The Castalia

was a 'failed ferry' -  it became a hospital ship in 1883 when the Metropolitan Asylum Board bought it, built several chimney-ish warehouses on it and moored it out at Deptford.

Last Saturday I became embroiled in a Metropolitan-Asylum-Board-themed jigsaw game. 

I discovered about the ship and the jigsaw last month when I was busy cleaning bits of boat and basket embedded in the foreshore* in Rotherhithe. There was a 'Receiving Station' at this place, people with infectious diseases like cholera and polio were held here until a fireboat took them away to the hospital ships. The Castalia was the ship for women.

The Receiving Station was bombed out of existence in the war and now a city farm occupies the site

On the footpath outside the city farm is a display case with shards of crockery from the Metropolitan Asylum Board (MAB), there were many items in the services; platescupssaucers, jugs-of-every-size, tureens ...

Items lost in the river often don't go far, the river buries them for a while and then allows them to re-emerge. People picking up pieces of  MAB crockery have noticed that sometimes they fit together - it has become a huge community jigsaw - if anyone finds a piece they leave it on the display case and each month people get together around a big table to try the new pieces and see if they fit. The aim is to reconstruct an example of each piece.


*I have developed a fascination with the Thames foreshore - the bit that's briefly visible at low tide. People come here to enjoy the river and look out for treasures; neolithic tools, bronze-age jewels, bones and bodies and reminders of bodies - It all comes back to bodies one way and another - this is what my anthropology thesis is about

A terrible thing happened in Manchester this week. 

I hesitate to write about any of these attacks because I don't want to fuel the publicity which seems to be the desired outcome -  to say that it's a horror and an unimaginable sorrow for the families concerned is to state the obvious - but it is beyond horrible. My niece and nephew are the age of these children - just going to their first pop concerts ...