orphan and at the age of five he worked

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Speaker 1: the spit in a household. Yeah, and I think this

419
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Speaker 1: comes through in common expressions within the English language of

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Speaker 1: the period, Like there was the expression turn spit to

421
00:22:44,240 --> 00:22:47,359
Speaker 1: like refer insulting lee to someone. It was essentially you

422
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Speaker 1: would call somebody a turnspit to suggest they were like

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Speaker 1: lowly and not worth your time, that they were wretched

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Speaker 1: in some way. But around the Tutor area, which was

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Speaker 1: roughly like the sixteenth century, you know, late fourteen hundreds

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Speaker 1: through the end of the fifteen hundreds, Uh, technology change

427
00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:08,280
Speaker 1: the picture somewhat. For this is when kitchens in in

428
00:23:08,359 --> 00:23:12,800
Speaker 1: England started using the rotisserie spit powered by belt and

429
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:15,680
Speaker 1: dog wheel. So maybe we should take a quick break

430
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:17,960
Speaker 1: and then when we come back we can discuss more

431
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:26,640
Speaker 1: about the turnspit dog. Alright, so here's where we're gonna

432
00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:29,639
Speaker 1: look at the turnspit dog and the wheel itself. So

433
00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: I guess I should mention a couple of sources that

434
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:34,480
Speaker 1: I used for this. One is a book by Jan

435
00:23:34,640 --> 00:23:38,920
Speaker 1: Bondison called Amazing Dogs, A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities from

436
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:42,200
Speaker 1: Amberley Publishing, two thousand eleven. And another is a book

437
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:45,960
Speaker 1: by Brian D. Cummins, who is a cultural anthropologist who's

438
00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 1: focused on the relationships between humans and dogs. And this

439
00:23:49,280 --> 00:23:51,439
Speaker 1: book is called Our Debt to the Dog, How the

440
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 1: Domestic Dog Helped Shape Human Societies from Caroline Academic Press. So,

441
00:23:57,119 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 1: according to Cummins, the first published men and of turnspit

442
00:24:01,320 --> 00:24:05,040
Speaker 1: dogs in history comes from a treatise published in fifteen

443
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: seventy six written by an author named Johanneses or John Caius,

444
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:13,159
Speaker 1: who was quote Doctor of physic a in the University

445
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: of Cambridge, and this is sometimes claimed to be the

446
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:18,679
Speaker 1: first English book written about dogs. I think he actually

447
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: wrote it in Latin, but it was quickly translated by

448
00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 1: an assistant into English. Um And Cummins points out that

449
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 1: right from the beginning, Kaius identifies the turnspit dog or

450
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: what he spells the turns pete dog as a breed,

451
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:35,120
Speaker 1: which Cummins thinks is probably incorrect. And we'll come back

452
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 1: to that more later, whether the turnspit dog was a

453
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:41,840
Speaker 1: distinct breed of dog or not. But John Chias appears

454
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 1: to have gotten a lot of things wrong about dogs

455
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:47,320
Speaker 1: in his book about dogs. He apparently didn't know much

456
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: about dogs, but he's like, I'll write a book any

457
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: little um. But this this being the first mentioned in

458
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:55,639
Speaker 1: literary history, I guess we should take a look at

459
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:59,520
Speaker 1: what he says. And so the text reads of the

460
00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:04,359
Speaker 1: dog called turn speed in Latin vuver sater, there is

461
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 1: comprehended under the curs of the coarsest kind, a certain

462
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:12,199
Speaker 1: dog in kitchen service, excellent for when any meat is

463
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:14,919
Speaker 1: to be roasted, they go into a wheel which they

464
00:25:15,040 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: turning round about with the weight of their bodies, so

465
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 1: diligently looked to their business, that no drudge nor scullion

466
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: can do the feet more cunningly whom the popular sort

467
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:30,080
Speaker 1: here upon call turns beats. Now that is that is interesting.

468
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,719
Speaker 1: Even if there is we'll discuss there maybe problems with it,

469
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:35,520
Speaker 1: because it does imply that this is not just you

470
00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: didn't just grab a random animal and throw it in

471
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: and just see what it did in the wheel. Now

472
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: that the dog seems to have been trained to to

473
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:49,120
Speaker 1: to proceed on the wheel at a regular pace so

474
00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: as to properly cook the meat, right, KaiA says that

475
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:55,200
Speaker 1: it's not just that the dog can turn the wheels.

476
00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: The dog turns the wheel and the spit at a

477
00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:00,439
Speaker 1: better rate than the human cooks in the hitchen do,

478
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people can probably relate

479
00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:05,359
Speaker 1: to the idea of a dog being more reliable than

480
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: a human um. But but the premise here, I think,

481
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 1: is that a dog runs inside a wheel like a

482
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 1: hamster wheel, in order to turn a belt that turns

483
00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:17,679
Speaker 1: a spit to ensure the even cooking on all sides

484
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: of the roast. So, beginning a few centuries later in

485
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, more records of turnspit dogs show up

486
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 1: in the literature, including a formal breed categorization by Carl Linnaeus,

487
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 1: the Swedish scholar who established a lot of important conventions

488
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: of taxonomy and nomenclature in zoology and botany. And so again,

489
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 1: I think Linnaeus here is identifying the turnspit dog is

490
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:44,440
Speaker 1: a distinct breed of dog. Bondison points out that Linnaeus's

491
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:48,200
Speaker 1: name for the breed is Canus vertigious or dizzy dog.

492
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:52,960
Speaker 1: A name used in several English sources is the verna

493
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: pat cur So here's Bondison on on Linnaeus's description here

494
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 1: quote small, long bodied, and bandy legged. Most had drooping ears,

495
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: but some had to ear standing up. Some turnspit dogs

496
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: had gray and white fur, often with a white blaze

497
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:11,920
Speaker 1: down the face. Others were black or reddish brown. There

498
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:15,439
Speaker 1: may as well have been several other colors. Brian Cummin

499
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: says that the most common characteristics of the dog identified

500
00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 1: as a breed are small size, short legs, muscular, especially

501
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 1: for their size and weight estimates are kind of all

502
00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:29,679
Speaker 1: over the place. They range from like fourteen to thirty

503
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: five pounds, good cardiovascular conditioning for obvious reasons, and generally

504
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: being terrier like and that makes sense because a terrier

505
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,359
Speaker 1: would already be a breed that is, uh, would be

506
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: we're talking with breeds that are are small in stature.

507
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: White you utilize mainly as vermin um. Uh. Chasers don't

508
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,359
Speaker 1: actually know, but that sounds right. I know, there's like

509
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: the rat terrier. Yeah. Uh so. Charles Darwin even made

510
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:56,960
Speaker 1: reference to the turnspit dog in On the Origin of Species.

