January 27, 2021 • 36 mins
In the early 1800s, Andrew Crosse observed a strange thing happening on an electrified rock in his lab, and he was catapulted into the public spotlight. But before that and after, his life and home at Fyne Court were filled with eccentric delights.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. After we
did our episode on John Cleaves Sims and his ideas
of the Earth being hollow, somebody suggested that we do
(00:24):
an episode on Andrew Cross. And I wrote all this down,
including the fact that he thought he invented life from crystals.
And now I'm going to totally depart from the document
that I gave Holly for our outline to come in
here because I just figured out who who suggested this.
What was originally written in this outline was that I
(00:47):
had gone looking in our email and our Facebook comments
and our our Twitter mentions, being like, who suggested this?
I wrote all this down and I did not write
down their name. Literally sitting in this student oh, I
was like, maybe it was a comment on our website.
It was a comment on our website from Kumari. I
(01:10):
hope I have said your name correctly. UM, I'm so
sorry if I did not who left the comment? How
about a podcast on Andrew Cross, who thought he created
life in eighteen thirty six with his crystals and electricity
because it's goofy. It is goofy. This was a joy
to work on UM. It also just came together with
(01:30):
remarkable ease, which is great because I was taken um
a long weekend and I wanted I needed to get
all my stuff done. Uh no shade at all to
Kumari if we're having left this comment on our um
on our website, but I will note we do not
get notification of comments on the website at Miston history
(01:51):
dot com. It is often weeks or longer before we
ever see anything on there, and we also do not
have the ability to turn the comments off because it's
like a whole company wide thing to have the comments
on there. So if you are going to leave a
comment on our website, we're probably not going to see
it in a timely manner and we may never respond
(02:11):
to it. But my last minute, literally sitting here in
the studio, oh maybe it was a comment on the website,
it was it was um Crosses account of what really
happened is a little bit more down to earth than
thinking that he invented life, or not invented life, but
created life with crystals and electricity. But it's still a
delightful story. It's a lot of fun to work on.
(02:34):
So thank you Kumari again. I hope I have said
your name right. I have a good check because I
literally made the connection just now. Yeah, thank you for
for suggesting this. So. Andrew Cross was born on June
seventeen at Fine Court in Broomfield, Somerset, England, and the
(02:55):
manor house at fine Court was first built in the
early seventeenth century, and then it was added onto over
the years, so by the time Cross was born it
had been his family's home for well over a hundred years.
Andrew's mother was named Susannah and his father was Richard Cross,
high Sheriff of Somerset. When Andrew was four, the family
moved to France and they stayed there for the next
(03:17):
four years. Andrew spoke both French and English by the
time he got back home, but after that he really
did not keep up with the French and he eventually
lost it all. Although he studied Latin and Greek in school,
he didn't really think he had much of an aptitude
for languages. However, he did invent a new language with
(03:37):
his younger brother, Richard, and the two of them made
up a world that was populated by beings they called
either hobble gs or hobble geese, we don't know for sure,
which they made out of fur cones. And they imagined
a whole society for the hobble geese, complete with its
own legal system and a system of government, which is
about as charming as you can get in my opinion.
(03:57):
In his own words, Andrew was quote a very happy boy, careless,
and extravagantly fond of fun, and both boys were somewhat
eccentric as they grew up. We're gonna get into Andrew's
eccentricities in more detail. But as for Richard, as one example,
he was really really into the metric system, so much
so that his clocks were divided into ten hours instead
(04:19):
of twelve. I have a number of questions about this, like,
if you're running your household on ten hour clocks, do
you just translate in your head to make sure you're
on time for your engagements or all? Are you always
not on time? We're going to have a talk about
this in our Friday episode super because your foolish co
(04:39):
host may have tried something similar as an adult. Oh,
I'm so excited. After the Cross Family got back from France,
Andrew was enrolled in a school in Dorchester that was
run by a reverend Mr. White, and then in when
he was nine, he moved to a school in Bristol
run by the Reverend Mr Samuel Sayer. In addition to
(05:02):
his work as a teacher, Sayer wrote memoirs historical and
topographical of Bristol in its neighborhood from the earliest period
down to the present time. Andrew did not really enjoy
his time at this school. He never felt like he
had enough to eat, and he thought the food that
they did have was terrible. He also didn't get along
with Sayer or some of the other teachers. Plus being
(05:24):
extravagantly fond of fun included getting into mischief and playing
jokes and pranks on people, like when a classmate asked
him for help translating some Latin, Andrew told him that
what he wanted translated meant the stork is safest in
the middle of the pond, when it really meant the
middle course is safest, and say you're Apparently did not
(05:45):
appreciate this particular brand of silliness. Some of the trouble
that Andrew got into at school was also more serious
than that. Andrew liked to make his own fireworks, and
that's what he was doing. One day, while he was
also studying his Virgil Sayer came and caught him and
took what he was working on a way in Andrew's
(06:05):
words quote, I watched where he put it. It was
on the window sill of a room which was always
kept locked. The window, though not glazed, had close iron
bars through which nothing could pass. The case was hopeless.
I could not recover my rocket mixture, but a happy
thought struck me. I was resolved that no one else
should enjoy the spoil, which I regarded as so valuable.
(06:29):
I had a burning glass in my pocket, and I
thought of Archimedes and the Roman fleet. The sun was shining,
and I soon drew a focus on the gunpowder, which
immediately blew up. It was well that the house was
not set on fire. As for me, I was reckless
of all consequences. At one point, some of the boys
(06:49):
at school decided to go on strike to try to
get longer holiday breaks. But beyond just refusing to go
to class, they were inspired by the British troops fighting
in the French Revolutionary Wars, so they also planned to
take over the school armed with muskets. This plan was
discovered and thwarted, thankfully before anybody carried it out, and
although the ringleaders were expelled and other participants were flogged,
(07:14):
Andrews somehow escaped notice. Aside from all of that, though,
Andrew's love of science, and particularly of electricity, really blossomed
while he was at Mr. Sayer's school. This might have
had roots back in his home life. His father was
actually friends with Benjamin Franklin. But while he was at
Sayer's school, Andrews saw an advertisement for a lecture series,
(07:38):
with the first installment being about optics and the second
about electricity. He asked for permission to go and that
was granted and things really took off from there. Soon
he and some schoolmates were shocking people with a laden
jar that they made from an apothecary's bottle. So a
laden jar is a vessel that store static electricity, in
(07:58):
this case probably a style uperd vile filled partway with
water with a wire through the stopper, which you charge
by touching the wire to something staticky. Before long, Andrew
was writing home to ask for money to buy various
electrical gadgetry. To be clear, this laden jar shocking would
not have been dangerous, but it would have been annoying.
(08:22):
Andrew's father died in eighteen hundred and he was sixteen,
and about that time he started to experience what he
described as nervous attacks, and they would recur regularly for
the rest of his life. While he had described himself
in childhood is happy and careless, he grew up to
be kind of a generally anxious person, with these attacks
(08:42):
coming on suddenly and lasting for as long as thirty
minutes at a time. In eighteen o two, Cross entered
Brazenose College at Oxford, which he called quote a perfect
hell on earth. Wine seemed to be the focal point
of social life at the college, and he hated wine.
