Patrick Bade
New York 1900: The ‘Melting Pot’

Patrick Bade - New York 1900: The ‘Melting Pot’

- Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Well, this is a very vibrant street scene from New York in around 1900. And New York at this time was a city of immigrants. United States had taken in 12 million immigrants between 1870 and 1890, and the numbers continued to rise right up until the First World War. And it was, of course, immigration that gave America it’s creativity, it’s energy. It’s immigration that made America the greatest country in the world throughout the 20th century. And those people who carry on about wanting to make America great again, they need, I think, to take this on board. That shutting the doors and trying to keep people out is actually not really a very creative way forward. So here, the famous lines of Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Statue of Liberty, which was the gift from France to the United States to celebrate American independence. And it was completed in the 1880s. And it would’ve been, can you, a thrilling sight to all those people coming over on boats at the end of the 19th century, in the early 20th century. I’m sure that when they first saw that on the horizon, their pulse must have quickened. You can see here, people in different national costumes. And it was in a way, immigrants, of course, are self-selecting to be energetic and creative. There are people at the carriage to up stakes and go to the other side of the world. A huge thing in the 19th century. This is a painting which always moves me. It’s by British artists, Richard Redgrave.

And it’s “The Immigrant’s Last Sight of the House,” in which he’s born. And he turns around to look at it ‘cause he knows he’s never going to see it again. And any contact with his family and friends will be infrequent. No mobile phones, no WhatsApp, just letters that take months to cross the Atlantic. He has another very famous painting of immigration. This is Ford Madox Brown, “The Last of England.” And you can see this young couple are not thrilled about it really. Their faces show anxiety and depression and dread. And so it was a huge undertaking, an an immense hardship to cross the Atlantic, especially with a cheap ticket. You can see here, Orthodox Jews in the hulls of the ship, upstairs, of course, there would’ve been greater comfort, but these are unlikely to have been immigrants. These will be wealthy Americans crossing the Atlantic. And here we see immigrants with all their possessions in small suitcases leaving the ship, arriving at Ellis Island, where they went through this, what must have been, I think, an intimidating and somewhat degrading experience of being processed through the Great Hall of Ellis Island. Of course, there are many funny stories about misunderstandings, people declaring their names, and the officials getting the names wrong, and so on. I’m sure many of you have stories about this kind of thing. So here is, again, Ellis Island. Now, this is a book that came out in 1906, a man called Howard B. Grose. And you can see the title is “Aliens or Americans?” And the theme of this is really his worry about all these people coming into America. He accepts the need for immigration, that they need the people, but he worries about what kind of people are coming in. And he worries about the dilution of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture.

So he doesn’t want Catholics, he doesn’t want Jews, certainly doesn’t want Hindus or Muslims coming into the country. And so there’s a lot of pseudoscience about race at this time. Distortions of the theories of Darwin. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about all of this from Trudy in various lectures. But there’s this pseudoscience of race, which, of course, eventually was completely discredited by the Nazis, measuring people’s noses and their skulls, and looking at different racial types. Mr. Grose, in his book, there are wonderful photographs of different types arriving in American. I’d like to spend some time looking at these 'cause I find them touching, moving, really. The people proudly arriving in America, wearing very often their national costume. Of course, that very often once they got off the ship and into America, the first thing they wanted to do was to shed that because they wanted to become Americans. So here, you can see a woman from Guadalupe on the left, and a woman from Alsace on the right, wearing their local costumes. Albanians on the left, Ethiopians on the right. Romanian Shepherds. I love this photograph on the right-hand side. They really look like extras from a Frankenstein movie, don’t they? Unidentified men. possibly farmhands, but we dunno where they’re from. And Greek Orthodox priests, and a rabbi on the right-hand side. Moroccan, Algerian.

So from all over the world, Dutch, and again, Guadalupe on the right-hand side. Finnish, Swedish. Scottish children proudly wearing their kilts, and some not very happy looking Dutch children on the right-hand side. Italian, and again, Sweden on the right. And this is an impressive family to arrive in America with, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 children. These are Russian Germans. I think they’re probably more likely to be Christian rather than Jewish. Of course, there was enormous populations before the Second World War, before they’re all ethnically cleansed. There were huge populations of German speakers into Eastern Europe. Hungarians, German Jewish family from Eastern Europe. Gipsies, Syrian, English Jews looking, well, English and except little boy, of course, rather exotically dressed. They’re rather typically middle class English of the period. This is a very poignant photograph of eight orphans whose mothers have been killed in programmes against Jews in Russia. And Cossacks, probably the very sort of people that actually carried out the programmes. Programmes that murdered the mothers of those children. And here’s a rather interesting case, Mary Johnson, who arrived in America in men’s clothing. And these photographs, my guess is that these people were unlikely to be accepted. Well, it depends actually on the date that they arrived. Well, everybody who was accepted. But the Chinese, there was a special act passed in 1882 to limit or even forbid the immigration of Chinese into America.