511
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,479
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about this, but so. Of course, one

512
00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:02,719
Speaker 1: of darwin main arguments for his theory of evolution by

513
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:06,880
Speaker 1: natural selection was the artificial breeding of animals such as

514
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:11,159
Speaker 1: cattle and dogs. Showing the descent with modification was possible

515
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 1: by the guidance of human breeders, and thus it could

516
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: also be possible by the guidance of the natural environment.

517
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: That was the point of comparison he was trying to make,

518
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:22,400
Speaker 1: And so Darwin writes that in domesticated strains of animals

519
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:26,480
Speaker 1: we constantly see examples of adaptation quote not indeed to

520
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:30,160
Speaker 1: the animals or plants own good, but to man's use

521
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: or fancy. Some variations useful to him have probably arisen

522
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 1: suddenly or by one step. So it has probably been

523
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:40,480
Speaker 1: with the turnspit dog. So we know that in the

524
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: middle of the eighteen hundreds, when Darwin's writing about this,

525
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: it would have been a common enough, like a well

526
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: known enough phenomenon to have a turnspit dog working in

527
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: a kitchen that he could just make casual reference to

528
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: it and people would know what he was talking about. Oh, yes,

529
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 1: that dog that is so well adapted to turning a

530
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 1: wheel in kitchens. So, but the question kind of becomes

531
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:03,680
Speaker 1: is the turnspit dog like a dog? Are these dogs

532
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: bred for this work or are you merely selecting dogs

533
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,719
Speaker 1: to fulfill the role of the turnspit dog? Right? And

534
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: I think it's possible that's some combination of the two, Right,

535
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 1: that dogs with initial bits of characteristics were selected for

536
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: the job early on, and then maybe they were bred

537
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 1: to bring out certain characteristics that made them especially good

538
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 1: wheel turners. Right. And and this would be the same

539
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: process that you would get, say, a good rat chasing dog.

540
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,719
Speaker 1: You can imagine like early on people saying I need

541
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: some dogs to go catch those rats. Give me some

542
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: short legged dogs, and then you know, the breeding commences

543
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 1: and you get increasingly breeds of short legged dogs that

544
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:45,280
Speaker 1: have a real tenacity for chasing rats. Right, If you've

545
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: got a batch of them, maybe the two that catch

546
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 1: the most rats. You breed them together and that makes

547
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 1: the next generation. At the time, an author named J. G.

548
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 1: Wood mentions the turnspit dog in his Illustrated Natural History

549
00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three, but he writes that by his

550
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: time the dog had become rare, and while it had

551
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 1: previously been very common, it then existed only in isolated regions.

552
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:10,720
Speaker 1: But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, uh turnspit dogs

553
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: were extremely common in Great Britain. Uh Bondison writes that

554
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: they were especially common in the west of England and

555
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 1: particularly in the city of Bristol, and in Wales, especially

556
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: South Wales. Bondison writes, quote in sixteen thirty nine, when

557
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: the cornishman Peter Mundy visited Bristol, he was amazed that

558
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 1: there was quote scarce a house that hath not a

559
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: dog to turn the spit in a little wooden wheel.

560
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 1: So he's not just talking about palaces or like ns

561
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:40,959
Speaker 1: with big kitchens there. He's saying scarcely a house. So

562
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 1: that's where it was apparently most common, but that was

563
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: less common. There are still records that there were turnspit

564
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: dogs outside of Great Britain, in places like France, where

565
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: they were shin tourn A Broches, or in Switzerland and

566
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:57,240
Speaker 1: Germany and Holland, and in North America. There even references

567
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 1: to turn spit dogs in Ben Franklin's own pencil Vania Gazette.

568
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 1: But I mean we should recognize that something so Cummins

569
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 1: characterizes the turnspit dog's work as often quite wretched for

570
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:13,320
Speaker 1: the dog. So they'd be having to power a wheel

571
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: by walking essentially inside the wheel for hours at a time.

572
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: These roasts take a long time to cook, uh, And

573
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: they were near the heat of the fire, which meant

574
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 1: that their work was sweltering, and they were often dehydrated.

575
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: And they can't take breaks because the wheel has to

576
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: keep going. Well, they can in some cases. I'll get

577
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: to that in a second. Generally the dog wheel was

578
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 1: hung suspended from the ceiling next to the fireplace. Yeah.

579
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: I believe their wood cuts the kind of show this

580
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:41,480
Speaker 1: as well, Like it almost looks like something you would

581
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:45,960
Speaker 1: see on a cracker barrel wall, right, you know, exactly, Yeah,

582
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 1: except it has a living dog and it turning a

583
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: crank um. Yeah, this is one of the things that's

584
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: so interesting about this is all these other categories we've

585
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 1: looked at, or at least, you know, disgusting in passing

586
00:31:56,720 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: in which we have bred a dog to to fulfill

587
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 1: a specific task. Those tasks are exclusively I think in

588
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: the wild, though, you know, like it's some version of

589
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 1: the thing they would do, be it hunting a rat,

590
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: or fetching a bird that's been shot out of the

591
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: sky with with bow or or buckshot, you know, or

592
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: or even swimming after fishing lures, or or even pulling

593
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: a sled. At least it is it is out in

594
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: an environment. It is running across the countryside in this

595
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: kind of artificially uh constructed pack structure. Well, yeah, you know,

596
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: I would say even for more indoor dogs, like companion

597
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: dogs that sit on your lap and cuddle with you.

598
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: I mean, that does seem more analogous to some kind

599
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:44,240
Speaker 1: of natural behaviors, you know, like din snuggling behaviors. Uh,

600
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:46,960
Speaker 1: this sort of like being trapped in a kitchen in

601
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 1: a wheel turning the wheel does seem more estranged from

602
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 1: the natural habitat and behaviors of a dog in the

603
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,840
Speaker 1: wild than any of these other uses I can think of.

604
00:32:57,040 --> 00:33:01,960
Speaker 1: It is at best almost animal cruelty and probably just

605
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: animal cruelty. Oh yeah, I mean in many cases surely.

606
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard to know because on one hand,

607
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:08,959
Speaker 1: like a lot of dogs do seem to kind of

608
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: like enjoy having a task to do, right, But this

609
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 1: seems like it's really hard work that is sustained for

610
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: a long time. That like, there are lots of stories

611
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:19,719
Speaker 1: of the dogs not wanting to do it, like they

612
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: would try to flee, like they would because dogs are intelligent,

613
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: and so one of the details I was reading is

614
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:27,160
Speaker 1: that you would have the turnspit dog that I get,

615
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: it's not in the wheel all the time. One presumes

616
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:31,120
Speaker 1: that it's just sort of either hanging out in the

617
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: kitchen or around the house. And then if the dog

618
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: begins to observe the telltale signs of a roast being prepared, uh,

619
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 1: if we'll run off and hide because there's no it

620
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: knows what's coming. Yeah, And there are explicit tales of

621
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 1: cruelty in some cases, at least like where authors at

622
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: the time right that some cruel cooks if a dog

623
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: didn't keep the wheel turning at a satisfactory rate, that

624
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:56,360
Speaker 1: mean cook would put a hot coal into the wheel

625
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: with the dog, so the dog would be made to

626
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: run to escape the coal, which continually tumbled in the

627
00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:05,320
Speaker 1: wheel after it was Obviously it's horrible. On the other hand,

628
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like it was always equally bad everywhere.

