When the Hyde Park second Great Exhibition in 1862 had closed its
doors, and the reaction from the bustle attendant on the arrival
and departure of country visitors had set in, so that the halls and
lecture rooms lately crowded with the numerous patrons of the old
Royal Polytechnic were somewhat deserted, there came to the aid of the
Institute a new invention, which people by common consent called “The
Ghost.”
The latter was matured in this wise:—Mr. Dircks, a patent agent, who
had saved some property and was an independent man, wrote a paper for
the _Athenæum Literary Journal_, in which he described an optical
effect that could be performed with sheets of glass. This paper
excited no attention because the explanation of it was somewhat vague
and unsatisfactory. The Christmas of 1862 was fast approaching, when
Messrs. Horne, Thornthwaite, and Wood, philosophical instrument makers,
of Newgate Street, invited the author to see a model which Mr. Dircks
had caused to be constructed. This was the beginning of the Ghost; but
as Mr. Dircks said that an entirely new theatre must be built to show
the effects which he allowed could only be seen by a few people placed
in an upper gallery, and then only by _daylight_, it was no wonder that
the Crystal Palace, the Colosseum, and other places had all declined to
have anything to do with Mr. Dircks or his model, which was now placed
in the hands of Professor Pepper—so called because the Directors of
the then Royal Polytechnic had determined that his title should be
Professor of Chemistry and Honorary Director of the above Institution.
The title was not that of a hair-dresser or a dancing-master, but
was conferred upon him by express minute of the Board of Directors.
Professor Pepper had had his services in establishing classes at the
Royal Polytechnic already recognised by the authorities at South
Kensington, who gave him an honorary diploma in Physics and Chemistry
of the Committee of Council on Education some two or three years before
the ghost was brought out, and at a time when he was sole lessee of
the Polytechnic at a rental of £2,480 per annum, which had to be paid
before a single lecture or entertainment was brought before the public.
The classes Mr. Pepper established were for the study of Drawing,
French, German, Arithmetic, and Mathematics, with, of course, Chemistry
and Physics; and pupils were admitted at very low fees in order to
encourage the working men to attend. He also arranged Monday evening
lectures for the working classes, and reduced the admission to sixpence
if the workmen came with proper tickets supplied by Professor Pepper,
but signed by the foreman under whom the men worked.
All this took place about the years 1858-9, and was continued until
the Institute finally closed its doors, principally caused by the fall
of the stone staircase, and sold all off to a new limited liability
company when Mr. Pepper was giving courses of lectures at the Crystal
Palace, Sydenham. Again, for the last time, and during the absence of
Professor Pepper in Australia, where he stopped ten years, viz., from
1879 to 1889, a sale of the plant and machinery, &c., of the Royal
Polytechnic took place, on the 28th of February and three following
days in 1882. Mr. George Buckland and his friends tried to secure
the lease by purchase; but, not completing the purchase in time, it
was bought by Quintin Hogg, Esq., who has greatly added to the size
of the building, which is chiefly devoted to classes, at least fifty
in number, teaching all kinds of useful knowledge, with a large day
school for boys, who are numbered by hundreds, and are well and most
efficiently taught by competent masters. The Laboratory has also been
enlarged, and is now under the able guidance of Mr. Ward, the teacher
of Chemistry and Physics.
But to return to the Christmas of 1862, ever memorable in the annals of
the Institute because Mr. Pepper brought out the illusion in quite a
different manner from that contemplated by Mr. Dircks, and so improved
and simplified the ghost that it could be shown in any lecture hall or
theatre, if sufficiently large to contain the necessary apparatus.
The following is a narrative from the lips of the inventor of the ghost
improvement:—“Just before Christmas Day in 1862, I invited a number
of literary and scientific friends, and my always kind supporters,
the members of the press, to a private view of the new illusion to
be introduced into Bulwer’s romantic and dramatic literary creation,
called ‘A Strange Story.’ The effect of the first appearance of the
apparition on my illustrious audience was startling in the extreme,
and far beyond anything I could have hoped for and expected, so much
so that, although I had previously settled to explain the whole _modus
operandi_ on that evening, I deferred doing so, and went the next day
to Messrs. Carpmael, the patent agents, and took out a provisional
patent for the ghost illusion, in the names, at my request, of Dircks
and Pepper. The day after the first evening I showed the ghost, Mr.
Dircks came down to the Polytechnic, and after saying how much pleased
he was with the manner in which I had introduced the illusion, ended
by handing me a letter, in which he spoke highly of my work in respect
of the ghost, and gave me spontaneously whatever profits might accrue
from the invention. Moreover, he went to Carpmael with me, and, being
an old and experienced patent agent himself, assisted in drawing up the
patent which is here copied, with my original drawing of the improved
method of showing the ghost by the use of a ‘Double Stage,’ at the old
Royal Polytechnic Institute.”
[Illustration]
A.D. 1863, _5th FEBRUARY_. Nᵒ 326.