Before discovering Chaucers, the Emily Chesley Reading Circle had been meeting in a re-creation of Emily’s old bedroom in her flat at Spidgy Park. (Before its incineration, of course, and without all the Norwegians.)
Most of the members were happy with the arrangement; however, Quizzling (at bottom) was nonplussed. And everyone agreed that is was unsporting of Dr. Robotnik to keep shifting off to the left like that.
Not to mention the mess caused by all the spilled Guinness.
Though known primarily for his prowess as a Victorian inventor, Michael Flannigan had the heart of an adventurer — both qualities inspired his niece, Emily Chesley, in her writing. Flannigan was the only stable adult during Emily’s upbringing and until his untimely and horrific death (testing the prototype of a nostril-stretching and hair-clipping invention) he continued to play a guiding role in her life. You can read more about Flannigan and his work in The Meanderings of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle.
Here are two of his more notorious inventions:
The Lady’s Flatus Inhibitor, circa 1864In 1864 Michael Flannigan and his little clan of Irish hooligans were doing well financially. He was flush from the roaring success of the Whistle-Snap Vitals Binding System (circa 1863) and famous for his Fecal Banishment Apparatus (circa 1860) [1]. On the family front, however, things were not nearly so rosy.
The continual debauchery of his sisters Mary, Hope and Chelsea and their various addictions were a constant drain on his resources, and they gave his other sister Molly terrible gas.
Flannigan well understood the obvious social embarrassment this caused his sister [2], and he saw an opportunity to help her and indeed, all of humanity deal with their intestinal vapours.
By the summer of 1864, Flannigan had created the Lady’s Flatus Inhibitor – a simple device, really, made of cork, a bit of rubber and a small disk of tin. The Inhibitor was designed for easy discreet insertion before a dinner party or an evening of whisk; Flannigan’s intention was that it would prevent the potentially humiliating escape of bodily gases in social contexts. The invention was an immediate hit, and many fine ladies in both Ireland and England were using the Flatus Inhibitor by the beginning of the social season.
Predictably, disaster followed.
At Lady Cecil B. Butrum’s annual Far East Festival the “lentil love” dish was particularly spicy and unfortunately, Hungrup Singh (her Sikh cook) had not prepared the lentils properly. Accordingly, the high level of complex carbohydrates made it difficult – if not impossible – to fully digest the dish. Butrum’s choice of food (and the shoddy workmanship of the sub-contractor that Flannigan had hired to produce the tin disks) would result in what the London Scabrous Times would later dub “The Windy Lake Cross Rip.” [3]
The rough edges of the poorly finished tin were sufficiently sharp to cut through several layers of cloth and projected with enough force, even whalebone. Many ladies present would later say they had a terrible premonition of disaster as they experienced “gaseous abdominal fullness” and “extreme discomfort”. When the music started and the dancing began, the stage was set for disaster.
Nearly 100 Flatus Inhibitors were in use that night, and all but one escaped the confines for which they were designed. [4] Most at high velocities. For the most part, the sound of bustles being blown apart was simply embarrassing, but for the Lady and Lord Jason Foewad, it was tragic. As they ascended to the upstairs parlour in Butrum Manor, it happened: The tension behind Lady Foewad’s Inhibitor finally reached its critical stress point, and it was launched. It was miserable luck that Lord Foewad was two steps below and behind her as the Inhibitor tore through her evening wear at the speed of sound.
The rough edges of the tin nicked Foewad in the carotid artery, and within minutes, he bled to death.
Luckily for Flannigan, the blame for the death could be put squarely on the shoulders of the sub-contractor, so the Windy Lake Cross Rip did not hurt him financially.
But he was – once again – the laughing stock of London: the papers referred to him as “Methane Mike” and “Michael Flatus-again”.
Undaunted by ridicule, financial danger or even the potential death of his customers, he returned to the drawing board, leading him to create the . . .
Clearly the problem with the original design was that it attempted to prevent the escape of such a large and volatile admixture of gases. Instead, why not capture the gases and use them for other things? This was the beginning of his love affair with vaporous fuels that would eventually result in the Library Bosom Affair.
It was also at this time the Fecal Banishment Apparatus was causing in many cases of Glutus Plus Maximus, and instituting the fashion sensation called the bustle. Flannigan had found his solution: The Lady’s Aerophagia Ameliorator.