629
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 1: Like some luckier dogs worked in pairs, trading off in

630
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:14,280
Speaker 1: shift so that one could rest while the other worked.

631
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe they would have a rest today while the

632
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:19,719
Speaker 1: other worked for a day, or they could trade off,

633
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:21,759
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't know by the hour or

634
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: something like that. Right, So there is there is the

635
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:27,480
Speaker 1: possibility for a less cruel model at it. And at

636
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 1: the same time, as we discussed later, there there were

637
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: individuals who who who specifically pointed out the practice as cruelty, yes,

638
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:37,480
Speaker 1: and as as one rare piece of good news in

639
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 1: this story. In the seventeen fifty six Sinographia, Carl Linnaeus,

640
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: again the Swedish scholar, wrote the when he was writing

641
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 1: about turnspit dogs, that as a reward for their hard work,

642
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 1: turnspit dogs would often get to eat a piece of

643
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:53,400
Speaker 1: the steak. That's good, you know, I guess well, I

644
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:55,719
Speaker 1: doubt that the cook who's putting the hot coal in

645
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: there with them is also giving them a taste of

646
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: the roast. But I imagine gender kitchen, it would vary

647
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 1: to give a bit of flavor about what this was

648
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 1: like to see in person from from people who were

649
00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:09,800
Speaker 1: there witnessing firsthand. I want to read one often sided

650
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:13,320
Speaker 1: passage that comes from a work called Anecdotes of Dogs

651
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 1: by Edward Jesse from the nineteenth century. Uh So, here's

652
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 1: what Jesse writes, how well do I recollect, in the

653
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:23,080
Speaker 1: days of my youth watching the operations of a turnspit

654
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:26,720
Speaker 1: at the house of a worthy old Welsh clergyman in Worcestershire.

655
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: As he had several borders as well as day scholars,

656
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:34,400
Speaker 1: his two turnspits had plenty to do. They were long bodied,

657
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: crooked legged, and ugly dogs, with a suspicious unhappy look

658
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: about them, as if they were weary of the task

659
00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:43,359
Speaker 1: they had to do and expected every moment to be

660
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: seized upon to perform it. Cooks in those days were

661
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 1: very cross, and if the poor animal, wearied with having

662
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 1: a larger joint than usual to turn, stopped for a moment,

663
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 1: the voice of the cook might be heard rating him

664
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,840
Speaker 1: in no very gentle terms. When we consider that a large,

665
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: solid piece of beef would take at least three hours

666
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: before it was properly roasted. We may form some idea

667
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: of the task a dog has to perform in turning

668
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,200
Speaker 1: a wheel. During that time, a pointer has pleasure in

669
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: finding game. The terrier worries rats with considerable glee, the

670
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: greyhound pursues hairs with eagerness and delight, and the bulldog

671
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,160
Speaker 1: even attacks bulls with the greatest of energy. While the

672
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: poor turnspit performs his task by compulsion like a culprit

673
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: on a treadwheel, subject to scolding or beating. If he

674
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: stops a moment to rest his weary limbs and then

675
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: kicked about the kitchen when his task is over, that

676
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: had some stark condemnation. And and of course, and it

677
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 1: totally it does. It does bring to mind all of

678
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: the popular chef TV reality shows in which the chef

679
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:48,080
Speaker 1: is is just nasty to humans. Uh, you know, one

680
00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: can imagine how nasty a chef could be of this

681
00:36:50,920 --> 00:36:54,879
Speaker 1: stereotypical TV chef could be to the poor the four

682
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:59,080
Speaker 1: spit dog. I wonder why is that such a common

683
00:36:59,120 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: stereotype of angry, yelling chef who's meaned all the cooks

684
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,880
Speaker 1: working for them? Is that Is that just an accident

685
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:10,719
Speaker 1: a cultural contingency, or does is does that grow naturally

686
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 1: out of the kind of work that happens in kitchens

687
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: with the heat and the rapid pace of work and everything.

688
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: I don't know, it'd be interesting to hear from people,

689
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:21,239
Speaker 1: because I know it, and I've heard shows where people

690
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: are talking about like regional differences. Um goodness me. I'm

691
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 1: terrible at remembering what podcast I've listened to before, what

692
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: what radio shows, But I specifically remember listening to a show. No,

693
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: it was a documentary, it was it was visual about

694
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: I believe it was a British couple that had moved

695
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: to Thailand to open a Thai restaurant and they're using

696
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: Thai chefs, and I believe it was the wife was

697
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:51,799
Speaker 1: was Tai and the husband was was British and so

698
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 1: he was used to the more British kitchen culture and

699
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:57,360
Speaker 1: when they when they were setting up a shop in Thailand,

700
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 1: like she advised him, look, you can't yell at staff

701
00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:03,760
Speaker 1: like you you did back in Britain. It's a different

702
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:05,879
Speaker 1: culture here. If you yell at them, they just won't

703
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 1: come back to work the next day. So that anecdote

704
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: in that show would lead me to believe that it

705
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: does gonna is It is gonna vary greatly from culture

706
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: to culture, and maybe what we see on TV is

707
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: largely a product of sort of the you know, the

708
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:23,480
Speaker 1: big city high cuisine and um, you know, major metropolitan

709
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:26,479
Speaker 1: parts of Europe and the United States, or maybe even

710
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: something specifically about like angry British food cuisine culture, because

711
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:34,239
Speaker 1: almost all the angry chefs I can think of are

712
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 1: like British guys. Yeah, I want to see one of

713
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: the gentle chef but maybe it just takes forever for

714
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: the for the food to come out. Well, I mean,

715
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 1: you never really know what they were like actually in

716
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,280
Speaker 1: their work. But I mean, as far as TV persona

717
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:47,279
Speaker 1: has come along, there are some gentle chefs. I think

718
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: of Paul Prudom, you know, he always seemed like such

719
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: a lovely, gentle soul. But I wanted to turn back

720
00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: to turnspit dogs for a second here. Uh So, there's

721
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,880
Speaker 1: a fact about them that cited in multiple sources that

722
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting is that apparently it was a

723
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:06,879
Speaker 1: well known custom on Sundays to take turnspit dogs out

724
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:09,799
Speaker 1: of the kitchen and bring them to church with you. Uh,

725
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 1: not just to have his companions at church, but specifically

726
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 1: to be used quote as foot warmers. Footwarmers, I guess,

727
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: so you put your feet on the dog and the

728
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 1: dog is warm. Maybe I assume it's cold in church,

729
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 1: and that I don't know, lessons the pain of going

730
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: to church somewhat, I guess. And it sounds like a

731
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 1: step up for the dog. But not that that's saying

732
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 1: much though. This actually led to a number of popular

733
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:37,240
Speaker 1: church jokes at the expense of the poor turnspit dogs.

