Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you a special
Speaker 1: bonus episode that is not not an original Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind episode, but an episode of the other
Speaker 1: show that Robert and I do, Invention, which is an
Speaker 1: exploration of human techno history. Uh, stories about like the
Speaker 1: things they made and how they in turn shaped our
Speaker 1: lives and the development of our species. And you know
Speaker 1: there's a reason we're doing this today is because we
Speaker 1: checked in with the machine and it turns out there
Speaker 1: are some of you that listen to this show but
Speaker 1: have not gone to check out Invention yet. What's wrong
Speaker 1: with you? No, no, we know everybody's time is precious.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of shows to listen to. We put
Speaker 1: out a lot of shows. Some of you just haven't
Speaker 1: gotten around to it yet. But hey, here you are.
Speaker 1: You're already listening to an episode of Inventions. Time to
Speaker 1: just tuck in and keep going. Don't worry. This one's
Speaker 1: a pretty weird one, that's right. We thought it would
Speaker 1: be great for the Stuff to blew your mind, crowd,
Speaker 1: because this is an episode about dog based cooking technology,
Speaker 1: not not cooking dogs, not cooking dogs to eat, but
Speaker 1: using dogs in order to power the technology that cooks
Speaker 1: your food. Yes, dog powered machines that help you cook
Speaker 1: you know, other animals, not dogs. We can't stress that enough.
Speaker 1: No dogs are going to be eaten in this episode.
Speaker 1: So obviously we hope you enjoyed this episode of Invention.
Speaker 1: We also really hope you go over to check out
Speaker 1: the separate Invention feed. The podcast is called Invention. If
Speaker 1: you don't already listen, hit the subscribe button, and then
Speaker 1: if you really want to do us a favor, if
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, Robert and Joe bring me these episodes
Speaker 1: every week, I really enjoy them. I want to help
Speaker 1: them out. You know what you can do. It's quite easy.
Speaker 1: Just download like every episode of Invention, get them all,
Speaker 1: listen to all of them, set our numbers on fire,
Speaker 1: and you benefit in the process. Yeah. I mean we
Speaker 1: we did a several different episodes over the holidays about toys,
Speaker 1: and each episode is kind of a grab bag of
Speaker 1: different toys. So we discussed Legos for instance, and one
Speaker 1: of them talk about the history of Lego Blocks, how
Speaker 1: those Lego bricks came together, and sort of a brief
Speaker 1: history of that company, as well as other inventions like
Speaker 1: the Yo Yo, and we mentioned the Chinese Yo Yo
Speaker 1: and one of those episodes the Uh the Apola and
Speaker 1: I got to use one just last weekend and at
Speaker 1: a Chinese New Year celebration they had some on hand.
Speaker 1: There was somebody there to to show me how to
Speaker 1: use one, and I have to say they are hypnotic.
Speaker 1: Do you want to be hypnotized with knowledge and fascination
Speaker 1: of the technology of ages past? If so, check out Invention. Subscribe,
Speaker 1: download like every episode you can find, get on it,
Speaker 1: help us, help yourself. We think you're gonna love it.
Speaker 1: All right, let's jump right in. Welcome to Invention, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Land and I'm Joe Cormick. And today
Speaker 1: we're continuing our trek through human techno history, and we're
Speaker 1: going to begin with The flint Stones. Okay, Uh. If
Speaker 1: you've ever watched The flint Stones, the Old Uh in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties American cartoon, you're probably familiar with their over
Speaker 1: the top cartoon world in which you know, you have,
Speaker 1: you have these cavemen, but they're also it's also like
Speaker 1: a commentary to a limited 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 prehistoric creature
Speaker 1: based technology. Oh yeah, clearly. That's the big draw of
Speaker 1: the series, is the curiosity what kind of dinosaur is
Speaker 1: going to be playing the role of a toilet today? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because well, they didn't use dinos to power everything for it.
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. Yeah,
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 abnets 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. This is because
Speaker 1: they were definitely not humans coexisting with dinosaurs. Uh. They
Speaker 1: had a mammoth based uh system of running water, didn't
Speaker 1: They also have a tiny mammoth that was like the
Speaker 1: vacuum cleaner. They used it to be as the hose
Speaker 1: or maybe it's young. I don't know how this worked.
Speaker 1: There was also a I'm not sure it was a
Speaker 1: bird or terra saar based camera, So like you hold
Speaker 1: up the camera to take the picture and the small
Speaker 1: winged creature uses its beak to then a chisel the
Speaker 1: image into a piece of stone. That's funny that it's
Speaker 1: some kind of bird as a dishwasher, it was like
Speaker 1: a pelican. Yeah, it looked a lot like a pelican.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, if you need a kitchen knife,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? Use a sawfish? Why not
Speaker 1: a rock? Why not a like a flint stone. It's
Speaker 1: it's there in the name flint hilarious. If it is
Speaker 1: an actual sword of fish, I guess, but that defeats
Speaker 1: the purpose. I mean why you would use an animal
Speaker 1: in place of a machine is that an animal is
Speaker 1: complex and has moving parts and can generate motive power.
Speaker 1: If you just need a knife or something that seems
Speaker 1: like real stone age technology would work just as well.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, um. And then of course there's the added
Speaker 1: fact that they have a pet dinosaur named Dino who
Speaker 1: is just there for companionship. Now all of this is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and even today we watch it and we laugh at
Speaker 1: it because it's a ridiculous exaggeration of animal labor. Each dinosaur,
Speaker 1: prehistar creature is highly specialized. So you know, either the
Speaker 1: humans of the flint Stones just found the right animals
Speaker 1: to perform these very specific functions, or like us real
Speaker 1: life humans, they bred them to encourage certain traits, traits
Speaker 1: that would make them ideal for highly specific specialized tasks
Speaker 1: such as living under your sink and eating all of
Speaker 1: your wraps. That's right. And to explore this concept further,
Speaker 1: today we're going to look at a real historical example, uh,
Speaker 1: certainly not the only example of an animal bread for
Speaker 1: a certain job within the house of providing some kind
Speaker 1: of motive power. Of course, we know farm animals, draft animals,
Speaker 1: pack animals have been doing this kind of thing for millennia.
Speaker 1: But today we're gonna be looking at a very strange
Speaker 1: specific case from history. The turnspit dog, a breed of
Speaker 1: domestic dog that is bred to run around a small
Speaker 1: wheel to power e rotisserie. Yes, and this is this
Speaker 1: is this is amazing. I was I had not heard
Speaker 1: of this before, so this was like suddenly, It's like
Speaker 1: suddenly realizing the flint Stones were real to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: But but this is gonna be a great episode as well,
Speaker 1: because it's not just going to be about this dog.
