Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're continuing our trek through human
Speaker 1: techno history, and we're going to begin with The flint Stones. Okay, uh.
Speaker 1: If you've ever watched The flint Stones the old uh
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixties American cartoon, you're probably familiar with their
Speaker 1: over the top cartoon world in which you know, you
Speaker 1: have you have these cavemen, but they're also it's also
Speaker 1: like a commentary to eliminated extent on nineteen sixties American culture,
Speaker 1: and they live alongside dinosaurs and they utilize them to
Speaker 1: power pretty much every aspect of their society. Is the
Speaker 1: satirical element there. If I've only seen The flint Stones
Speaker 1: Viva Rock Vegas, probably yeah, I think so, because they,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, those live action adaptations did put
Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on the dinosaur and pre star
Speaker 1: creature based technology. Oh yeah, clearly. That's the big draw
Speaker 1: of the series, is the curiosity what kind of dinosaur
Speaker 1: is going to be playing the role of a toilet today? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because well, they didn't use dinos to power everything. For instance,
Speaker 1: they did insist on footing their own ridiculous stone cars
Speaker 1: around town. I love that they had a typewriter that
Speaker 1: was a mere stone machine, kind of like a cross
Speaker 1: between a typewriter and a stone xylophone or something. But
Speaker 1: they also used, of course, that would be what is
Speaker 1: it a lithophone? Actually it's not a there is a
Speaker 1: name for a stone xylophone. But but it was of
Speaker 1: course more complicated, ridiculously complicated. Uh, in the flint Stones.
Speaker 1: But then they also used, just to name a few inventions,
Speaker 1: the following uh. And let let's go back and forth
Speaker 1: on these jokes, a sauropod powered construction crane device, a
Speaker 1: stegosaur based fire truck, theropod based mobile stairs like the airport. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: A small dinosaur that they used as a can opener up.
Speaker 1: This one's really famous. And I know they used this
Speaker 1: one in the live action film. A garbage disposal dinosaur
Speaker 1: that just lives underneath the counter. I remember this. Actually
Speaker 1: they were like the garbage disposals acting up and he
Speaker 1: opens up the cabinets and like yells at it. But
Speaker 1: they've also got a record player that's a turtle and hummingbird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the hummingbird is the needle, of course, and
Speaker 1: the turtle was somehow spinning the record. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: where they're hummingbirds? And wait a minute. They were definitely
Speaker 1: not humans coexisting with dinosaurs. Uh. They had a mammoth
Speaker 1: based uh system of running water, didn't They also have
Speaker 1: a tiny mammoth that was like the vacuum cleaner. They
Speaker 1: used it to because the hose or maybe it's young.
Speaker 1: I don't know how this worked. There was also a
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it was a bird or terra saar
Speaker 1: based camera. So like you hold up the camera to
Speaker 1: take the picture and the small winged creature uses its
Speaker 1: beak to then a chisel the image into a piece
Speaker 1: of stone. That's funny that it's some kind a bird
Speaker 1: as a dishwasher, it was like a pelican. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looked a lot like a pelican. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: if you need a kitchen knife, what are you gonna
Speaker 1: do use a sawfish? Why not a rock? Why not
Speaker 1: a like a flint stone. It's it's there in the
Speaker 1: name the flint. Hilarious If it is an actual sword fish,
Speaker 1: I guess, but that defeats the purpose. I mean, why
Speaker 1: you would use an animal in place of a machine
Speaker 1: is that an animal is complex and has moving parts
Speaker 1: and can generate motive power if you just need a
Speaker 1: knife or something. It seems like real stone age technology
Speaker 1: would work just as well. Oh absolutely, um. And then
Speaker 1: of course there's the added fact that they have a
Speaker 1: pet dinosaur named Dino who is just there for companionship. Now,
Speaker 1: all of this is ridiculous, and even today we watch
Speaker 1: it and we laugh at it because it's a ridiculous
Speaker 1: exaggeration of animal labor. Each dinosaur prehistar creature is highly specialized.
Speaker 1: So you know, either the humans of the flint Stones
Speaker 1: just found the right animals to perform these very specific functions, uh,
Speaker 1: or like us real life humans, they bred them to
Speaker 1: encourage certain traits, traits who would make them ideal for
Speaker 1: highly specific specialized tasks such as living under your sink
Speaker 1: and eating all of your scraps. That's right. And to
Speaker 1: explore this concept further today we're going to look at
Speaker 1: a real historical example. Uh. Certainly not the only example
Speaker 1: of an animal bred for a certain job within the
Speaker 1: house providing some kind of motive power. Of course, we
Speaker 1: know farm animals, draft animals. Pack animals have been doing
Speaker 1: this kind of thing for millennia. But today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be looking at a very strange specific case from history.
Speaker 1: The turnspit dog, a breed of domestic dog that is
Speaker 1: bred to run around a small wheel to power e rotisserie. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is this is this is amazing. I was
Speaker 1: I had not heard of this before. So this was
Speaker 1: like suddenly, It's like suddenly realizing the flint stones were
Speaker 1: real to a certain extent. But but this is gonna
Speaker 1: be a great episode as well, because it's not just
Speaker 1: going to be about this dog. It's gonna be about
Speaker 1: sort of two or three additional technologies that factor in
Speaker 1: to this period in time in which dog labor was
Speaker 1: used to help cook big chunks of meat. Right, So
Speaker 1: I guess first we always asked the question here what
Speaker 1: came before this invention? So obviously we should look at
Speaker 1: the dog itself, and the dog in a way, if
Speaker 1: you sort of, if you sort of squint, it is
Speaker 1: sort of a human invention. I mean, obviously it's a
Speaker 1: product of nature. So we like we didn't create you know,
Speaker 1: canines generally, but the domestic dog and the domestic dog
Speaker 1: breeds that exist have in many ways been guided by
Speaker 1: human hands to greater and lesser extents. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not you know, it's not necessary a situation where
Speaker 1: a prehistoric uh you know, number of human society said
Speaker 1: that is a good wolf creature out there. I have
Speaker 1: a few pointers for what we might change in it,
Speaker 1: but that is essentially the process that ends up taking place. So, yes,
Speaker 1: before you can have a dog powered meat spinning grill machine,
Speaker 1: you have to have a domestic dog. And in brief,
Speaker 1: the domestic dog dates back an estimated twelve thousand years
Speaker 1: to the Near East, before the cat, before the sheep,
Speaker 1: before the goat, and before the horse. The dog maybe
Speaker 1: man's best friend, and it is certainly one of his
Speaker 1: oldest non human friends. It is the oldest recognizably domestic animal.
Speaker 1: And we know they were used some eleven thousand years
Speaker 1: ago in post glacial Europe by hunter gatherers, and they
Speaker 1: were almost certainly used in hunting. Interestingly enough, it's sometimes
Speaker 1: questioned why humans didn't actually domesticate the dogs sooner than this,
Speaker 1: and one idea is that there was even more incentive
Speaker 1: to domesticate these, you know, the wild wolf like creatures
Speaker 1: into the domesticated dog in the post glacial world, because
Speaker 1: you increasingly then had to track wounded animals that you've
Speaker 1: wounded during the you know, the hunt through wooded regions.
Speaker 1: Increasing a wooded regions is the forest return and a
Speaker 1: dog's superior sense of smell could make a huge difference
Speaker 1: in that task. So the dog was a pre farming
Speaker 1: domestic species, and that's something that's really essential to note.
Speaker 1: Because the cat, I think we've touched on this before.
Speaker 1: If not an invention, then unstuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: You know, the cat comes about as an investigated species
Speaker 1: in the post farming world because of the post farming
Speaker 1: surplus of food. Right, So in the in the post
Speaker 1: farming world, you might have say stores of grain or
Speaker 1: other foods in a settled location that you're not moving
Speaker 1: around from, and those might attract to say rats or
Speaker 1: something like that that would get into your grain, and
Speaker 1: then the cat can follow the rats. Right. And then
Speaker 1: these areas other species, many of them of course, our
Speaker 1: food species that we domesticated so so as to uh
Speaker 1: control them and not have to hunt them anymore. They
Speaker 1: live with us, and we kill them when we desire
Speaker 1: to kill them. But of course as great as dogs
Speaker 1: can be and continue to be and in the in
Speaker 1: aiding the hunt, we know that they can be bred
Speaker 1: who specialize in a number of key tasks. And I
Speaker 1: have a short list here that I thought we might
Speaker 1: go back and forth on again, much like we did
Speaker 1: with the dinosaurs of the Flintstones. So you can of
Speaker 1: course breed a dog over many generations to fetch felled foul.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a tongue twister, but yeah, you can see.