He also hated his classmates, snobbery and classism, and later
(09:03):
on he said quote I was less liberal at this
time than at any other of my life. It took
some years to rub off the prejudices of class which
I had acquired at Oxford. Cross earned his degree in
law in eighteen oh five, and he also inherited fine
Court after his mother's death on July three of that
same year. This was one of a long series of losses.
(09:25):
Over a period of about five years. He lost both
of his parents, a sister, an uncle, two close friends,
and one of his household staff, who he described as
quote a most faithful and attached servant. It's not really
clear whether the grief over all of this led him
to abandon law, but he did. He gave up law
(09:45):
after two or three years. Instead, he established himself as
a country gentleman at fine court, becoming absorbed in studying electricity, mineralogy,
and chemistry. He also served as a magistrate, where he
developed a reputation and for being quite liberal, and he
wrote a lot of poetry. Cross became friends with George
(10:06):
John Singer, author of Elements of Electricity and electro Chemistry.
Like Cross, Singer was an amateur scientist whose family business
involved making artificial feathers and flowers, but he was knowledgeable
on the subject of electricity. He held public lectures and
demonstrations that were attended by people like Michael Faraday. Cross
(10:29):
and Singer did experiments together until Singer's death from tuberculosis
in eighteen seventeen at the age of only thirty one.
George John Singer had built a laboratory and lecture hall
at his own home. But Andrew Cross's efforts to devote
his home to research went even further. We'll talk more
about that after we pause for a sponsor break. In
(10:57):
eighteen oh seven, Andrew Cross became fascinated with crystal formations
and Hollwell Cavern, which is a limestone crevice in room
Field not far from where he lived. The entrance to
this cavern has since been filled in, and in Crosses
words quote, I felt convinced at an early period that
the formation and constant growth of the crystalline matter which
(11:20):
lined the roof of this cave was caused by some
peculiar upward attraction, and reasoning more on the subject, I
felt assured that it was electric attraction. Cross got a
tumbler of water out of the stream that ran through
the cavern, and he ran a current through it on wires,
and eventually some crystals did start to form. This was
(11:41):
the first of many experiments that he conducted in electro crystallization,
which is when metals are deposited onto electrodes, eventually forming crystals.
He would eventually start to experiment with electro refining, or
extracting metals from their ores with electricity, which is also
called electro winning. Electro Winning, which by the way, sounds
(12:02):
like a great band name, was first developed by Sir
Humphrey Davy, who came up in our John Cleves Simms
episode Everything Connects in History. Yea. Davy was one of
the people who thought John Cleve Sims did not know
what he was talking about, because he he didn't. As
Cross experimented, though, more and more of his home became
(12:24):
devoted to this work over the next few decades. He
installed six or seven furnaces for purifying metals. The estates, glassware,
and china became laboratory vessels, and he purified the household
silver for use in his experiments. He also strung up
about a third of a mile of copper wire from
(12:44):
poles and the tallest trees on the grounds, and he
connected all that to about fifty laden jars in the
organ loft of the music room. This setup became particularly
dramatic in foggy or stormy weather. Sir Richard Phillips visited
Fine Core and relate a conversation with Cross quote. He
told me that sometimes the current was so great as
(13:05):
to charge and discharge the great battery twenty times in
a minute, with reports as loud as a cannon, which,
being continuous, were so terrible to strangers that they always fled,
while everyone expected the destruction of himself and premises. If
the weather wasn't cooperating. Cross could also manually charge the
laden jars by turning a device with a crank. Here
(13:27):
is how a visitor described find court. During all this quote,
here was an immense number of jars and gallipots containing
fluids on which electricity was operating for the production of crystals.
But you were startled in the midst of your observations
by the smart crackling sound that attends the passage of
the electrical spark. You hear also the rumblings of distant thunder.
(13:51):
The rain is already splashing and great drops against the glass,
and the sound of the passing sparks continues to startle
your ear. Your host is in high glee, for a
battery of electricity is about to come within his reach,
a thousandfold more powerful than all those the rooms strung together.
You follow his hasty steps to the organ gallery and
(14:14):
curiously approached the spot. Whence the noise that has attracted
your notice you see at the window a huge brass
conductor with a discharging rod near it, passing into the floor.
And from what knob to the other sparks are leaping
with increasing rapidity and noise. Rap rap rap, bang bang bang. Nevertheless,
(14:35):
your host does not fear. He approaches as boldly as
if the flowing stream of fire were a harmless spark.
Here comes the big no surprise moment. Many of his
neighbors did not particularly care for all of this. Cross
was nicknamed the Wizard of Broomfield, and at one point
he was speaking in a meeting ahead of an election
and local farmers were booing him. When an outsider asked
(14:59):
what was wrong, someone replied, quote, why don't you know him?
That's a Cross a Broomfield, the thunder and lightning man.
You can't go near his cursed house at night without
danger of your life. Them as have been there, have
seen devils, all surrounded by lightning, dancing on the wires
that he has put up around his grounds. At the
same time, though, there were local people who thought his
(15:20):
experiments had curative properties, and her account of his life
and work, Cross his second wife, Cornelia, described the case
of a local man who was paralyzed on one side
of his body and also had a salivary gland issue. Quote.
After being electrified twice a week for six weeks, he
was so much better that he could walk to find
(15:41):
court and the complaint in the throat was entirely removed.
I'm making a grimacing face. Another gem from Cornelia about
their booming, flashing property quote, we were never troubled with
burglars at fine Court. We will get back to Cornelia
in a bit. Since they got married later on in
Andrew's life, his first wife was Marian Hamilton's, daughter of
(16:05):
Captain John Hamilton's. They got married in eighteen o nine,
relatively early into crosses time as a gentleman scientist. They
would go on to have seven children together over the
next ten years, although three of those children died when
they were still children. Their oldest child, John, was born
in eighteen ten. Cross seems to have been really deeply
(16:27):
fond of his wife and children and very traumatized by
those three deaths. At the same time, though, in terms
of family, he'd been on his own aside from a
couple of younger siblings for four years before he got married,
and he just wasn't used to having a regular home life,
and along with all of his experiments and made things
a little bit chaotic. Ada Lovelace became friends with both
(16:49):
Andrew and his son John. Aida and John actually had
a romantic relationship that was also tangled up with her gambling.
She summed up the atmosphere at Fine Court this way,
quote the dinner hour was an accident in the day's arrangements.
Even though they were living in a seventeenth century manor house,
which suggests a lot of wealth, the Cross family's lifestyle
(17:12):
wasn't particularly extravagant compared to other people in a similar situation.
They did have problems with cash flow, though, and Cross's
words quote, my family were learned and honorable men as
long as I can look back. But they had the
happy knack of turning a guinea into a shilling, and
I have inherited that faculty pretty strongly. Cornelia described him
(17:36):
as quote injudicious in his expenditure. Apart from his friendship
with George John Singer, Andrew Cross was intellectually actually pretty isolated.
