August 30, 2020 • 11 mins
England's master gardener, Lancelot "Capability" Brown, was baptized on this day in 1716. / On this day in 1892, the steamship Moravia arrived in New York from Hamburg, Germany, where a cholera epidemic was happening.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, it's Eves checking in here to let you
know that you're going to be hearing two different events
in history in this episode, one from me and one
from Tracy V. Wilson. They're both good, if I do
say so myself. One with the show, Welcome to this
day in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com
and from the desk of Stuff You Missed in History Class.
It's the show where we explore the past one day
(00:21):
at a time with a quick look at what happened
today in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy V. Wilson and it's August. England's greatest gardener, Lancelot
Capability Brown was baptized on this day in seventeen sixteen,
although we don't know exactly his date of birth. If
(00:44):
you have ever watched Downton Abbey, or even just seeing
a picture of the abbey and Downton Abbey that's high
Clear Castle, It's gardens were designed by Lancelot Brown. That
nickname of Capability is said to be because he likes
to tell his clients that their landscapes had great capability
for improvement. He was colossally influential in the eighteenth century
(01:08):
in England and Wales, designing gardens and grounds of the
mansions and the country estates, basically creating the look of England.
His style was a huge break away from the idea
of formal gardens, which obviously looked like somebody planned them
out and planted specific things in specific places, and said
(01:28):
he was carefully crafting landscapes that looked deceptively natural. They
looked like they just grew that way. He had trees
and curving ponds and streams and expansive lawns that all
just looked like they were supposed to be there. This
earned him some criticism for designing estates that look like
that was just how they happened, instead of looking like
(01:49):
somebody put effort into it. His whole philosophy was all
about being both comfortable and elegant, and it was also
very practical. These landscapes are round. These estates were not
just gardens to walk through and be observed. They had
different uses. They were home to different types of animals,
different livestock that was being raised on the property. Brown's
(02:13):
gardens were supposed to serve the needs of the estate,
not just exist for the sake of looking at them.
A hallmark of capability Brown's designs was the ha ha.
Instead of a raised fence that very obviously invisibly cut
one part of the state off from another, he'd sink
the land on one side of a wall, creating a
(02:33):
barrier that couldn't be seen at all from the house,
while still keeping the sheep pastured with the sheep instead
of wandering around eating whatever they wanted in other parts
of the estate. Jane Austen fans may remember that ha
Has makes several appearances in the book Mansfield Park. Obviously,
a sunken wall that is made on purpose to not
(02:54):
be visible isn't necessarily safe to walk around near, and
the term haha supposedly comes from a person's surprise at
accidentally tripping over one. Capability Brown's work was very expensive
because the estates that he was designing had enormous grounds.
He wasn't just making a little garden path around to
the side of the house, he was designing the entire property.
(03:16):
They took years to complete and hundreds of labors worked
on them. Over his career. He designed about two hundred
and fifty estates all over England, but he didn't really
grow wealthy from all of that work. He had asthma,
which affected his health, and he traveled a lot doing
his work. He just was always on the road from
(03:37):
one client to another, and travel at the time was
exhausting and difficult. All of this had an effect on
his overall health, and he also didn't always charge people
for the work that he did. He might submit an
invoice but never really pushed to collect on it, or
he might go into the project without a very clear
set of expectations or a budget about how much he
(03:57):
was going to be spending on it. He died suddenly
on fib We're a sixth three at the age of
sixty six, having worked all the way up until the end.
In a lot of ways, he set standards for the
look of English manor houses and estates that continue to
influence British aesthetics today. And you can still visit a
lot of estates that Brown designed and walk through gardens
(04:18):
that are still pretty much as he left them, although
of course all of the trees that he planted are
bigger now than they were where they still survive. Thanks
to Christopher hascy Otis for his research work on today's episode,
a Tatari Harrison for her audio work on this podcast.