Starting with the original “plug” design from the Flatus Inhibitor [5], Flannigan added some rubber tubing, attaching it in order to: the “Swiveller Deal”, the “Particulate Eradicator”, “the Continence Valvular Device” and the “Gas Bag”, all of which he patented separately. The prosaically named “Gas Bag” was designed to fit within the confines of a lady’s bustle.
Though the memory of The Windy Lake Cross Rip was still fresh in the minds of London Society, its Ladies were keen to try another device to help them with social intestinal indiscretions. [6]
The carefully constructed nature of The Lady’s Aerophagia Ameliorator and the high-cost subcontractors that he employed ensured the success of the invention. It was truly the hit of the 1865 social season, though there were still a few distressing incidents.
The most embarrassing was reported by none other than Horatio Jeeks, the worst alcoholic in London and the writer of the London Barf and Whistle’s gossip column, Addled Chatter:
It seems the nether regions of our Nation’s Peerage are once again under assault from that pernicious Irish inventor, Michael Flannigan. Last night at a piano recital, Lady Felicity Farnshump suffered what can only be described as an intestinal outrage. Apparently, she was using Mr. Flannigan’s “Aerophagia Ameliorator” for several days without respite; the design of the contraption could not withstand the intense pressure of continued use, no doubt made worse by Lady Farnshump’s fondness for cheese and onion sandwiches and the excitement of the music.
In wild counterpoint to the Mozart’s Concerto Number 11, the sound of Lady Farnshump’s Ameliorator giving up the ghost was nothing short of apocalyptic.
In fact, several gentle souls sitting in the row behind her were knocked off their chairs.
Compared with the full-scale (and lethal) disaster of the Inhibitor, the Ameliorator was quite the success, despite with such reports. Even the lower classes found the eliminatory equipment quite useful, though naturally, they found the name awkward and unmanageable. They found a more lyrical way of describing the device: The Flatus Apparatus.
The doxies and nautch girls of the Whitechapel region in particular benefited from the invention. Not only did the Flatus Apparatus keep them from scaring off the customers, they could use the gassy byproduct to light the rooms they used for their assignations. After a while, the harlots who used the device became known as their regulars as the “Sweet FA”.
But this mis-appellation and misuse of the device did not bother Flannigan one bit; for now he was on a holy crusade – to free the human body from the bondage of the bowel! [7]
Notes:
1) Flannigan routinely chose American spellings for his inventions not only because he was always running out of space in advertisements, but because it was one small way in which he could snub the British masters.
2) An interview with the Sultana of Khabstakan nearly ended in disaster because of an ill-timed meal of “Whipple Mix” in 1822 – the incident is reported in the excellent monograph: Flannigan and the Face of Disaster.
3) The Butrum’s had an ancestral home at Windy Lake, and held parties there every year.
4) Lady Bracknell was a legendary tight ass.
5) He patented this as “Device 1245”, but amongst friends and in his sketches, Flannigan always referred to this as “the rude bit”.
6) Though in Joseph “Spungy” Freakinswad’s titembetic masterpiece: “Ode to Odifer”, based on the incident at Windy Lake, he suggests that many ladies simply enjoyed the invasive nature of the device.
7) Though Flannigan was hardly obsessed by the colon. Later in life he enjoyed a brief friendship with Dr. Harvey Kellog (known to many in the health field as the Baron of the Bowel) when they created the Systematic Anti-autointoxication Device, in 1898. Now there was a man who knew his way around a gut.
———–
Thus endeth the “week of Emily Chesley” (which started here.) I hope you’ve enjoyed this taste of the Meanderings. More content will be available in the New Year on the Emily Chesley Reading Circle’s website.
Now, here is humor-blogs.com.
Writer, poet, social activist, explorer, aviatrix, and 92-year-old pole vaulter: Emily Chesley played many roles in her long and remarkable life. This week I am posting abridged excerpts from her biography, Get Bent: Emily Chesley’s Life of Speculation, which recounts the humble beginnings and formative experiences of the Speculative Songstress Of The Southwest. Chapter two (part two) of Emily’s bio here.