Speaker 1: It's going to be about sort of two or three
Speaker 1: additional technologies that factor in to this period in time
Speaker 1: in which dog labor was used to help cook big
Speaker 1: chunks of meat. Right, So I guess first we always
Speaker 1: asked the question here what came before this invention? So
Speaker 1: obviously we should look at the dog itself, and the
Speaker 1: dog in a way, if you sort, if you sort
Speaker 1: of squint, it is sort of a human invention. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's a product of nature. So we like, we
Speaker 1: didn't create you know, canines generally, but the domestic dog
Speaker 1: and the domestic dog breeds that exist have in many
Speaker 1: ways been guided by human hands to greater and lesser extents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not you know, it's not necessary a
Speaker 1: situation where a prehistoric h you know, number of human
Speaker 1: society said that is a good wolf creature out there.
Speaker 1: I have a few pointers for what we might change
Speaker 1: in it, but that is essentially the process that ends
Speaker 1: up taking place. So yes, before you can have a
Speaker 1: dog powered meat spinning grill machine, you have to have
Speaker 1: a domestic dog, and in brief, the domestic dog dates
Speaker 1: back an estimated twelve thousand years to the Near East,
Speaker 1: before the cat, before the sheep, before a goat, and
Speaker 1: before the horse. The dog maybe man's best friend, and
Speaker 1: it is certainly one of his oldest non human friends.
Speaker 1: It is the oldest recognizably domestic animal. And we know
Speaker 1: they were used some eleven thousand years ago in post
Speaker 1: glacial Europe by hunter gatherers, and they were almost certainly
Speaker 1: used in hunting. Interestingly enough, it's sometimes questioned why humans
Speaker 1: didn't actually domesticate the dogs sooner than this, and one
Speaker 1: idea is that there was even more incentive to domesticate these,
Speaker 1: you know, the wild wolf like creatures into the domesticated
Speaker 1: dog in the post glacial world, because you increasingly then
Speaker 1: had to track wounded animals that you've wounded during the
Speaker 1: you know, the hunt through wooded regions. Increasingly wooded regions
Speaker 1: is the forest return and a dog's superior sense of
Speaker 1: smell could make a huge difference in that task. So
Speaker 1: the dog was a pre farming domestic species, and that's
Speaker 1: something that's really essential to note because the at I
Speaker 1: think we've touched on this before. If not an invention,
Speaker 1: then unstuff to blow your mind. You know, the cat
Speaker 1: comes about as an investigated species in the post farming
Speaker 1: world because of the post farming surplus of food. Right,
Speaker 1: So in the in the post farming world, you might
Speaker 1: have say stores of grain or other foods in a
Speaker 1: settled location that you're not moving around from, and those
Speaker 1: might attract to say rats or something like that that
Speaker 1: would get into your grain, And then the cat can
Speaker 1: follow the rats. Right. And then these areas other species,
Speaker 1: many of them of course our food species that we
Speaker 1: domesticated so so as to uh control them and not
Speaker 1: have to hunt them anymore. They live with us, and
Speaker 1: we kill them when we desire to kill them. But
Speaker 1: of course, as great as dogs can be and continue
Speaker 1: to be, and in the in aiding the hunt, we
Speaker 1: know that they can be bred to specialize in a
Speaker 1: number of key tasks. And I have a short list
Speaker 1: here that I thought we might go back and forth
Speaker 1: on again, much like we did with the dinosaurs of
Speaker 1: the Flintstones. So you can of course breed a dog
Speaker 1: of many generations to fetch felled foul. That's kind of
Speaker 1: a tongue twister, but yeah, you can see maybe you
Speaker 1: shoot down a bird, you don't know exactly where it went,
Speaker 1: but the dog can find it. Essentially, the dog is
Speaker 1: still aiding in the hunt, but it's a more specialized
Speaker 1: version of aiding in the hunt. Now, the other thing
Speaker 1: would be playing more of a role we think of
Speaker 1: with cats these days, are ridding the home area or
Speaker 1: the food storage areas of rats and other vermin. Right.
Speaker 1: Another one is to aid in fishing specifically, and this
Speaker 1: is one of the breeds you see this with is
Speaker 1: the Newfoundland dog, which is a you know, a kin
Speaker 1: to the Labrador retriever. The Labrador retriever fetches felled foul,
Speaker 1: but the traditionally but the Newfoundland dog is there to
Speaker 1: retrieve floats and ropes from dangerous icy waters. Now, of
Speaker 1: course we see lots of shepherd ng dogs in world
Speaker 1: traditions that they can help control the movements and direction
Speaker 1: of flocks. Right, Um, a big scary dog with a
Speaker 1: loud bark has long been used and uh and and
Speaker 1: is still used to as as protects and 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 made 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: offer 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, animals that are there to
Speaker 1: provide motive power, we don't often think of the dog
Speaker 1: this way. And yet nevertheless, the dog has been used
Speaker 1: for these purposes in many ways around the world all
Speaker 1: throughout history. And one of those ways is what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today, pairing dogs for motive power
Speaker 1: with a specific type of cooking technology, which is the turnspit,
Speaker 1: the practice of using a dog to turn a wheel
Speaker 1: like a hamster wheel to turn a rotisserie in a kitchen. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, but before we really started researching this, the
Speaker 1: only example that would have come to mind would be
Speaker 1: sled dogs, where the dog is used for locomotion to
Speaker 1: pull a sled across snow. Yeah. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of people using dogs to uh, to
Speaker 1: pull carts and things like that. Uh and there carry
Speaker 1: a pack, yes, us exactly. But later in the episode
Speaker 1: we'll also talk about other types of more treadmill based
Speaker 1: motive power that come from dogs. Another important thing to
Speaker 1: note when we're talking about all these different things that
Speaker 1: dogs have been bred for, and and this is kind
Speaker 1: of this is one of those sort of overstatements of
Speaker 1: the obvious, but the role changes the form of the dog.
Speaker 1: So like when we're talking about these dogs that are
Speaker 1: that were bred to, you know, to catch rats and
Speaker 1: to chase vermin, we're often dealing with dogs that are
Speaker 1: that are small in stature that can chase the rat
Speaker 1: into its hiding places. Likewise, the dogs that are used
Speaker 1: for tracking and in many cases involving the hunt as well,
Speaker 1: are often some of the absolute best smellers and are
Speaker 1: just you know, ideal for tracking and and in all
Speaker 1: of this too we get into the problem of the
Speaker 1: modern world sometimes where someone will have a pure bred dog,
Speaker 1: a dog that has been whose evolution has been hijacked,
Speaker 1: uh to you know, for the specific function, and then
Speaker 1: it signs itself as a pet without a without necessarily
Speaker 1: having an avenue for that special power that it has
Speaker 1: been given through selective breeding. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's funny that people will have a dog for
Speaker 1: a pet and they don't even realize what the that
Speaker 1: dog breed that their pet is was was originally bred for.
Speaker 1: And so they may notice behavioral characteristics of the dogs
Speaker 1: that come through without knowing why that dog is like
Speaker 1: so attuned to chasing after my certain moving objects, or
Speaker 1: why that dog has to sniff everything. Yeah, I've I've
Speaker 1: heard though of specific cases where especially urban dogs um
Speaker 1: have you know, their owners will make an effort to
Speaker 1: find outlets like find a place where they can herd
Speaker 1: a single sheep around and use that energy, or these
Speaker 1: groups that will go through I think it's New York.