734
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: Bondison notes a couple of these. I'll read a quote

735
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: from from jam Bondison quote. According to an eighteenth century joke,

736
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: the Bishop of Gloucester once preached to a church in Bath,

737
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: uttering the line, it was then that Ezekiel saw the wheels.

738
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:55,840
Speaker 1: This is the passage from the prophet Ezekiels is the

739
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:59,240
Speaker 1: wheels coming in the sky and uh. And Bondiston continues

740
00:39:59,719 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: at the mention of this dreaded word, all the turnspit

741
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 1: dogs ran for the door, their tails between their legs,

742
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,440
Speaker 1: and then Bondison mentions that another version of the story

743
00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 1: has the bishop talking about the horrors of hell, where

744
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:15,720
Speaker 1: there's like roasting and turning on a spit. And again

745
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:18,280
Speaker 1: the mention of these words sends all the foot warmer

746
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: dogs running to escape, and it's it's a clever joke,

747
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 1: but it does get back to the idea that the dogs,

748
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 1: dogs are intelligent, and dogs would pick up on the cues.

749
00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:30,719
Speaker 1: They might well pick up on the particular words like this,

750
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:34,000
Speaker 1: but but even on I think even the smaller signs

751
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: like they're just just little clues that everyone is preparing

752
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,839
Speaker 1: for a feast right now, Robert, I think you turned

753
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: up some examples of other animals that were used in

754
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: a similar fashion. Yeah, yeah, so this is something that

755
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:51,080
Speaker 1: b brings up in their book, because, like we've been

756
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 1: touching on, the dog was awfully smart, perhaps too smart

757
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:57,919
Speaker 1: for the work, and could run and hide. Uh. So

758
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: there were some who said at the turnspit goose was

759
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 1: the preferred method, uh, that you would get you would

760
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: get a goose in there, and it would perform better

761
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: and longer, uh and would be less prone to outthink

762
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: the chefs. So we have thus far we have turnspit children,

763
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: turnspit dogs, and the turnspit goose. But of course there

764
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:21,479
Speaker 1: was like there was an arc of the turnspit dog,

765
00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:25,319
Speaker 1: the turnspit dog is a convention came and went. Jan

766
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:29,239
Speaker 1: Bondison writes that in seventeen fifty, uh, turnspit dogs would

767
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 1: be found all over the place in Great Britain, extremely common.

768
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty people still knew about them. It was

769
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: like a thing you could make reference to, and and

770
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 1: people knew what it was. But they'd become more scarce

771
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: at that point, and by nineteen hundred they had almost

772
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: completely vanished. There. There were just a few here and

773
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: there left. Uh. And of course the main reason is

774
00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 1: the increasing availability of mechanical alternatives like clock jacks, which

775
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: we will talk about more in a bit, But there

776
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: was also an accompanying shift in social norms. I think,

777
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:05,239
Speaker 1: not just against animal cruelty, which was a thing that

778
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:08,799
Speaker 1: changed somewhat in social conventions over time, but by the

779
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:13,360
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century, when turnspit dogs were increasingly rare,

780
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:16,600
Speaker 1: to be seen with a turnspit dog in your kitchen

781
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: came to be interpreted as a sign of poverty, of

782
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: sort of backwardness or old fashioned nous, or just of eccentricity.

783
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:26,560
Speaker 1: It was the kind of thing you might have, like

784
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:28,759
Speaker 1: you're saying at the at the cracker barrel wall. You know,

785
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 1: people putting up weird stuff and having a strange attraction

786
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 1: at their inn or restaurant. Uh, you could have a

787
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:38,959
Speaker 1: turnspit dog. Would be like, isn't that quaint? The old

788
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 1: school turnspit dog, Like this would be even like today,

789
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,040
Speaker 1: of course even more so, like this would be a

790
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: moment in a horror film. Yeah, yeah, you know the

791
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:49,680
Speaker 1: cup of Young Cuckball. There a car breaks down and

792
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:52,880
Speaker 1: they're invited into the you know, the warm uh, you know,

793
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 1: the living room of this eccentric individual, and there on

794
00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:59,759
Speaker 1: the wall is a turnspit dog running in its wheel, uh,

795
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,760
Speaker 1: to operate the rotissory. Right, it's a sign you should

796
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: turn around and go back. Now we'll come back to

797
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 1: the question of whether the turnspit dog was actually a

798
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 1: breed of dog or not. But Bondison argues that the

799
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: disuse of the wheel turned spits over time, and you

800
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: know again by the beginning of the twentieth century that

801
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 1: almost completely vanished. That the disuse of this technology led

802
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:25,399
Speaker 1: to the extinction of the breed of dog known as

803
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 1: the turnspit dog, since the looks and the temperament of

804
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: the dog made them mostly unattractive as pets. In fact,

805
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:35,279
Speaker 1: one of the extremely few records of turnspit dogs being

806
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:37,759
Speaker 1: kept as pets after the decline of their role in

807
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 1: the kitchens is that Queen Victoria herself kept three quote

808
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: turnspit tykes as personal pets at winds Or Castle. So

809
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:49,399
Speaker 1: whatever you think of Queen Victoria otherwise she she took

810
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: in some turnspit tykes. Well, yeah, that was pretty decent.

811
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: And you know what it also speaks we touched on

812
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:56,880
Speaker 1: the cleverness that would still be innate in the turn

813
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:00,760
Speaker 1: spit dog. But also like it also shows the dogs

814
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: other longstanding ability uh could not be bred out of it.

815
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:08,920
Speaker 1: Its ability to bond with humans, to you know, to

816
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 1: look up at humans with those uh, those eyes that

817
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 1: seem you know, almost you know, watery, with devotion and

818
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: emotion and and and enabling this bond to form and

819
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: and indeed, a bond to form with the most powerful

820
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:27,760
Speaker 1: individual insaid country, the bond between them and the lowest

821
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:31,479
Speaker 1: domesticated animal. Well, you know, you you could identify many

822
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:33,760
Speaker 1: of the great powers of the dog as a species.

823
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:36,000
Speaker 1: You know, they have an amazing sense of smell. You

824
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,239
Speaker 1: can you can see their determination and dedication and hard

825
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: work in many cases to the tasks they set to.