You can subscribe to The Day in History Class on
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
(04:41):
Tune in tomorrow for a much gorrier tale, although it's
still set in England. Hello, Welcome to this Day in
History class, where we flipped through the book of History
and bring give a new page every day. The day
(05:10):
was August two. The steamship Moravia arrived in New York
Harbor late in the evening. By this point, twenty two
of the ships three and fifty eight passengers who had
traveled from Hamburg, Germany, had died from cholera. Cholera is
an infectious disease of the small intestine, usually caused by
(05:33):
contaminated food or water, and it can lead to severe diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration,
and even death. In the late nineteenth century, there was
a cholera pandemic in Asia and Africa that made it
to parts of Europe and South America. A cholera epidemic
(05:54):
broke out in Hamburg in eighteen ninety two because of
contaminated drinking water, and more than half of the people
who were infected died. Americans worried that the epidemic would
reach the United States. Unrestricted and so called undesirable immigration
was already a hot button issue in the country. For
(06:16):
contexts on the fears and prejudices surrounding immigration at the
time the Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed in eighteen nine two,
those fears extended to immigration from places that were affected
by cholera. Those Jewish people in Russia were not the
only ones getting cholera or fleeing epidemics. Many newspapers and
(06:38):
public health establishments pegged them as the likely carriers of
cholera to the US. One August twenty nine article in
The New York Times said the following about Hungarians and
Jewish people in Russia, even should they pass the quarantine officials,
their mode of life when they settled down makes them
(06:59):
all always a source of danger. Cholera, it must be remembered,
originates in the homes of this human refraff. Journalists, working
class Americans, and medical professionals called for a suspension of
immigration to keep cholera from spreading to the US, but
by mid August of eight two, many ships from the
(07:22):
port of Hamburg were en route to New York. Steamships
continued carrying steerage immigrants out of Hamburg, even after health
officials admitted that there was a cholera epidemic. The people
aboard those ships were coming from places that had been
widely affected by cholera. One of those ships was the Moravia,
(07:43):
which left Hamburg on August seventeen. Only a couple of
days after the trip began, Russian and Polish Jewish people,
as well as German and French folks, began getting symptoms
of cramping, vomiting, and diarrhea, which progressed tacoma and death.
Between August nineteen and twenty nine, twenty two people died
(08:07):
and two more were ill upon arrival in the New
York quarantine station on the night of Tuesday, August, One
correspondent reported that people who died were wrapped in canvas
and thrown overboard with their belongings. The Health officer of
the Port of New York, members of the New York
(08:27):
City Board of Health, and physicians from the U. S.
Marine Hospital Service dealt with the cholera affected ships that
arrived in New York Harbor from Hamburg. A quarantine had
been placed over the Port of New York, which led
to the poor treatment of immigrants and the confinement of
thousands of people on steamships and islands, including those who
(08:50):
did not have cholera. The same day that the Morabia
arrived in New York, Health Officer William Jenkins announced that
only steerage passengers, as opposed to first and second class passengers,
would be inspected, disinfected, and detained for about five days
for observation, and the U. S. Treasury Departments Immigration Bureau
(09:14):
let people into New York from Hamburg as long as
steamship companies put steerage passengers in slower, older ships and
cabin class passengers in faster newerships. This separation allowed cabin
class passengers to be quickly inspected, and it allowed the
fast detention of immigrant passengers aboard the slower ships. The
(09:38):
Morabia was the first slow moving pest ship to arrive
in New York from Hamburg. Its passengers were sent to
Hoffman Island, where they were bathed and their clothes were fumigated.
Jenkins ordered that they be quarantined for as long as necessary.
As they remained in quarantine, more ships arrived and were quarantined.
(10:01):
US President Benjamin Harrison issued an order for a nationwide
twenty day quarantine of ships from foreign ports carrying immigrants.
The twenty day period applied to steerage immigrant passengers, but
not cabin passengers, and state authorities could decide to keep
people in quarantine for more time in special cases. But
(10:24):
by early September, there were no new cases of cholera
on the Moravia, and the cholera epidemic was over by
the end of September, But all the conflicts that had
arisen among state and federal officials over management of the
epidemic led to a desire for changes in public health
(10:44):
and immigration laws. In President Harrison signed into law the
National Quarantine Act, which created a national system of quarantine
while still allowing for state run quarantines. It also put
standards in place for medically inspecting immigrants, ships and cargoes.