Speaker 1: Maybe you shoot down a bird, you don't know exactly
Speaker 1: where it went, but the dog can find it. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the dog is still aiding in the hunt, but it's
Speaker 1: a more specialized version of aiding in the hunt. Now
Speaker 1: the other thing would be playing more of a role
Speaker 1: we think of with cats these days, are ridding the
Speaker 1: home area or the food storage areas of rats and
Speaker 1: other vermin. Right. Another one is to aid in fishing specifically,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the breeds you see this
Speaker 1: with is the Newfoundland dog, which is a you know,
Speaker 1: a kin to the Labrador retriever. The Labrador retriever fetches
Speaker 1: felled foul, but the traditionally but the Newfoundland dog is
Speaker 1: there to retrieve floats and ropes from dangerous icy waters. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we see lots of shepherd ng dogs in
Speaker 1: world traditions that they can help control the movements and
Speaker 1: direction of flocks. Right. Um, a big scary dog with
Speaker 1: a loud bark has long been used and uh and
Speaker 1: and is still used to as as protection, either to
Speaker 1: protect an individual or to protect property. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: guess this would be part of a bigger thing. Is
Speaker 1: just sort of like using dogs for violence or the
Speaker 1: threat of violence. So dogs used in war or fighting
Speaker 1: or in in in combat dogs. Unfortunately, sometimes dogs you
Speaker 1: used to fight each other purely for sport, which is terrible,
Speaker 1: or in other equally egregious kinds of bear baiting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another area, though that is not dark or not not
Speaker 1: intrinsically dark, is tracking, because dogs mad dogs could be
Speaker 1: used to track somebody or something for nefarious reasons, certainly,
Speaker 1: but dogs can be used to track people to say,
Speaker 1: to find uh say, fine individuals who have been buried
Speaker 1: in an avalanche, that sort of thing. Right, And then
Speaker 1: of course you've got the final version, the version that
Speaker 1: many of us today probably know the best, which is
Speaker 1: just pure companionship. Dogs are a good friend, They're a
Speaker 1: good buddy, and this is where we get the final
Speaker 1: form of the dog, the pug. Right. But while we
Speaker 1: often think of other animals like horses, donkeys, cattle, and
Speaker 1: stuff like this clearly as draft animals animals that are
Speaker 1: used to pull loads, or as pack animals, animals that
Speaker 1: are used to carry loads. Uh, animals that are there
Speaker 1: to provide motive power. We don't often think of the
Speaker 1: dog this way. And yet, nevertheless, the dog has been
Speaker 1: used for these purposes in many ways around the world
Speaker 1: all throughout history. And one of those ways is what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today, pairing dogs for motive
Speaker 1: power with a specific type of cooking technology, which is
Speaker 1: the turnspit to the practice of using a dog to
Speaker 1: turn a wheel like a hamster wheel to turn a
Speaker 1: rotisserie in a kitchen. Right, I mean, but before we
Speaker 1: really started researching this, the only example that would have
Speaker 1: come to mind would be sled dogs, where the dog
Speaker 1: is used for locomotion to pull a sled across snow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there there are plenty of examples of people
Speaker 1: using dogs to uh to pull carts and things like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and there carry a pack, yes, yes, exactly. But later
Speaker 1: in the episode, we'll also talk about other types of
Speaker 1: more treadmill based motive power that come from dogs. Another
Speaker 1: important thing to note when we're talking about all these
Speaker 1: different things that dogs have been bred floor and and
Speaker 1: this is kind of this is one of those sort
Speaker 1: of overstatements of the obvious, But the role changes the
Speaker 1: form of the dog. So like when we're talking about
Speaker 1: these dogs that are that were bred to you know,
Speaker 1: to catch rats and to chase vermin, we're often dealing
Speaker 1: with dogs that are that are small in stature that
Speaker 1: can chase the rat into its hiding places. Likewise, the
Speaker 1: dogs that are used for tracking and in many cases
Speaker 1: involving the hunt as well, are often some of the
Speaker 1: absolute best smellers and are just you know, ideal for
Speaker 1: tracking and and in all of this too, we get
Speaker 1: into the problem of the modern world sometimes where someone
Speaker 1: will have a pure bred dog, a dog that has
Speaker 1: been whose evolution has been hijacked too, you know, for
Speaker 1: the specific function, and then it finds itself as a
Speaker 1: pet without a without necessarily having an avenue for that
Speaker 1: special power that it has been given through selective breeding.
Speaker 1: So I mean a lot of times it's funny that
Speaker 1: people will have a dog for a pet, and they
Speaker 1: don't even realize what the that dog breed that their
Speaker 1: pet is was was originally bred for. And so they
Speaker 1: may notice behavioral characteristics of the dogs that come through
Speaker 1: without knowing why that dog is like so attuned to
Speaker 1: chasing after my certain little moving objects, or why that
Speaker 1: dog has to sniff everything. Yeah, I've I've heard though
Speaker 1: of specific cases where, especially urban dogs, um have you know,
Speaker 1: their owners will make an effort to find outlets, like
Speaker 1: find a place where they can herd a single sheep
Speaker 1: around and use that energy, or these groups that will
Speaker 1: go through. I think it's New York. I heard a
Speaker 1: radio I think it's an NPR story about this, where
Speaker 1: people with traditionally vermin hunting dogs will get together and
Speaker 1: basically go on a big rat chase the streets, you know,
Speaker 1: because that's that's what the dog wants. Right. So we've
Speaker 1: read plenty of breeds for different tasks, but I guess
Speaker 1: we should turn to the other half of the equation here,
Speaker 1: leading to the turnspit dog, which is the Rotisseriy. Yes,
Speaker 1: the rotissory. So if you've been to the supermarket, I
Speaker 1: think you know the basic idea here because you've probably
Speaker 1: seen rotisserie chickens, right, but this this, uh, it's a
Speaker 1: chicken on a spit, and usually they're like multiple spits,
Speaker 1: creating this whole carousel of rotisserie chickens. And they're moving
Speaker 1: under some sort of heat source, you know, being a
Speaker 1: lamp or some sort of actual you know, heating element.
Speaker 1: But you've probably also seen it if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: like the spit for donor kebab or for euros. These
Speaker 1: are traditionally done where there's a heat element on one
Speaker 1: side and there's a bunch of you know, seasoned meat
Speaker 1: that's on a spit that constantly rotates. And the idea
Speaker 1: what the constant rotation is to provide even heat. Right,
Speaker 1: meat is skewered and then placed over or adjacent to
Speaker 1: a heat source. But then what happens if you don't
Speaker 1: turn it. You're gonna get one side of the meat
Speaker 1: that's hideously burned and one side of the meat that
Speaker 1: is perhaps undercooked. Even you but it's not what you want.
Speaker 1: You want uniform heating around the meat and within the meat.
Speaker 1: And this method actually still works. One of their Robert,
Speaker 1: do you ever encounter steak world, you know this whole
Speaker 1: world world wisdom and false wisdom about what you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do or not do with steaks. It can be
Speaker 1: it can be a treacherous pass So used to when
Speaker 1: I when I still ate beef and I would grill.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I had I had, I would look in a
Speaker 1: grilled book and there would be a lot of wisdom
Speaker 1: there about how to do it. And then you go
Speaker 1: on the line and there might be, you know, wisdom
Speaker 1: that set the opposite. Yeah, exactly. There's also a lot
Speaker 1: of like you know, dad wisdom kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: about this. One of the one of the steak myths
Speaker 1: that people often say is you should only turn your
Speaker 1: steak once. You know, you put it on the grill
Speaker 1: one side, let it go halfway on that side. Flip
Speaker 1: it once and let it go halfway on that side. Uh,
Speaker 1: that is not good wisdom. You can turn a steak
Speaker 1: as many times as you want if you're grilling it,
Speaker 1: and that actually helps the steak cook more evenly. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, by constantly turning it, you are not letting
Speaker 1: the heat build up too much on one side and
Speaker 1: overcook that side. Okay, Well, like a similar thing I
Speaker 1: do when I do grill, I tend to do veggie grilling,
Speaker 1: and so I'll do like a grill basket and I'll
Speaker 1: just make sure I I stir it up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the same principles actually, I think would apply pretty well
Speaker 1: to vegetables. Probably the more you stir them, the more
Speaker 1: evenly cooked they're going to be. But in this case,
Speaker 1: we're continuing to talk about big hunks of meat. The
Speaker 1: bigger the better on a spit turning, uh, so as
Speaker 1: to have that uniform cooking. But here's the thing. You've
Speaker 1: got to turn that spit, and the most basic way
Speaker 1: to do that is to turn it by hand. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, later it's no spoiler to say that eventually
Speaker 1: machines are going to come into play and do it,
Speaker 1: because again, you've been to the grocery store, you've seen
Speaker 1: machines turning rotisserie chickens. You know that that is coming. Um. However,
Speaker 1: the rotisserie, you know, was very much in vogue in
Speaker 1: the medieval world, and we see plenty of illustrations of
Speaker 1: their use, both both in you know, their terrestrial setting
Speaker 1: depictions of everyday medieval humans engaging in rotisserie cooking. But
Speaker 1: then you also see lots of these imagined realms of
Speaker 1: hell to where if you see a big elaborate depiction
Speaker 1: of eternal damnation, there's almost certainly going to be some
Speaker 1: individual spitted on a on a long skewer and then
Speaker 1: turned over a fire. Right, the culinary traditions of the
Speaker 1: time come through in our imaginations of torment right now.
