With the generous assistance of Petrean Dilip Chandra (m. 1965), Peterhouse was able in 2020 significantly to supplement its collection of works by and about Charles Babbage (1791-1871), best known as the inventor of the difference engine and thus as a pioneer of computing. Although Babbage began his Cambridge career at Trinity, matriculating in April 1810, he moved to Peterhouse in 1812, where he remained until his graduation in 1814.
Expected to excel in his examinations due to his evident mathematical talent, Babbage instead graduated without honours as a poll man, receiving his MA in 1817. Information about Babbage during his time at Peterhouse is scarce. Although he devoted a chapter of his often-eccentric memoir, Passages from the life of a philosopher (1864), to his time at Cambridge, no direct mention is made of Peterhouse, or indeed his decision to leave Trinity. This sort of omission is characteristic for Passages, as Babbage evidently had no intention to provide a full and detailed account of his life in this work, which was written when he was in his mid-seventies. Loose with both chronology and precise biographical information, Passages notably fails to mention his wife Georgina or significant personal tragedies such as the death of four of his family members in 1827. From what Babbage does include on his time in Cambridge, it is apparent he spent much of it playing chess and cards, sailing, and establishing various student societies including the Analytical Society.
With a career of work spanning the fields of mathematics, economics, industry, and early computing, Charles Babbage was one of the most notable polymaths of the nineteenth century. He also held – both to his contemporaries and posthumously – a rather prickly reputation, which is perhaps no better illustrated than in one chapter of Passages that is particularlycredited with cementing this reputation: Chapter XXVI: A chapter on street nuisances.
As is the case with much of the material in Passages, A chapter on street nuisances was published separately prior to the publication of Babbage’s memoirs. It first appeared as a pamphlet under the same name in 1864 ahead of the publication of Passages, and was issued in three editions in that year (two of which are now held by the Ward Library, in addition to Passages itself and related publications).
A chapter on street nuisances conveys Babbage’s contempt for street performers, arguing for their detrimental effect upon the populace, and condemning their imperfect regulation and policing. How Babbage lays out his argument is characteristically clear and analytical. He begins by setting out what he considers to be street nuisances in a taxonomic manner. First are the “instruments of torture”; then the “encouragers of street music”, and finally a list of the musical performers themselves, ethnographically associating different instruments with different groups (Passages, pp. 338-9).
Throughout Babbage builds himself up as the defender of those undertaking worthwhile and intellectual pursuits, pitting him against the idle, less refined, and lower echelons of society who disrupted these works. In this second camp he places servants, children, “people from the country”, and (in a wonderful turn of phrase) “ladies of elastic virtue and cosmopolitan tendencies” (p. 339).
To justify his distain towards street nuisances, Babbage points to the terrible physiological effects of the noise created by them, particularly towards the infirm,
“Those who possess an impaired bodily frame, and whose misery might be alleviated by good music at proper intervals, are absolutely driven to distraction by the vile and discordant music of the streets waking them, at all hours in the midst of that temporary repose so necessary for confirmed invalids”
(A chapter on street nuisances, 3rd ed., p. 240)
Moreover, these street noises cause accidents, for instance by frightening horses and causing them to spook or bolt, and street musicians and bands regularly block thoroughfares. Street nuisances also gravely affected professional musicians by interrupting their studies and destroying “the value of the instructions they are giving their domestic pupils”. Even here, though, Babbage thought these superior musicians should close their windows rather than “permanently annoy his neighbours”. Well-performed music is better than the chaotic tunes of street musicians, but it is still a poor substitute for peaceful quiet.