One of his closest longtime friends was John Kenyon, who
had been one of his classmates at Mr Sayer's school,
and while Kenyan was interested in Crosses experiments, science was
(17:57):
really not his calling. Their overlapping interest was poetry. Kenyan
wrote poetry himself, and he was a distant cousin of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. At one point before her marriage, he
brought Andrew Cross to visit her. He also supplemented Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's income and left the money when
he died in eighteen fifty six. So Cross did talk
(18:20):
about his work in public, but not really all that
often and somewhat reluctantly. On December eighteen fourteen, he gave
an address at garner In's Lecture Hall, and it is
possible that Mary Shelley, who at the time was Mary Godwin,
attended this lecture. She references it in her diary, but
her notes about it are also kind of vague. She
(18:41):
writes about going from place to place looking for Thomas
Jefferson Hogg, but not finding him at any of those places,
before saying quote, go to garner In's lecture on electricity,
the gases and the Phantasmagoria. Return at half past nine.
Shelly goes to sleep, so it's not a hunter sent
clear whether garner ends was one of the places she
(19:03):
was looking for hog and she was just noting the
topic of the lecture that night, or if she actually
attended the lecture herself. Either way, though, sometimes people point
to this diary entry as evidence that Cross was an
inspiration for Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheists, which
was published four years later. In eighteen thirty six, Cross
(19:25):
reluctantly agreed to speak at the annual meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science that was being
held in Bristol. He had intended to go to the
meeting simply as an observer, but he was persuaded to
talk about his experiments with electro crystallization. It turned out
that people were fascinated. John Dalton, who we just covered
(19:45):
on the show, was in attendance, and he told Cross
he had never before listened to anything so interesting, and
all this attention made Cross fairly uncomfortable, though, and his
words quote, I slipped away out of it all and
he went home before the meeting was over. It was
not long before he was getting even more attention, though,
and we'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.
(20:15):
After the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting
in eighteen thirty six. A lot of the response to
Andrew Cross's work was pretty positive, but he did have
some detractors. On January thirty one of eighteen thirty seven,
he wrote a letter to a newspaper called The Atlas,
in which he responded to what he described as an
(20:37):
attack by a doctor Ritchie. I could not find the
text of this article, but Ritchie apparently criticized Cross for
framing his work as discoveries when other people had discovered
these things many years before. Ritchie also described Cross as
work in a way that just wasn't very accurate. Cross.
(21:00):
His tone is kind of along the lines of you
were there at the meeting, Dr Ritchie, and you could
have just asked me if you had questions, instead of
writing this incorrect article mischaracterizing me and my experiments, which
I do because I love them. In this response, Cross
framed his work as observations, not discoveries. His letter ended quote,
(21:21):
p S. I should have sent this answer long since,
but have been prevented by severe illness. I must beg
in future to decline engaging in scientific warfare with anyone
having neither inclination nor time for that kind of amusement.
But Dr Ritchie's article that he was responding to you
was just the tip of the iceberg. Not long after
(21:41):
he spoke at the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
Andrew Cross became famous in a way that he really
did not expect and also really did not want. He
had been experimenting with a piece of porous volcanic rock,
which he was using because of its perosity rather than
because of its compass Asian. He kept this rock electrified
(22:03):
with a voltaic battery, and he had placed it in
a fluid that was saturated with black flint and potassium carbonate.
In his words quote, on the fourteenth day from the
commencement of this experiment, I observed through a lens a
few small whitish excrescences or nipples, projecting from about the
middle of the electrified stone. On the eighteenth day, these
(22:25):
projections enlarged and struck out seven or eight filaments, each
of them longer than the hemisphere on which they grew.
On the twenty sixth day, these appearances assumed the form
of a perfect insect standing erect on a few bristles
which formed its tail. Till this period, I had no
notion that these appearances were other than an incipient mineral formation.
(22:47):
On the twenty day, these little creatures moved their legs.
I must now say that I was not a little astonished.
After a few days, they detached themselves from the stone
and moved about at pleasure. He went on to write, quote,
in the course of a few weeks, about a hundred
of them made their appearance on the stone. I examined
them with a microscope and observed the smaller ones appeared
(23:10):
to have only six legs, the larger ones eight. Cross
thought the most likely explanation for this startling occurrence was
that airborne mites had deposited their eggs on his equipment,
which was exposed to the air, but that didn't explain
why the mtes seemed able to survive in an environment
that should have killed them. Later on, he also acknowledged
(23:31):
that the early stage of these creatures formation was nearly
indistinguishable from the early stages of crystal formation, so he
might have just been mistaken. Beyond that, he said quote,
I have never ventured an opinion on the cause of
their birth, and for a very good reason I was
unable to form one. He talked over what he had
seen with some other scientists and he sent some samples
(23:53):
to Richard Owen. Owen was a biologist, comparative annomist, and
a paleontologist. He's act lee the person who coined the
term dinosaria. He also very vocally criticized Charles Darwin's work
on evolution. Owen said that these were cheese mites, which
are arachnids from the genus a Carus. Cross called them
(24:15):
a Carus calvanicus. Cross never intended to publicize this find anywhere,
but at some point he either mentioned it to or
was overheard by William Bragg of the Somerset County Gazette.
Bragg published an article on December thirty one, eight thirty six,
titled Extraordinary Experiment. Although Bragg's article did not make this claim,
(24:37):
soon papers all over Britain and Ireland were printing sensationalized
reports that Andrew Cross of Somerset had used electricity to
create life. So to be clear, Andrew Cross did make
some far fetched claims during his lifetime, like he told
a story about being bitten by a cat that died
(24:58):
that day of hydrophoe b A, which is rabies. About
three months later, Cross had a worrying combination of symptoms.
He was thirsty, but his throat spasmed when he tried
to drink water, and he had a pain that started
in his hand and worked its way up to his
elbow and shoulder. Convinced that he was going to die
(25:19):
of hydrophobia, he went shooting and intentionally exerted himself, and
thanks to his physical exertion and mental focus, he was
better in three days. He wrote quote. I mentioned the
circumstance to Dr King Lake, and he said he certainly
considered that I had had an attack of hydrophobia, which
would possibly have proved fatal had I not struggled against
(25:41):
it by a strong effort of mind. You cannot cure
rabies with exercise and positive thinking, which just never occur
to me to be like, I think I might have rabies.
You know what I should do? Go shooting. That's going
to help um. As an anxious person, I can totally
see my elf being like, oh no, this thing is
(26:01):
happening to me. Uh. We we don't really know if
Dr King Lake really did think that he had somehow
staved off an attack of rabies, or if if King
Lake was humoring him, that's right, dear, you cured yourself.
But even though he had this whole story about the
(26:22):
cat and the rabies, um, he did not say that
he had used electricity to create life. He steadfastly maintained
that not only had he never made that claim, he
had never said anything that a reasonable person could interpret
that way. He really didn't know for sure why mits
(26:43):
had hatched in his experiment. I mean, he had that
kind of best guest of like maybe some mights put
their eggs on there, but he definitely did not think
he had created them or given life to them with electricity.