But otherwise, there were no specific racial requirements, but there was a law passed in 1917 that banned the immigration of homosexuals or people with mental or physical disabilities and anarchists. So I suppose these would’ve come under the physical, if not the mental disabilities. And that you could, if you were initially rejected, you could appeal, you can see somebody here coming before the appeal board. But though it wasn’t an entirely one-way traffic. There were people who were rejected or deported. These are German stowaways. It’s not specified why they were deported. Maybe 'cause they just hadn’t paid for their tickets. And this is somebody who I’m sure you’ve heard about from Trudy, the anarchist, Emma Goldman, who was deported to Russia in 1919. So here are the happy people who’ve been through the process on Ellis Island and they come out with their suitcases. And I said, mostly, I think they wanted to become American, although a huge proportion of them actually settled either in New York or not far from New York, and very often in ghettos of their own ethnic groups. So can you imagine somebody coming from a shtetl in Eastern Europe or a village in Southern Italy, they arrive and they see this. It must have been absolutely overwhelming. This megalopolis of New York in around 1900. Human antep, the ultimate example of the melting pot with all these, all the languages you would’ve heard and the different costumes and so on, it would’ve been really amazing.

But it was hard. This was capitalism red in tooth and claw, very little protection workers, terrible exploitation, or awful conditions of working in sweatshops and so on. So you had to be really tough to survive all of this. But of course, millions did and they thrived. This is the young Arthur Rubinstein who arrived in New York in 1906, age 19, to make his debut at Carnegie Hall. And I recommend his autobiography, “My Younger Years.” It’s a very entertaining book. And he’s very vivid in his descriptions of what New York was like for a young European boy. He found it, I mean, he was thrilled with the hotels. The hotels was so luxurious, so comfortable, and hot running water in every room, and sheets changed every day, and so on. That was all amazing and wonderful for him. But he found New York, a very ugly city. He said the only building worth looking at New York when he arrived in 1906 was the recently constructed Flatiron Building that I’ll come to shortly, 'cause he could have walked up 5th Avenue and he could have seen the fake French Renaissance palaces of the Vanderbilts, all 10 of them on 5th Avenue. But they probably didn’t really impress him. After all, he’d moved in very aristocratic circles in Europe. He’d seen the real thing in Europe. But I think the one thing that would really have amazed anybody arriving from Europe in New York at this time was the height of the buildings. And Manhattan, having very constricted space, people needed to build upwards. And this was enabled by two things. One was the development of the steel frame, and I’ll show you for the construction of building. So basically, you build a huge steel skeleton, and the wall sort of hang on the skeleton. And, and that, combined with the invention of the hydraulic lift by Elisha Otis. This is him in 1854, demonstrating to an amazed crowd the lift, and the fact that you could sever the cables and the lift just came to a stop. It didn’t go crashing down.

People were very nervous, of course, initially of going up in lifts in tall buildings. So he patented this in 1854. And here is the design for the lift that was patented. And so Americans were well ahead with this. As late, late as 1889 when the Eiffel Tower was constructed, the French were unable to make lifts adequate to Eiffel Tower. They had to apply to Elisha Otis to help them out. This is the very first building in New York that had lifts installed. This is the Equitable Life Assurance Building. This was in, I think this is around 1870, and it’s nine stories high. But of course once you’ve got the steel frame and the lifts pretty well, quite literally, the sky was the limit. This is the Park Row Building, that was briefly the tallest building in New York, 1897 to '99. And this is 26 stories high. And you can see halfway through the construction on the right-hand side, you can see the steel skeleton on which the outer walls hang. This is the Gillender Building in New York. Well, I hope I’m pronouncing it right. Somebody can correct me if I’m not. This was built also in 1897. Had a very short life. Somebody recently asked me why it was that the Vanderbilt palaces were all demolished. And New York was so dynamic economically and things were constantly changing, and the fashionable parts of town were moving uptown very rapidly. And there was never any thought really at this time for preserving buildings for their aesthetic or historic interests. So buildings were often replaced very, very quickly.

