THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE GHOST.
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.”
A.D. 1863, 5th February. Nᵒ 326.