The marketing dept. of the publisher I'm writing for is full of people who have their ... how shall I put it?... well, who have their Degrees in Marketing.
And they have decreed that my history of sanitation book for teens shall be called something I cannot tell you because of legal constraints (really, until the book is published, it is legally the publisher's secret), but believe me, it's lame.
Lame, and clunky.
In truth, I didn't come up with very great titles myself, but at least they didn't sound like a bag of garbage being dragged down stairs.
Anyway, I've now got all sorts of fun titles for chapters and B-heads (the sections within chapters), mostly drawn from quotes.
Like Muck and Filthe, from a letter 54 London slum-dwellers wrote to the Times in 1849:
This is my absolutely favorite quote, below. It's from the records of the London assize of nuisance (the court that heard nuisance complaints).
Seems Bad Neighbors are a staple of history, and so are do-it-yourselfers who do it wrong.
But actually, I admire this Alice Wade, who came up with her own solution to the sanitary shortfalls of medieval London. The court heard this complaint against her in 1310:
The manuscript is due in ONE WEEK, so off I go!
And they have decreed that my history of sanitation book for teens shall be called something I cannot tell you because of legal constraints (really, until the book is published, it is legally the publisher's secret), but believe me, it's lame.
Lame, and clunky.
In truth, I didn't come up with very great titles myself, but at least they didn't sound like a bag of garbage being dragged down stairs.
Anyway, I've now got all sorts of fun titles for chapters and B-heads (the sections within chapters), mostly drawn from quotes.
Like Muck and Filthe, from a letter 54 London slum-dwellers wrote to the Times in 1849:
“We live in muck and filthe. We aint got no privez [privies, or outhouses], no dust bins, no drains, no water splies, and no drain or suer in the whole place. ... The Stenche of the Gully-hole is disgustin. We al of us suffur, and numbers are ill....”And––also from 1849 (the year of a cholera epidemic)–– A Derangement of Stomach and Bowels, the words newly retired president James Polk used to describe what he suffered after he caught the cholera that would kill him.
This is my absolutely favorite quote, below. It's from the records of the London assize of nuisance (the court that heard nuisance complaints).
Seems Bad Neighbors are a staple of history, and so are do-it-yourselfers who do it wrong.
But actually, I admire this Alice Wade, who came up with her own solution to the sanitary shortfalls of medieval London. The court heard this complaint against her in 1310:
...Alice Wade has made a wooden pipe connecting the seat of the privy in her solar [a "solitary" room], with the gutter (provided to receive the rainwater and other water draining from the houses), which is frequently stopped up by the filth therefrom, and the neighbours under whose houses the gutter runs are greatly inconvenienced by the stench.--From "London assize of nuisance 1301-1431: A calendar," British History Online
Judgment that she remove the pipe within 40 days etc."
The manuscript is due in ONE WEEK, so off I go!