And it’s extraordinary to think that this building, such an impressive building in a way, lasted only 13 years. And it’s also has a certain importance in that it was the first of these very tall buildings to be demolished. And that was, of course, a challenge in a very constricted space, surrounded by other tall buildings. How do you demolish a building like this? And here are two stages of the demolition in 1910. So here is the Flatiron Building that was admired by Arthur Rubinstein. And this is a very famous and iconic photograph, I suppose, taken in 1905, I think this is just a couple of years after it was built by Edward Steichen, wonderfully atmospheric winter day in New York. And again, it’s the necessities of building high on very constricted spaces. Here is the Flatiron Building under construction in various stages, with this very narrow pointed end to the building. Here is a floor plan where you can see it’s like a wedge of cheese, isn’t it? Coming to a point on the left-hand side. But very elaborate stone decoration on the exterior. And this is what the room looks like at the end of the building, as the two diagonals come together. This is the Woolworth Building. This was built between 1910 and 1913, and it was 60 stories high. So this actually was the tallest building in the world for a generation. It wasn’t really till the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930, followed by the Empire State Building in 1931, that this height was surpassed. And you can see here in this photograph that it’s in a neo gothic style. 'Cause it was a challenge, a bit of a problem for architects of these tall building in Europe, how do you decorate them on the exterior? And what style do you choose?

And there are of course the very tall buildings in all sorts of different historical styles in New York. But gothic was one of the most favoured styles. And because gothic has an inherently vertical aesthetic, a gothic cathedral. It’s reaching up into the sky. Here is the entrance hall of the Woolworth Building. And here at the top with all its spiky, gothic pinnacles. And just to make that point here, going back to the Gillender or Gillender Building, it’s a ludicrous building when you think about it because the top of the building is in English Baroque style. It’s imitating Hawksmoor or Christopher Wren. And on the right, that is part of Greenwich Palace, dating from the beginning of the 18th century. But it’s like Christopher Wren or Hawksmoor perching rather uncomfortably on top of a very high building. So the, the gothic, as I said, suited the aesthetic of the very tall building so well that it continued to be used right through into the early 1930s. And we have the Tribune Tower here on the left, which dates from 1920, and the General Electric Building on the right, which isn’t a kind of art deco gothic, neo-Gothic, dating from 1931. So new other amazing examples of engineering in New York. This is Brooklyn Bridge. That was opened in 1883. It was the first bridge to link, to cross the East River. And when it was built, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. This rather alarming view of, just imagine working at that kind of height, the Brooklyn Bridge under construction. Again, I wouldn’t want to be one of those two gentlemen, one with a top hat and one with a bowler hat. And of course, Central Park. I mentioned that America is, of course, the ultimate capitalist country, isn’t it? As I said, capitalism red in tooth and claw, absolutely ruthless capitalism.

And so it was a rare triumph, I would say, of concern for public spiritedness, concern for the well-being of the inhabitants of Manhattan that this huge park, Central Park, was created and not just built over, and it is really the sort of lung of New York. And that was the result. There was a competition in 1857 was won by Frederick Law Olmsted and Culvert Vaux, and it was a huge undertaking. It it also involved a fair amount of ruthlessness because it wasn’t completely uninhabited. There were various settlements, even some of Native Americans that had to be cleared away. And it involved vast earthworks and the creation of lakes and so on. Here again, you can see a map showing this very distinctive elongated narrow shape of Manhattan and the creation of little hills and lakes and various architectural elements and bridges and so on. Beautiful 19th century cast iron work in Central Park. This is the Dakota Building, which is overlooking Central Park on 74th Avenue. I mentioned how New York is moving Northwoods. The fashionable areas moving Northwoods throughout the 19th and the early 20th century. Dakota Building dated from 1880 to '84. This is soon after its completion. You can see how isolated it looks. And it’s called the Dakota Building 'cause the joke at the time was, “Oh my God, it’s so far north, it might as well be in Dakota.” And Central Park, of course, great inspiration to many artists. This is William Glackens.