Speaker 1: The word ROTISSERII. The rotisserie concept itself, of course, is
Speaker 1: not too complicated, but the word comes goes back to
Speaker 1: France in around fourteen fifty years so, which is ironic
Speaker 1: because while all there were versions of of turnspit roasting
Speaker 1: or rotisserie all over Europe from the medieval period and
Speaker 1: probably some earlier than that, but especially beginning in the
Speaker 1: medieval period, I've read that it is most common in
Speaker 1: Great Britain, that is, where spit roasting was an extremely
Speaker 1: popular form of cooking. That like in the European continent
Speaker 1: and elsewhere in the world, people would be more likely
Speaker 1: to use like ovens enclosures to cook inside if they
Speaker 1: were going to do a roast of meat at all
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Apparently, for some reason, English culture
Speaker 1: was just not into the ovens for roasting. They liked
Speaker 1: the open flame and the constantly turning spit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely both. I think the main sources we turned to
Speaker 1: in this yeah, they center almost exclusively on England. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's where we look at the documentation of the of
Speaker 1: the spit and all of these additional details about how
Speaker 1: the practice changes. Well, I think that's for two reasons.
Speaker 1: Number one, spit roasting in general seems a more popular
Speaker 1: form of cooking in Great Britain. And then beyond that,
Speaker 1: where spit roasting is done, it seems like the dog
Speaker 1: was a more popular way of doing it in Great
Speaker 1: Britain than it was elsewhere. Now, one of the sources
Speaker 1: that I I used in in my research here is
Speaker 1: an excellent book by one B. Wilson called Consider the Fork,
Speaker 1: a History of how We Eat and Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that's important is even though we have this
Speaker 1: cartoony and perhaps even flint Stonian idea of meat spitted
Speaker 1: above a fire and roast in turned, I think this
Speaker 1: is how the Ewoks were attempting to to to consume
Speaker 1: the heroes in Star Wars, right, maybe, I mean they've
Speaker 1: got them hanging from a stick. It would be kind
Speaker 1: of awkward actually spitted. I guess they weren't spitted there
Speaker 1: would be a lot of like tumbling and falling around
Speaker 1: the ropes they were hanging from. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how well that would work for somebody I thought they
Speaker 1: were going to eat somebody. I thought that they were
Speaker 1: going to eat them. Yeah, I just don't know if
Speaker 1: they would have turned to them. I think they probably
Speaker 1: would have just burned them on one side and then
Speaker 1: they do all right. Well. Well, one thing that that B.
Speaker 1: Wilson points out is that the spit was typically located
Speaker 1: next to a fire and not over it for most
Speaker 1: of the cooking. You would only position it more over
Speaker 1: the fire towards the end to toast it, sort of
Speaker 1: like in an oven. Now you might you know, you
Speaker 1: might bake something and then broil it to the last
Speaker 1: you know, few minutes to get it a little crispy
Speaker 1: on top. Right, then that makes sense putting it next
Speaker 1: to the fire. I think you could get gentler, more
Speaker 1: even heat throughout right. And a lot of times in
Speaker 1: England we're talking about open hearth cooking too, so that
Speaker 1: just makes more sense. Right the fire is in the
Speaker 1: fireplace and then your eu rotisserie is positioned in front
Speaker 1: of the fireplace. But for open hearth cooking. You have
Speaker 1: to understand that this means the kitchen, especially near the fireplace,
Speaker 1: is going to be a sweltering environment, and somebody's got
Speaker 1: to turn that spit. And according to be Wilson, before
Speaker 1: we put the spit dogs to work turning the spit,
Speaker 1: we used turnspit boys. Yes, it's it's, it's, it's, it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's hilarious and at the same time it is
Speaker 1: so disturbing. So only only during the sixteenth and seventeen
Speaker 1: centuries did the dogs take over the work really, uh,
Speaker 1: and they took over the work from human children. She
Speaker 1: includes a quote from biography John Aubrey, who said, quote
Speaker 1: in olden times, the poor boys did turn the spits
Speaker 1: and lipped the dripping pans, Oh boy, the dripping yeah.
Speaker 1: And Be describes this as perhaps the worst of the
Speaker 1: many quotes soul destroying jobs in the rich medieval kitchen.
Speaker 1: Here's a passage from their book quote by the reign
Speaker 1: of Henry the Eighth, the king's household had whole battalions
Speaker 1: of turnspits, charring their faces and tiring their arms to
Speaker 1: satisfy the royal appetite for roast capin's and ducks. Venison
Speaker 1: and beef crammed in cubby holes to the side of
Speaker 1: the fireplace. The boys must have been near roasted themselves
Speaker 1: as they labored to roast the meats. Until the year
Speaker 1: fifteen thirty, the kitchen staff at Hampton Core worked either
Speaker 1: naked or in scanty, grimy garments. Henry the Eighth addressed
Speaker 1: the situation not by relieving the turnspits of their duties,
Speaker 1: but by providing the master cooks with a clothing allowance
Speaker 1: with which to keep the junior staff decently clothed and
Speaker 1: therefore even hotter. That's horrible, I mean this, this lines
Speaker 1: up with everything I've read that the turnspit role was
Speaker 1: essentially the lowest rank in the kitchen. It was the
Speaker 1: last job you'd want to have because it's like, it's
Speaker 1: not only sweltering hot, hard work, it's also incredibly dull
Speaker 1: and repetitive. You know, you're not getting much of variety.
Speaker 1: You're just standing there by a really hot fire, turning
Speaker 1: a crank at a steady pace for hours and hours
Speaker 1: at a time. It's kind of it's like Conan the Barbarian,
Speaker 1: you know, running the mill exactly. Yeah, because it's very
Speaker 1: important that the crank had to be turned at a
Speaker 1: steady rate. You couldn't have the person turning the crank
Speaker 1: take a break for a few minutes and go do
Speaker 1: something else, because then the meat would burn on that side,
Speaker 1: So you had to keep it turning. Yeah, so it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's grueling, just monotonous manual labor here and uh
Speaker 1: and even though it's not even just the big kingly houses,
Speaker 1: even lesser houses used them and they were they were
Speaker 1: actually seen as acceptable well into the eighteenth century in England.
