Archive for October, 2010
Forgotten Crafts: Broombinder
Thursday, October 7th, 2010
Jan en Caspar Luyken, ±1690
The other day I was absorbed in writing in my office when all of a sudden I was disturbed by a horrible noise. I got up to have a look out of the window to see what that awful noise could be. It turned out to be the street sweeper with his latest fall gadget: a leaf blower.
With a sigh I sat down and my thoughts wandered off to the days when street sweepers would do just that: sweep the street, with a broom: tsssjk-tjssk-tsssjk. And if the good man was in a jolly mood he would whistle or sing a song. I would like that far better that this deafening noise.
But, in our age, there are no old-fashioned street sweepers anymore. Moreover, there are no real brooms anymore. I mean the good ones made of birch twigs. And there are no broombinders anymore either.
Broom making used to be good business. It started out as a side job to add to the family income in rural areas along with basket making. Over time, it became a real occupation with its own guild. Winter was the ideal season to pick the right birch twigs. Some broom makers would travel around and create a broom to your wishes at the spot. Others had their own shop. Especially in the eastern part of the Netherlands the industry flourished. Around 1900, the industry was at its peak, producing over 150,000 brooms and scrubbers a year. Ultimately, industrialization took over from the old handwork to keep up with demands.
Thanks to industrialization, everybody can buy a cheap, reasonably good broom nowadays. But frankly, who needs a broom these days? We vacuum our houses and we vacuum our gardens. We even vacuum” our streets. Very efficient, maybe, but I do miss the whistle and the tsssjk-tssjk-tsssjk-sound of the street sweeper.
Streets of Death
Monday, October 4th, 2010
Gallowfield of The Hague 1618.
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
On a chilly morning on October 31, 1860, Johannes Nathan had a last look at the watery sun that just peeped through the clouds. Then the rope pushed his last breath out of his throat and everything went black. Was his last thought with his mother-in-law that he had beaten to death on the road to Sittard? We will never know. We do know, however, that he was the last person in the Netherlands to be sentenced to death (periods of war not included). The death penalty was abolished in 1870.
However, up until 1860, death by hanging was a common penalty for capital offenses and for small offenses if you were of low class. The possibility of being hanged was even more frightening because of torture practices. If someone refused to confess, torture was applied. We now know that torture easily leads to false confessions to stop the pain, but in those days, that wisdom was not so common. So if you were guilty of a serious offense, you would confess to avoid torture. If you were innocent, you would too. And in both cases, you were hanged. This dubious method of law practice could lead to serious mistakes. A horrible example of this is the dozens of so-called “Bokkenrijders” that were falsely accused of murder and sentenced to death in the early 1700s. Read our article about the Bokkenrijders if you would like to know more about that case.
Almost every major town and city had gallows. A hanging was public entertainment, at which large crowds would gather. The bodies of the dead were exposed at the entrance of the town to warn people that disobeying the law could have serious consequences.
Nowadays all the gallows are gone, but many street names still hint at their bygone presence:
Dodenberg (death hill), Cuijck
Doodsweg (death road), Bornerbroek
Galgenberg (gallow hill), Tubbergen
Galgenkampsweg (gallow camp street), Meppel
Galgenstraat (gallow street), Amsterdam
Galgenveld (gallow field), Ootmarsum
Galgenwaard (gallow holm), Utrecht
Korteademhalingssteeg (short breath alley), Zwolle
Wipstrik (gallow), Zwolle
Some people would like to reintroduce the death penalty in the Netherlands for capital offenses. However, as long as we cannot guarantee that innocent people will not be mistakenly executed, I think we better leave it as it is today…
From scribble to chat
Friday, October 1st, 2010
Dutch stamp with king William III.
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Last weekend my two boys wrote an e-mail to grandma who lives in Germany and together we made a beautiful postcard for my twin nieces in Spain who will celebrate their birthday next week. Grandma responded within minutes even though she was over a hundred miles away and we know my nieces will get the card within five days, because that is just how reliable the postal services are today.
That made me think of my great-grandmother who set sail with her husband in 1909 to Aceh (Indonesia), then known as the “outback” of the Dutch East Indies. I imagine she and her mom cried bitter tears, knowing that they would not see each other again for a long time. A letter could take months to get from Aceh to Amsterdam, and a telegraph office had not been installed there yet. By the time my great-great-grandmother read the news about the birth of her first granddaughter, the child already set her first steps on the other end of the globe…
In the middle ages, communication was even worse. Paper was expensive, the roads were bad and dangerous, and the majority of the population was illiterate. Hence, only the rich and powerful would be able to write a letter and have a courier bring the valuable message to its destination. Only tough and brave made became a courier. They had to be able to walk long distances in every kind of weather, and they had to know how to handle a sword to protect the letters and their valuable contents (money, strategic political messages, etcetera) from bandits. Even though it was a dangerous job, it was also highly lucrative: the recipients paid up to 25 cents for a letter. That does not sound like much, but considering that a workman would earn about 50 cents a day, that is a lot of money, corresponding to about €25.- (USD 33.-) in today’s money. Just imagine that you would have to pay that amount for receiving just one letter!