826
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:45,319
Speaker 1: But I think it could easily be argued that the

827
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:49,439
Speaker 1: ultimate superpower of the dog is their ability to form

828
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:53,960
Speaker 1: emotional connections with humans more so than any other. After all,

829
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,680
Speaker 1: they've they've lived alongside us so long, longer again than

830
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: any of the domesticated animals. All right, on that note,

831
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:02,439
Speaker 1: we're going to take another break, and when we come back,

832
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 1: we're going to get into the legacy of the turnspit dog.

833
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, all right. I think we should

834
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the legacy of the turnspit dog

835
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:19,200
Speaker 1: in English literature, because references to them show up in

836
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 1: English literature roughly from like the fifteen hundreds, when the

837
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:27,240
Speaker 1: turnspit dog first became popular, uh, roughly to the eighteen hundreds.

838
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: It kind of cuts off after in the twentieth century.

839
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 1: And it makes sense, right because if especially in in

840
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:35,440
Speaker 1: in Britain, if this was something that was to be

841
00:45:35,520 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 1: found in pretty much every household or in a lot

842
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 1: of households anyway, it would be a common frame. There

843
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:43,080
Speaker 1: would be a common frame of reference. It would be

844
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: a common even in perhaps a metaphor for expressing something

845
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:48,680
Speaker 1: about the human condition, and so it might not surprise

846
00:45:48,719 --> 00:45:50,840
Speaker 1: you that, since it goes back to the hundreds, it

847
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:54,920
Speaker 1: shows up in Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, Dromeo

848
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: of Syracuse says, I amazed ran from her as a witch,

849
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:01,959
Speaker 1: and I think, if my breast had not been made

850
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,240
Speaker 1: of faith, in my heart of steel, she had transformed

851
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 1: me into a curtail dog and made me turn in

852
00:46:08,200 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: the wheel. So curtail dog there refers I think to

853
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 1: the docking of the tail and curtailed like cut off,

854
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:18,080
Speaker 1: and and that seems to have something to do with

855
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:21,840
Speaker 1: the social class or status or value of the dogs,

856
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: like the uh, the more valuable breeds that would would

857
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 1: have belonged to rich people. I think we're more likely

858
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 1: to have the full tail, whereas the tail was curtailed

859
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: and breeds that were maybe for working, like in the kitchen.

860
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:38,520
Speaker 1: That's where we get the word curtail. Yes, oh my goodness,

861
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:41,359
Speaker 1: all right, and all sorts of discoveries are taking place

862
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 1: with the stopping. Well, actually, I want to go back.

863
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:45,840
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's where we get the word curtail.

864
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that means cut short, but like, yeah,

865
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 1: but let's just say that is where we get but

866
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:55,359
Speaker 1: by Brian Cummins account, usually a curtail dog in Shakespearean

867
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:58,919
Speaker 1: references is a reference to a turnspit dog. There's another

868
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,880
Speaker 1: quote in the Mary Wife of windsor quote Hope is

869
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: a kurtil dog in some affairs, and Cummins links this

870
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 1: to the futility of hope in some cases, like to

871
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: the futility of the work in the turnspit wheel, that

872
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 1: it just goes on and on. Another one is that

873
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 1: some authors have even alleged that the saying every dog

874
00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:20,800
Speaker 1: has its day comes from the turnspit dog tradition. I

875
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 1: think this has not proven. I can't find strong evidence

876
00:47:23,680 --> 00:47:27,120
Speaker 1: linking the saying to the roasting spit. But the the

877
00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: idea is that since many kitchens would have two dogs

878
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 1: in some cases, they would trade off every other day,

879
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: so you'd have a day where you work in the

880
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:36,920
Speaker 1: wheel and then you'd have a day of rest. And

881
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, this English expression does probably

882
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: show up during the Tudor period in the fifteen hundreds,

883
00:47:43,200 --> 00:47:46,080
Speaker 1: which is also the time when turnspit dog wheels became

884
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:48,760
Speaker 1: common in England, but again I can't prove that's where

885
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 1: the phrase comes from. Interesting yeah, and it's like there's

886
00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:58,319
Speaker 1: this handy example of of of of cruelty in every household,

887
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 1: and of course it makes into language or in this

888
00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: case potentially Yeah. Unfortunately, it's like every reference to it

889
00:48:05,640 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: in English literature is to the fact that it is

890
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 1: wretched work, that it's something you don't want to have

891
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:13,240
Speaker 1: to do, that it's hard, that it can be cruel.

892
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 1: In fact, even not just not just hard work and cruel,

893
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:21,319
Speaker 1: but Sisyphean literally because Bondison also quotes a quote a

894
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:26,360
Speaker 1: rare collection of poems entitled Norfolk Drollery, And here's the

895
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 1: quote this, I confess he goes around around a hundred

896
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: times and never touches ground, and in the middle circle

897
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:36,440
Speaker 1: of the air he draws a circle like a conjurer

898
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 1: with eagerness. He still does forward tend like Sisyphus, whose

899
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 1: journey has no end. Of course, is the what the

900
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:47,399
Speaker 1: Titan that is punished by having to push the rock

901
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:49,439
Speaker 1: up the hill and then it rolls back down. Yeah,

902
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:51,680
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's Titans that You're probably right

903
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 1: about that, Yeah, but in Greek mythology, having to push

904
00:48:54,120 --> 00:48:56,040
Speaker 1: the boulder up the hill only to have it roll

905
00:48:56,120 --> 00:48:58,799
Speaker 1: back down again every time he's somebody who ticked off

906
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 1: a guy that. But it's interesting because then why a

907
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 1: mythology is usually the handy metaphor to turn to. It's like,

908
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:08,840
Speaker 1: for this period of time, you had to replace Sisiphus.

909
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 1: You'd replace myth because you had the real life Sisiphus

910
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,240
Speaker 1: installed in your home. That's the epic struggle that everybody

911
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:17,200
Speaker 1: can relate to because they've seen one of these in

912
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: the kitchen. Uh. And it turns out we mentioned this earlier,

913
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:24,480
Speaker 1: but there were other similar dog powered machines in human history.

914
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 1: For some reason, always especially in whales. I don't know why,

915
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 1: but whales in western England seemed like the epicenter for

916
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: dog powered machines. So you had dog powered butter turns,

917
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 1: dog powered fruit presses, dog powered grain wheels, even water

918
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: wheels to draw water up from a well. And then

919
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 1: later I was reading about how in England and in

920
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: the United States there were a few examples of dog

921
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,840
Speaker 1: powered printing presses. Wow, like, I mean, it really sounds

922
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:54,520
Speaker 1: like we're almost getting into the realm of dog punk.