Speaker 1: And uh and uh. Also in Scotland, b rights that
Speaker 1: Scottish highlander John McDonald born seventeen forty one, he was
Speaker 1: an orphan and at the age of five he worked
Speaker 1: the spit in a household. Yeah, and I think this
Speaker 1: comes through in common expressions within the English language of
Speaker 1: the period, Like there was the expression turn spit to
Speaker 1: like refer insulting lee to someone. It was essentially you
Speaker 1: would call somebody a turnspit to suggest they were like
Speaker 1: lowly and not worth your time, that they were wretched
Speaker 1: in some way. But around the Tutor area, which was
Speaker 1: roughly like the sixteenth century, you know, late fourteen hundreds
Speaker 1: through the end of the fifteen hundreds, Uh, technology change
Speaker 1: the picture somewhat. For this is when kitchens in in
Speaker 1: England started using the rotisserie spit powered by belt and
Speaker 1: dog wheel. So maybe we should take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then when we come back we can discuss more
Speaker 1: about the turnspit dog. Alright, so here's where we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at the turnspit dog and the wheel itself. So
Speaker 1: I guess I should mention a couple of sources that
Speaker 1: I used for this. One is a book by Jan
Speaker 1: Bondison called Amazing Dogs, A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities from
Speaker 1: Amberley Publishing, two thousand eleven. And another is a book
Speaker 1: by Brian D. Cummins, who is a cultural anthropologist who's
Speaker 1: focused on the relationships between humans and dogs. And this
Speaker 1: book is called Our Debt to the Dog, How the
Speaker 1: Domestic Dog Helped Shape Human Societies from Caroline Academic Press. So,
Speaker 1: according to Cummins, the first published men and of turnspit
Speaker 1: dogs in history comes from a treatise published in fifteen
Speaker 1: seventy six written by an author named Johanneses or John Caius,
Speaker 1: who was quote Doctor of physic a in the University
Speaker 1: of Cambridge, and this is sometimes claimed to be the
Speaker 1: first English book written about dogs. I think he actually
Speaker 1: wrote it in Latin, but it was quickly translated by
Speaker 1: an assistant into English. Um And Cummins points out that
Speaker 1: right from the beginning, Kaius identifies the turnspit dog or
Speaker 1: what he spells the turns pete dog as a breed,
Speaker 1: which Cummins thinks is probably incorrect. And we'll come back
Speaker 1: to that more later, whether the turnspit dog was a
Speaker 1: distinct breed of dog or not. But John Chias appears
Speaker 1: to have gotten a lot of things wrong about dogs
Speaker 1: in his book about dogs. He apparently didn't know much
Speaker 1: about dogs, but he's like, I'll write a book any
Speaker 1: little um. But this this being the first mentioned in
Speaker 1: literary history, I guess we should take a look at
Speaker 1: what he says. And so the text reads of the
Speaker 1: dog called turn speed in Latin vuver sater, there is
Speaker 1: comprehended under the curs of the coarsest kind, a certain
Speaker 1: dog in kitchen service, excellent for when any meat is
Speaker 1: to be roasted, they go into a wheel which they
Speaker 1: turning round about with the weight of their bodies, so
Speaker 1: diligently looked to their business, that no drudge nor scullion
Speaker 1: can do the feet more cunningly whom the popular sort
Speaker 1: here upon call turns beats. Now that is that is interesting.
Speaker 1: Even if there is we'll discuss there maybe problems with it,
Speaker 1: because it does imply that this is not just you
Speaker 1: didn't just grab a random animal and throw it in
Speaker 1: and just see what it did in the wheel. Now
Speaker 1: that the dog seems to have been trained to to
Speaker 1: to proceed on the wheel at a regular pace so
Speaker 1: as to properly cook the meat, right, KaiA says that
Speaker 1: it's not just that the dog can turn the wheels.
Speaker 1: The dog turns the wheel and the spit at a
Speaker 1: better rate than the human cooks in the hitchen do,
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people can probably relate
Speaker 1: to the idea of a dog being more reliable than
Speaker 1: a human um. But but the premise here, I think,
Speaker 1: is that a dog runs inside a wheel like a
Speaker 1: hamster wheel, in order to turn a belt that turns
Speaker 1: a spit to ensure the even cooking on all sides
Speaker 1: of the roast. So, beginning a few centuries later in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, more records of turnspit dogs show up
Speaker 1: in the literature, including a formal breed categorization by Carl Linnaeus,
Speaker 1: the Swedish scholar who established a lot of important conventions
Speaker 1: of taxonomy and nomenclature in zoology and botany. And so again,
Speaker 1: I think Linnaeus here is identifying the turnspit dog is
Speaker 1: a distinct breed of dog. Bondison points out that Linnaeus's
Speaker 1: name for the breed is Canus vertigious or dizzy dog.
Speaker 1: A name used in several English sources is the verna
Speaker 1: pat cur So here's Bondison on on Linnaeus's description here
Speaker 1: quote small, long bodied, and bandy legged. Most had drooping ears,
Speaker 1: but some had to ear standing up. Some turnspit dogs
Speaker 1: had gray and white fur, often with a white blaze
Speaker 1: down the face. Others were black or reddish brown. There
Speaker 1: may as well have been several other colors. Brian Cummin
Speaker 1: says that the most common characteristics of the dog identified
Speaker 1: as a breed are small size, short legs, muscular, especially
Speaker 1: for their size and weight estimates are kind of all
Speaker 1: over the place. They range from like fourteen to thirty
Speaker 1: five pounds, good cardiovascular conditioning for obvious reasons, and generally
Speaker 1: being terrier like and that makes sense because a terrier
Speaker 1: would already be a breed that is, uh, would be
Speaker 1: we're talking with breeds that are are small in stature.
Speaker 1: White you utilize mainly as vermin um. Uh. Chasers don't
Speaker 1: actually know, but that sounds right. I know, there's like
Speaker 1: the rat terrier. Yeah. Uh so. Charles Darwin even made
Speaker 1: reference to the turnspit dog in On the Origin of Species.
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about this, but so. Of course, one
Speaker 1: of darwin main arguments for his theory of evolution by
Speaker 1: natural selection was the artificial breeding of animals such as
Speaker 1: cattle and dogs. Showing the descent with modification was possible
Speaker 1: by the guidance of human breeders, and thus it could
Speaker 1: also be possible by the guidance of the natural environment.
Speaker 1: That was the point of comparison he was trying to make,
Speaker 1: And so Darwin writes that in domesticated strains of animals
Speaker 1: we constantly see examples of adaptation quote not indeed to
Speaker 1: the animals or plants own good, but to man's use
Speaker 1: or fancy. Some variations useful to him have probably arisen
Speaker 1: suddenly or by one step. So it has probably been
Speaker 1: with the turnspit dog. So we know that in the
Speaker 1: middle of the eighteen hundreds, when Darwin's writing about this,
Speaker 1: it would have been a common enough, like a well
Speaker 1: known enough phenomenon to have a turnspit dog working in
Speaker 1: a kitchen that he could just make casual reference to
Speaker 1: it and people would know what he was talking about. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: that dog that is so well adapted to turning a
Speaker 1: wheel in kitchens. So, but the question kind of becomes
Speaker 1: is the turnspit dog like a dog? Are these dogs
Speaker 1: bred for this work or are you merely selecting dogs
Speaker 1: to fulfill the role of the turnspit dog? Right? And
Speaker 1: I think it's possible that's some combination of the two, Right,
Speaker 1: that dogs with initial bits of characteristics were selected for
Speaker 1: the job early on, and then maybe they were bred
Speaker 1: to bring out certain characteristics that made them especially good
Speaker 1: wheel turners. Right. And and this would be the same
Speaker 1: process that you would get, say, a good rat chasing dog.
Speaker 1: You can imagine like early on people saying I need
Speaker 1: some dogs to go catch those rats. Give me some
Speaker 1: short legged dogs, and then you know, the breeding commences
Speaker 1: and you get increasingly breeds of short legged dogs that
Speaker 1: have a real tenacity for chasing rats. Right, If you've
Speaker 1: got a batch of them, maybe the two that catch
Speaker 1: the most rats. You breed them together and that makes
Speaker 1: the next generation. At the time, an author named J. G.
Speaker 1: Wood mentions the turnspit dog in his Illustrated Natural History
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three, but he writes that by his
Speaker 1: time the dog had become rare, and while it had
Speaker 1: previously been very common, it then existed only in isolated regions.
Speaker 1: But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, uh turnspit dogs
Speaker 1: were extremely common in Great Britain. Uh Bondison writes that
Speaker 1: they were especially common in the west of England and
Speaker 1: particularly in the city of Bristol, and in Wales, especially
Speaker 1: South Wales. Bondison writes, quote in sixteen thirty nine, when
Speaker 1: the cornishman Peter Mundy visited Bristol, he was amazed that
Speaker 1: there was quote scarce a house that hath not a
Speaker 1: dog to turn the spit in a little wooden wheel.
Speaker 1: So he's not just talking about palaces or like ns
Speaker 1: with big kitchens there. He's saying scarcely a house. So
Speaker 1: that's where it was apparently most common, but that was
Speaker 1: less common. There are still records that there were turnspit
Speaker 1: dogs outside of Great Britain, in places like France, where
Speaker 1: they were shin tourn A Broches, or in Switzerland and
Speaker 1: Germany and Holland, and in North America. There even references
Speaker 1: to turn spit dogs in Ben Franklin's own pencil Vania Gazette.
Speaker 1: But I mean we should recognize that something so Cummins
Speaker 1: characterizes the turnspit dog's work as often quite wretched for
Speaker 1: the dog. So they'd be having to power a wheel
Speaker 1: by walking essentially inside the wheel for hours at a time.
Speaker 1: These roasts take a long time to cook, uh, And
Speaker 1: they were near the heat of the fire, which meant
Speaker 1: that their work was sweltering, and they were often dehydrated.