Speaker 1: I heard a radio I think it's an NPR story
Speaker 1: about this, where people with traditionally vermin hunting dogs will
Speaker 1: get together and basically to go on a big rat
Speaker 1: chase the streets, you know, because that's that's what the
Speaker 1: dog wants. Right. So we've bred plenty of breeds for
Speaker 1: different tasks, but I guess we should turn to the
Speaker 1: other half of the equation here, leading to the turnspit dog,
Speaker 1: which is the rotisseriy. Yes, the rotissory. So if you've
Speaker 1: been to the supermarket, I think you know the basic
Speaker 1: idea here because you've probably seen rotisserie chickens, right, but
Speaker 1: this this, uh, it's a chicken on a spit, and
Speaker 1: usually they're like multiple spits creating this whole carousel of
Speaker 1: rotisserie chickens. And they're moving under some sort of heat source,
Speaker 1: you know, being a lamp or some sort of actual
Speaker 1: you know, heating element. But you've probably also seen it
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen like the spit for donor kebab
Speaker 1: or for euros. These are traditionally done where there's a
Speaker 1: heat element on one side and there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: you know, seasoned meat that's on a spit that constantly rotates.
Speaker 1: And the idea what the constant rotation is to provide
Speaker 1: even heat right meat is skewered and emplaced over or
Speaker 1: adjacent to a heat source. But then what happens if
Speaker 1: you don't turn it. You're gonna get one side of
Speaker 1: the meat that's hideously burned and one side of the
Speaker 1: meat that is perhaps undercooked even you, but it's not
Speaker 1: what you want. You want uniform heating around the meat
Speaker 1: and within the meat. And this method actually still works.
Speaker 1: One of their Robert, do you ever encounter steak world?
Speaker 1: You know, this whole world world wisdom and false wisdom
Speaker 1: about what you're supposed to do or not do with steaks.
Speaker 1: It can be it can be a treacherous pass So
Speaker 1: used to when I when I still ate beef, and
Speaker 1: I would grill sometimes I had I had, I would
Speaker 1: look in a grill book and there would be a
Speaker 1: lot of wisdom there about how to do it. And
Speaker 1: then you go on the line and the would might be,
Speaker 1: you know, wisdom that set the opposite. Yeah, exactly. There's
Speaker 1: also a lot of like you know, dad wisdom kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that about this. One of the one of
Speaker 1: the steak myths that people often say is you should
Speaker 1: only turn your steak once. You know, you put it
Speaker 1: on the grill one side, let it go halfway on
Speaker 1: that side. Flip it once and let it go halfway
Speaker 1: on that side. Uh. That is not good wisdom. You
Speaker 1: can turn a steak as many times as you want
Speaker 1: if you're grilling it, and that actually helps the steak
Speaker 1: cook more evenly. Um. You know, by constantly turning it,
Speaker 1: you are not letting the heat build up too much
Speaker 1: on one side and overcook that side. Okay, Well, like
Speaker 1: a similar thing I do when I do grill, I
Speaker 1: tend to do veggie grilling, and so I'll do like
Speaker 1: a grill basket and I'll just make sure I I
Speaker 1: stir it up. Yea. And the same principles actually, I
Speaker 1: think would apply pretty well to vegetables. Probably the more
Speaker 1: you stir them, the more evenly cooked they're going to be.
Speaker 1: But in this case, we're continuing to talk about big
Speaker 1: hunks of meat. The bigger the better on a spit turning. Uh,
Speaker 1: So as to have that uniform cooking. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You've got to turn that spit, and the most basic
Speaker 1: way 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 tissory, you know, it was very much in vogue
Speaker 1: in the medieval world, and we see plenty of illustrations
Speaker 1: of their use, both both in you know, their terrestrial
Speaker 1: setting depictions of everyday medieval humans engaging in rotisserie cooking.
Speaker 1: But then you also see lots of these imagined realms
Speaker 1: of hell, to where if you see a big, elaborate
Speaker 1: depiction of eternal damnation, there's almost certainly going to be
Speaker 1: some individual spitted on a on a long skewer and
Speaker 1: then turned over a fire. Right, the culinary traditions of
Speaker 1: the time come through in our imaginations of torment. Right.
Speaker 1: And now the word rotissori. The rotisserie concept itself, of
Speaker 1: course is not too complicated, but the word comes goes
Speaker 1: back to France in around fourteen fifty years so, which
Speaker 1: is ironic because while there were versions 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 that is where spit roasting was an extremely popular
Speaker 1: form of cooking. That like in the European continent and
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the world, people would be more likely to
Speaker 1: use like ovens enclosures to cook inside if they were
Speaker 1: going to do a roast of meat at all or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Apparently, for some reason, English culture was
Speaker 1: just not into the ovens for roasting. They liked the
Speaker 1: open flame and the constantly turning spit. Yeah, yeah, absolutely both.
Speaker 1: I think the main sources we turn to in this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they center almost exclusively on England. Uh, that's where we
Speaker 1: look at the documentation of the of the spit and
Speaker 1: all of these additional details about how the practice changes. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's for two reasons. Number One, spit roasting
Speaker 1: in general seems a more popular form of cooking in
Speaker 1: Great Britain, and then beyond that, where spit roasting is done,
Speaker 1: it seems like the dog was a more popular way
Speaker 1: of doing it in Great Britain than it was elsewhere. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the sources that I I used in in
Speaker 1: my research here is an excellent book by one B.
Speaker 1: Wilson called Consider the Fork, a History of how We
Speaker 1: Eat and uh. And you know, one thing that's important is,
Speaker 1: even though we have this cartoony and perhaps even flint
Speaker 1: Stonian idea of meat spitted above a fire and roast
Speaker 1: in turned, I think this is how the Ewoks were
Speaker 1: attempting to to to consume the heroes in Star Wars,
Speaker 1: right maybe. I mean they've got them hanging from a stick.
Speaker 1: It would be kind of awkward actually spitted. I guess
Speaker 1: they weren't spitted. There would be a lot of like
Speaker 1: tumbling and falling around the ropes they were hanging from.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how well that would work for
Speaker 1: somebody I thought they were going to eat somebody I
Speaker 1: thought that they were going to eat them. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just don't know if they would have turned to them.
Speaker 1: I think they probably would have just burned them on
Speaker 1: one side and then they do all right. Well, Well,
Speaker 1: one thing that that B. Wilson points out is that
Speaker 1: the spit was typically located next to a fire and
Speaker 1: not over it for most of the cooking. You would
Speaker 1: only position it more over the fire towards the end
Speaker 1: to toast it, sort of like in an oven. Now
Speaker 1: you uh, you know, you might bake something and then
Speaker 1: broil it to the last you know, few minutes to
Speaker 1: get it a little crispy on top. Right, then that
Speaker 1: makes sense putting it next to the fire, I think
Speaker 1: you could get gentle er, more even heat throughout right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of times in England we're talking about
Speaker 1: open hearth cooking too, so that just makes more sense.
Speaker 1: Right the fire is in the fireplace and then your
Speaker 1: eu rotisserie is positioned in front of the fireplace. But
Speaker 1: for open hearth cooking, you have to understand that this
Speaker 1: means the kitchen, especially near the fireplace, is going to
Speaker 1: be a sweltering environment and somebody's got to turn that spit.
