Get a Grip

anything to remind parents of who's in charge. But mom and Dad aren't really helpless. They have plenty of tricks of their sleeves when it comes to getting their little ones back in line. Of course, Santa sees them when they're sleeping and when they're awake, lest they want to end up on the naughty list at Christmas time, and they can have their toys taken away if they refused to clean their rooms or get in the bath. Wind told. But as the days drag on and patients wear thin,

moms and dads need a little help. For British parents after World War Two that help came in the form of a strange mandate. It started in ninety six, just as televisions were starting to pop up in living rooms across the U S and the UK. A new generation was being born, the baby Boomers, and parents now had a brand new way to keep their children entertained. The BBC was the only game in town after the war, and so it took up the responsibility to provide educational

programming to children all over Britain. Many of its original shows featured puppets, variety programs, and dramatic performances of children literature classics. These presentations aired primarily in the mornings and afternoons. At night, though, the television became the parents domain. Once the kids were in bed, mom and dad could unwine to watch the news or get lost in a drama program.

There was just one problem. Getting the children bathed and tucked in before prime time programming kicked off was almost impossible. They didn't have te bows back then or streaming channels on the internet, and stations didn't broadcast twenty four hours a day like they do today. Reruns just weren't a thing. In order to watch something new, everyone had to be in front of the TV at the same time to see it. Otherwise, they could hear about it at the water cooler the next day at work. But the BBC

had a solution. Since it earned its money from mandatory subscriptions paid by TV set owners, it did not rely on advertising revenue to keep the lights on. Therefore, it was able to shut down broadcasting operations for an hour each night to allow parents to put their kids to bed without missing any of its evening programming. It was called the Toddler's Truce and it was just a fact of life for British families from the midnighteteen forties to

the mid nineteen fifties. They didn't think twice about having an extra hour at night to wrap up their parenting duties. After all, this was what a publicly funded outfit like the BBC was supposed to do, function for the benefit of the average citizen. Some government officials, however, thumbed their noses at it. They believed that it interfered with an individual's choice to watch TV whenever they chose, but parents

loved it. Things went well for about a decade until nineteen fifty five went a new channel launched, I t V was the first network to offer commercial programming, which meant to Unlike the BBC, it required advertising to generate revenue, and there was no way it was going to survive shutting down for an hour every night like the BBC, especially when the BBC was pulling in money whether it was broadcasting or not. They saw the Toddler's Truce as anti competitive and so I t V lobbied to have

it lifted. It took about a year, but in nineteen fifty six in agreement was reached between the government and the television stations to resume programming between the hours of six and seven pm each evening. All in all, the removal of the truce was a success in that it garnered almost no complaints from unhappy parents. After the first show has went live on February six of ninetifty seven, only six calls to the BBC were made by people who frowned upon the change. The Tyler's Truce was an

honorable way to make life a little easier for new parents. Sadly, it fell victim, as most things do, to capitalist greed. Luckily, a new technology used by TV stations was only about twenty years away from hitting the home consumer market. And it would allow people to record their favorite shows to watch later, you know, once the kids were finally asleep.

It was called VHS. Given the solitary nature of being a writer, it is all too common to see famous writers and artists who keep the company of animals, and more times than nut turned them into muses themselves. Mark Twain had his cat Bambino, Flannery O'Connor had her peacocks. Ernest Hemingway had a six toed kitten named snow White.

And then there was Charles Dickens, forever remembered for his timeless tales of orphans and the impoverished, as well as for his social commentary and criticism of the socio political climate of industrial England. Dickens had a veritable zoo at home with him at all times. He had cats, dogs, birds, and much much more. But there was one pet that Dickens loved more than all the rest. It was quite the intelligent animal, too, although it had a tendency for

peeling and eating paint. One time it even drank liquid white paint from a tin. After indulging in paint a bit too much. A vet was called a ministering a powerful dose of castor oil, but to no avail. He could not save dickens precious animal. Dickens may have mourned the poor creature, but his children were reportedly thrilled to be rid of it, since it had a nasty have of nipping at their ankles. Not wanting to simply part ways with his pet, however, Dickens purchased himself another of

the same animal. And what did he name it? Well, I'm glad you asked, He named it the exact same thing that he had named the first. However, this new rendition was, according to dickens daughter Mami, mischievous and impudence, and thus quickly made way for a third of the

same animal, and yes, of the exact same name. Clearly, there was something about this animal and it's breed that really stuck with Dickens, because after the demise of this third iteration of it, he moved on from purchasing new attempts at the same animal to having the latest and supposedly greatest stuffed and placed on the mantle. They're living in still life. It could not nip at the children's ankles,

nor could it consume mass quantities of paint. But Charles Dickens didn't just love and care for this pet, he also wrote about it, with the animal taking on a prominent role in Barnaby Rudge, the Story of a Simpleton and as pet wandering in and out of the story. And that pet's name, you guessed it, the exact same name of the pet that Dickens had both stuffed and alive, seemingly at all times. But the story of this endless animal and his forever repeating name does not end there.

Following the death of Dickens in eighteen seventy, the stuffed animal was purchased and put on display at the Free Library in Philadelphia, and the living versions they're still going to the Tower of London, known for keeping these animals as well, is now on their third successive animal by this same name, the exact same that Dickens kept, the exact same number of times. And you can bet that when this latest one goes by paint or by fox, as the previous one had, there will be another, and

another and another. This seemingly never ending animal was known as Gripp, and he was a raven and remarkably intelligent raven. In fact, as most ravens are, Dickens himself wrote that when the original Grip died from drinking paint, he first looked to Dickens, said hello, old girl, and then croaked.

This was apparently Gripp's favorite thing to say. The creative legacy of Grip the Raven didn't just end with Dickens, though, no. A bird that had been around that many times, both living and stuffed, and even put into a novel, rarely sees its influence confined to the works of just one man. When Dickens made a trip to America in eighteen forty two, he brought one of those Grips with him As he

made the rounds. He met with many of his American contemporaries, but none were as impactful as one particular meeting he had with a young writer named Edgar Allan Poe. Poe had been struggling to find his own muse, but he was so struck by Dickens bird that he decided to write a little about a raven himself, a raven from the saintly days of yore, who said, and I quote nevermore. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Ye