Speaker 1: And they can't take breaks because the wheel has to
Speaker 1: keep going. Well, they can in some cases. I'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a second. Generally the dog wheel was
Speaker 1: hung suspended from the ceiling next to the fireplace. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe their wood cuts the kind of show this
Speaker 1: as well, Like it almost looks like something you would
Speaker 1: see on a cracker barrel wall, right, you know, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: except it has a living dog and it turning a
Speaker 1: crank um. Yeah, this is one of the things that's
Speaker 1: so interesting about this is all these other categories we've
Speaker 1: looked at, or at least, you know, disgusting in passing
Speaker 1: in which we have bred a dog to to fulfill
Speaker 1: a specific task. Those tasks are exclusively I think in
Speaker 1: the wild, though, you know, like it's some version of
Speaker 1: the thing they would do, be it hunting a rat,
Speaker 1: or fetching a bird that's been shot out of the
Speaker 1: sky with with bow or or buckshot, you know, or
Speaker 1: or even swimming after fishing lures, or or even pulling
Speaker 1: a sled. At least it is it is out in
Speaker 1: an environment. It is running across the countryside in this
Speaker 1: kind of artificially uh constructed pack structure. Well, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I would say even for more indoor dogs, like companion
Speaker 1: dogs that sit on your lap and cuddle with you.
Speaker 1: I mean, that does seem more analogous to some kind
Speaker 1: of natural behaviors, you know, like din snuggling behaviors. Uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of like being trapped in a kitchen in
Speaker 1: a wheel turning the wheel does seem more estranged from
Speaker 1: the natural habitat and behaviors of a dog in the
Speaker 1: wild than any of these other uses I can think of.
Speaker 1: It is at best almost animal cruelty and probably just
Speaker 1: animal cruelty. Oh yeah, I mean in many cases surely.
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard to know because on one hand,
Speaker 1: like a lot of dogs do seem to kind of
Speaker 1: like enjoy having a task to do, right, But this
Speaker 1: seems like it's really hard work that is sustained for
Speaker 1: a long time. That like, there are lots of stories
Speaker 1: of the dogs not wanting to do it, like they
Speaker 1: would try to flee, like they would because dogs are intelligent,
Speaker 1: and so one of the details I was reading is
Speaker 1: that you would have the turnspit dog that I get,
Speaker 1: it's not in the wheel all the time. One presumes
Speaker 1: that it's just sort of either hanging out in the
Speaker 1: kitchen or around the house. And then if the dog
Speaker 1: begins to observe the telltale signs of a roast being prepared, uh,
Speaker 1: if we'll run off and hide because there's no it
Speaker 1: knows what's coming. Yeah, And there are explicit tales of
Speaker 1: cruelty in some cases, at least like where authors at
Speaker 1: the time right that some cruel cooks if a dog
Speaker 1: didn't keep the wheel turning at a satisfactory rate, that
Speaker 1: mean cook would put a hot coal into the wheel
Speaker 1: with the dog, so the dog would be made to
Speaker 1: run to escape the coal, which continually tumbled in the
Speaker 1: wheel after it was Obviously it's horrible. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like it was always equally bad everywhere.
Speaker 1: Like some luckier dogs worked in pairs, trading off in
Speaker 1: shift so that one could rest while the other worked.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe they would have a rest today while the
Speaker 1: other worked for a day, or they could trade off,
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't know by the hour or
Speaker 1: something like that. Right, So there is there is the
Speaker 1: possibility for a less cruel model at it. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, as we discussed later, there there were
Speaker 1: individuals who who who specifically pointed out the practice as cruelty, yes,
Speaker 1: and as as one rare piece of good news in
Speaker 1: this story. In the seventeen fifty six Sinographia, Carl Linnaeus,
Speaker 1: again the Swedish scholar, wrote the when he was writing
Speaker 1: about turnspit dogs, that as a reward for their hard work,
Speaker 1: turnspit dogs would often get to eat a piece of
Speaker 1: the steak. That's good, you know, I guess well, I
Speaker 1: doubt that the cook who's putting the hot coal in
Speaker 1: there with them is also giving them a taste of
Speaker 1: the roast. But I imagine gender kitchen, it would vary
Speaker 1: to give a bit of flavor about what this was
Speaker 1: like to see in person from from people who were
Speaker 1: there witnessing firsthand. I want to read one often sided
Speaker 1: passage that comes from a work called Anecdotes of Dogs
Speaker 1: by Edward Jesse from the nineteenth century. Uh So, here's
Speaker 1: what Jesse writes, how well do I recollect, in the
Speaker 1: days of my youth watching the operations of a turnspit
Speaker 1: at the house of a worthy old Welsh clergyman in Worcestershire.
Speaker 1: As he had several borders as well as day scholars,
Speaker 1: his two turnspits had plenty to do. They were long bodied,
Speaker 1: crooked legged, and ugly dogs, with a suspicious unhappy look
Speaker 1: about them, as if they were weary of the task
Speaker 1: they had to do and expected every moment to be
Speaker 1: seized upon to perform it. Cooks in those days were
Speaker 1: very cross, and if the poor animal, wearied with having
Speaker 1: a larger joint than usual to turn, stopped for a moment,
Speaker 1: the voice of the cook might be heard rating him
Speaker 1: in no very gentle terms. When we consider that a large,
Speaker 1: solid piece of beef would take at least three hours
Speaker 1: before it was properly roasted. We may form some idea
Speaker 1: of the task a dog has to perform in turning
Speaker 1: a wheel. During that time, a pointer has pleasure in
Speaker 1: finding game. The terrier worries rats with considerable glee, the
Speaker 1: greyhound pursues hairs with eagerness and delight, and the bulldog
Speaker 1: even attacks bulls with the greatest of energy. While the
Speaker 1: poor turnspit performs his task by compulsion like a culprit
Speaker 1: on a treadwheel, subject to scolding or beating. If he
Speaker 1: stops a moment to rest his weary limbs and then
Speaker 1: kicked about the kitchen when his task is over, that
Speaker 1: had some stark condemnation. And and of course, and it
Speaker 1: totally it does. It does bring to mind all of
Speaker 1: the popular chef TV reality shows in which the chef
Speaker 1: is is just nasty to humans. Uh, you know, one
Speaker 1: can imagine how nasty a chef could be of this
Speaker 1: stereotypical TV chef could be to the poor the four
Speaker 1: spit dog. I wonder why is that such a common
Speaker 1: stereotype of angry, yelling chef who's meaned all the cooks
Speaker 1: working for them? Is that Is that just an accident
Speaker 1: a cultural contingency, or does is does that grow naturally
Speaker 1: out of the kind of work that happens in kitchens
Speaker 1: with the heat and the rapid pace of work and everything.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it'd be interesting to hear from people,
Speaker 1: because I know it, and I've heard shows where people
Speaker 1: are talking about like regional differences. Um goodness me. I'm
Speaker 1: terrible at remembering what podcast I've listened to before, what
Speaker 1: what radio shows, But I specifically remember listening to a show. No,
Speaker 1: it was a documentary, it was it was visual about
Speaker 1: I believe it was a British couple that had moved
Speaker 1: to Thailand to open a Thai restaurant and they're using
Speaker 1: Thai chefs, and I believe it was the wife was
Speaker 1: was Tai and the husband was was British and so
Speaker 1: he was used to the more British kitchen culture and
Speaker 1: when they when they were setting up a shop in Thailand,
Speaker 1: like she advised him, look, you can't yell at staff
Speaker 1: like you you did back in Britain. It's a different
Speaker 1: culture here. If you yell at them, they just won't
Speaker 1: come back to work the next day. So that anecdote
Speaker 1: in that show would lead me to believe that it
Speaker 1: does gonna is It is gonna vary greatly from culture
Speaker 1: to culture, and maybe what we see on TV is
Speaker 1: largely a product of sort of the you know, the
Speaker 1: big city high cuisine and um, you know, major metropolitan
Speaker 1: parts of Europe and the United States, or maybe even
Speaker 1: something specifically about like angry British food cuisine culture, because
Speaker 1: almost all the angry chefs I can think of are
Speaker 1: like British guys. Yeah, I want to see one of
Speaker 1: the gentle chef but maybe it just takes forever for
Speaker 1: the for the food to come out. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you never really know what they were like actually in
Speaker 1: their work. But I mean, as far as TV persona
Speaker 1: has come along, there are some gentle chefs. I think
Speaker 1: of Paul Prudom, you know, he always seemed like such
Speaker 1: a lovely, gentle soul. But I wanted to turn back
Speaker 1: to turnspit dogs for a second here. Uh So, there's
Speaker 1: a fact about them that cited in multiple sources that
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting is that apparently it was a
Speaker 1: well known custom on Sundays to take turnspit dogs out
Speaker 1: of the kitchen and bring them to church with you. Uh,
Speaker 1: not just to have his companions at church, but specifically
Speaker 1: to be used quote as foot warmers. Footwarmers, I guess,
Speaker 1: so you put your feet on the dog and the
Speaker 1: dog is warm. Maybe I assume it's cold in church,
Speaker 1: and that I don't know, lessons the pain of going
Speaker 1: to church somewhat, I guess. And it sounds like a
Speaker 1: step up for the dog. But not that that's saying
Speaker 1: much though. This actually led to a number of popular
Speaker 1: church jokes at the expense of the poor turnspit dogs.