Speaker 1: And according to B. Wilson, before we put the spit
Speaker 1: dogs to work turning the spit, we used turnspit boys. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's hilarious and at
Speaker 1: the same time it is so disturbing. So only only
Speaker 1: during the sixteenth and seventeen centuries. Did the dogs take
Speaker 1: over the work? Really? Uh? And they took over the
Speaker 1: work from human children. She includes a quote from biography
Speaker 1: John Aubrey, who said, quote in olden times, the poor
Speaker 1: boys did turn the spits and licked the dripping pans.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, the drippings. Yeah, and Be describes this as
Speaker 1: perhaps the worst of the many quotes soul destroying jobs
Speaker 1: in the rich medieval kitchen. Here's a passage from their
Speaker 1: book quote by the reign of Henry the Eighth, The
Speaker 1: king's household had whole battalions of turnspits, charring their faces
Speaker 1: and tiring their arms to satisfy the royal appetite for
Speaker 1: roast capin's and ducks, venison and beef crammed in cubby
Speaker 1: holes to the side of the fireplace. The boys must
Speaker 1: have been near roasted themselves as they labored to roast
Speaker 1: the meats. Until the year fifteen thirty, the kitchen staff
Speaker 1: at Hampton Court worked either naked or in scanty, grimy garments.
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth addressed the situation not by relieving the
Speaker 1: turnspits of their duties, but by providing the master cooks
Speaker 1: with a clothing allowance with which to keep the junior
Speaker 1: staff decently closed and therefore even hotter. It's horrible. I
Speaker 1: mean this, this lines up with everything I've read that
Speaker 1: the turnspit role was essentially the lowest rank in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: It was the last job you'd want to have, because
Speaker 1: it's like, it's not only sweltering hot, hard work, it's
Speaker 1: also incredibly dull and repetitive. You know, you're not getting
Speaker 1: much variety. You're just standing there by a really hot fire,
Speaker 1: turning a crank at a steady pace for hours and
Speaker 1: hours at a time. It's kind of it's like Conan
Speaker 1: the Barbarian, you know, running the mill exactly. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's very important that the crank had to be turned
Speaker 1: at a steady rate. You couldn't have the person turning
Speaker 1: the crank take a break for a few minutes and
Speaker 1: go do something else, because then the meat would burn
Speaker 1: on that side, so you had to keep it turning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's it's grueling, just monotonous manual labor
Speaker 1: here and uh and even though it's not even just
Speaker 1: the big kingly houses, even lesser houses used them, and
Speaker 1: they were they were actually seen as acceptable well into
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century in England, and uh and uh also
Speaker 1: in Scotland. B rights that Scottish highlander John McDonald born
Speaker 1: seventeen forty one. He was an orphan and at the
Speaker 1: age of five he worked the spit in a household. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think this comes through in common expressions within
Speaker 1: the English language of the period, Like there was the
Speaker 1: expression turn spit to like refer insulting lee to someone.
Speaker 1: It was essentially you would call somebody a turnspit to
Speaker 1: suggest they were like lowly and not worth your time,
Speaker 1: that they were wretched in some way. But around the
Speaker 1: Tutor area, which was roughly like the sixteenth century, you know,
Speaker 1: late fourteen hundreds through the end of the fifteen hundreds, uh,
Speaker 1: technology changed the picture somewhat. For this is when kitchens
Speaker 1: in in England started using the rotisserie spit powered by
Speaker 1: belt and dog wheel. So maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then when we come back we can
Speaker 1: discuss more about the turnspit dog. All right, So here's
Speaker 1: where we're gonna look at the turnspit dog and the
Speaker 1: wheel itself. So I guess I should mention a couple
Speaker 1: of sources that I used for This one is a
Speaker 1: book by Jan Bondison called Amazing Dogs, A Cabinet of
Speaker 1: Canine Curiosities from Amberley Publishing, two thousand eleven. And another
Speaker 1: is a book by Brian D. Cummins, who is a
Speaker 1: cultural anthropologist who's focused on the relationships between humans and dogs,
Speaker 1: and this book is called Our Debt to the Dog,
Speaker 1: How the Domestic Dog Helped Shape Human Societies from Caroline
Speaker 1: Academic Press. So, according to Cummins, the first published mention
Speaker 1: of turnspit dogs in history comes from a treatise published
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy six written by an author named Johannes
Speaker 1: or John Caius, who was quote Doctor of physic a
Speaker 1: in the University of Cambridge. And this is sometimes claimed
Speaker 1: to be the first English book written about dogs. I
Speaker 1: think he actually wrote it in Latin, but it was
Speaker 1: quickly translated by an assistant into English. Um and Cummins
Speaker 1: points out that right from the beginning, Kaius identifies the
Speaker 1: turnspit dog or what he spells the turns pete dog
Speaker 1: as a breed, which Cummins thinks is probably incorrect, and
Speaker 1: we'll come back to that more later. Whether the turnspit
Speaker 1: dog was a distinct breed of dog or not. But
Speaker 1: John Chias appears to have gotten a lot of things
Speaker 1: wrong about dogs in his book about dogs. He apparently
Speaker 1: didn't know much about dogs. But he's like, I'll write
Speaker 1: a book anyway. Um. But this, this being the first
Speaker 1: mentioned in literary history, I guess we should take a
Speaker 1: look at what he says. And so the text reads
Speaker 1: of the dog called turnspeed in Latin vuver sater, there
Speaker 1: is comprehended, under the curs of the coarsest kind, a
Speaker 1: certain dog in kitchen service, excellent for when any meat
Speaker 1: is to be roasted, 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 kitchen 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 ears standing up. Some turnspit dogs had
Speaker 1: gray and white fur, often with a white blaze down
Speaker 1: the face. Others were black or reddish brown. There may
Speaker 1: as well have been seven all 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: Why you utilize mainly as vermin um uh chasers, I
Speaker 1: don't actually know, but that sounds right. I know, there's
Speaker 1: like the rat terrier, yeah, uh so. Charles Darwin even
Speaker 1: made reference to the turnspit dog in On the Origin
Speaker 1: of Species. I had forgotten about this, but so, of course.
Speaker 1: One of Darwin's main arguments for his theory of evolution
Speaker 1: by natural selection was the artificial breeding of animals such
Speaker 1: as cattle and dogs. Showing the descent with modification was
Speaker 1: possible by the guidance of human breeders, and thus it
Speaker 1: could 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 it'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 and then existed only in isolated regions,
Speaker 1: but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, turnspit dogs were
Speaker 1: extremely common in Great Britain. Bondison writes that they were
Speaker 1: especially common in the west of England and particularly in
Speaker 1: the city of Bristol, and in Wales, especially South Wales.
Speaker 1: Bondison writes, quote in sixt thirty nine, when the cornishman
Speaker 1: Peter Mundy visited Bristol, he was amazed that there was
Speaker 1: quote scarce a house that hath not a dog to
Speaker 1: turn the spit in a little wooden wheel. So he's
Speaker 1: not just talking about palaces or like ends with big
Speaker 1: kitchens there. He's saying scarcely a house. So that's where
Speaker 1: it was apparently most common, but that was less common.