Flannigan’s inventive mind could not keep up with either the irrepressible debauchery of his sisters or Emily’s increasingly frequent counseling sessions with a sympathetic but expensive Dr. Abbie 
FitzWeezepuddle. Near penniless, Michael had a new plan for his dysfunctional family. He’d heard about land being given away in the far western reaches of British North America and he dreamed of making a fresh start. “Surely,” he wrote in the opening entry of a diary dated October 13, 1869, “there must be some demand for locationists. I can only hope and pray.”
Emily, bursting with the onset of womanhood, was thrilled with her trans-Atlantic accommodations in the third class hold of the S.S. Travesty. En route to America, she began her scientific schooling peppered by romantic between-deck encounters with a variety of Ians, Owens, Euans and Hamishes).
In so many ways, it was just like home, packed like sardines into their beds, nuzzling up against each other’s most pointy parts, and breathing the familiar fetid air of unwashed bodies. For Emily, reveling in both the emerging fire of her delicate years and the burgeoning sweep of her vivid imagination, it was revelatory. Her curvaceous buttocks squeezed surreptitiously by a passing young man named Sean (or was it Seamus?), she glowed within and without, and imagined beginning and ending each day with such pleasures. “Am I part of the throng, or am I simply wearing it?,” she wondered dreamily, brushing away the ardent and exploratory caresses of a youthful gentleman named Seamus (or was it Sean?).
Arriving at Ellis Island, in Lady Liberty’s fulsome shadow, [1] Emily suffered the indignity familiar to so many immigrants, as an official who had been imbibing too heavily of a crusty port over an extended luncheon changed her name, as if by rote. “Now you’re Irmgard Phlegmstein,” he decreed, as if such an edict could alter the inner essence of the vibrant young woman. It took several days, and liberal internal and external application of black coffee to persuade the besotted official of his error, but Irmgard was soon dismissed in favor of Emily. This bizarre event, though, was the beginning of a lifelong quest for identity that sent Emily and her familial entourage into the vast central plains of North America.
Leaving a broken-hearted trail of Ians, Owens, Euans and Hamishes in her wake, Emily found herself drawn to middle America, to the open skies and windswept expanses of North Dakota. There, in the midst of a sea of sugar beets and rich black soil, both Emily and Michael found themselves at
the center of their respective universes. He found the perfect spot to establish a focal point for his calling, encouraged by the insistence of the local expert in such matters as land and property that the key to success in a venture of this sort was “Locationism, locationism, locationism.” She, propelled down an entirely different path, found Norwegians.
They took the North Pacific Railroad to its terminus, and ended up in a small farming community near what is now Williston in the Dakota Territory. Fed a steady diet of science from Michael, Emily also continued to read her beloved mythology, delighting especially in the bleak world view of the Norse.
Perhaps it was this latter reading that left her in a frame of mind to throw herself at the un-named soldier who lived in the sod hut about two miles away.
It was a long toss, and unfortunately, the Norwegian was unable to catch it due to a “sexually indescribable fencing wedgie”. Emily was outraged and jilted him in a scene of such humiliation, his name has never been mentioned since. Meanwhile Michael Flannigan continued to work on his inventions. The most successful of which was the women’s undergarment of the future: the Thong. Emily thoroughly endorsed the product and was more than willing to show off its many benefits. Thus it came to be that the Thors, Ivors and Bjorns of the community came to lie broken and panting in the wake of her merchandising frenzy. The town fathers and church leaders, upright in their support of Emily’s youthful exuberance, were cowardly in the end, and did not object when the womenfolk demanded that the community expel the family.
Notes:
1. Scholars are divided on when Emily and her family actually arrived in North America. Whether the event occurred in 1869 or 1870, however, one could only arrive in at Ellis Island, under “Lady Liberty’s fulsome shadow”, after 1884. Also, Ellis Island was not in use until the 1890s. However it is true that nearby on the deck of the Travesty was one Libby Learty, a butcher’s wife from Galway whose six-foot 300-pound frame was said to cast quite a fulsome shadow. This too could be a source of scholarly confusion over accounts of Emily’s arrival in New York City.
It can only be said that the exact dates of several events in Emily’s life between 1869 and her arrival in London, Canada, in 1880 are, at best, murky.
Writer, poet, social activist, explorer, aviatrix, and 92-year-old pole vaulter: Emily Chesley played many roles in her long and remarkable life.
