Author: Purple Brolly

The London Underground, or ‘the Tube’, was the world’s first subterranean railway network and without it and its 270 stations, London would be engulfed by cars and extra roads. Of its 253 miles, 45% are below ground, as much as 221ft. down. During WW2, Tube stations doubled up as air raid shelters and even housed makeshift factories for the manufacture of aircraft components.

It opened in 1863 with the Metropolitan line. The trains were steam-powered and had three classes of carriage. In 1890 the first electric railway was introduced as more lines were added. In 1900 the Central line was the first to lie entirely underground. The whole system was unified in the early 1900s and the flat rate fare was launched. The Art Deco design of stations and signs became the corporate style and journey time was cut by installing a driver’s cab at each end of the train.

Inevitably, tunnel construction disturbed cemeteries and goodness-knows-what-else from centuries past. This, along with disused stations and the many suicides committed on Tube tracks, has led to numerous accounts of ghostly sightings and strange noises! These generally occur when the almost 4 million passengers per day have left and the Tube is shut, 12am-5am, for maintenance and cleaning.

(Top image: Rossographer at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

William Addis (1734-1808) from London is the protagonist of a story about the invention of the toothbrush which seems to merge two different events. Addis was a rag trader for the paper-making industry and rags dipped in grit were also used in those days to clean teeth. However, the increasing inclusion of sugar in people’s diets had a disastrous effect on dental health.

At some point Addis found himself in jail for starting a riot, cause unknown. It is said that whilst there, he put together his toothbrush prototype with the assistance of a guard. The fact that this involved drilling small holes in a bone, inserting boar bristles and gluing the back infers that the guard must have been a friendly, co-operative and resourceful sort of chap. Alternatively, Addis’s jail-time may have merely provided the inspiration for his new product.

Nonetheless, this saw the introduction of the toothbrush as we know it today and Addis went on to establish a hugely successful manufacturing business in 1780 which remained in the family until 1996, having incorporated Wisdom Toothbrushes Ltd in 1993. Around 70 million toothbrushes are produced per year by Wisdom and Addis Housewares Ltd now focuses on other types of brush and household accessories.

(Top image: Karolina Grabowska at pexels.com / Public domain)