(11:07):
I'm Eves Jeffcote and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. You can find
us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at t D I
h C podcast Tune in tomorrow for Another Day in History.
(11:28):
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
Hello everyone, it's Eves checking in here to let you
know that you're going to be hearing two different events
in history in this episode, one from me and one
from Tracy V. Wilson. They're both good, if I do
say so myself. One with the show, Welcome to this
day in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com
and from the desk of Stuff You Missed in History Class.
It's the show where we explore the past one day
(00:21):
at a time with a quick look at what happened
today in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy V. Wilson and it's August. England's greatest gardener, Lancelot
Capability Brown was baptized on this day in seventeen sixteen,
although we don't know exactly his date of birth. If
(00:44):
you have ever watched Downton Abbey, or even just seeing
a picture of the abbey and Downton Abbey that's high
Clear Castle, It's gardens were designed by Lancelot Brown. That
nickname of Capability is said to be because he likes
to tell his clients that their landscapes had great capability
for improvement. He was colossally influential in the eighteenth century
(01:08):
in England and Wales, designing gardens and grounds of the
mansions and the country estates, basically creating the look of England.
His style was a huge break away from the idea
of formal gardens, which obviously looked like somebody planned them
out and planted specific things in specific places, and said
(01:28):
he was carefully crafting landscapes that looked deceptively natural. They
looked like they just grew that way. He had trees
and curving ponds and streams and expansive lawns that all
just looked like they were supposed to be there. This
earned him some criticism for designing estates that look like
that was just how they happened, instead of looking like
(01:49):
somebody put effort into it. His whole philosophy was all
about being both comfortable and elegant, and it was also
very practical. These landscapes are round. These estates were not
just gardens to walk through and be observed. They had
different uses. They were home to different types of animals,
different livestock that was being raised on the property. Brown's
(02:13):
gardens were supposed to serve the needs of the estate,
not just exist for the sake of looking at them.
A hallmark of capability Brown's designs was the ha ha.
Instead of a raised fence that very obviously invisibly cut
one part of the state off from another, he'd sink
the land on one side of a wall, creating a
(02:33):
barrier that couldn't be seen at all from the house,
while still keeping the sheep pastured with the sheep instead
of wandering around eating whatever they wanted in other parts
of the estate. Jane Austen fans may remember that ha
Has makes several appearances in the book Mansfield Park. Obviously,
a sunken wall that is made on purpose to not
(02:54):
be visible isn't necessarily safe to walk around near, and
the term haha supposedly comes from a person's surprise at
accidentally tripping over one. Capability Brown's work was very expensive
because the estates that he was designing had enormous grounds.
He wasn't just making a little garden path around to
the side of the house, he was designing the entire property.
(03:16):
They took years to complete and hundreds of labors worked
on them. Over his career. He designed about two hundred
and fifty estates all over England, but he didn't really
grow wealthy from all of that work. He had asthma,
which affected his health, and he traveled a lot doing
his work. He just was always on the road from
(03:37):
one client to another, and travel at the time was
exhausting and difficult. All of this had an effect on
his overall health, and he also didn't always charge people
for the work that he did. He might submit an
invoice but never really pushed to collect on it, or
he might go into the project without a very clear
set of expectations or a budget about how much he
(03:57):
was going to be spending on it. He died suddenly
on fib We're a sixth three at the age of
sixty six, having worked all the way up until the end.
In a lot of ways, he set standards for the
look of English manor houses and estates that continue to
influence British aesthetics today. And you can still visit a
lot of estates that Brown designed and walk through gardens
(04:18):
that are still pretty much as he left them, although
of course all of the trees that he planted are
bigger now than they were where they still survive. Thanks
to Christopher hascy Otis for his research work on today's episode,
a Tatari Harrison for her audio work on this podcast.