It was within this chaotic milieu that Emily’s formative years were lived. As well, she grew up in the posthumous shadow of her father, whose legacy of savagery, alcohol dependence and war heroics was assimilated into her consciousness through the stories endlessly retold by her heartbroken mother. Molly’s inability to let go of the past seemed to envelop the young Emily like a shroud.
Friar Parsnip was also the master of the region’s only school, which met every morning after mass for two hours in the 13th century Ennis Friary. It was there that Emily learned to read and love speculative fiction. [3] But while not immersed in the fairy tales told by the Friar or sitting in her uncle’s laboratory while he tinkered, Emily was an unhappy child. Emily was prone at a very early age to outbursts,” as Molly called them; expressed through a twisted combination of violence and creativity, they quite often involved small animals and vaguely satanic rituals. Friar Parsnip tried to control the child, through blandishments of Mary’s love, and warnings that she would drink hellfire. Emily thought of these bribes and threats as mere story telling, and would pat the good-natured Friar on the cheek while she smeared lark’s vomit on the neighbor’s poodle, Yumyum.
Flannigan hired a local physician who was experienced in the field of psychiatry to help Emily overcome these “outbursts”. Dr. Abbie FitzWeezepuddle was descended from a long line of Norman loonies (who had settled in the region about the same time the friary was built). FitzWeezpuddle did not subscribe to such modern concepts as the “conscious automata,” “animal spirits” or even radical phrenology models of the human mind. He relied on tried and true methods, and therefore bled Emily on a regular basis to dispose of the “angry and melancholy humours” causing her explosive bursts of temper. This constant bleeding was expensive and, for Emily, quite enervating. However, while her body recovered and produced new blood, Emily used the time to read voraciously. She rounded out her study of Catholicism with books on Celtic, Greek and Arthurian mythology, and later supplemented this reading with the Norwegian sagas.
But eventually, her strength would return and another “outburst” would occur. Finally, the good citizens of Ennis had enough, and the dyspeptic family was run out of town; though it must be noted that the Friars did ask Mary, Hope and the womb-challenged Chelsea to stay. [4]
As Emily entered her delicate years Michael became the primary source of her education; the inventor was appalled to discover that she had learned neither mathematics nor natural science under the Friar’s tutelage. Meanwhile he continued to be a prolific inventor, cranking out a series of successful and sometimes dangerous devices.
Notes:
3. This was how her “uncle” Michael referred to the catechism the school children did each morning.
4. The triumvirate of Flannigan sisters was often at the friary, though usually they were seen entering by the back door. Later, the sisters became well-known in the Irish district of New York City as the Friar’s Tarts.
Writer, poet, social activist, explorer, aviatrix, and 92-year-old pole vaulter: Emily Chesley played many roles in her long and remarkable life. This week I am posting abridged excerpts from her biography, Get Bent: Emily Chesley’s Life of Speculation, which recounts the humble beginnings and formative experiences of the Speculative Songstress Of The Southwest. The previous episode (chapter one) is here.
Michael’s mounting success as an inventor sustained a comfortable existence for Molly, and Emily during her younger years. The particulate breathing apparatus proved more popular among the privileged classes of counties Clare and Limerick than his introspection wheel had been among the 
nouveau riche of Westminster. In fact, the “party brat” (by which the device was affectionately known) became so ubiquitous that it was considered one of the primary factors responsible for a dramatic increase in cannabis use witnessed throughout Ireland during the late 1850s and early 1860s. [1]
As word of Michael’s infamy as the inventor of the party brat, and of his subsequent fortune, spread to the red-light district of east London, three of Molly’s four sisters, [2] Chelsea, Hope and Mary, returned to Ireland in a desperate attempt to redeem themselves in the eyes of their now wealthy brother. Fortunately for the three Flannigan girls, Michael’s brilliance was equaled by his soft-hearted, forgiving nature and naiveté. He welcomed all three sisters into his home only to see them regress shortly thereafter back to a lifestyle of sexual deviancy and addiction now subsidized by him.