For the next few years, though, Cross faced on going
accusations of blasphemy and atheism. Because of this misreporting of
(27:04):
his work and the rumors that followed. People called him
a Frankenstein and a disturber of the piece of families.
Cornelia Cross later wrote quote, after disavowing all intention to
raise any questions connected with either natural or revealed religion,
he went on to observe that he was sorry to
see that the faith of his neighbors could be overset
(27:25):
by the claw of a mite. Other people tried to
replicate cross as results, but only one, William Henry Weeks
of Sandwich, had any success, and that happened in eighteen forty.
Weeks had placed his experiment under a bell jar in
Mercury to seal it off from the external air, and
he said that quote five perfect insects formed on novembert one,
(27:51):
after more than a year of the experiment running. So
we had started the experiment in eighteen forty and then
reported this eighteen forty one. He named the might a
Carus CROSSII after Andrew Cross. Cross and Weeks were both
threatened with violence, and they were not the only people
caught up in this media storm. Another was Michael Faraday,
(28:12):
who was falsely reported as having confirmed Cross's experiment in
February of eighteen thirty seven. Not only had he not
done this, he also had not tried to. As all
of this was happening, several members of Cross's family were
seriously ill. His wife Mary Anne died in eighteen forty six,
and his brother Richard died just four days later. Andrew
(28:36):
was absolutely bereft, and he went to London, where he
spent most of the next four years. As the house
and grounds of Fine Court fell into disrepair. While he
was in London, he met Cornelia Augusta Hewitt Berkeley, who
was a fan of his work. In her words, quote
when young, I had always been intensely interested in Mr
Cross's experiments in electrical science. I had cut out scraps
(29:00):
from the newspapers that made mention of his discoveries, so
that it was with no common feelings that I looked
upon the man whose power, in wielding that mysterious agent electricity,
had so excited my imagination. She goes on to say
that she was disappointed that at their first meeting he
didn't talk about electricity. Perhaps he was hungry. I love that.
(29:23):
Andrew and Cornelia got married in eighteen fifty he was
sixty six and she was twenty three. They went back
to find Court, where they had a son in eighteen
fifty two, followed by two more children, bringing his total
surviving children to ten. Cornelia helped Andrew with his experiments
and observation. He tried to use electricity to purify seawater
(29:45):
and restore spoiled foods to wholesomeness, and make a hangover
cure by electrifying wine and beer. When he published his work,
he did so through the Electrical Society, which took a
more populist egalitarian approach than many of the more formal
acade amic societies. In eighteen fifty one, the Crosses went
to the Great Exhibition in London at Joseph Paxson's Crystal Palace,
(30:08):
which we've covered previously on the show. They also went
on a tour of England, coming back to find Court
in eighteen fifty five. On May eighteen fifty five, Andrew
Cross had what he called a paralytic seizure. It was
probably a stroke that paralyzed part of his body. He
died on July six, in the same room where he
(30:29):
had been born. On his deathbed, he changed his will
to leave his property to his wife rather than his
oldest son, John, but she then gave the estate to
John and his family. Andrew Cross is buried in the
churchyard at the Church of Saint Mary and All Saints
in Broomfield. Cornelia had an obelisk erected in his memory there.
(30:49):
In eighteen fifty seven, Cornelia published Memorials Scientific and Literary
of Andrew Cross the Electrician, which discussed her late husband's
life and work, including men of his poems and correspondence
and a complete account of the experiment with the mites.
In two she published Red Letter Days of My Life,
(31:09):
which included her recollections about the scientists and writers and
thinkers that she could come to know during their marriage.
Most of the manor house at Fine Court is no
longer standing. It was largely destroyed in a fire in
eight but the library and music room are still there,
as well as a gardener's cottage and a church. Some
of the structure still standing on the property are used
(31:32):
as office space, including for organizations like Somerset Wildlife Trust,
and visitors can stay at the gardener's cottage. It is
primarily a nature preserve with walking trails in a tea
room with a tea room currently only take out due
to the COVID nineteen pandemic. We have made some references
to Andrew Cross's poetry, and I thought we would end
(31:54):
on one of his poems. This is called the Three
Trenches three thirdling trenches round my heart. I throw to
keep at bay each intermeddling foe within the first the
world may enter free, whatever their sect, opinion, or degree,
safe or the next. I greet a fair array, serenely smiling,
(32:15):
as a summer's day to pass. The third alas how
few contrive and of those dearest few, how few survive.
That is Andrew Cross. This is one of those topics
that if I had a do over in a time machine,
I would have saved this for like a tour show,
(32:37):
because it's so fun. It's very very fun. Uh do
you have fun email? I do? Is it fun? It
is fun? Fun? Is it fun? This is from Jennifer.
Jennifer says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I got so excited
while I was listening to the recent scurvy episode. I
went down a history rabbit hole a few months ago.
(33:00):
Didn't know how to write in about it. It's a
long story, but I was watching a cooking show and
the recipe called for black currents. I was intrigued because
they looked delicious and I had never heard of them before.
It turns out, in the early nineteen hundreds of the
US banned the cultivation, sale, and transportation of currents. They
can carry a fungus that is destructive to the white pine,
(33:21):
so currents were banned to safeguard the timber industry. That
basically eliminated currents from the American diet. Another interesting fact,
during the Blackades in World War two, currents were one
of the only vitamin C rich fruits that could be
grown locally in Britain. Churchill encouraged people to cultivate black
currents and it kept the population from getting scurvy. Current
(33:44):
flavored soda and candy are still popular in the UK today.
I love the show. It was my first podcast ever
and it opened me up to the podcast world. My
love of history has grown so much because of you guys.
Thanks for reading. Thank you for sending this Ale Jennifer.
I got it this morning and I was like, why
have I had no confusion about what currents are, even
(34:06):
though I don't know that I have ever actually eaten them.
And the answer quickly came into my mind that in
Anne of Green Gables, and is supposed to give Diana
Berry raspberry cordial, but instead she accidentally gives Diana Berry
Marilla's black current line, and then Diana gets very drunk,
and it is a big source of the tension in
(34:28):
that part of the book. And so I think sometime
in my childhood I was like, what is what is
black current line? And I found out that they're like
little they're like a little berry. Um. I looked into
it because I was like, wow, I did not know
all of this about their being banned in the US.
I just sort of assumed that they were something that
(34:50):
didn't grow locally. That's not true at all, Like they
were grown a whole lot in New York and New
England until this whole problem with the with the fungus
which is actually a rust and the band, like the
federal band was rolled back before I was born, but
there were still a lot of state level bands. It
(35:11):
is still not a commonly grown crop in the US
at all, Like more than of the current crop in
the world is grown in Europe. So um, that was
an interesting tidbit for me to start my morning off with.
So thank you so much Jennifer for sending this email.