Speaker 1: There are still records that there were turnspit dogs outside
Speaker 1: of Great Britain, in places like France, where they were
Speaker 1: shin tourn A Broches, or in Switzerland and Germany and Holland,
Speaker 1: and in North America. There even references to turn spit
Speaker 1: dogs in Ben Franklin's own Pennsylvania Gazette. But I mean
Speaker 1: we should recognize that something. So Cummins characterizes the turnspit
Speaker 1: dogs work as often quite wretched for the dog, so
Speaker 1: they they'd be having to power a wheel by walking
Speaker 1: essentially inside the wheel for hours at a time. These
Speaker 1: roasts take a long time to cook. Uh, And they
Speaker 1: were near the heat of the fire, which meant that
Speaker 1: their work was sweltering, and they were often dehydrated. And
Speaker 1: they can't take breaks because the wheel has to keep going. Well,
Speaker 1: they can in some cases. I'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a second. Generally the dog wheel was hung suspended from
Speaker 1: the ceiling next to the fireplace. Yeah. I believe their
Speaker 1: woodcuts that kind of show this as well, Like it
Speaker 1: almost looks like something you would see on a cracker
Speaker 1: barrel wall, right, you know, exactly, Yeah, except it has
Speaker 1: a living dog and it turning a crank um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is one of the things that's so interesting about
Speaker 1: this is all these other categories we've looked at or
Speaker 1: at least you know, disgusting in passing, in which we
Speaker 1: have reread a dog to to fulfill a specific task.
Speaker 1: Those tasks are exclusively i think in the wild, though,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's some version of the thing they
Speaker 1: would do, be it hunting a rat, or fetching a
Speaker 1: bird that's been shot out of the sky with with
Speaker 1: bow or or buckshot, you know, or or even swimming
Speaker 1: after fishing lures or or even pulling a sled. At
Speaker 1: least it is it is out in an environment. It
Speaker 1: is running across the countryside in this kind of artificially
Speaker 1: uh constructed pack structure. Well, yeah, you know, I would
Speaker 1: say even for more indoor dogs, like companion dogs that
Speaker 1: sit on your lap and cuddle with you, I mean
Speaker 1: that does seem more analogous to some kind of natural behaviors,
Speaker 1: you know, like din snuggling behaviors. Uh, this sort of
Speaker 1: like being trapped in a kitchen in a wheel turning
Speaker 1: the wheel does seem more estranged from the natural habitat
Speaker 1: and behaviors of a dog in the wild than any
Speaker 1: of these other uses I can think of. It is
Speaker 1: at best almost animal cruelty and probably just animal cruelty.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean in many cases surely. I mean
Speaker 1: it's hard to know because on one hand, like a
Speaker 1: lot of dogs do seem to kind of like enjoy
Speaker 1: having a task to do, But this seems like it's
Speaker 1: really hard work that is sustained for a long time.
Speaker 1: That like, there are lots of stories of the dogs
Speaker 1: not wanting to do it, like they would try to
Speaker 1: flee like they would because dogs are intelligent, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so One of the details I was reading is that
Speaker 1: you would have the turnspit dog that I get. I mean,
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 there is
Speaker 1: the possibility for a less cruel model of it. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, as we discussed later, there there
Speaker 1: were individuals who who who specifically pointed out the practice
Speaker 1: as cruelty, yes, and as as one rare piece of
Speaker 1: good news in this story. In the seventeen fifty six Sinographia,
Speaker 1: Carl Linnaeus, again the Swedish scholar, wrote the when he
Speaker 1: was writing about turnspit dogs that as a reward for
Speaker 1: their hard work, turnspit dogs would often get to eat
Speaker 1: a piece of the steak. That's good, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess well. I doubt that the cook who's putting the
Speaker 1: hot coal in there with them is also giving them
Speaker 1: a taste of the roast. But I imagine kitchen to kitchen,
Speaker 1: it would vary. To give a bit of flavor about
Speaker 1: what this was like to see in person from from
Speaker 1: people who were there witnessing it firsthand. I want to
Speaker 1: read one often cited passage that comes from a work
Speaker 1: called Anecdotes of Dog by Edward Jesse from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Uh So, here's what Jesse writes, How well do I
Speaker 1: recollect in the days of my youth? Watching the operations
Speaker 1: of a turnspit at the house of a worthy old
Speaker 1: Welsh clergyman in Worcestershire. As he had several borders as
Speaker 1: well as day scholars, his two turnspits had plenty to do.
Speaker 1: They were long bodied, crooked legged, and ugly dogs with
Speaker 1: a suspicious, unhappy look about them, as if they were
Speaker 1: weary of the task they had to do and expected
Speaker 1: every moment to be seized upon to perform it. Cooks
Speaker 1: in those days were very cross, and if the poor animal,
Speaker 1: wearied with having a larger joint than usual to turn,
Speaker 1: stopped for a moment, the voice of the cook might
Speaker 1: be heard rating him in no very gentle terms. When
Speaker 1: we consider that a large solid piece of beef would
Speaker 1: take at least three hours before it was properly roasted,
Speaker 1: we may form some idea of the task a dog
Speaker 1: has to perform in turning a wheel. During that time,
Speaker 1: a pointer has pleasure in finding game, The terrier worries
Speaker 1: rats would consider durable glee. The greyhound pursues hairs with
Speaker 1: eagerness and delight, and the bulldog even attacks bulls with
Speaker 1: the greatest of energy. While the poor turnspit performs his
Speaker 1: task by compulsion, like a culprit on a treadwheel, subject
Speaker 1: to scolding or beating. If he stops a moment to
Speaker 1: rest his weary limbs and then kicked about the kitchen
Speaker 1: when his task is over, that has some stark condemnation.
Speaker 1: And and of course, and totally it does. It does
Speaker 1: bring to mind all of the popular chef TV reality
Speaker 1: shows in which the chef is is just nasty to humans. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one can imagine how nasty a chef could be.
Speaker 1: Uh of this stereotypical TV chef could be to the poor,
Speaker 1: the four spit dog. I wonder why is that such
Speaker 1: a common stereotype of the angry, yelling chef who's meaned
Speaker 1: all the cooks working for them? Is that? Is that
Speaker 1: just an accident a cultural contingency? Or does is does
Speaker 1: that grow naturally out of the kind of work that
Speaker 1: happens in kitchens, with the heat and the rapid pace
Speaker 1: of work and everything. I don't know. It'd be interesting
Speaker 1: to hear from people, because I know it, and I've
Speaker 1: heard shows where people were talking about like regional differences. Um,
Speaker 1: goodness me, I'm terrible remembering what podcast I've listened to before?