And parts of Central Park, areas where wealthy, bashful people could show off rather like Rotten Row in Hyde Park In London, or Le Bois de Boulogne in Paris. And here’s his, William Glackens also did many pictures inspired by elegant and fashionable people in Central Park. And another William Glackens. So transport in New York. This is the El, it’s so-called El. It’s the New York Elevated Railway Company. And that was started in 1875, and was such a distinctive feature of New York in the late 19th, early 20th century. There are relatively few other cities that use the system of elevated railways. Berlin had added. And there are two sections of Paris, one very close to me, behind me. The line number two is elevated. And on the other side of the river, there’s also through Montparnasse, there’s an area of elevated railway. And some very striking images of the El, dating from the late 19th, early 20th century. And you can see in the Bowery, this double lead section of the El. And here, a rather terrifying looking accident. So I mean, the El had these elevated stations. Again, there are some actually very similar to this in Paris, the Barbes-Rochechouart and La Chapelle right behind me on the line number two, look very, very similar to this. And these wonderful curving raised railways. Now, 1904, the subway was opened, running the length of Manhattan. This was very important. I mean, for instance, it completely transformed the way that people spent their leisure time. That you’ve got Central Park in the middle of Manhattan, but now you could zoom up the subway, here is an interior picture of the subway under construction. And you could zoom all the way up to Coney Island for your entertainment. So here the El. Sadly most of it was torn down in the 1930s. Now, I’ve completely miscalculated with this lecture. I thought I initially I was going to include a whole section on theatre in New York.

The looking at how roundabout 1900, New York was beginning to rival Paris and London as a very important centre of theatre. All the great stars of the period, Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, they all came to New York and became very great celebrities there. And of course New York also produced its own theatrical celebrities, like Lillian Russell and the Barrymore family. But I thought I wasn’t going to have time to talk about them. So I’ve cut all of that, which is very annoying. 'cause now I’ve got an awful lot of time to spare. And Frank, this is going to be a rather curtailed lecture. We’ll see if there are a few questions, so maybe we can have a bit of discussion. But I wanted to have at least a flavour of Broadway and New York Theatre, and I thought, well, just as sort of Yvette Guilbert was like the voice of Paris, you could say that Sophie Tucker was really the voice of New York, and she began her career in the early 1900s. And you can see she was rather glam, actually wasn’t she, at the beginning of her career. And she, of course, put on a lot of weight and she was famous as the last of the red-hot mamas. Had a very, very long career, lasting right up until the 1950s. So I thought I would at least give you the sound of New York Broadway through Sophie Tucker. And here is Sophie Tucker, offering ladies some very sound advice.

♪ If there’s anything that drives me wild, ♪ ♪ It’s a woman acting like a child ♪ ♪ Because some man has given her the air ♪ ♪ So what ♪ ♪ Girls, that’s one thing we’ve all got to go through ♪ ♪ I’ve had men walk out on me too ♪ ♪ Did it get my goat ♪ ♪ I should say not ♪ ♪ Anytime that I get aired ♪ ♪ Believe me, I am well prepared ♪ ♪ I’m strictly a one man woman ♪ ♪ My rule is safety first ♪ ♪ I’ve always got an understudy ♪ ♪ Who is well rehearsed ♪ ♪ And no one man is ever going to worry me ♪ ♪ I don’t cheat ♪ ♪ I don’t chisel ♪ ♪ I believe in plain square ♪ ♪ When you’re going out for an automobile ride ♪ ♪ I say it always pays to take a spare ♪ ♪ And no one man is ever going to worry me ♪ ♪ I’m a pretty good housekeeper ♪ ♪ I’m a first class cook ♪ ♪ I’m as faithful as the puppy dog ♪ ♪ But just the same, I’ve got an address book ♪ ♪ An address book like a Selfridge’s catalogue ♪ ♪ There’s plenty of fishes in the sea ♪ ♪ I don’t have long to wait ♪ ♪ And as long as I’ve still got my lines ♪ ♪ In the can with plenty of bait ♪ ♪ No one man is ever going to worry me ♪ ♪ Why? ♪ ♪ When a smart man buys a suit of clothes ♪ ♪ He gets two pairs of pants ♪ ♪ Well, smart gal does the same thing ♪ ♪ When she starts out on a romance ♪ ♪ And no one man is ever going to worry me ♪ ♪ And another thing ♪ ♪ As long as there’s a brush man with a brush to sell ♪ ♪ And as long as there’s a lounge in any large hotel ♪ ♪ No one man is ever going to worry me ♪ ♪ I’m a do-right gal ♪ ♪ I don’t run loose ♪ ♪ I’m not the kind of a woman that meanders ♪ ♪ But just the same if a man takes me for a goose ♪ ♪ He’s going to find out I’m ♪ ♪ one goose who knows her ganders ♪ ♪ You see, I believe in giving tit for tat ♪ ♪ That’s the way I live ♪ ♪ And I’m entitled to a hell of a lot of tat ♪ ♪ For what I’ve got to give ♪ ♪ And no one man is ever going to worry me ♪

• Right. Well, let’s see what.