If you would like to write to us about this
(35:31):
or any other podcast, we're at History Podcast that I
Heart radio dot com, and then we are all over
social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll find
our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe
to our show on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app,
and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed
(35:53):
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. M
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. After we
did our episode on John Cleaves Sims and his ideas
of the Earth being hollow, somebody suggested that we do
(00:24):
an episode on Andrew Cross. And I wrote all this down,
including the fact that he thought he invented life from crystals.
And now I'm going to totally depart from the document
that I gave Holly for our outline to come in
here because I just figured out who who suggested this.
What was originally written in this outline was that I
(00:47):
had gone looking in our email and our Facebook comments
and our our Twitter mentions, being like, who suggested this?
I wrote all this down and I did not write
down their name. Literally sitting in this student oh, I
was like, maybe it was a comment on our website.
It was a comment on our website from Kumari. I
(01:10):
hope I have said your name correctly. UM, I'm so
sorry if I did not who left the comment? How
about a podcast on Andrew Cross, who thought he created
life in eighteen thirty six with his crystals and electricity
because it's goofy. It is goofy. This was a joy
to work on UM. It also just came together with
(01:30):
remarkable ease, which is great because I was taken um
a long weekend and I wanted I needed to get
all my stuff done. Uh no shade at all to
Kumari if we're having left this comment on our um
on our website, but I will note we do not
get notification of comments on the website at Miston history
(01:51):
dot com. It is often weeks or longer before we
ever see anything on there, and we also do not
have the ability to turn the comments off because it's
like a whole company wide thing to have the comments
on there. So if you are going to leave a
comment on our website, we're probably not going to see
it in a timely manner and we may never respond
(02:11):
to it. But my last minute, literally sitting here in
the studio, oh maybe it was a comment on the website,
it was it was um Crosses account of what really
happened is a little bit more down to earth than
thinking that he invented life, or not invented life, but
created life with crystals and electricity. But it's still a
delightful story. It's a lot of fun to work on.
(02:34):
So thank you Kumari again. I hope I have said
your name right. I have a good check because I
literally made the connection just now. Yeah, thank you for
for suggesting this. So. Andrew Cross was born on June
seventeen at Fine Court in Broomfield, Somerset, England, and the
(02:55):
manor house at fine Court was first built in the
early seventeenth century, and then it was added onto over
the years, so by the time Cross was born it
had been his family's home for well over a hundred years.
Andrew's mother was named Susannah and his father was Richard Cross,
high Sheriff of Somerset. When Andrew was four, the family
moved to France and they stayed there for the next
(03:17):
four years. Andrew spoke both French and English by the
time he got back home, but after that he really
did not keep up with the French and he eventually
lost it all. Although he studied Latin and Greek in school,
he didn't really think he had much of an aptitude
for languages. However, he did invent a new language with
(03:37):
his younger brother, Richard, and the two of them made
up a world that was populated by beings they called
either hobble gs or hobble geese, we don't know for sure,
which they made out of fur cones. And they imagined
a whole society for the hobble geese, complete with its
own legal system and a system of government, which is
about as charming as you can get in my opinion.
(03:57):
In his own words, Andrew was quote a very happy boy, careless,
and extravagantly fond of fun, and both boys were somewhat
eccentric as they grew up. We're gonna get into Andrew's
eccentricities in more detail. But as for Richard, as one example,
he was really really into the metric system, so much
so that his clocks were divided into ten hours instead
(04:19):
of twelve. I have a number of questions about this, like,
if you're running your household on ten hour clocks, do
you just translate in your head to make sure you're
on time for your engagements or all? Are you always
not on time? We're going to have a talk about
this in our Friday episode super because your foolish co
(04:39):
host may have tried something similar as an adult. Oh,
I'm so excited. After the Cross Family got back from France,
Andrew was enrolled in a school in Dorchester that was
run by a reverend Mr. White, and then in when
he was nine, he moved to a school in Bristol
run by the Reverend Mr Samuel Sayer. In addition to
(05:02):
his work as a teacher, Sayer wrote memoirs historical and
topographical of Bristol in its neighborhood from the earliest period
down to the present time. Andrew did not really enjoy
his time at this school. He never felt like he
had enough to eat, and he thought the food that
they did have was terrible. He also didn't get along
with Sayer or some of the other teachers. Plus being
(05:24):
extravagantly fond of fun included getting into mischief and playing
jokes and pranks on people, like when a classmate asked
him for help translating some Latin, Andrew told him that
what he wanted translated meant the stork is safest in
the middle of the pond, when it really meant the
middle course is safest, and say you're Apparently did not
(05:45):
appreciate this particular brand of silliness. Some of the trouble
that Andrew got into at school was also more serious
than that. Andrew liked to make his own fireworks, and
that's what he was doing. One day, while he was
also studying his Virgil Sayer came and caught him and
took what he was working on a way in Andrew's
(06:05):
words quote, I watched where he put it. It was
on the window sill of a room which was always
kept locked. The window, though not glazed, had close iron
bars through which nothing could pass. The case was hopeless.
I could not recover my rocket mixture, but a happy
thought struck me. I was resolved that no one else
should enjoy the spoil, which I regarded as so valuable.
(06:29):
I had a burning glass in my pocket, and I
thought of Archimedes and the Roman fleet. The sun was shining,
and I soon drew a focus on the gunpowder, which
immediately blew up. It was well that the house was
not set on fire. As for me, I was reckless
of all consequences. At one point, some of the boys
(06:49):
at school decided to go on strike to try to
get longer holiday breaks. But beyond just refusing to go
to class, they were inspired by the British troops fighting
in the French Revolutionary Wars, so they also planned to
take over the school armed with muskets. This plan was
discovered and thwarted, thankfully before anybody carried it out, and
although the ringleaders were expelled and other participants were flogged,
(07:14):
Andrews somehow escaped notice. Aside from all of that, though,
Andrew's love of science, and particularly of electricity, really blossomed
while he was at Mr. Sayer's school. This might have
had roots back in his home life. His father was
actually friends with Benjamin Franklin. But while he was at
Sayer's school, Andrews saw an advertisement for a lecture series,
(07:38):
with the first installment being about optics and the second
about electricity. He asked for permission to go and that
was granted and things really took off from there. Soon
he and some schoolmates were shocking people with a laden
jar that they made from an apothecary's bottle. So a
laden jar is a vessel that store static electricity, in
(07:58):
this case probably a style uperd vile filled partway with
water with a wire through the stopper, which you charge
by touching the wire to something staticky. Before long, Andrew
was writing home to ask for money to buy various
electrical gadgetry. To be clear, this laden jar shocking would
not have been dangerous, but it would have been annoying.
(08:22):
Andrew's father died in eighteen hundred and he was sixteen,
and about that time he started to experience what he
described as nervous attacks, and they would recur regularly for
the rest of his life. While he had described himself
in childhood is happy and careless, he grew up to
be kind of a generally anxious person, with these attacks
(08:42):
coming on suddenly and lasting for as long as thirty
minutes at a time. In eighteen o two, Cross entered
Brazenose College at Oxford, which he called quote a perfect
hell on earth. Wine seemed to be the focal point
of social life at the college, and he hated wine.