Speaker 1: Bondison notes a couple of these. I'll read a quote
Speaker 1: from from jam Bondison quote. According to an eighteenth century joke,
Speaker 1: the Bishop of Gloucester once preached to a church in Bath,
Speaker 1: uttering the line, it was then that Ezekiel saw the wheels.
Speaker 1: This is the passage from the prophet Ezekiels is the
Speaker 1: wheels coming in the sky and uh. And Bondiston continues
Speaker 1: at the mention of this dreaded word, all the turnspit
Speaker 1: dogs ran for the door, their tails between their legs,
Speaker 1: and then Bondison mentions that another version of the story
Speaker 1: has the bishop talking about the horrors of hell, where
Speaker 1: there's like roasting and turning on a spit. And again
Speaker 1: the mention of these words sends all the foot warmer
Speaker 1: dogs running to escape, and it's it's a clever joke,
Speaker 1: but it does get back to the idea that the dogs,
Speaker 1: dogs are intelligent, and dogs would pick up on the cues.
Speaker 1: They might well pick up on the particular words like this,
Speaker 1: but but even on I think even the smaller signs
Speaker 1: like they're just just little clues that everyone is preparing
Speaker 1: for a feast right now, Robert, I think you turned
Speaker 1: up some examples of other animals that were used in
Speaker 1: a similar fashion. Yeah, yeah, so this is something that
Speaker 1: b brings up in their book, because, like we've been
Speaker 1: touching on, the dog was awfully smart, perhaps too smart
Speaker 1: for the work, and could run and hide. Uh. So
Speaker 1: there were some who said at the turnspit goose was
Speaker 1: the preferred method, uh, that you would get you would
Speaker 1: get a goose in there, and it would perform better
Speaker 1: and longer, uh and would be less prone to outthink
Speaker 1: the chefs. So we have thus far we have turnspit children,
Speaker 1: turnspit dogs, and the turnspit goose. But of course there
Speaker 1: was like there was an arc of the turnspit dog,
Speaker 1: the turnspit dog is a convention came and went. Jan
Speaker 1: Bondison writes that in seventeen fifty, uh, turnspit dogs would
Speaker 1: be found all over the place in Great Britain, extremely common.
Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty people still knew about them. It was
Speaker 1: like a thing you could make reference to, and and
Speaker 1: people knew what it was. But they'd become more scarce
Speaker 1: at that point, and by nineteen hundred they had almost
Speaker 1: completely vanished. There. There were just a few here and
Speaker 1: there left. Uh. And of course the main reason is
Speaker 1: the increasing availability of mechanical alternatives like clock jacks, which
Speaker 1: we will talk about more in a bit, But there
Speaker 1: was also an accompanying shift in social norms. I think,
Speaker 1: not just against animal cruelty, which was a thing that
Speaker 1: changed somewhat in social conventions over time, but by the
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century, when turnspit dogs were increasingly rare,
Speaker 1: to be seen with a turnspit dog in your kitchen
Speaker 1: came to be interpreted as a sign of poverty, of
Speaker 1: sort of backwardness or old fashioned nous, or just of eccentricity.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of thing you might have, like
Speaker 1: you're saying at the at the cracker barrel wall. You know,
Speaker 1: people putting up weird stuff and having a strange attraction
Speaker 1: at their inn or restaurant. Uh, you could have a
Speaker 1: turnspit dog. Would be like, isn't that quaint? The old
Speaker 1: school turnspit dog, Like this would be even like today,
Speaker 1: of course even more so, like this would be a
Speaker 1: moment in a horror film. Yeah, yeah, you know the
Speaker 1: cup of Young Cuckball. There a car breaks down and
Speaker 1: they're invited into the you know, the warm uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the living room of this eccentric individual, and there on
Speaker 1: the wall is a turnspit dog running in its wheel, uh,
Speaker 1: to operate the rotissory. Right, it's a sign you should
Speaker 1: turn around and go back. Now we'll come back to
Speaker 1: the question of whether the turnspit dog was actually a
Speaker 1: breed of dog or not. But Bondison argues that the
Speaker 1: disuse of the wheel turned spits over time, and you
Speaker 1: know again by the beginning of the twentieth century that
Speaker 1: almost completely vanished. That the disuse of this technology led
Speaker 1: to the extinction of the breed of dog known as
Speaker 1: the turnspit dog, since the looks and the temperament of
Speaker 1: the dog made them mostly unattractive as pets. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the extremely few records of turnspit dogs being
Speaker 1: kept as pets after the decline of their role in
Speaker 1: the kitchens is that Queen Victoria herself kept three quote
Speaker 1: turnspit tykes as personal pets at winds Or Castle. So
Speaker 1: whatever you think of Queen Victoria otherwise she she took
Speaker 1: in some turnspit tykes. Well, yeah, that was pretty decent.
Speaker 1: And you know what it also speaks we touched on
Speaker 1: the cleverness that would still be innate in the turn
Speaker 1: spit dog. But also like it also shows the dogs
Speaker 1: other longstanding ability uh could not be bred out of it.
Speaker 1: Its ability to bond with humans, to you know, to
Speaker 1: look up at humans with those uh, those eyes that
Speaker 1: seem you know, almost you know, watery, with devotion and
Speaker 1: emotion and and and enabling this bond to form and
Speaker 1: and indeed, a bond to form with the most powerful
Speaker 1: individual insaid country, the bond between them and the lowest
Speaker 1: domesticated animal. Well, you know, you you could identify many
Speaker 1: of the great powers of the dog as a species.
Speaker 1: You know, they have an amazing sense of smell. You
Speaker 1: can you can see their determination and dedication and hard
Speaker 1: work in many cases to the tasks they set to.
Speaker 1: But I think it could easily be argued that the
Speaker 1: ultimate superpower of the dog is their ability to form
Speaker 1: emotional connections with humans more so than any other. After all,
Speaker 1: they've they've lived alongside us so long, longer again than
Speaker 1: any of the domesticated animals. All right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into the legacy of the turnspit dog.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, all right. I think we should
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the legacy of the turnspit dog
Speaker 1: in English literature, because references to them show up in
Speaker 1: English literature roughly from like the fifteen hundreds, when the
Speaker 1: turnspit dog first became popular, uh, roughly to the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: It kind of cuts off after in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And it makes sense, right because if especially in in
Speaker 1: in Britain, if this was something that was to be
Speaker 1: found in pretty much every household or in a lot
Speaker 1: of households anyway, it would be a common frame. There
Speaker 1: would be a common frame of reference. It would be
Speaker 1: a common even in perhaps a metaphor for expressing something
Speaker 1: about the human condition, and so it might not surprise
Speaker 1: you that, since it goes back to the hundreds, it
Speaker 1: shows up in Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, Dromeo
Speaker 1: of Syracuse says, I amazed ran from her as a witch,
Speaker 1: and I think, if my breast had not been made
Speaker 1: of faith, in my heart of steel, she had transformed
Speaker 1: me into a curtail dog and made me turn in
Speaker 1: the wheel. So curtail dog there refers I think to
Speaker 1: the docking of the tail and curtailed like cut off,
Speaker 1: and and that seems to have something to do with
Speaker 1: the social class or status or value of the dogs,
Speaker 1: like the uh, the more valuable breeds that would would
Speaker 1: have belonged to rich people. I think we're more likely
Speaker 1: to have the full tail, whereas the tail was curtailed
Speaker 1: and breeds that were maybe for working, like in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: That's where we get the word curtail. Yes, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: all right, and all sorts of discoveries are taking place
Speaker 1: with the stopping. Well, actually, I want to go back.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's where we get the word curtail.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that means cut short, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but let's just say that is where we get but
Speaker 1: by Brian Cummins account, usually a curtail dog in Shakespearean
Speaker 1: references is a reference to a turnspit dog. There's another
Speaker 1: quote in the Mary Wife of windsor quote Hope is
Speaker 1: a kurtil dog in some affairs, and Cummins links this
Speaker 1: to the futility of hope in some cases, like to
Speaker 1: the futility of the work in the turnspit wheel, that
Speaker 1: it just goes on and on. Another one is that
Speaker 1: some authors have even alleged that the saying every dog
Speaker 1: has its day comes from the turnspit dog tradition. I
Speaker 1: think this has not proven. I can't find strong evidence
Speaker 1: linking the saying to the roasting spit. But the the
Speaker 1: idea is that since many kitchens would have two dogs
Speaker 1: in some cases, they would trade off every other day,
Speaker 1: so you'd have a day where you work in the
Speaker 1: wheel and then you'd have a day of rest. And
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, this English expression does probably
Speaker 1: show up during the Tudor period in the fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: which is also the time when turnspit dog wheels became
Speaker 1: common in England, but again I can't prove that's where
Speaker 1: the phrase comes from. Interesting yeah, and it's like there's
Speaker 1: this handy example of of of of cruelty in every household,
Speaker 1: and of course it makes into language or in this
Speaker 1: case potentially Yeah. Unfortunately, it's like every reference to it
Speaker 1: in English literature is to the fact that it is
Speaker 1: wretched work, that it's something you don't want to have
Speaker 1: to do, that it's hard, that it can be cruel.