Q&A and Comments:

This is Susanna. I’ve heard that immigration officers getting the names wrong is a myth. Apparently, the names were taken from the ship’s manifest of passengers. Is this correct? I dunno the answer to that. You may be right. But it’s probably one of those, there are so many stories, aren’t there? That they may be urban legends.

Q: Do we know the percentage of immigrants who are rejected in Ellis Island?

A: I dunno that, but I don’t know if anybody knows that.

This is Ruth Miller. My grandfather and his brother who immigrated to Canada at different times, both ended up with the first English name, Charles.

My grandfather was from his Yiddish name, Nechemya, and his brother from his Yiddish name, Yechiel. I dunno how they get to Charles from that. I said maybe the ch- in it was what led them to Charles. Shout out to Chicago, which was the birthplace of the skyscraper. Yes, indeed. Chicago, very, one of the great centres of modern architecture altogether, of course. There was a terrible bias against immigrants from Asia. For example, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which I mentioned, yes, in 1882, not repealed until 1943. With back-breaking labour, Chinese and other immigrants made it possible to build a transcontinental railroad.

Yes, indeed. Seneca Village was cleared, yes, to accommodate Central Park. It was mainly inhabited by free Blacks and Irish immigrants. There also several churches in Seneca Village. Thank you. Much of the construction in all these tall buildings was done by native labour who were uniquely skilled at working at heights. And of course, there was actually quite a considerable death rate in the construction of these things. Health and safety was not a high priority in those days.

That Sophie Tucker could be on the cover of Vogue today. Yes, she was very gorgeous when she was young, wasn’t she? Contrary to the popular notion that surnames were sometimes changed on Ellis Island, I’ve been told that immigration agents prohibited from changing names. People took affirmative action to Americanize their names. I think that’s very likely. This is Francine Miller. I remember the 3rd Avenue El before and after it was tore down. It made the street extremely shadowed and dark even at the height of day.

This is Margaret. My grandmother was of the generation and taught me how to speak songs to music. Seems to be in a popular at the time and on through Noel Coward. Yes, I think there are probably plenty of people of that generation who did that. And so it’s a gift, isn’t it, to be able to go backwards and forwards between speaking and singing. You do get it in, of course, Schoenberg introducing Sprechgesang And in fact, in my next but one lecture, I’ll play you an example of it in opera was famous example of that moving between speaking and singing is in the clock scene from Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.”

Q: Were the lifts powered by electricity?

A: I think it’s, well, as you see, the very term hydraulic lifts suggested they were powered by water. There are still elevated trains in New York City, but in outer boroughs. Durham Avenue Line, West Bronx, and a line in East Bronx, as well as elevated portions on Queens. Yes, I have taken them in the past.

Speaking songs to music was yesterday’s with Marlon Brando and Rex Harrison, of course. Yes, absolutely, 'cause he really couldn’t sing.

So in “Pygmalion,” can’t remember the name of the film now. The film version of “Pygmalion.” The height of the building, their perceived proximity to each other was remarkable even to a new immigrant of the 1970s. Well, it was for me, when I first went to New York in the 1980s. Add to that, steam billowed from many feet into the air from the manhole covers. Yes. And this immigrant was convinced that hell existed under the streets of New York. That what they were very spectacular. There’s plumes of smoke. About Yiddish theatre, I’m very interested indeed in Yiddish theatre. I would need to do quite, I’ve just actually ordered a CD of Molly Picon, and I’m going to talk a little bit about Yiddish operetta. when I do my talk on American Operetta, which was a thriving musical theatre art form. It’s something that interests me very much, but my knowledge of it so far, I’m afraid, is rather superficial. So I would need to do some work on that. Again, it is somebody else saying it’s a myth about the immigration officers changing names. The immigrants Americanized to assimilate.

And this, again, repeated by Francine. And to try and prevent discrimination. Yes. It’s what it’s very interesting. Something I might talk about. Later in the American series, there’s a whole generation of Jewish singers at the Met, Roberta Peters, Richard Tucker, his real name was Rubin Ticker.

“My Fair Lady,” thank you, Peter. Leonard Warren, his real name was Warenoff.