The unexpected arrival of Chelsea, Hope and Mary took a particularly harsh toll on Molly, who was already suffering from a prolonged case of post-partum depression following the birth of Emily. While Michael resigned himself to his sisters’ increasingly scandalous behaviour and distracted himself with his latest inventions, Molly was prone to lashing out at her siblings with a ferocity that rivaled her late husband’s. On one occasion, having walked in on a roily orgy in a garden shack involving all three of her sisters and a toothless groundskeeper named ‘Wily Willy’, Molly was observed by a local clergyman one Friar Parsnip pursuing her sisters “barefoot and wailing like a banshee” down a cobble-stone street with hedging shears. The shocked clergyman engaged in the chase to ensure no harm would befall Molly or her sisters. When he finally caught up with the Flannigans, Hope and Mary had spent their entire energy disarming Molly from her shears. But he was too late to prevent Chelsea from receiving an extraordinarily well-hung fence wedgie that ultimately resulted in a hysterectomy.
Notes:
1. This little known fact is well documented by the world’s first known demographer, Charles “Chuckles” Pratt, in his commentary on the social evils of 19th century Irish society, Cannabis Shenanigans.
2. Catherine, the fourth sister, had earlier given up her life of prostitution to repent as a nun at the Worcestershire Convent and Buggy Wash in Liverpool. After a decade of life as a quiet penitent and carriage lamp detailer, Catherine found her calling as a missionary and devoted the rest of her life to a South Pacifi c colony of poor outcasts of sexual ambiguity. Though still far from beatifi cation, let alone sainthood in the eyes of the Church, she is already known in the tiny archipelago of Laigo Maiago as St. Catherine Among The Hermaphrodites.
Writer, poet, social activist, explorer, aviatrix, and 92-year-old pole vaulter: Emily Chesley played many roles in her long and remarkable life. This week I am posting abridged excerpts from her biography, Get Bent: Emily Chesley’s Life of Speculation, which recounts the humble beginnings and formative experiences of the Speculative Songstress Of The Southwest.
Emily Chutney Chesley was born in Ireland, on May 24, 1856, the daughter of an Irish Catholic girl named Molly Magdalene Catherine Mary (née) Flannigan and a bona fide British war hero, Johnny Charles Chesley. Johnny Chesley, forced into a life in the Army by poverty, was the youngest son of a failed merchant banker. Molly’s family had fled their hometown of Ennis, County Clare during the Potato Famine in 1848 and settled in London.
Though an indifferent marksman, Johnny Chesley was a famed drinker and ruffian. As such, he made perfect sergeant’s material, and met with some success in that role, though he never made it above the rank of sergeant, as he was constantly being demoted for public drunkenness. Johnny was famous for two things — month-long, sack-inspired benders, and a ferocity in battle not seen since the Magyars. He is said to have personally decapitated twelve Russian Uhlans at the Battle of Balaclava, some feat for an infantryman. Balaclava is best known for the ridiculous Charge of the Light Brigade, but Chesley’s feats of mindless savagery are comparable to atrocities throughout the ages and were sadly overlooked by talented poets of the era, though his officers appreciated Chesley’s “mettle.” [1] He was given an extended leave. Chesley returned to London where he met Molly, who was working as a charwoman, trying to keep her family alive. Molly was the honest female breadwinner of the family. Her younger sisters Mary, Catherine, Chelsea and Hope all fell into prostitution as soon as they were able. The patriarch of the family, six siblings, and an old aunt named Gertrude had all died since their move to London. Most of Molly’s brothers died in
London’s slums, but one, Michael, survived as an inventor and “locationist;” [2] he proved a lifelong companion for both Molly and her daughter Emily.
The remarkable life of Michael Flannigan is deserving of its own biographical sketch. We can say here, however, that Michael Flannigan’s life of invention was one of soaring achievement and disastrous failure, of brief spasms of opulent wealth connected by longer stretches of grinding poverty. Flannigan had already had more than a lifetime of success and failure, by 1850, when he produced what would become one of his most successful inventions, Flannigan’s Phanerogam Rendering Tube (commonly known as “The Nautch”).
