Just one word of advice to the protestors from a witch used to crossroads and graveyards on cold nights without the benefit of a burning police van to keep warm by - There's a plague out there so wear a mask. And leave your phone at home.
This is about the history of a road in Balsall Heath. The subsequent clear up of the area is a total other history and the city's red light district subsequently moved to Edgbaston before moving onto the internet and any odd corner. The Hound thinks licensing sex work is the way ahead, but nobody listens to me.
The piece is called Revisiting the Wickedest Road in Britain and is by Professor Val Williams. It is about the photographer Janet Mendelssohn.
'Mendelsohn was a visiting scholar at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University from 1967 to 1969. Having studied Social Relations at Harvard’s all-women Radcliffe College, Mendelsohn became interested in documentary photography; in Birmingham she decided to study social conditions in the inner city, and began to work in and around Varna Road in Balsall Heath.
Originally a sedate and elegant nineteenth century middle- class suburb, by the 1960s, Balsall Heath had become known as Birmingham’s major red light district and as a centre for migration from South Asia. The once-elegant houses fell into decay, and were subdivided into rooming houses and shabby flats. Corner shops, pubs and cafés formed the social hubs of the community, and life on the streets was hectic and crowded. The combination of vitality and cheapness meant that, for a time, Balsall Heath became a draw both for Birmingham’s artistic bohemia and for students, as well as a centre for prostitution. Balsall Heath was a highly visible example of British post-war society in transition, with a complex mix of groups, new populations engaging with the more traditional. Balsall Heath was about to undergo a relentless process of slum clearance and Varna Road, along with many other streets in the area, would cease to exist.
Mendelsohn’s Varna Road photographs focussed on the life of ‘Kathleen’ – sex worker, mother and Balsall Heath resident. These remarkable photographs, are intimate and collaborative, as Mendelsohn observed ‘Kathleen’ in her day-to-day life. At the heart of the project are Mendelsohn’s photographs of Kathleen and her family at home. Though Kathleen’s life was a challenging one, and her circumstances extremely straitened, Mendelsohn’s photographs of her are rich and poetic. Intimate, collaborative. Shot in available light, the gloomy, dishevelled interiors of Kathleen’s rooms assume a kind of grandeur, as with Kathleen as a gaunt but sublime Madonna. These are photographs full of warmth and compassion, photographs made by a woman about another woman’s life. No two people could have been further apart than the high achieving Radcliffe student and the impoverished Birmingham prostitute, but there is real connection here.
Outside, on the street, in the café, outside the pub, the photography changes and becomes much more of an observation of life in Balsall Heath as reflected through Kathleen and her circle. Mendelsohn accompanies Kathleen as she chats with friends on street corners, pushes her pram, and visits the launderette; she even photographed the broken down bed where Kathleen took her clients. She observes Kathleen with her children in photographs of great poignancy. This is a many-layered study, where empathy meets sheer inquisitiveness on a massive scale.
A picture gallery of 1960s Varna Road can be found here
Further insight as well as wonderful period shots of the Second City can be found in the film Prostitute.
You may not believe it that the Grand National was held in Birmingham so it's lucky there is film evidence. You also get to see the horses come out of the previous Register Office (now demolished) and glimpses of the Central Library (ditto).
I have three in my collection. A standard Grimaud Grand Etteilla (centre), the Lo Scarabeo Book of Thoth Etteilla tarot (left) and the Lo Scarabeo Tarots Egyptiens from the Anima Antiqua series (right). I am not equipped to tell you clearly what order they were originally published in but can tell you for certainty that none of them was actually designed by Etteilla himself. I love tarot history, don't you?
My investigation is also solely based on the resources available to me - I find the French of Etteilla's own writing to be so old fashioned it is well beyond my schoolboy French. But let's start off anyway. I have three prime candidates to be the African Despot.
The text on the right hand deck identifies him as Busiris, who it turns out was a probably legendary founder of Egypt featuring in some Greek legend:
a son of Poseidon and Libya or Lysianassa,[4]was the ancient founder of Egyptian civilization, with an imagined "model constitution" that Isocrates sets up as a parodic contrast to the Republic by Plato. Plutarch says that his mother is Anippe,[5]daughter of the river-god Nilus.[6] The monstrous Busiris sacrificed all visitors to his gods. Heracles defied him, broke his shackles at the last minute and killed Busiris.
In Diodorus Siculus, Busiris appears as the founder of the line of kings at Thebes, which historically would have been the 11th Dynasty.
According to Hyginus, Busiris was the father of Melite who became the mother of Metus by her grandfather Poseidon.[7]
This part of the mythology concerning Herakles appears to have origins in a corruption of an Egyptian myth concerning Osiris' sacrifice by Set, and subsequent resurrection (see Legend of Osiris and Isis). Source
Theck does give mythological names to the various characters, which was very common at the time. Busiris has the advantage of being African and also connected to the notional Egyptian origin of the tarot.
The LWB of the central fecd identifies the despot clearly as Rehoboam. I would note that that deck tends to take a more biblical approach to the characters depicted, and sure enough Rehoboam was a rather hopeless king of Judah. You can read more about Rehoboam here. I personally don't think he comes across as that much of a despot - certainly not in the Mugabe mould.
So what I have actually found out is that there are two streams contributing to the modern 'Etteilla' decks, one more biblical and the other a mythological reading of Egypt through Greek eyes. Since Etteilla's main thing was that the tarot was supposed to be Egyptian I feel Busiris fits better with the myth.
