Mephitic vapors and dunghills in Copenhagen 1798-1845
That was the title of my thesis from 2008, where I looked at the magazine “The police friend’s” endless stream of complaints about the stench of Copenhagen. The capital smelled foul for a little less than 200 years ago. The contributors to the stink were among other things: Open sewers, cow houses in the basements, waste on the streets and a whale-oil cookery on Christianshavn. The smell made the citizens worried because the stench was seen as life threatening in itself.
Hear more about the fight against the stink. It is a history that touches upon many aspects: The making of a modern city, recycling, waste control, sewerage, illness, manners and enlightenment. And one can ask oneself if the fight against waste is won at all…
The lecture takes about 45 minutes and there’s usually a lively discussion afterwards. Call for further information.
Walter’s wild sex in the Victorian era
A lewd lecture
The Victorian era, named after Queen Victoria who reigned from 1837 to 1901, is for most people synonymous with priggish prudishness and decent dresses that did not reveal so much as an ankle. This is not wrong, but a weird autobiography called My Secret Life published 1888 to 1894 show that not all women succumbed to the notion of being blood- and sexless creatures…
The enormous work of 4200 pages, 11 volumes!, covers a period of approximately forty years, 1830-70 and is almost entirely about sex. We follow a “Walter” through his life where he uses a lot of his wealth on women, as he thinks that “the greatest pleasure in life is fucking” and this he does with about 1500 persons. The writer is anonymous and he has taken great care to cover his tracks, because the book would have earned him a prison sentence because of its open descriptions of sexual intercourses.
Hear more about sex back in the days seen through the eyes of a Victorian gentleman. The lecture takes about 45 minutes and is not appropriate for minors because of the explicit language in My Secret Life. The lecture is an introduction to a hotly disputed work and my angle will be on the sexual practices: Does sex and sexual intercourse change over time?