Prostitution was rampant in 1850s London and the spirochete treponema was having a class-blind field day. Flannigan’s Phanerogam Rendering Tube was the answer to every English gent’s problem with syphilis. [3]
Some deviants swore by the Nautch, and wives were even known to buy their errant husbands Flannigan’s invention by the box load. Flannigan sold enough Phanerogam Rendering Tubes to finance an ill-fated mountain climbing expedition to Tibet in 1852 (recounted in the excellent monograph To Bardo and Back). Though he failed to conquer Mount XV — now well-known as Mount Everest — the trip did provide inspiration for more inventions, including the Particulate Breathing Apparatus and the Introspection Wheel. The latter device was the hit of the 1854 social season, though it would eventually be a cause of ridicule and exile for Flannigan and his family. But before the scandal, Flannigan’s celebrity translated into a small fortune — enough money to pay outright for the wedding of his sister Molly to the dashing and psychotic Sgt. Johnny Chesley.
A grand wedding was performed at Chapel Shercksbury-on-Whimsey for the couple. It would be, for poor hardworking Molly, one of the happiest days of her life. Hundreds came from all around for the nuptials: English, Irish, Protestants, Catholics, wealthy and dirt poor. Songs were sung. There was dancing and carousing. Draught and wine flowed in abundance. The wedding celebration would be long remembered not least for the carnage that ensued. For it is always only a matter of time, in keeping with such occasions, until somebody throws the first punch. For Molly it was all bliss. She and Johnny were well away from the action by the time of the Great Shercksbury Riot of 1854. Molly was convinced she saw firreworks, though the sky was merely lit by the burning of several downtown establishments, accompanied by the popping musketry of the local militia called out to quell the celebration.
Molly was impregnated after the nuptials, and two days later, Johnny was sent back to the Crimean War. Though Florence Nightingale was more famous, Johnny Chesley made his own mark during the Crimea and the reams of history of that sad and silly conflict do contain a few scant pages that speak of him. He was featured in several of William Howard Russell’s reports in The Times, most notably, the passage that describes Johnny’s greatest heroics and death:
Fighting continues at Sevastopol. While Nightingale moves amongst the casualties, British infantry makes assault after assault upon the mighty walls of the wily Nakhimov’s fortress defense. Meanwhile, fighting continues outside of the citadel. Yesterday, the 12th Line made three attempts to exploit a weakness caused by successive artillery barrages. Sergeant John C. Chesley distinguished himself in these actions on several occasions by hurling Russian corpses at the enemy. It had such a devastating effect on enemy morale that the Russian line collapsed twice before a Russian officer put a sabre through Chesley’s midriff. The enraged sergeant decapitated the officer before expiring of obvious causes. Army officers say the sergeant will be given posthumous decoration.
When news of the death of the brave and quite mad Johnny reached Molly, she returned to Ireland to be with her brother Michael, who had moved back home. Michael, having funded her trip back to Ireland,was something of a sensation in Ennis, Co. Clare, and Limerick, Co. Limerick for his Particulate Breathing Apparatus. Flannigan created the device during an 1852 trip to Hong Kong, while he scoured the town’s opium dens, looking for the dissolute Tyrolean mountaineer, Gunter Gruntz. Flannigan became fascinated with the hookah, an oriental water-cooled pipe. He made his first sketches of the ‘party brat’ during his search for Gruntz. (This episode is outlined in the excellent monograph, Feng Brat.)
From the Meanderings of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle, by: Mark A. Rayner, John Sloan, David B. Lurie, Jeff Black & Malcolm Ruddock. Learn more about The Emily Chesley Reading Circle.
Notes:
1. Though some not-so-talented poets such as William Thudworth St.John-Smith, the Poet Laureate of Spidgy-on-Thames, did write about his exploits, notably the poem: Ode to Johnny the Brave.
2. Locationism, as everyone in Chesley’s day knew, was the art of finding the perfect place. Be it as small as a chair or a painting, or as large as a farm, the services of a “locationist” were indispensable in putting things in the flawless spot. It was the Victorian version of Feng Shui — an art form “invented” by Flannigan, but more likely something he picked up during his ill-fated expedition to Everest in 1852.
3. INSTRUCTIONS: “Simply purchase “The Nautch”, conveniently pre-rendered for your enjoyment, light it on fire, and stick your John Thomas in the superheated mixture of tallow, lye and plaster. (After the fire had gone out of course.)” The cure rate was phenomenal virtually none died of syphilis, though many were driven mad by the intense burning that followed not only the first use of a Nautch, but the subsequent intense aftereffects of the lye application on their members. (Flannigan had presciently combined that base ingredient with both tallow and plaster, making it nearly impossible to remove the admixture before the Nautch could do its good work.)