He also hated his classmates, snobbery and classism, and later
(09:03):
on he said quote I was less liberal at this
time than at any other of my life. It took
some years to rub off the prejudices of class which
I had acquired at Oxford. Cross earned his degree in
law in eighteen oh five, and he also inherited fine
Court after his mother's death on July three of that
same year. This was one of a long series of losses.
(09:25):
Over a period of about five years. He lost both
of his parents, a sister, an uncle, two close friends,
and one of his household staff, who he described as
quote a most faithful and attached servant. It's not really
clear whether the grief over all of this led him
to abandon law, but he did. He gave up law
(09:45):
after two or three years. Instead, he established himself as
a country gentleman at fine court, becoming absorbed in studying electricity, mineralogy,
and chemistry. He also served as a magistrate, where he
developed a reputation and for being quite liberal, and he
wrote a lot of poetry. Cross became friends with George
(10:06):
John Singer, author of Elements of Electricity and electro Chemistry.
Like Cross, Singer was an amateur scientist whose family business
involved making artificial feathers and flowers, but he was knowledgeable
on the subject of electricity. He held public lectures and
demonstrations that were attended by people like Michael Faraday. Cross
(10:29):
and Singer did experiments together until Singer's death from tuberculosis
in eighteen seventeen at the age of only thirty one.
George John Singer had built a laboratory and lecture hall
at his own home. But Andrew Cross's efforts to devote
his home to research went even further. We'll talk more
about that after we pause for a sponsor break. In
(10:57):
eighteen oh seven, Andrew Cross became fascinated with crystal formations
and Hollwell Cavern, which is a limestone crevice in room
Field not far from where he lived. The entrance to
this cavern has since been filled in, and in Crosses
words quote, I felt convinced at an early period that
the formation and constant growth of the crystalline matter which
(11:20):
lined the roof of this cave was caused by some
peculiar upward attraction, and reasoning more on the subject, I
felt assured that it was electric attraction. Cross got a
tumbler of water out of the stream that ran through
the cavern, and he ran a current through it on wires,
and eventually some crystals did start to form. This was
(11:41):
the first of many experiments that he conducted in electro crystallization,
which is when metals are deposited onto electrodes, eventually forming crystals.
He would eventually start to experiment with electro refining, or
extracting metals from their ores with electricity, which is also
called electro winning. Electro Winning, which by the way, sounds
(12:02):
like a great band name, was first developed by Sir
Humphrey Davy, who came up in our John Cleves Simms
episode Everything Connects in History. Yea. Davy was one of
the people who thought John Cleve Sims did not know
what he was talking about, because he he didn't. As
Cross experimented, though, more and more of his home became
(12:24):
devoted to this work over the next few decades. He
installed six or seven furnaces for purifying metals. The estates, glassware,
and china became laboratory vessels, and he purified the household
silver for use in his experiments. He also strung up
about a third of a mile of copper wire from
(12:44):
poles and the tallest trees on the grounds, and he
connected all that to about fifty laden jars in the
organ loft of the music room. This setup became particularly
dramatic in foggy or stormy weather. Sir Richard Phillips visited
Fine Core and relate a conversation with Cross quote. He
told me that sometimes the current was so great as
(13:05):
to charge and discharge the great battery twenty times in
a minute, with reports as loud as a cannon, which,
being continuous, were so terrible to strangers that they always fled,
while everyone expected the destruction of himself and premises. If
the weather wasn't cooperating. Cross could also manually charge the
laden jars by turning a device with a crank. Here
(13:27):
is how a visitor described find court. During all this quote,
here was an immense number of jars and gallipots containing
fluids on which electricity was operating for the production of crystals.
But you were startled in the midst of your observations
by the smart crackling sound that attends the passage of
the electrical spark. You hear also the rumblings of distant thunder.
(13:51):
The rain is already splashing and great drops against the glass,
and the sound of the passing sparks continues to startle
your ear. Your host is in high glee, for a
battery of electricity is about to come within his reach,
a thousandfold more powerful than all those the rooms strung together.
You follow his hasty steps to the organ gallery and
(14:14):
curiously approached the spot. Whence the noise that has attracted
your notice you see at the window a huge brass
conductor with a discharging rod near it, passing into the floor.
And from what knob to the other sparks are leaping
with increasing rapidity and noise. Rap rap rap, bang bang bang. Nevertheless,
(14:35):
your host does not fear. He approaches as boldly as
if the flowing stream of fire were a harmless spark.
Here comes the big no surprise moment. Many of his
neighbors did not particularly care for all of this. Cross
was nicknamed the Wizard of Broomfield, and at one point
he was speaking in a meeting ahead of an election
and local farmers were booing him. When an outsider asked
(14:59):
what was wrong, someone replied, quote, why don't you know him?
That's a Cross a Broomfield, the thunder and lightning man.
You can't go near his cursed house at night without
danger of your life. Them as have been there, have
seen devils, all surrounded by lightning, dancing on the wires
that he has put up around his grounds. At the
same time, though, there were local people who thought his
(15:20):
experiments had curative properties, and her account of his life
and work, Cross his second wife, Cornelia, described the case
of a local man who was paralyzed on one side
of his body and also had a salivary gland issue. Quote.
After being electrified twice a week for six weeks, he
was so much better that he could walk to find
(15:41):
court and the complaint in the throat was entirely removed.
I'm making a grimacing face. Another gem from Cornelia about
their booming, flashing property quote, we were never troubled with
burglars at fine Court. We will get back to Cornelia
in a bit. Since they got married later on in
Andrew's life, his first wife was Marian Hamilton's, daughter of
(16:05):
Captain John Hamilton's. They got married in eighteen o nine,
relatively early into crosses time as a gentleman scientist. They
would go on to have seven children together over the
next ten years, although three of those children died when
they were still children. Their oldest child, John, was born
in eighteen ten. Cross seems to have been really deeply
(16:27):
fond of his wife and children and very traumatized by
those three deaths. At the same time, though, in terms
of family, he'd been on his own aside from a
couple of younger siblings for four years before he got married,
and he just wasn't used to having a regular home life,
and along with all of his experiments and made things
a little bit chaotic. Ada Lovelace became friends with both
(16:49):
Andrew and his son John. Aida and John actually had
a romantic relationship that was also tangled up with her gambling.
She summed up the atmosphere at Fine Court this way,
quote the dinner hour was an accident in the day's arrangements.
Even though they were living in a seventeenth century manor house,
which suggests a lot of wealth, the Cross family's lifestyle
(17:12):
wasn't particularly extravagant compared to other people in a similar situation.
They did have problems with cash flow, though, and Cross's
words quote, my family were learned and honorable men as
long as I can look back. But they had the
happy knack of turning a guinea into a shilling, and
I have inherited that faculty pretty strongly. Cornelia described him
(17:36):
as quote injudicious in his expenditure. Apart from his friendship
with George John Singer, Andrew Cross was intellectually actually pretty isolated.