Speaker 1: What what radio shows. But I specifically remember listening to
Speaker 1: a show. No it was a documentary, it was it
Speaker 1: was visual about I believe it was a British couple
Speaker 1: that had moved to Thailand to open a Thai restaurant
Speaker 1: and they're using Thai chefs, and I believe it was
Speaker 1: the wife was was Thai and the husband was was
Speaker 1: British and so he was used to the more British
Speaker 1: kitchen culture. And when they when they were setting up
Speaker 1: a shop in Thailand, like she advised him, look, you
Speaker 1: can't yell at the staff like you you did back
Speaker 1: in Britain. It's a different culture here. If you yell
Speaker 1: at them, they just won't come back to work the
Speaker 1: next day. So that anecdote in that show would lead
Speaker 1: me to believe that it does gonna. It is gonna
Speaker 1: vary greatly for culture to culture, and maybe what we
Speaker 1: see on TV is is largely a product of sort
Speaker 1: of the you know, the big city high cuisine and
Speaker 1: um you know, major metropolitan parts of Europe and the
Speaker 1: United States, or maybe even something specifically about like angry
Speaker 1: British food cuisine culture, because almost all the angry chefs
Speaker 1: I can think of, or like British guys. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to see one of the gentle chef, but maybe
Speaker 1: it just takes forever for the for the food to
Speaker 1: come out. Well, I mean, you never really know what
Speaker 1: they were like actually in their work. But I mean,
Speaker 1: as far as TV personas come along, there are some
Speaker 1: gentle chefs. I think of Paul Prudom, you know he
Speaker 1: he always seemed like such a lovely, gentle soul. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to turn back to Turnspit dogs for a
Speaker 1: second here. Uh So, there's a fact about them that
Speaker 1: cited in multiple sources that I thought was interesting, which
Speaker 1: is that apparently it was a well known custom on
Speaker 1: Sundays to take turnspit dogs out of the kitchen and
Speaker 1: bring them to church with you. Uh not just to
Speaker 1: have his companions at church, but specifically to be used
Speaker 1: quote as foot warmers. Footwarmers, I guess, so you put
Speaker 1: your feet on the dog and the dog is warm.
Speaker 1: Maybe I assume it's cold in church, and that I
Speaker 1: don't know, lessens the pain of going to church somewhat,
Speaker 1: I guess, And it sounds like a step up for
Speaker 1: the dog, but not that that's saying much though. This
Speaker 1: actually led to a number of popular church jokes at
Speaker 1: the expense of the poor turnspit dogs. Bondison notes a
Speaker 1: couple of these. I'll read a quote from from jam
Speaker 1: Bondison quote. According to an eighteenth century joke, the Bishop
Speaker 1: of Gloucester once preached to a church in Bath, uttering
Speaker 1: the line it was then that Ezekiel saw the wheels.
Speaker 1: This is the passage from the prophet ezekiels the wheels
Speaker 1: coming in the sky and uh, and Boniston continues at
Speaker 1: the mention of this dreaded word, all the turnspit dogs
Speaker 1: ran for the door, their tails between their legs. And
Speaker 1: then Bondison mentions that another version of the story has
Speaker 1: the bishop talking about the horrors of hell, where there's
Speaker 1: roasting and turning on a spit, and again the mention
Speaker 1: of these words sends all the foot warmer dogs running
Speaker 1: to escape. And it's it's a clever joke, but it
Speaker 1: does get back to the idea that the dogs. Dogs
Speaker 1: 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 that 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: error to be seen with a turnspit dog in your
Speaker 1: kitchen came to be interpreted as a sign of poverty,
Speaker 1: of sort of backwardness, or old fashioned nous, or just
Speaker 1: of eccentricity. It was the kind of thing you might have,
Speaker 1: like you're saying at the at the cracker barrel wall,
Speaker 1: you know, people putting up weird stuff. You're having a
Speaker 1: strange attraction at their inn or restaurant. Uh, you could
Speaker 1: have a turnspit dog. Would be like, isn't that quaint?
Speaker 1: The old school turnspit dog? Like this would be even
Speaker 1: like today, of course, even more so, like this would
Speaker 1: be a moment in a horror film. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the cup of young cuck ball. There car breaks down
Speaker 1: and they're invited into the you know, the warm uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the living room of this eccentric individual, and
Speaker 1: they're on the wall is a turnspit dog running in
Speaker 1: its wheel to operate the rotissory. Right, it's a sign
Speaker 1: you should turn around and go back. Now we'll come
Speaker 1: back to the question of whether the turnspit dog was
Speaker 1: actually a breed of dog or not. But Bondison argues
Speaker 1: that the disc use of the wheel turned spits over time,
Speaker 1: and you know again by the beginning of the twentieth
Speaker 1: century that almost completely vanished. That the disuse of this
Speaker 1: technology led to the extinction of the breed of dog
Speaker 1: known as the turnspit dog, since the looks and the
Speaker 1: temperament of the dog made them mostly unattractive as pets.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the extremely few records of turnspit
Speaker 1: dogs being kept as pets after the decline of their
Speaker 1: role in the kitchens is that Queen Victoria herself kept
Speaker 1: three quote turnspit tykes as personal pets at winds Or Castle.
Speaker 1: So whatever you think of Queen Victoria otherwise she she
Speaker 1: took 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 that the
Speaker 1: dogs other long standing ability uh could not be bred
Speaker 1: out of it its ability to bond with humans, to
Speaker 1: you know, to look up at humans with those uh,
Speaker 1: those eyes that seem almost you know, watery with devotion
Speaker 1: and emotion and and and enabling this bond to form
Speaker 1: and and indeed, a bond to form with the most
Speaker 1: powerful individual insaid country, the bond between them and the
Speaker 1: lowest domesticated animal. Well, you know, you you could identify
Speaker 1: many 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. Alright, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: going to take another break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into the legacy of the turnspit dog. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, all right. I think we should talk a
Speaker 1: bit of out the legacy of the turnspit dog in
Speaker 1: English literature, because references to them show up in English
Speaker 1: literature roughly from like the fifteen hundreds, when the turnspit
Speaker 1: 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 curtailed dog there refers, I think to
Speaker 1: the docking of tail and curtailed like cut off, and
Speaker 1: and that seems to have something to do with the
Speaker 1: social class or status or value of the dogs, like
Speaker 1: the uh, the more valuable breeds that would would have
Speaker 1: belonged to rich people. I think we're more likely to
Speaker 1: have the full tail, whereas the tail was curtailed in
Speaker 1: 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, I'm 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 Wives of windsor quote Hope is
Speaker 1: a curtail 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 thirst have even alleged that the saying every dog
Speaker 1: has its day comes from the turnspit dog tradition. I
Speaker 1: think this is not proven. I can't find strong evidence
Speaker 1: linking the saying to the roasting spit. But the idea
Speaker 1: is that since many kitchens would have two dogs, in
Speaker 1: some cases, they would trade off every other day, so
Speaker 1: you'd have a day where you work in the wheel
Speaker 1: and then you'd have a day of rest. And from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, this English expression does probably show
Speaker 1: up during the Tudor period in the fifteen hundreds, which
Speaker 1: is also the time when turnspit dog wheels became common
Speaker 1: in England, but again I can't prove that's where the
Speaker 1: phrase comes from. Interesting, Yeah, and it's like there's this
Speaker 1: handy example of of of of cruelty in every household,
Speaker 1: and of course it makes its way into language or
Speaker 1: in this case potentially Yeah. Unfortunately, it's like every reference
Speaker 1: to it in English literature is to the fact that
Speaker 1: it is wretched work, that it's something you don't want
Speaker 1: to have to do, that it's hard, that it can
Speaker 1: be cruel. In fact, even not just not just hard
Speaker 1: work and cruel but Sisyphean literally because Bondison also quotes
Speaker 1: a quote a rare collection of poems entitled Norfolk Drollery,
Speaker 1: And here's the quote. This I confess he goes around
Speaker 1: around a hundred times and never touches ground. And in
Speaker 1: the middle circle of the air he draws a circle
Speaker 1: like a conjurer with eagerness. He still does forward tend
Speaker 1: like Sisyphus, whose journey has no ends? Of course, is
Speaker 1: the what the titan that is punished by having to
Speaker 1: push the rock up the hill and then it rolls
Speaker 1: back down. Yeah, I don't know if it's a titan.
