Charles Babbage, designer in 1837 of the world’s first general purpose computer – the Analytical Engine – frequently worked himself up into a rage about people playing music in the street.
Over the years, these musicians or buskers became more and more commonplace in his London street, playing accordions, fiddles, bagpipes, beating relentlessly on drums, and grinding organs.
Indeed, the character of his once quiet neighborhood changed completely, with coffee shops, pubs, and guest houses opening.
Babbage, who needed peace and quiet to think and work, bristled at the attitudes of some of his fellow Londoners to the buskers:
The great encouragers of street music belong chiefly to the lower classes of society. Of these, the frequenters of public-houses and beer-shops patronize the worst and the most noisy kinds of music… Another class who are great supporters of street music, consists of ladies of elastic virtue and cosmopolitan tendencies…
An organ grinder.
Babbage reserved the greatest part of his rage for organ-grinders, who played from early morning till late at night.
Any relatively quiet street could be instantly transformed into a maelstrom of noise as different buskers vied to be heard.
Babbage described the musical plague that afflicted him in these terms:
The most numerous of these classes, the organ-grinders, are natives of Italy… whose language is a rude patois… It is said that there are above a thousand of these foreigners usually in London employed in tormenting the natives.
Babbage paid musicians more than their usual pennies to leave his street entirely. No sooner did some leave than others spotted an opportunity and took their place. Babbage wrote:
It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons, and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time, destroyed by organ-grinders and other similar nuisances.
The esteemed mathematician and computational scientist estimated that one-fourth of his working life over the previous 12 years had been disrupted by unwanted musicians.
In several of these cases my whole day’s work was destroyed, for they frequently occurred at times when I was giving instruction to my workmen relative to some of the most difficult parts of the Analytical Engine.
Babbage wasn’t the only resident of once quiet streets who paid the musicians handsomely to go away. Indeed, playing music excruciatingly badly often resulted in higher earnings than more melodious performers could hope for. Babbage wrote:
I believe that the greater part of the householders of London would gladly assist in putting a stop to street-music. The proportion of cases prosecuted compared with the number of interruptions, is, in my own case, less than one in a thousand. If the annoyance is not absolutely prohibited by law, the number of the police must be at least double, to give quiet working people any repose.
On 25 July 1864, Babbage finally thought he could rest in peace – not because he’d gone to that great palace of computing in the sky, no – it was because the British Parliament finally passed a law that he had campaigned for: street musicians could be moved on by members of the public who objected to their melodies. If they refused to move on, they faced arrest and jail.
His campaign made Babbage deeply unpopular with London’s buskers. He commented:
I received constantly anonymous letters, advising, and even threatening me with all sorts of evils.
Unfortunately, as he lay dying at age 79 in October 1871, the hated street musicians of his neighborhood extracted their revenge: several of them passed his house at different times grinding their organs. It was a sad end for one of the century’s most brilliant minds.
Author of this page: The Doc
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