923
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, well, that could be a great like

924
00:49:58,520 --> 00:50:02,319
Speaker 1: whole family plus dog Halloween costumes, some kind of dog

925
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: punk outfit actually, and that's someone should do this. You

926
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: could have a scenario where it's like a dog punk world,

927
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:10,279
Speaker 1: but of course the dogs are heroes and they of

928
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:12,800
Speaker 1: course escape and rebel, so sort of like dog punk

929
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 1: meets Rats of nim basically rights itself. Yeah. So we

930
00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 1: we talked before about the question of whether the turnspit

931
00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:23,600
Speaker 1: dog was actually a breed of dog. There's been a

932
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 1: lot of speculation about which dog breeds most resemble or

933
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:31,799
Speaker 1: are most closely related to the turnspit dog. According to Bondison,

934
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 1: the docks In and the Bassett Hound have been proposed,

935
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:38,799
Speaker 1: but Boniston thinks these are bad candidates. Maybe better candidates

936
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 1: for relations are the glen of imaal terrier, which greatly

937
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:47,400
Speaker 1: resembles historical reports of the turnspit dogs, though has a

938
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 1: more terrier like head. And this was but this was

939
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:53,640
Speaker 1: also a dog that was definitely used to hunt vermin. Yes,

940
00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: so we're getting into that area to where perhaps this

941
00:50:56,120 --> 00:50:57,920
Speaker 1: is a dog that had a dual role, Like we

942
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: have these rat catcher dogs. I need them to turn

943
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:02,879
Speaker 1: this wheel. Go grab one of those rat catcher dogs

944
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:05,360
Speaker 1: and throw in the wheel. Yeah, I think that's highly plausible,

945
00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:07,880
Speaker 1: especially early on you know, and maybe they were bred

946
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 1: more for wheel duties as time went on. Another bit

947
00:51:11,160 --> 00:51:15,319
Speaker 1: better candidate also is apparently the Welsh Corgy, which is

948
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:19,040
Speaker 1: ironic because of the famous Welsh corgy Corgis, who are

949
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 1: royal companions at the castles of the British monarchy, which

950
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 1: might sort of fit with the story of the nineteenth

951
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:28,879
Speaker 1: century Queen Victoria taking in turnspit dogs as pets. I mean,

952
00:51:28,920 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 1: because perhaps you end up with another selective breeding situation.

953
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: The cutest of the turnspit dogs are taken in by

954
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: the queen, and you get you get Corgis. I can

955
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:40,520
Speaker 1: see it, though I don't know how far back Corgis go.

956
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: Might that may not actually match up with the corgy lineage,

957
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:47,719
Speaker 1: and perhaps we'll hear from Corky breeders in that right.

958
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:51,880
Speaker 1: So Cummins ultimately argues that, given all of the disparate

959
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 1: reports about size, appearance, coat, and so forth, that the

960
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:59,320
Speaker 1: turnspit dog, in his mind, probably was not a distinct

961
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 1: breathe of dog, but rather was any small dog that

962
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:05,280
Speaker 1: could be trained to turn the wheel, though he believes

963
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 1: they were mostly derived from terrier breeds. So we've got

964
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:11,279
Speaker 1: these different I think it's not fully settled whether the

965
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:14,320
Speaker 1: turnspit dog was a breed of dog or wasn't in

966
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 1: the large part, maybe sort of a breed of dog

967
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:20,919
Speaker 1: or just was was a class of types of dogs. Yeah,

968
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: like we might be in that area where it was

969
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 1: on its way in some regions towards becoming a breed.

970
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: But ultimately and thankfully the practice does go away. There

971
00:52:30,760 --> 00:52:36,080
Speaker 1: is one known taxidermy turnspit dog at the Abergavenny Museum

972
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:39,000
Speaker 1: in Wales. It's a named Whiskey. I've included a picture

973
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:41,120
Speaker 1: for you to look at here, Robert. I mean it's

974
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:44,320
Speaker 1: a small dog with short kind of bent or crooked legs,

975
00:52:44,520 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 1: and it is a cute dog. I could see a

976
00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: dog like this, uh, you know, earning its way out

977
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:53,040
Speaker 1: of the wheel and into the hearts of a queen. Now,

978
00:52:53,480 --> 00:52:56,600
Speaker 1: b rights that turnspit dogs were used in America into

979
00:52:56,640 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and uh, and that you had an

980
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:02,480
Speaker 1: the animal rights advocate by the name of Henry Burg

981
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 1: who lobbied against their use, and he ultimately succeeded in

982
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:10,319
Speaker 1: bringing some shame to the practice, but with limited consequences. Yeah,

983
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:12,400
Speaker 1: there were there were at least some cases where he

984
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,960
Speaker 1: like identified turnspit dogs that were being used in some

985
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 1: cities as like as where there was obvious cruelty, and

986
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: he like took the people who were who owned the

987
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:25,320
Speaker 1: dogs to court. Yeah, and he would make surprise visits

988
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 1: and kitchens to catch the dogs and their use and

989
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:31,799
Speaker 1: reportedly be rights. In some cases he found that the

990
00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:35,400
Speaker 1: dogs had been replaced by young black children. It's horrible.

991
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:38,000
Speaker 1: It commins rights about that too, that in some cases

992
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:41,680
Speaker 1: when the dogs were removed, uh that human children were

993
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 1: used in the role, especially black children, and that Berg

994
00:53:44,760 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: tried to to advocate on behalf of the children who

995
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:50,680
Speaker 1: were put through this cruelty too in some cases, arguing that, like,

996
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:55,320
Speaker 1: will children not be given the same rights as an animal? Yeah, thankfully. However,

997
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:57,719
Speaker 1: you know, even though we started with children and then

998
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:01,720
Speaker 1: dogs enter the picture, than geese of the picture, thankfully,

999
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: going back to children is not the change that ultimately

1000
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: brought the end of the turnspit dog. Right, just as

1001
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 1: dogs replaced some human turnspits early on, automotive power ultimately

1002
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,319
Speaker 1: replaced the majority of dogs, and and it started not

1003
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:20,360
Speaker 1: the majority, but it started somewhat as early as the

1004
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 1: sixteenth century and would just go on to replace dogs

1005
00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:26,759
Speaker 1: more and more for spit turning as time went on.

1006
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:30,800
Speaker 1: So Bondison writes that Leonardo da Vinci, of course invented

1007
00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 1: an automatic spit turning device that was called a smoke jack,

1008
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 1: And it worked sort of on the principle of a windmill,

1009
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:41,240
Speaker 1: except inside a chimney. So smoke and hot air rising

1010
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:44,480
Speaker 1: from the fireplace up into the chimney would rotate a

1011
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 1: turbine with several blades, and then the turbine, driven by

1012
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 1: the smoke and the rising gases, would generate rotational energy

1013
00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: that could be transferred by belt or chain to the

1014
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: roasting spit. Yeah, it's a clever, clever invention. It would

1015
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,279
Speaker 1: later see some use. One of the drawba to it,

1016
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:02,680
Speaker 1: of course, is that you do have to, uh, you

1017
00:55:02,719 --> 00:55:04,319
Speaker 1: have to feed a lot of fuel to the fire.