Q: Why was that that whole generation of Jewish singers at the Met who made their debuts in the 1940s all gave themselves Anglo-Saxon names? Was that to avoid prejudice?

A: That is an interesting question.

Q: Was the El successful after it was built and why was it disbanded?

A: I think it was, well it was certainly successful initially 'cause it was the only way to get around by travelling to public transport. I suppose after the construction of the subway and there were the problems, I think it was disbanded for the reasons that were just given, that it cluttered the streets and it cut light. Again, about the getting the names wrong is a myth. It’s funny how these myths grow and persist.

There were squatter shacks in Central Park. Yes. Thank you for “My Fair Lady.” It’s terrible these days. My memory for names, even things you know really well when you need them in the middle of a lecture, they can suddenly disappear.

This is Barry who says, “To this day, I dunno the real name of my bubbe and zayde who came to Cape Town South Africa in 1929. My mother said that the name of my grandparents was not the name that they had in Cape Town.” Thank you. I’m sorry my lecture was so short. I miscalculated.

“My Fair Lady” with Audrey Hepburn, of course. And Rex Harrison, who does it so beautifully. I mean there’s a real art to it, isn’t it? That half speaking, half singing Walter Houston’s version of “September Song.” I dunno what date that is. Because the “September Song” is 1940s, isn’t it? The composition of it. So Vaux is pronounced Vox. Thank you.

This is Francine again whose father spoke about the first subways. They brought him to the North Bronx to a new swimming pool. Yes, it must have been a big change in the city to be able to get around so easily with the subway.

And Rita, yes, my wall of paintings. A new acquisitions today, because usually I go to the flea market on a Saturday, but it was raining yesterday. So I went this morning and I found a whole stack of wonderful drawings that which I came back with in triumph today from the flea market. Jan Peerce, yes, whose real name was Perelmuth.

And Robert Merrill, another example. Yes, absolutely. I can’t remember what his real name was. Hannah, I don’t dust. I have to tell you. I follow the philosophy of Quentin Crisp, that after five years, it doesn’t make any difference. Not every manifest was complete or fully distributed to shore officials. In many cases, the officials sometimes had to ask the individual, leading to occasional confusion on the part of the immigrant whose understanding of the English was limited. That’s interesting. That gives you a little bit more believability to some of those stories about the distorted names. It’s Michael Tilson Thomas grandparents, the Thomashefskys, who founded the Yiddish Theatre in New York, because there’s a wonderful Yiddish film industry as well in the early talking period, in the 1930s. I remember seeing a very interesting documentary about that.

Thank you Laurie, very, for your kind compliment.

And thank you, Tony. As you live down the street from the Dakota, the Calvert Vaux, now I know how to pronounce it, and the Dakota never called the Dakota Building, it’s just the Dakota. Thank you.

Transliterations of surnames in Cyrillic Alphabet cause problems on shipping lines.

Which flea market? Well, the flea market that I prefer is Porte de Vanves, that’s in the south of Paris. It’s smaller than the huge one at Clignancourt. You’re more likely to find bargains there, but it’s weather dependent because it’s not under shelter.

This is Francine whose husband was a childhood friend of Roberta Peters, very, very fine singer. It was a wonderful, extraordinary generation of American singers in the 1940s who very high proportion of them, interestingly, from a Jewish background. I wonder why that was. Currently, Neil Diamond, his real name, but probably his grandfather changed the name, talks and sings many of his lines and songs. Good public TV special about the Thomashefskys.

Q: Did all the pollocks come from Poland? And your grandfather was called Ungar.

A: So, yes, very likely to come from Hungary. Thank you so, so much. You are very kind to me despite my having shortchanged you rather today. Jan Peerce and Robert Merrill both lived in New Rochelle, New York, which is where you live. In fact, our local post office is named after Robert Merrill. I did get to hear him once. He came to do a concert after he’d retired from the opera in London. I’ll never forget it. Was an incredible voice, an amazingly beautiful, smooth baritone voice.

Jan Peerce, of course, was the brother-in-law of Richard Tucker. And they fell out and were not on speaking terms. And yes, John Lennon lived and was murdered outside the Dakota. So lots of interest. Thank you very, very much for offering me so much rich information at the end of my lecture. And I think I, what is my next one? I think it is that I won’t have any shortage of, usually, my problem with all the things, including music is finishing on time. And so I certainly won’t have a problem with finishing early for the forthcoming ones.

Thank you all very, very much, and see you again on Wednesday.