Babbage’s crusade against street nuisances and other noise was not entirely philanthropic. He was concerned with how they affected him and his work, bemoaning his reduced work rate:
“On a careful retrospect of the last dozen years of my life, I have arrived at the conclusion that I speak within limit when I state that one-fourth part of my working power has been destroyed by the nuisance against which I have protested”
(p. 345)
Babbage took notes on the frequency with which he was disturbed, and found that, during one period of eighty days, he “registered one hundred and sixty-five instances”, in the greater part of which “I went out myself to put a stop to the nuisance”:
“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”
(p. 354)
Such a reduction in productivity could not be tolerated. Babbage related that in order to obtain the peace he most needed for his work, he took the drastic step of buying a house in a quieter area of London with the intention of building a workshop there. However, not long after, a hackney carriage stand popped up nearby. The serenity of the neighbourhood then went downhill, with the arrival of shops and other loud ventures causing the noise and nuisances that Babbage had previously fled from.
Babbage went on to describe his frustrated attempts to stop street musicians both by telling them to desist himself and through legal means such as bringing musicians to court. Babbage’s complaints and efforts to stop those causing street nuisances did him no favours and he recognised that he had become well known for his objections to street nuisances, “I have obtained, in my own [emphasis Babbage’s] country, an unenviable celebrity, not by anything I have done, but by a determined resistance to the tyranny of the lowest mob…” (p. 345). On top of the harassment to which he was subjected in the streets, Babbage described receiving hate mail threatening, amongst other things, to burn down his house.
Despite – or perhaps rather because of – his own perceived hardships at the hands of street musicians, and the acts of retribution he saw as enacted against him, Babbage was defiant about the ills of street nuisances. He was confident of the support of “quiet working” people, devoting the end of A chapter to a call for greater enforcement and legislative penalties against the perpetrators.
Babbage was not expressing a unique concern here. Although his caustic treatise was described by his biographer Martin Campbell-Kelly as a “gift to parodists”, A chapter on street nuisances was representative of a real contemporary concern and shines a light on public debates in the 1860s about the impact of sound pollution caused by street musicians. Most notably, Derby MP and brewer Michael Bass (1799-1884) championed the cause by bringing forward a bill for the better regulation of street music within the district overseen by the Metropolitan Police (Street Music (Metropolis) Bill of May 1864). Bass wanted to give the police the power to arrest or send away street musicians for “any reasonable cause”. To justify his argument, Bass gathered accounts of the distress and injury caused by street musicians, including from Babbage, in his book Street music in the metropolis : correspondence and observations on the existing law, and proposed amendments (London, 1864). Although debated in parliament, Bass’s Bill was unsuccessful and Bass himself was much mocked for his attempts to clamp down on street musicians.
There is some discussion about the importance of Babbage within these debates, especially as other famous figures including Charles Dickens and Alfred Tennyson also contributed to Bass’s work. Babbage’s connection to Bass’s campaign was certainly recognised in the contemporary mind. As with Dickens and Tennyson, Babbage was name-checked in a Commons debate on the Bill on 3rd May 1864 (see Hansard, v. 174, col. 2117) and he appears in the 21st May 1864 issue of satirical magazine Punch in the fourth verse of the song “Brayvo, Bass!”
For those looking for the source of Babbage’s reputation-defining vendetta beyond his bad-tempered determination for a quiet environment in which to work, it has been posited that Babbage’s particular aversion to street nuisances and other sound pollution was a consequence of sensitivity to noise caused by his physiology. After Babbage’s death, his brain was donated to the Hunterian Museum and was dissected in 1909 at the request of the trustees there. The subsequent report (of which Peterhouse holds a copy) “raises the intriguing possibility that Babbage’s acute sensitivity to noise was due to a medical condition involving cochlear degeneration cause by arterial disease” (ODNB).
So much more could be said about A chapter on street nuisances. Whether you see Babbage as simply a grumpy curmudgeon, or a self-parodist, or as a man fighting for an unpopular but justified stance, A chapter provides a fascinating and very personal insight into the mind of one of the most popular figures in Victorian science and industry.
By Dr Roz Green (Assistant Librarian, Ward Library, Peterhouse)
The Perne & Ward Libraries 
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