Speaker 1: You're probably right about that. Yeah, but in Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: having to push the boulder up the hill only to
Speaker 1: have it roll back down again every time, he's somebody
Speaker 1: who ticked off a guy. That's sure. But that's interesting
Speaker 1: because then why why a mythology is usually the handy
Speaker 1: metaphor to turn to. It's like, for this period of
Speaker 1: time you had to replace Sisiphus. You'd replaced myth because
Speaker 1: you had the real life Sysiphus installed in your home.
Speaker 1: That's the epic struggle that everybody can relate to because
Speaker 1: they've seen one of these in the kitchen. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it turns out we mentioned this earlier, but there were
Speaker 1: other similar dog powered machines in human history. For some reason,
Speaker 1: always especially in whales. I don't know why, but whales
Speaker 1: in western England seemed like the epicenter for dog powered machines.
Speaker 1: So you had dog powered butter turns, dog powered fruit presses,
Speaker 1: dog powered grain wheels, even water wheels to draw water
Speaker 1: up from a well. And then later I was reading
Speaker 1: about how in England and in the United States there
Speaker 1: were a few examples of dog powered printing presses. Wow, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it really sounds like we're almost getting into
Speaker 1: the room of dog punk. I think, yeah, well, that
Speaker 1: could be a great like whole family plus dog halloween costumes,
Speaker 1: some kind of dog punk outfit actually, and that's someone
Speaker 1: should do this. You could have a scenario where it's
Speaker 1: like a dog punk world, but of course the dogs
Speaker 1: are heroes and they of course escape and rebel, so
Speaker 1: sort of like dog punk me eats Rats of nim
Speaker 1: basically rights itself. Yeah. Uh. So we we talked before
Speaker 1: about the question of whether the turnspit dog was actually
Speaker 1: a breed of dog. There's been a lot of speculation
Speaker 1: about which dog breeds most resemble or are most closely
Speaker 1: related to, the turnspit dog. According to Bondison, the docks
Speaker 1: in and the Bassett hound have been proposed, but Boniston
Speaker 1: thinks these are bad candidates. Maybe better candidates for relations
Speaker 1: are the glen of Imal terrier, which greatly resembles historical
Speaker 1: reports of the turnspit dogs, though has a more terrier
Speaker 1: like head. And this was but this was also a
Speaker 1: dog that was definitely used to hunt vermin. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we're getting into that area to where perhaps this is
Speaker 1: a dog that had a dual role, like we have
Speaker 1: these rat catcher dogs. I need something to turn this wheel.
Speaker 1: Go grab one of those rat catcher dogs and throw
Speaker 1: in the wheel. Yeah. I think that's highly plausible, especially
Speaker 1: early on, you know, and maybe they were bred more
Speaker 1: for wheel duties as time went on. Another bit better
Speaker 1: candidate also is apparently the well corgy, which is ironic
Speaker 1: because of the famous Welsh corgy Corgis, who are royal
Speaker 1: companions at the castles of the British monarchy, which might
Speaker 1: sort of fit with the story of the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: 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: breed 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 dog or was in 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 ter 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: early animal rights advocate by the name of Henry Berg
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 I identified turnspit dogs that were being used in
Speaker 1: some cities as like as where there was obvious cruelty,
Speaker 1: and he like took the people who were who owned
Speaker 1: the dogs to court. Yeah, and he would make surprise
Speaker 1: visits and kitchens to catch the dogs and they're use
Speaker 1: and reportedly be rights. In some cases he found that
Speaker 1: the 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
Speaker 1: that like, will children not be given the same rights
Speaker 1: as an animal? Yeah, thankfully. However, you know, even though
Speaker 1: we started with children and then dogs into the picture,
Speaker 1: then geese into the picture, thankfully, going back to children
Speaker 1: is not the change that ultimately brought the end of
Speaker 1: the turnspit dog. Right, just as dogs replaced some human
Speaker 1: turnspits early on automotive power ultimately replace the majority of dogs.
Speaker 1: And and it started not the majority, but it started
Speaker 1: somewhat as early as the sixteenth century and would just
Speaker 1: go on to replace dogs more and more for spit
Speaker 1: turning as time went on. So Bondison writes that Leonardo
Speaker 1: da Vinci, of course, invented an automatic spit turning device
Speaker 1: that was called a smoke jack, and it worked sort
Speaker 1: of on the principle of a windmill, except inside a chimney.
Speaker 1: So smoke and hot air rising from the fireplace up
Speaker 1: into the chimney would rotate a turbine with several blades
Speaker 1: and then the turbine driven by the smoke and the
Speaker 1: rising gases would generate rotational energy that could be transferred
Speaker 1: by belt or chain to the roasting spit. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a clever, clever invention. It would later see some use.
Speaker 1: One of the drawbacks to it, of course, is that
Speaker 1: you do have to, uh, you have to feed a
Speaker 1: lot of fuel to the fire. You have to keep
Speaker 1: the fire up, you have to keep that updraft powerful
Speaker 1: enough to turn it in machinery. Yeah, there were several
Speaker 1: problems with the smoke jack model. Uh. The it was
Speaker 1: improved upon incrementally in later decades after da Vinci's invention
Speaker 1: of it. Bondiston notes that records indicate smoke jack's were
Speaker 1: in use in England during the time of Samuel Peeps,
Speaker 1: who was an English naval administrator and prolific diarists who
Speaker 1: whose journals give us a window into much about what
Speaker 1: English life was like at the time, which was like
Speaker 1: sixteen thirty three to seventeen oh three. But even these
Speaker 1: later improved models of smoke jack's were still dirty, they
Speaker 1: were unreliable, and yeah, they required a very hot fire
Speaker 1: and a lot of you know, putting off, so a
Speaker 1: lot of fuel essentially to get them spinning at the
Speaker 1: right rate. But even with those limitations, they could do
Speaker 1: the work of a lot of dogs, Bondison writes. Quote
Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century, Lowther Castle near Penrith had
Speaker 1: a particularly advanced smoke jack drive, driving eight horizontal and
Speaker 1: four vertical spits, saving the labor of not less than
Speaker 1: twelve turnspit dogs. But another automated solution, and I think
Speaker 1: the one that ultimately really replaced turnspit dogs, was also
Speaker 1: in assistance by the sixteenth century, and this was the
Speaker 1: clock jack, sometimes called the meat jack, had other names
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. The clock jacks used a suspended weight
Speaker 1: or a spring that you would wind up at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the cooking process to store potential energy that
Speaker 1: would slowly be released with a steady rotation mechanism, and
Speaker 1: it worked much better than any of the other known methods. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically consisted of a weight suspended from a cord and
Speaker 1: wound around a cylinder. The weight slowly descended the power
Speaker 1: transferred through a series of cogs and pulleys and powered
Speaker 1: one or even multiple spits. Uh. Sometimes there was even
Speaker 1: a bell included which would ring when it stopped when
Speaker 1: the food was done even uh So some commentators have
Speaker 1: likened it to a modern microwave in that respect. Oh
Speaker 1: that's interesting, But did it have a popcorn function? No?