You can subscribe to The Day in History Class on
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
(04:41):
Tune in tomorrow for a much gorrier tale, although it's
still set in England. Hello, Welcome to this Day in
History class, where we flipped through the book of History
and bring give a new page every day. The day
(05:10):
was August two. The steamship Moravia arrived in New York
Harbor late in the evening. By this point, twenty two
of the ships three and fifty eight passengers who had
traveled from Hamburg, Germany, had died from cholera. Cholera is
an infectious disease of the small intestine, usually caused by
(05:33):
contaminated food or water, and it can lead to severe diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration,
and even death. In the late nineteenth century, there was
a cholera pandemic in Asia and Africa that made it
to parts of Europe and South America. A cholera epidemic
(05:54):
broke out in Hamburg in eighteen ninety two because of
contaminated drinking water, and more than half of the people
who were infected died. Americans worried that the epidemic would
reach the United States. Unrestricted and so called undesirable immigration
was already a hot button issue in the country. For
(06:16):
contexts on the fears and prejudices surrounding immigration at the
time the Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed in eighteen nine two,
those fears extended to immigration from places that were affected
by cholera. Those Jewish people in Russia were not the
only ones getting cholera or fleeing epidemics. Many newspapers and
(06:38):
public health establishments pegged them as the likely carriers of
cholera to the US. One August twenty nine article in
The New York Times said the following about Hungarians and
Jewish people in Russia, even should they pass the quarantine officials,
their mode of life when they settled down makes them
(06:59):
all always a source of danger. Cholera, it must be remembered,
originates in the homes of this human refraff. Journalists, working
class Americans, and medical professionals called for a suspension of
immigration to keep cholera from spreading to the US, but
by mid August of eight two, many ships from the
(07:22):
port of Hamburg were en route to New York. Steamships
continued carrying steerage immigrants out of Hamburg, even after health
officials admitted that there was a cholera epidemic. The people
aboard those ships were coming from places that had been
widely affected by cholera. One of those ships was the Moravia,
(07:43):
which left Hamburg on August seventeen. Only a couple of
days after the trip began, Russian and Polish Jewish people,
as well as German and French folks, began getting symptoms
of cramping, vomiting, and diarrhea, which progressed tacoma and death.
Between August nineteen and twenty nine, twenty two people died
(08:07):
and two more were ill upon arrival in the New
York quarantine station on the night of Tuesday, August, One
correspondent reported that people who died were wrapped in canvas
and thrown overboard with their belongings. The Health officer of
the Port of New York, members of the New York
(08:27):
City Board of Health, and physicians from the U. S.
Marine Hospital Service dealt with the cholera affected ships that
arrived in New York Harbor from Hamburg. A quarantine had
been placed over the Port of New York, which led
to the poor treatment of immigrants and the confinement of
thousands of people on steamships and islands, including those who
(08:50):
did not have cholera. The same day that the Morabia
arrived in New York, Health Officer William Jenkins announced that
only steerage passengers, as opposed to first and second class passengers,
would be inspected, disinfected, and detained for about five days
for observation, and the U. S. Treasury Departments Immigration Bureau
(09:14):
let people into New York from Hamburg as long as
steamship companies put steerage passengers in slower, older ships and
cabin class passengers in faster newerships. This separation allowed cabin
class passengers to be quickly inspected, and it allowed the
fast detention of immigrant passengers aboard the slower ships. The
(09:38):
Morabia was the first slow moving pest ship to arrive
in New York from Hamburg. Its passengers were sent to
Hoffman Island, where they were bathed and their clothes were fumigated.
Jenkins ordered that they be quarantined for as long as necessary.
As they remained in quarantine, more ships arrived and were quarantined.
(10:01):
US President Benjamin Harrison issued an order for a nationwide
twenty day quarantine of ships from foreign ports carrying immigrants.
The twenty day period applied to steerage immigrant passengers, but
not cabin passengers, and state authorities could decide to keep
people in quarantine for more time in special cases. But
(10:24):
by early September, there were no new cases of cholera
on the Moravia, and the cholera epidemic was over by
the end of September, But all the conflicts that had
arisen among state and federal officials over management of the
epidemic led to a desire for changes in public health
(10:44):
and immigration laws. In President Harrison signed into law the
National Quarantine Act, which created a national system of quarantine
while still allowing for state run quarantines. It also put
standards in place for medically inspecting immigrants, ships and cargoes.
(11:07):
I'm Eves Jeffcote and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. You can find
us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at t D I
h C podcast Tune in tomorrow for Another Day in History.
(11:28):
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
This Day in History Class News
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Gabe Luzier
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