Related Inventions:

The Systematic Anti-autointoxication Device, circa 1895

Michael Flannigan's cheese-based underwear helped save the economy of Woodstock, Ontario. Unfortunately, it could not help this man with his lack of genitalia.

The Oxford Curd Gird (1895)

We have seen the Queen of cheese,
Laying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze --
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

-- James McIntyre,
Dairy Poet of Oxford County
1827 -1906

Michael Flannigan, like his prolific niece Emily Chesley, was a person far ahead of his time. Many of Flannigan’s inventions anticipated technologies and products of the later 20th and 21st centuries. In fact, the failure of many of Flannigan’s inventions was due as much to the limits of Flannigan’s time than to deficiencies in the idea itself.

The Single Action Facial Hair Removal device, for example, might have worked if not for relying on player piano-style memory technology that was not up to the need for precision that such a device had. It can’t be off by a hair’s width let alone a nose or a chin. Perhaps nowhere is both Flannigan’s prescience, and limitations of the times, more evident than in his creation of the Oxford Curd Gird. In this one invention, Flannigan anticipated such 20th century developments as technological convergence, advance materials engineering, and edible underwear all in one fell swoop.

A Cow. A City. A Big Cheese.

To this day Oxford County in southern Ontario Canada refers to itself as The Dairy Capital of Canada. It produces more milk than any other county in the country. The dairy industry (as well as related industries such as farm equipment and packaging) played a key role in the development of the county seat of Woodstock as well as the nearby town of Ingersoll. Woodstock has commemorated this past with a statue of a cow. The life sized painted iron statue, referred to by locals as simply “The Cow”, honors the “Springbank Snow Countess”. The Countess lived between 1919 and 1936 and was the world record producer of butterfat, a record that was not bested until 1952. The Countess was also milked four times a day (as opposed to the usual twice) and may have been the source of the term “tough titties”.

Even earlier than “The Cow” there was the “Big Cheese”. Produced in Ingersoll in 1866 to showcase Oxford dairy prowess, the Cheese was a huge wheel three foot high and seven feet wide. Legend has it than when the Cheese was displayed at the state fair in Saratoga New York its 7,300 pounds was too much for the exhibit hall and it fell through the floor. The Cheese also toured England. Eventually, a 300-pound wedge made it back to Ingersoll where local citizens consumed it. No one is sure what happened to the other 7,000 pounds but there is suspicion that it may have played a role in the scalding death of the Earl of Cheethamshire, and 20 of his guests, in the Great Cheethamshire Fondue Disaster of 1867.

Big Smoke. Bawling Cows

References to Woodstock as a dairy capital could lead to a mistaken view of the city as a bucolic place where contented cows graze in sunlit pastures. In fact Woodstock was a bustling Victorian industrial towns known as much for its machine shops and textile mills as for milk, cheese and eggs. Intrigued by a description he overheard one day of Woodstock as a town of both heavy industry and bawling cows, Flannigan decided to visit the nearby Oxford County in the fall of 1895. While he was a little disappointed to find that, in this case, bawling was spelled with a “w”, Flannigan was none-the-less impressed with the enterprising little city of Woodstock, a mere 30 miles from his home in London.

Flannigan’s arrival in Woodstock could not have come at a more opportune time. In 1895 North America was in the grips of a great depression. Just as severe as the great depression of the 1930s, the depression of the 1890s has largely been forgotten. Woodstock’s bustling industries were falling idle and its dairies were bursting with unsold butterfat. Flannigan turned his keen and inventive mind to helping Oxford out of its doldrums and within a fortnight he had come up with both an invention and a strategy. With his reputation recently restored by the success of the Systematic Anti-autointoxication Device, the city fathers of Woodstock were eager to hear how Flannigan might help them in their plight.

The Cheese Stringer

Flannigan’s Cheese Stringer (Model #5)

Using a pump to force cheese curds through a series of heating, stretching, compression and drying chambers, the Flannigan Cheese Stringer made it possible to create a yarn like substance out of cheese curds. The substance could be weaved into a heavy woolen-like material that was both comfortable and warm to wear (if a little greasy). Flannigan noted the Cheese Stringer could reduce raw materials costs for the local textile mills significantly, thus keeping them in business.

“The machine’s a wonder!” exclaimed city Alderman Pool Miffenger. “It will save us.”

Better still, explained Flannigan, when the cheese stringer undergarments wore out they could be shredded and fed to domestic pets. Flannigan came upon this idea when he tested a prototype of the cheesy undergarment around his London home. By the end of a short walk around his Woodfield neighborhood, at least a dozen barking hounds, mongrels and mutts were witness following the doddering old inventor.

“As everybody knows,” said Flannigan, “dogs love cheese!”

The city leapt at the chance to produce cheesewear and by 1896 the Oxford Curd Gird was in full production.

End of the Dream

The poet Robert Buchanan fed his dog “Plugs” nothing but shredded Curd Gird garments for four years. Plugs never barked but made odd grunting sounds.

The Curd Gird was an overnight success. Soon, cheese-based undergarments were appearing across North America as well as in England and Continental Europe. Queen Victoria herself was rumored to be a proud owner of some curd-based underthings. (This can never, of course, be confirmed, as one didn’t normally speak of these things in polite company especially if one was Queen and Emperor). James McIntyre, Dairy Poet Laureate of Oxford County, is said to have penned an Ode to My Cheesy Shorts around this time though no copy of the poem exists today.

The growing proceeds from the Curd Girds helped keep Flannigan and Emily Chesley in the black through the rest of the depression and helped fund the first of many extensive travels that Emily would undertake – this one to the Yukon to investigate talk of a gold rush. The product was a huge success. Unlike many other Flannigan schemes, the Curd Gird did not cause dismemberment or massive cranial bleeding. (An upsurge in cases of attacks by packs of stray dogs was never successfully linked to the Curd Gird). But, alas, the dream was not to last. In this instance, it was Flannigan himself who ended it.

”Christ! It’s the Master’s undies again.”

Around 1900 Flannigan found out that, in spite of clearly printed instructions noting that the garments could be fed to Domestic Pets, certain members of the leisure classes had taken to feeding their used Curd Girds to Domestics – char women, maids, gardeners, cooks and hired hands. Flannigan flew into a rage when he found that his invention was being abused in such a way. As sole owner of the patents he was able to have all Cheese Stringers withdrawn from service and destroyed. Fortunately, for the people of Woodstock, the economy had revived and conventional cotton and woolen garments were back in vogue. In 1906 one Kenneth W. Harvey founded his first knitting mill in Woodstock. From this modest start an undergarments and hosiery empire (known eventually as Harvey Woods Ltd.) was built. As far as anybody knows, none of the Harvey Woods garments were ever made of cheese. In Oxford County the whole experiment with cheese curd underwear has been largely forgotten.

--"Scholarship" by Thuder