Speaker 1: In fact, even not just not just hard work and cruel,
Speaker 1: but Sisyphean literally because Bondison also quotes a quote a
Speaker 1: rare collection of poems entitled Norfolk Drollery, And here's the
Speaker 1: quote this, I confess he goes around around a hundred
Speaker 1: times and never touches ground, and in the middle circle
Speaker 1: of the air he draws a circle like a conjurer
Speaker 1: with eagerness. He still does forward tend like Sisyphus, whose
Speaker 1: journey has no end. Of course, is the what the
Speaker 1: Titan that is punished by having to push the rock
Speaker 1: up the hill and then it rolls back down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's Titans that You're probably right
Speaker 1: about that, Yeah, but in Greek mythology, having to push
Speaker 1: the boulder up the hill only to have it roll
Speaker 1: back down again every time he's somebody who ticked off
Speaker 1: a guy that. But it's interesting because then why a
Speaker 1: mythology is usually the handy metaphor to turn to. It's like,
Speaker 1: for this period of time, you had to replace Sisiphus.
Speaker 1: You'd replace myth because you had the real life Sisiphus
Speaker 1: installed in your home. That's the epic struggle that everybody
Speaker 1: can relate to because they've seen one of these in
Speaker 1: the kitchen. Uh. And it turns out we mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 1: but there were other similar dog powered machines in human history.
Speaker 1: For some reason, always especially in whales. I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but whales in western England seemed like the epicenter for
Speaker 1: dog powered machines. So you had dog powered butter turns,
Speaker 1: dog powered fruit presses, dog powered grain wheels, even water
Speaker 1: wheels to draw water up from a well. And then
Speaker 1: later I was reading about how in England and in
Speaker 1: the United States there were a few examples of dog
Speaker 1: powered printing presses. Wow, like, I mean, it really sounds
Speaker 1: like we're almost getting into the realm of dog punk.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, well, that could be a great like
Speaker 1: whole family plus dog Halloween costumes, some kind of dog
Speaker 1: punk outfit actually, and that's someone should do this. You
Speaker 1: could have a scenario where it's like a dog punk world,
Speaker 1: but of course the dogs are heroes and they of
Speaker 1: course escape and rebel, so sort of like dog punk
Speaker 1: meets Rats of nim basically rights itself. Yeah. So we
Speaker 1: we talked before about the question of whether the turnspit
Speaker 1: dog was actually a breed of dog. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot of speculation about which dog breeds most resemble or
Speaker 1: are most closely related to the turnspit dog. According to Bondison,
Speaker 1: the docks In and the Bassett Hound have been proposed,
Speaker 1: but Boniston thinks these are bad candidates. Maybe better candidates
Speaker 1: for relations are the glen of imaal terrier, which greatly
Speaker 1: resembles historical reports of the turnspit dogs, though has a
Speaker 1: more terrier like head. And this was but this was
Speaker 1: also a dog that was definitely used to hunt vermin. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we're getting into that area to where perhaps this
Speaker 1: is a dog that had a dual role, Like we
Speaker 1: have these rat catcher dogs. I need them to turn
Speaker 1: this wheel. Go grab one of those rat catcher dogs
Speaker 1: and throw in the wheel. Yeah, I think that's highly plausible,
Speaker 1: especially early on you know, and maybe they were bred
Speaker 1: more for wheel duties as time went on. Another bit
Speaker 1: better candidate also is apparently the Welsh Corgy, which is
Speaker 1: ironic because of the famous Welsh corgy Corgis, who are
Speaker 1: royal companions at the castles of the British monarchy, which
Speaker 1: might sort of fit with the story of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Queen Victoria taking in turnspit dogs as pets. I mean,
Speaker 1: because perhaps you end up with another selective breeding situation.
Speaker 1: The cutest of the turnspit dogs are taken in by
Speaker 1: the queen, and you get you get Corgis. I can
Speaker 1: see it, though I don't know how far back Corgis go.
Speaker 1: Might that may not actually match up with the corgy lineage,
Speaker 1: and perhaps we'll hear from Corky breeders in that right.
Speaker 1: So Cummins ultimately argues that, given all of the disparate
Speaker 1: reports about size, appearance, coat, and so forth, that the
Speaker 1: turnspit dog, in his mind, probably was not a distinct
Speaker 1: breathe of dog, but rather was any small dog that
Speaker 1: could be trained to turn the wheel, though he believes
Speaker 1: they were mostly derived from terrier breeds. So we've got
Speaker 1: these different I think it's not fully settled whether the
Speaker 1: turnspit dog was a breed of dog or wasn't in
Speaker 1: the large part, maybe sort of a breed of dog
Speaker 1: or just was was a class of types of dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we might be in that area where it was
Speaker 1: on its way in some regions towards becoming a breed.
Speaker 1: But ultimately and thankfully the practice does go away. There
Speaker 1: is one known taxidermy turnspit dog at the Abergavenny Museum
Speaker 1: in Wales. It's a named Whiskey. I've included a picture
Speaker 1: for you to look at here, Robert. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a small dog with short kind of bent or crooked legs,
Speaker 1: and it is a cute dog. I could see a
Speaker 1: dog like this, uh, you know, earning its way out
Speaker 1: of the wheel and into the hearts of a queen. Now,
Speaker 1: b rights that turnspit dogs were used in America into
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and uh, and that you had an
Speaker 1: the animal rights advocate by the name of Henry Burg
Speaker 1: who lobbied against their use, and he ultimately succeeded in
Speaker 1: bringing some shame to the practice, but with limited consequences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were there were at least some cases where he
Speaker 1: like identified turnspit dogs that were being used in some
Speaker 1: cities as like as where there was obvious cruelty, and
Speaker 1: he like took the people who were who owned the
Speaker 1: dogs to court. Yeah, and he would make surprise visits
Speaker 1: and kitchens to catch the dogs and their use and
Speaker 1: reportedly be rights. In some cases he found that the
Speaker 1: dogs had been replaced by young black children. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: It commins rights about that too, that in some cases
Speaker 1: when the dogs were removed, uh that human children were
Speaker 1: used in the role, especially black children, and that Berg
Speaker 1: tried to to advocate on behalf of the children who
Speaker 1: were put through this cruelty too in some cases, arguing that, like,
Speaker 1: will children not be given the same rights as an animal? Yeah, thankfully. However,
Speaker 1: you know, even though we started with children and then
Speaker 1: dogs enter the picture, than geese of the picture, thankfully,
Speaker 1: going back to children is not the change that ultimately
Speaker 1: brought the end of the turnspit dog. Right, just as
Speaker 1: dogs replaced some human turnspits early on, automotive power ultimately
Speaker 1: replaced the majority of dogs, and and it started not
Speaker 1: the majority, but it started somewhat as early as the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century and would just go on to replace dogs
Speaker 1: more and more for spit turning as time went on.
Speaker 1: So Bondison writes that Leonardo da Vinci, of course invented
Speaker 1: an automatic spit turning device that was called a smoke jack,
Speaker 1: And it worked sort of on the principle of a windmill,
Speaker 1: except inside a chimney. So smoke and hot air rising
Speaker 1: from the fireplace up into the chimney would rotate a
Speaker 1: turbine with several blades, and then the turbine, driven by
Speaker 1: the smoke and the rising gases, would generate rotational energy
Speaker 1: that could be transferred by belt or chain to the
Speaker 1: roasting spit. Yeah, it's a clever, clever invention. It would
Speaker 1: later see some use. One of the drawba to it,
Speaker 1: of course, is that you do have to, uh, you
Speaker 1: have to feed a lot of fuel to the fire.