One of his closest longtime friends was John Kenyon, who
had been one of his classmates at Mr Sayer's school,
and while Kenyan was interested in Crosses experiments, science was
(17:57):
really not his calling. Their overlapping interest was poetry. Kenyan
wrote poetry himself, and he was a distant cousin of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. At one point before her marriage, he
brought Andrew Cross to visit her. He also supplemented Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's income and left the money when
he died in eighteen fifty six. So Cross did talk
(18:20):
about his work in public, but not really all that
often and somewhat reluctantly. On December eighteen fourteen, he gave
an address at garner In's Lecture Hall, and it is
possible that Mary Shelley, who at the time was Mary Godwin,
attended this lecture. She references it in her diary, but
her notes about it are also kind of vague. She
(18:41):
writes about going from place to place looking for Thomas
Jefferson Hogg, but not finding him at any of those places,
before saying quote, go to garner In's lecture on electricity,
the gases and the Phantasmagoria. Return at half past nine.
Shelly goes to sleep, so it's not a hunter sent
clear whether garner ends was one of the places she
(19:03):
was looking for hog and she was just noting the
topic of the lecture that night, or if she actually
attended the lecture herself. Either way, though, sometimes people point
to this diary entry as evidence that Cross was an
inspiration for Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheists, which
was published four years later. In eighteen thirty six, Cross
(19:25):
reluctantly agreed to speak at the annual meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science that was being
held in Bristol. He had intended to go to the
meeting simply as an observer, but he was persuaded to
talk about his experiments with electro crystallization. It turned out
that people were fascinated. John Dalton, who we just covered
(19:45):
on the show, was in attendance, and he told Cross
he had never before listened to anything so interesting, and
all this attention made Cross fairly uncomfortable, though, and his
words quote, I slipped away out of it all and
he went home before the meeting was over. It was
not long before he was getting even more attention, though,
and we'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.
(20:15):
After the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting
in eighteen thirty six. A lot of the response to
Andrew Cross's work was pretty positive, but he did have
some detractors. On January thirty one of eighteen thirty seven,
he wrote a letter to a newspaper called The Atlas,
in which he responded to what he described as an
(20:37):
attack by a doctor Ritchie. I could not find the
text of this article, but Ritchie apparently criticized Cross for
framing his work as discoveries when other people had discovered
these things many years before. Ritchie also described Cross as
work in a way that just wasn't very accurate. Cross.
(21:00):
His tone is kind of along the lines of you
were there at the meeting, Dr Ritchie, and you could
have just asked me if you had questions, instead of
writing this incorrect article mischaracterizing me and my experiments, which
I do because I love them. In this response, Cross
framed his work as observations, not discoveries. His letter ended quote,
(21:21):
p S. I should have sent this answer long since,
but have been prevented by severe illness. I must beg
in future to decline engaging in scientific warfare with anyone
having neither inclination nor time for that kind of amusement.
But Dr Ritchie's article that he was responding to you
was just the tip of the iceberg. Not long after
(21:41):
he spoke at the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
Andrew Cross became famous in a way that he really
did not expect and also really did not want. He
had been experimenting with a piece of porous volcanic rock,
which he was using because of its perosity rather than
because of its compass Asian. He kept this rock electrified
(22:03):
with a voltaic battery, and he had placed it in
a fluid that was saturated with black flint and potassium carbonate.
In his words quote, on the fourteenth day from the
commencement of this experiment, I observed through a lens a
few small whitish excrescences or nipples, projecting from about the
middle of the electrified stone. On the eighteenth day, these
(22:25):
projections enlarged and struck out seven or eight filaments, each
of them longer than the hemisphere on which they grew.
On the twenty sixth day, these appearances assumed the form
of a perfect insect standing erect on a few bristles
which formed its tail. Till this period, I had no
notion that these appearances were other than an incipient mineral formation.
(22:47):
On the twenty day, these little creatures moved their legs.
I must now say that I was not a little astonished.
After a few days, they detached themselves from the stone
and moved about at pleasure. He went on to write, quote,
in the course of a few weeks, about a hundred
of them made their appearance on the stone. I examined
them with a microscope and observed the smaller ones appeared
(23:10):
to have only six legs, the larger ones eight. Cross
thought the most likely explanation for this startling occurrence was
that airborne mites had deposited their eggs on his equipment,
which was exposed to the air, but that didn't explain
why the mtes seemed able to survive in an environment
that should have killed them. Later on, he also acknowledged
(23:31):
that the early stage of these creatures formation was nearly
indistinguishable from the early stages of crystal formation, so he
might have just been mistaken. Beyond that, he said quote,
I have never ventured an opinion on the cause of
their birth, and for a very good reason I was
unable to form one. He talked over what he had
seen with some other scientists and he sent some samples
(23:53):
to Richard Owen. Owen was a biologist, comparative annomist, and
a paleontologist. He's act lee the person who coined the
term dinosaria. He also very vocally criticized Charles Darwin's work
on evolution. Owen said that these were cheese mites, which
are arachnids from the genus a Carus. Cross called them
(24:15):
a Carus calvanicus. Cross never intended to publicize this find anywhere,
but at some point he either mentioned it to or
was overheard by William Bragg of the Somerset County Gazette.
Bragg published an article on December thirty one, eight thirty six,
titled Extraordinary Experiment. Although Bragg's article did not make this claim,
(24:37):
soon papers all over Britain and Ireland were printing sensationalized
reports that Andrew Cross of Somerset had used electricity to
create life. So to be clear, Andrew Cross did make
some far fetched claims during his lifetime, like he told
a story about being bitten by a cat that died
(24:58):
that day of hydrophoe b A, which is rabies. About
three months later, Cross had a worrying combination of symptoms.
He was thirsty, but his throat spasmed when he tried
to drink water, and he had a pain that started
in his hand and worked its way up to his
elbow and shoulder. Convinced that he was going to die
(25:19):
of hydrophobia, he went shooting and intentionally exerted himself, and
thanks to his physical exertion and mental focus, he was
better in three days. He wrote quote. I mentioned the
circumstance to Dr King Lake, and he said he certainly
considered that I had had an attack of hydrophobia, which
would possibly have proved fatal had I not struggled against
(25:41):
it by a strong effort of mind. You cannot cure
rabies with exercise and positive thinking, which just never occur
to me to be like, I think I might have rabies.
You know what I should do? Go shooting. That's going
to help um. As an anxious person, I can totally
see my elf being like, oh no, this thing is
(26:01):
happening to me. Uh. We we don't really know if
Dr King Lake really did think that he had somehow
staved off an attack of rabies, or if if King
Lake was humoring him, that's right, dear, you cured yourself.
But even though he had this whole story about the
(26:22):
cat and the rabies, um, he did not say that
he had used electricity to create life. He steadfastly maintained
that not only had he never made that claim, he
had never said anything that a reasonable person could interpret
that way. He really didn't know for sure why mits
(26:43):
had hatched in his experiment. I mean, he had that
kind of best guest of like maybe some mights put
their eggs on there, but he definitely did not think
he had created them or given life to them with electricity.