1018
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 1: You have to keep the fire up. You have to

1019
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:09,560
Speaker 1: keep that updraft powerful enough to turn the machinery. Yeah.

1020
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:12,960
Speaker 1: There were several problems with the smoke jack model. Uh.

1021
00:55:13,239 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 1: It was improved upon incrementally in later decades after Da

1022
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:19,879
Speaker 1: Vinci's invention of it. Bondison notes that records indicate smoke

1023
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:22,120
Speaker 1: jack's were in use in England during the time of

1024
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 1: Samuel Peeps, who was an English naval administrator and prolific

1025
00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:28,879
Speaker 1: diarist who whose journals give us a window into much

1026
00:55:28,880 --> 00:55:31,359
Speaker 1: about what English life was like at the time, which

1027
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:34,960
Speaker 1: was like sixteen thirty three to seventeen oh three. But

1028
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:38,720
Speaker 1: even these later improved models of smoke jack's were still dirty,

1029
00:55:38,840 --> 00:55:41,560
Speaker 1: They were unreliable, and yeah, they required a very hot

1030
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 1: fire and a lot of you know, putting off, so

1031
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:46,759
Speaker 1: a lot of fuel essentially to get them spinning at

1032
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: the right rate. But even with those limitations, they could

1033
00:55:50,080 --> 00:55:52,399
Speaker 1: do the work of a lot of dogs. Bondison writes,

1034
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:56,280
Speaker 1: quote in the early nineteenth century, Lowther Castle near Penrith

1035
00:55:56,560 --> 00:56:00,719
Speaker 1: had a particularly advanced smoke jack drive, driving eight horizontal

1036
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 1: and four vertical spits, saving the labor of not less

1037
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: than twelve turnspit dogs. But another automated solution, and I

1038
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:12,319
Speaker 1: think the one that ultimately really replaced turnspit dogs, was

1039
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:16,360
Speaker 1: also in existence by the sixteenth century, and this was

1040
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:20,520
Speaker 1: the clock jack, sometimes called the meat jack, had other

1041
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:24,439
Speaker 1: names as well. Yeah, the clock jacks used a suspended

1042
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:27,319
Speaker 1: weight or a spring that you would wind up at

1043
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: the beginning of the cooking process to store potential energy

1044
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 1: that would slowly be released with a steady rotation mechanism,

1045
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:36,839
Speaker 1: and it worked much better than any of the other

1046
00:56:36,920 --> 00:56:40,400
Speaker 1: known methods. Yeah. Basically consisted of a weight suspended from

1047
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:43,320
Speaker 1: a cord and wound around a cylinder. The weight slowly descended,

1048
00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:45,760
Speaker 1: the power transferred through a series of cogs and pulleys

1049
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 1: and powered one or even multiple spits. Uh Sometimes there

1050
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 1: was even a bell included which would ring when it

1051
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:56,960
Speaker 1: stopped when the food was done. Even uh So some

1052
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: commentators have likened it to a modern microwave and that respect.

1053
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:03,280
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting, But did it have a popcorn function?

1054
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 1: I bet not, so you might be asking the question

1055
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:10,759
Speaker 1: and wait a second. If clock jacks existed since the

1056
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:14,920
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, as long as smoke jacks and almost as

1057
00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:19,560
Speaker 1: long as the turnspit dogs, like why were inferior turnspit

1058
00:57:19,600 --> 00:57:22,720
Speaker 1: engines such as dogs or smoke jacks or whatever used

1059
00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:25,280
Speaker 1: at all? And the main answer here has cost. You know,

1060
00:57:25,360 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 1: clock jacks, especially early on, were expensive. They these were

1061
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: mechanisms that had intricate you know, clockwork issue designs which

1062
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 1: were too expensive for standard homes and ends. But I

1063
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: think as time went on, as they became cheaper to

1064
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:42,360
Speaker 1: produce or mass produce, you could get them cheaper, and

1065
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:45,880
Speaker 1: more people would replace their turnspit dogs with an automatic

1066
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:48,840
Speaker 1: system like a clock jack. And indeed Be points out

1067
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: that by around seventy eight the meat jack was just

1068
00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 1: highly praised as as a method to keep the meat turning. Uh.

1069
00:57:56,560 --> 00:58:00,880
Speaker 1: And you actually would find them in nearly half of

1070
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 1: English households. Uh. And that's of all households, not just

1071
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:08,520
Speaker 1: the rich ones, but that just all English households. Uh.

1072
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: You know these culinary robots as being caused them. Uh,

1073
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,600
Speaker 1: they did the job. They didn't invoke even a tinge

1074
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:17,560
Speaker 1: of shame. Uh. And it wouldn't run off and hide

1075
00:58:17,600 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 1: like a turnspit dog. And we know this. We know

1076
00:58:20,400 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: that it was in in in pretty much half of

1077
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 1: all households based on probate inventories of the deceased, so

1078
00:58:27,560 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 1: this would be where you know they go. They had

1079
00:58:29,160 --> 00:58:31,280
Speaker 1: records of what were in the households of people who

1080
00:58:31,320 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 1: had died, and so they knew like this house had

1081
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 1: had a head of clockjack, this house had a clockjack,

1082
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:40,040
Speaker 1: and ultimately we can say like half of England had

1083
00:58:40,080 --> 00:58:43,360
Speaker 1: a clock jack in their house, thus driving away the

1084
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:47,440
Speaker 1: necessity of the turnspit dog. So you would hope that

1085
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:49,640
Speaker 1: that what would have happened historically is that there was

1086
00:58:49,640 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 1: a great awakening of people, you know, turning away from

1087
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:57,120
Speaker 1: animal cruelty and human cruelty for these these biologically powered

1088
00:58:57,160 --> 00:58:59,800
Speaker 1: spits and saying hey, there's a better way. But no,

1089
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:02,400
Speaker 1: it sounds like probably it was more like technology and

1090
00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:05,880
Speaker 1: economics that played the main role in replacing dogs and

1091
00:59:05,960 --> 00:59:09,440
Speaker 1: humans to turn spits. Yeah, and so you you had

1092
00:59:09,640 --> 00:59:11,280
Speaker 1: you know a number of these gadgets came into play,

1093
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:14,200
Speaker 1: not only the clockwork jack but also the smoke jack,

1094
00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:18,000
Speaker 1: which who entered earlier had become the designs had become better. Uh.