Speaker 1: I didn't, I bet not, So you might be asking
Speaker 1: the question, Wait a second. If clock jacks existed since
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, as long as smoke jack's and almost
Speaker 1: as long as the turnspit dogs, like, why were inferior
Speaker 1: turnspit engines such as dogs or smoke jacks or whatever
Speaker 1: used at all? And the main answer here has cost.
Speaker 1: You know, clock jacks, especially early on, were expensive. They
Speaker 1: these were mechanisms that had intricate, you know, clockwork issue
Speaker 1: designs which were too expensive for standard homes and ends.
Speaker 1: But I think as time went on, as they became
Speaker 1: cheaper to produce or mass produce, you could get them
Speaker 1: cheaper and more people would replace their turnspit dogs with
Speaker 1: an automatic system like a clock jack. And indeed Be
Speaker 1: points out that by around seventy eight, the meat jack
Speaker 1: was just highly praised as as a method to keep
Speaker 1: the meat turning. Uh. And you actually would find them
Speaker 1: in nearly half of English households. Uh. And that's of
Speaker 1: all households, not just the rich. Ones, but they just
Speaker 1: all English households. Uh. You know these culinary robots as
Speaker 1: being caused them. Uh, they did the job. They did
Speaker 1: invoke even a tinge of shame. Uh. And it wouldn't
Speaker 1: run off and hide like a turnspit dog. And we
Speaker 1: know this. We know that it was in in pretty
Speaker 1: much half of all households based on probate inventories of
Speaker 1: the deceased, so this would be where you know they go.
Speaker 1: They had records of what were in the households of
Speaker 1: people who had died, and so they knew like this
Speaker 1: house had had a head of clockjack, this house had
Speaker 1: a clockjack, and ultimately we can say like half of
Speaker 1: England had a clock jack in their house, thus driving
Speaker 1: away the necessity of the turnspit dog. So you would
Speaker 1: hope that that what would have happened historically is that
Speaker 1: there was a great awakening of people, you know, turning
Speaker 1: away from animal cruelty and human cruelty for these these
Speaker 1: biologically powered spits and saying hey, there's a better way.
Speaker 1: But no, it sounds like probably it was more like
Speaker 1: technology and economics that played the main role in replacing
Speaker 1: dogs and humans to turn spits. Yeah, and so you
Speaker 1: you had. You know, a number of these gadgets came
Speaker 1: into play, not only the clockwork jack, also the smoke jack,
Speaker 1: which who mentioned 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 spit.
Speaker 1: Roasting meat was just such a central part of the
Speaker 1: English way of life that it attracted the sort of
Speaker 1: endless innovation that we see now, and things like coffee preparation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like everybody's got to have their coffee, and so you
Speaker 1: see so many endless varieties of ways to make a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee and still continue to see new innovations
Speaker 1: in coffee percolation design, right. Uh. And then of course
Speaker 1: once electricity came along, I think that was a huge
Speaker 1: game changer, right because now rotisseries pretty much all of
Speaker 1: them are going to be electrically powered. Right. And the
Speaker 1: other big factor to be points out is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with with with all these jacks, we had
Speaker 1: an increasingly high tech invention based around rather old cooking
Speaker 1: method allogy the like open hearth cooking, cooking something in
Speaker 1: front of that big open fireplace. But then this went
Speaker 1: out of style during the mid nineteenth century, and so
Speaker 1: did the meat jack and its related meat turning robots.
Speaker 1: Though of course this just spit roasting itself, of course,
Speaker 1: did not go away. Spit roasting itself lives on, as
Speaker 1: to do various mechanical rotisseries. You can you can buy
Speaker 1: them for your backyard grill. You can buy you can
Speaker 1: you know, certainly you can see them at the grocery store,
Speaker 1: the butcher shopper anywhere. Uh, chickens or other meats are are,
Speaker 1: you know, turning about and cooking their own juices. But
Speaker 1: thankfully you will not find dogs turning tiny wheels to
Speaker 1: power them. I gotta say this one was interesting, but
Speaker 1: it tugged on my heart strings. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: they certainly. I mean in a way it's this is
Speaker 1: human techno history, right, you have you have to consider
Speaker 1: the light in the dark. Yeah, but I mean also
Speaker 1: just seeing the way changes in technology and culture are
Speaker 1: constantly interacting with each other as time goes on, the
Speaker 1: way the technology influences what's culturally appropriate and acceptable and
Speaker 1: that and then then cultural values affecting what kind of
Speaker 1: technologies in demand. Yeah, and then also I'm so interested
Speaker 1: in the fact that you had uh some very old
Speaker 1: technologies that were remaining the same, but this one aspect
Speaker 1: of the process kept getting altered, you know, like the
Speaker 1: cauldron and the spit itself. Uh, there's nothing modern about
Speaker 1: that that the hearth itself did not change for so long,
Speaker 1: but there was like a one pivot in the process
Speaker 1: that was where you saw all this innovation and then
Speaker 1: ultimately everything else changes as well. Fortunately, now in the
Speaker 1: twenty one century, we can cook all of our food
Speaker 1: in the microwave. Yes, and hopefully I think the plan
Speaker 1: is so this November, of course, we are doing a
Speaker 1: lot of food based episodes that you know, we'll do
Speaker 1: food based episodes the rest of the year as well
Speaker 1: as well. We have already, but we wanted to really
Speaker 1: focus in on food given that this is a period
Speaker 1: of feast uh traditionally and especially in America. So hopefully
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to the microwave this month as well.
Speaker 1: It'll melt your brain in the best way, all right. Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody has some thoughts on this. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: whether you're a fan of spitted turning meat, or a
Speaker 1: fan of dogs, or like you know all of us, uh,
Speaker 1: you know someone who is you know, starkly offended by
Speaker 1: the prospect of putting children to work, five year olds
Speaker 1: to work in a in a in a kitchen, uh,
Speaker 1: performing manual labor. Uh. We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can reach out to us a number of different ways.
Speaker 1: You can also find the podcast at invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where they all are, but you can also find
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Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
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