For the next few years, though, Cross faced on going
accusations of blasphemy and atheism. Because of this misreporting of
(27:04):
his work and the rumors that followed. People called him
a Frankenstein and a disturber of the piece of families.
Cornelia Cross later wrote quote, after disavowing all intention to
raise any questions connected with either natural or revealed religion,
he went on to observe that he was sorry to
see that the faith of his neighbors could be overset
(27:25):
by the claw of a mite. Other people tried to
replicate cross as results, but only one, William Henry Weeks
of Sandwich, had any success, and that happened in eighteen forty.
Weeks had placed his experiment under a bell jar in
Mercury to seal it off from the external air, and
he said that quote five perfect insects formed on novembert one,
(27:51):
after more than a year of the experiment running. So
we had started the experiment in eighteen forty and then
reported this eighteen forty one. He named the might a
Carus CROSSII after Andrew Cross. Cross and Weeks were both
threatened with violence, and they were not the only people
caught up in this media storm. Another was Michael Faraday,
(28:12):
who was falsely reported as having confirmed Cross's experiment in
February of eighteen thirty seven. Not only had he not
done this, he also had not tried to. As all
of this was happening, several members of Cross's family were
seriously ill. His wife Mary Anne died in eighteen forty six,
and his brother Richard died just four days later. Andrew
(28:36):
was absolutely bereft, and he went to London, where he
spent most of the next four years. As the house
and grounds of Fine Court fell into disrepair. While he
was in London, he met Cornelia Augusta Hewitt Berkeley, who
was a fan of his work. In her words, quote
when young, I had always been intensely interested in Mr
Cross's experiments in electrical science. I had cut out scraps
(29:00):
from the newspapers that made mention of his discoveries, so
that it was with no common feelings that I looked
upon the man whose power, in wielding that mysterious agent electricity,
had so excited my imagination. She goes on to say
that she was disappointed that at their first meeting he
didn't talk about electricity. Perhaps he was hungry. I love that.
(29:23):
Andrew and Cornelia got married in eighteen fifty he was
sixty six and she was twenty three. They went back
to find Court, where they had a son in eighteen
fifty two, followed by two more children, bringing his total
surviving children to ten. Cornelia helped Andrew with his experiments
and observation. He tried to use electricity to purify seawater
(29:45):
and restore spoiled foods to wholesomeness, and make a hangover
cure by electrifying wine and beer. When he published his work,
he did so through the Electrical Society, which took a
more populist egalitarian approach than many of the more formal
acade amic societies. In eighteen fifty one, the Crosses went
to the Great Exhibition in London at Joseph Paxson's Crystal Palace,
(30:08):
which we've covered previously on the show. They also went
on a tour of England, coming back to find Court
in eighteen fifty five. On May eighteen fifty five, Andrew
Cross had what he called a paralytic seizure. It was
probably a stroke that paralyzed part of his body. He
died on July six, in the same room where he
(30:29):
had been born. On his deathbed, he changed his will
to leave his property to his wife rather than his
oldest son, John, but she then gave the estate to
John and his family. Andrew Cross is buried in the
churchyard at the Church of Saint Mary and All Saints
in Broomfield. Cornelia had an obelisk erected in his memory there.
(30:49):
In eighteen fifty seven, Cornelia published Memorials Scientific and Literary
of Andrew Cross the Electrician, which discussed her late husband's
life and work, including men of his poems and correspondence
and a complete account of the experiment with the mites.
In two she published Red Letter Days of My Life,
(31:09):
which included her recollections about the scientists and writers and
thinkers that she could come to know during their marriage.
Most of the manor house at Fine Court is no
longer standing. It was largely destroyed in a fire in
eight but the library and music room are still there,
as well as a gardener's cottage and a church. Some
of the structure still standing on the property are used
(31:32):
as office space, including for organizations like Somerset Wildlife Trust,
and visitors can stay at the gardener's cottage. It is
primarily a nature preserve with walking trails in a tea
room with a tea room currently only take out due
to the COVID nineteen pandemic. We have made some references
to Andrew Cross's poetry, and I thought we would end
(31:54):
on one of his poems. This is called the Three
Trenches three thirdling trenches round my heart. I throw to
keep at bay each intermeddling foe within the first the
world may enter free, whatever their sect, opinion, or degree,
safe or the next. I greet a fair array, serenely smiling,
(32:15):
as a summer's day to pass. The third alas how
few contrive and of those dearest few, how few survive.
That is Andrew Cross. This is one of those topics
that if I had a do over in a time machine,
I would have saved this for like a tour show,
(32:37):
because it's so fun. It's very very fun. Uh do
you have fun email? I do? Is it fun? It
is fun? Fun? Is it fun? This is from Jennifer.
Jennifer says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I got so excited
while I was listening to the recent scurvy episode. I
went down a history rabbit hole a few months ago.
(33:00):
Didn't know how to write in about it. It's a
long story, but I was watching a cooking show and
the recipe called for black currents. I was intrigued because
they looked delicious and I had never heard of them before.
It turns out, in the early nineteen hundreds of the
US banned the cultivation, sale, and transportation of currents. They
can carry a fungus that is destructive to the white pine,
(33:21):
so currents were banned to safeguard the timber industry. That
basically eliminated currents from the American diet. Another interesting fact,
during the Blackades in World War two, currents were one
of the only vitamin C rich fruits that could be
grown locally in Britain. Churchill encouraged people to cultivate black
currents and it kept the population from getting scurvy. Current
(33:44):
flavored soda and candy are still popular in the UK today.
I love the show. It was my first podcast ever
and it opened me up to the podcast world. My
love of history has grown so much because of you guys.
Thanks for reading. Thank you for sending this Ale Jennifer.
I got it this morning and I was like, why
have I had no confusion about what currents are, even
(34:06):
though I don't know that I have ever actually eaten them.
And the answer quickly came into my mind that in
Anne of Green Gables, and is supposed to give Diana
Berry raspberry cordial, but instead she accidentally gives Diana Berry
Marilla's black current line, and then Diana gets very drunk,
and it is a big source of the tension in
(34:28):
that part of the book. And so I think sometime
in my childhood I was like, what is what is
black current line? And I found out that they're like
little they're like a little berry. Um. I looked into
it because I was like, wow, I did not know
all of this about their being banned in the US.
I just sort of assumed that they were something that
(34:50):
didn't grow locally. That's not true at all, Like they
were grown a whole lot in New York and New
England until this whole problem with the with the fungus
which is actually a rust and the band, like the
federal band was rolled back before I was born, but
there were still a lot of state level bands. It
(35:11):
is still not a commonly grown crop in the US
at all, Like more than of the current crop in
the world is grown in Europe. So um, that was
an interesting tidbit for me to start my morning off with.
So thank you so much Jennifer for sending this email.
If you would like to write to us about this
(35:31):
or any other podcast, we're at History Podcast that I
Heart radio dot com, and then we are all over
social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll find
our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe
to our show on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app,
and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed
(35:53):
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
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your favorite shows. M
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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