1095
00:59:18,080 --> 00:59:20,240
Speaker 1: Still there were certain design problems with it, but you

1096
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:24,840
Speaker 1: saw them implemented. Other English inventors experimented with steam water

1097
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: clock were various, like even more elaborate clockwork wonders. Uh

1098
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:31,960
Speaker 1: spit Roasting meat was just such a central part of

1099
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:35,479
Speaker 1: the English way of life that it attracted the sort

1100
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: of endless innovation that we see now and things like

1101
00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:42,160
Speaker 1: coffee preparation. Yeah, like everybody's got to have their coffee,

1102
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:45,560
Speaker 1: and so you see so many endless varieties of ways

1103
00:59:45,640 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 1: to make a cup of coffee and still continue to

1104
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:53,320
Speaker 1: see new innovations in coffee percolation design, right. Uh. And

1105
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:56,080
Speaker 1: then of course, once electricity came along, I think that

1106
00:59:56,120 --> 00:59:59,520
Speaker 1: was a huge game changer, right, because now rotisseries pretty

1107
00:59:59,600 --> 01:00:02,080
Speaker 1: much all of them are going to be electrically powered. Right.

1108
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:04,480
Speaker 1: And the other big factor that B points out is that,

1109
01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:08,000
Speaker 1: you know, with with with all these jacks, we had

1110
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:13,520
Speaker 1: an increasingly high tech invention based around rather old cooking methodology,

1111
01:00:13,800 --> 01:00:17,040
Speaker 1: the like open hearth cooking, cooking something in front of

1112
01:00:17,040 --> 01:00:20,000
Speaker 1: that big open fireplace. But then this went out of

1113
01:00:20,040 --> 01:00:22,880
Speaker 1: style during the mid nineteenth century, and so did the

1114
01:00:22,920 --> 01:00:27,120
Speaker 1: meat jack and its related meat turning robots. Though of

1115
01:00:27,120 --> 01:00:30,000
Speaker 1: course this just spit roasting itself of course did not

1116
01:00:30,080 --> 01:00:33,600
Speaker 1: go away. Spit roasting itself lives on, as to do

1117
01:00:33,800 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: various mechanical rotisseries. You can you can buy them for

1118
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:39,920
Speaker 1: your backyard grill. You can buy you can you know,

1119
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:41,800
Speaker 1: certainly you can see them at the grocery store, the

1120
01:00:41,840 --> 01:00:46,919
Speaker 1: butcher shopper anywhere. Uh. Chickens or other meats are are,

1121
01:00:47,160 --> 01:00:50,120
Speaker 1: you know, turning about and cooking in their own juices.

1122
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:54,760
Speaker 1: But thankfully you will not find dogs turning tiny wheels

1123
01:00:54,760 --> 01:00:57,240
Speaker 1: to power them. I gotta say this one was interesting,

1124
01:00:57,240 --> 01:01:00,480
Speaker 1: but it tugged on my heart strings. Yeah, I mean certainly.

1125
01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 1: I mean in a way, it's this is human techno history, right,

1126
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:06,800
Speaker 1: you have you have to consider the light in the dark. Yeah.

1127
01:01:06,800 --> 01:01:10,480
Speaker 1: But I mean also just seeing the way changes in

1128
01:01:10,560 --> 01:01:14,160
Speaker 1: technology and culture are constantly interacting with each other as

1129
01:01:14,200 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 1: time goes on, the way the technology influences what's culturally

1130
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:22,280
Speaker 1: appropriate and acceptable and that, and then then cultural values

1131
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:25,040
Speaker 1: affecting what kind of technology is in demand. Yeah. And

1132
01:01:25,080 --> 01:01:27,800
Speaker 1: then also I'm just so interested in the fact that

1133
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:32,280
Speaker 1: you had, uh, some very old technologies that were remaining

1134
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: the same, but this one aspect of the process kept

1135
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:40,200
Speaker 1: getting altered, you know, like the cauldron and the spit itself. Uh,

1136
01:01:40,720 --> 01:01:43,880
Speaker 1: there's nothing modern about that. The heart itself did not

1137
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 1: change for so long, but there was like a one

1138
01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:50,800
Speaker 1: pivot in the process that was where you saw all

1139
01:01:50,840 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 1: this innovation and then ultimately everything else changes as well. Fortunately,

1140
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:57,000
Speaker 1: now in the twenty one century, we can cook all

1141
01:01:57,040 --> 01:02:01,360
Speaker 1: of our food in the microwave. Yes, and hopefully I

1142
01:02:01,360 --> 01:02:04,000
Speaker 1: think the plan is so this November, of course, we

1143
01:02:04,040 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 1: are doing a lot of food based episodes that you know,

1144
01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:09,840
Speaker 1: we'll do food based episodes the rest of the year

1145
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:12,840
Speaker 1: as well as well, we have already, but we wanted

1146
01:02:12,880 --> 01:02:15,680
Speaker 1: to really focus in on food, given that this is

1147
01:02:15,760 --> 01:02:20,080
Speaker 1: a period of feast uh traditionally and especially in America.

1148
01:02:20,160 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 1: So hopefully we're gonna get to the microwave this month

1149
01:02:22,680 --> 01:02:24,960
Speaker 1: as well. It'll melt your brain in the best way,

1150
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:29,080
Speaker 1: all right. Uh, well, I'm sure everybody has some thoughts

1151
01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:31,280
Speaker 1: on this. Uh. You know, whether you're a fan of

1152
01:02:31,560 --> 01:02:35,439
Speaker 1: spitted turning meat or a fan of dogs, or like

1153
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:37,720
Speaker 1: you know all of us. H you know someone who is,

1154
01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:42,080
Speaker 1: you know, starkly offended by the prospect of putting children

1155
01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:43,960
Speaker 1: to work, five year olds to work in a in

1156
01:02:44,040 --> 01:02:47,400
Speaker 1: a in a kitchen, uh, performing manual labor. Uh. We

1157
01:02:47,440 --> 01:02:49,520
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. You can reach out

1158
01:02:49,560 --> 01:02:51,600
Speaker 1: to us a number of different ways. You can also

1159
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:55,280
Speaker 1: find the podcast at invention pod dot com. That's where

1160
01:02:55,280 --> 01:02:57,160
Speaker 1: they all are, but you can also find the podcast

1161
01:02:57,680 --> 01:03:00,800
Speaker 1: everywhere you find podcasts these days, wherever it is. Just

1162
01:03:00,840 --> 01:03:03,920
Speaker 1: make sure you subscribe and check out the episodes, and

1163
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:06,040
Speaker 1: if you dig them, leave us some stars. Leave us

1164
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:08,840
Speaker 1: a nice review that really helps us out huge thanks

1165
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:12,280
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

1166
01:03:12,520 --> 01:03:13,960
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1167
01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:16,680
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1168
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:18,720
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.

1169
01:03:18,760 --> 01:03:26,760
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.

1170
01:03:26,800 --> 01:03:29,920
Speaker 1: Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

1171
01:03:29,920 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1172
01:03:32,840 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.