Speaker 1: You have to keep the fire up. You have to
Speaker 1: keep that updraft powerful enough to turn the machinery. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There were several problems with the smoke jack model. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was improved upon incrementally in later decades after Da
Speaker 1: Vinci's invention of it. Bondison notes that records indicate smoke
Speaker 1: jack's were in use in England during the time of
Speaker 1: Samuel Peeps, who was an English naval administrator and prolific
Speaker 1: diarist who whose journals give us a window into much
Speaker 1: about what English life was like at the time, which
Speaker 1: was like sixteen thirty three to seventeen oh three. But
Speaker 1: even these later improved models of smoke jack's were still dirty,
Speaker 1: They were unreliable, and yeah, they required a very hot
Speaker 1: fire and a lot of you know, putting off, so
Speaker 1: a lot of fuel essentially to get them spinning at
Speaker 1: the right rate. But even with those limitations, they could
Speaker 1: do the work of a lot of dogs. Bondison writes,
Speaker 1: quote in the early nineteenth century, Lowther Castle near Penrith
Speaker 1: had a particularly advanced smoke jack drive, driving eight horizontal
Speaker 1: and four vertical spits, saving the labor of not less
Speaker 1: than twelve turnspit dogs. But another automated solution, and I
Speaker 1: think the one that ultimately really replaced turnspit dogs, was
Speaker 1: also in existence by the sixteenth century, and this was
Speaker 1: the clock jack, sometimes called the meat jack, had other
Speaker 1: names as well. Yeah, the clock jacks used a suspended
Speaker 1: weight or a spring that you would wind up at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the cooking process to store potential energy
Speaker 1: that would slowly be released with a steady rotation mechanism,
Speaker 1: and it worked much better than any of the other
Speaker 1: known methods. Yeah. Basically consisted of a weight suspended from
Speaker 1: a cord and wound around a cylinder. The weight slowly descended,
Speaker 1: the power transferred through a series of cogs and pulleys
Speaker 1: and powered one or even multiple spits. Uh Sometimes there
Speaker 1: was even a bell included which would ring when it
Speaker 1: stopped when the food was done. Even uh So some
Speaker 1: commentators have likened it to a modern microwave and that respect.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting, But did it have a popcorn function?
Speaker 1: I bet not, so you might be asking the question
Speaker 1: and wait a second. If clock jacks existed since the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, as long as smoke jacks and almost as
Speaker 1: long as the turnspit dogs, like why were inferior turnspit
Speaker 1: engines such as dogs or smoke jacks or whatever used
Speaker 1: at all? And the main answer here has cost. You know,
Speaker 1: clock jacks, especially early on, were expensive. They these were
Speaker 1: mechanisms that had intricate you know, clockwork issue designs which
Speaker 1: were too expensive for standard homes and ends. But I
Speaker 1: think as time went on, as they became cheaper to
Speaker 1: produce or mass produce, you could get them cheaper, and
Speaker 1: more people would replace their turnspit dogs with an automatic
Speaker 1: system like a clock jack. And indeed Be points out
Speaker 1: that by around seventy eight the meat jack was just
Speaker 1: highly praised as as a method to keep the meat turning. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you actually would find them in nearly half of
Speaker 1: English households. Uh. And that's of all households, not just
Speaker 1: the rich ones, but that just all English households. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know these culinary robots as being caused them. Uh,
Speaker 1: they did the job. They didn't invoke even a tinge
Speaker 1: of shame. Uh. And it wouldn't run off and hide
Speaker 1: like a turnspit dog. And we know this. We know
Speaker 1: that it was in in in pretty much half of
Speaker 1: all households based on probate inventories of the deceased, so
Speaker 1: this would be where you know they go. They had
Speaker 1: records of what were in the households of people who
Speaker 1: had died, and so they knew like this house had
Speaker 1: had a head of clockjack, this house had a clockjack,
Speaker 1: and ultimately we can say like half of England had
Speaker 1: a clock jack in their house, thus driving away the
Speaker 1: necessity of the turnspit dog. So you would hope that
Speaker 1: that what would have happened historically is that there was
Speaker 1: a great awakening of people, you know, turning away from
Speaker 1: animal cruelty and human cruelty for these these biologically powered
Speaker 1: spits and saying hey, there's a better way. But no,
Speaker 1: it sounds like probably it was more like technology and
Speaker 1: economics that played the main role in replacing dogs and
Speaker 1: humans to turn spits. Yeah, and so you you had
Speaker 1: you know a number of these gadgets came into play,
Speaker 1: not only the clockwork jack but also the smoke jack,
Speaker 1: which who entered earlier had become the designs had become better. Uh.
Speaker 1: Still there were certain design problems with it, but you
Speaker 1: saw them implemented. Other English inventors experimented with steam water
Speaker 1: clock were various, like even more elaborate clockwork wonders. Uh
Speaker 1: spit Roasting meat was just such a central part of
Speaker 1: the English way of life that it attracted the sort
Speaker 1: of endless innovation that we see now and things like
Speaker 1: coffee preparation. Yeah, like everybody's got to have their coffee,
Speaker 1: and so you see so many endless varieties of ways
Speaker 1: to make a cup of coffee and still continue to
Speaker 1: see new innovations in coffee percolation design, right. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then of course, once electricity came along, I think that
Speaker 1: was a huge game changer, right, because now rotisseries pretty
Speaker 1: much all of them are going to be electrically powered. Right.
Speaker 1: And the other big factor that B points out is that,
Speaker 1: you know, with with with all these jacks, we had
Speaker 1: an increasingly high tech invention based around rather old cooking methodology,
Speaker 1: the like open hearth cooking, cooking something in front of
Speaker 1: that big open fireplace. But then this went out of
Speaker 1: style during the mid nineteenth century, and so did the
Speaker 1: meat jack and its related meat turning robots. Though of
Speaker 1: course this just spit roasting itself of course did not
Speaker 1: go away. Spit roasting itself lives on, as to do
Speaker 1: various mechanical rotisseries. You can you can buy them for
Speaker 1: your backyard grill. You can buy you can you know,
Speaker 1: certainly you can see them at the grocery store, the
Speaker 1: butcher shopper anywhere. Uh. Chickens or other meats are are,
Speaker 1: you know, turning about and cooking in their own juices.
Speaker 1: But thankfully you will not find dogs turning tiny wheels
Speaker 1: to power them. I gotta say this one was interesting,
Speaker 1: but it tugged on my heart strings. Yeah, I mean certainly.
Speaker 1: I mean in a way, it's this is human techno history, right,
Speaker 1: you have you have to consider the light in the dark. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean also just seeing the way changes in
Speaker 1: technology and culture are constantly interacting with each other as
Speaker 1: time goes on, the way the technology influences what's culturally
Speaker 1: appropriate and acceptable and that, and then then cultural values
Speaker 1: affecting what kind of technology is in demand. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then also I'm just so interested in the fact that
Speaker 1: you had, uh, some very old technologies that were remaining
Speaker 1: the same, but this one aspect of the process kept
Speaker 1: getting altered, you know, like the cauldron and the spit itself. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's nothing modern about that. The heart itself did not
Speaker 1: change for so long, but there was like a one
Speaker 1: pivot in the process that was where you saw all
Speaker 1: this innovation and then ultimately everything else changes as well. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: now in the twenty one century, we can cook all
Speaker 1: of our food in the microwave. Yes, and hopefully I
Speaker 1: think the plan is so this November, of course, we
Speaker 1: are doing a lot of food based episodes that you know,
Speaker 1: we'll do food based episodes the rest of the year
Speaker 1: as well as well, we have already, but we wanted
Speaker 1: to really focus in on food, given that this is
Speaker 1: a period of feast uh traditionally and especially in America.
Speaker 1: So hopefully we're gonna get to the microwave this month
Speaker 1: as well. It'll melt your brain in the best way,
Speaker 1: all right. Uh, well, I'm sure everybody has some thoughts
Speaker 1: on this. Uh. You know, whether you're a fan of
Speaker 1: spitted turning meat or a fan of dogs, or like
Speaker 1: you know all of us. H you know someone who is,
Speaker 1: you know, starkly offended by the prospect of putting children
Speaker 1: to work, five year olds to work in a in
Speaker 1: a in a kitchen, uh, performing manual labor. Uh. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. You can reach out
Speaker 1: to us a number of different ways. You can also
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