SYMHC Classics: Peter Roget

Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class: SYMHC Classics – Peter Roget

Hosted by Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson Released on January 18, 2025

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Introduction

In the SYMHC Classics episode titled "Peter Roget," hosts Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson delve deep into the life of the man behind the ubiquitous Roget's Thesaurus. From his early fascination with classification systems to his enduring legacy in both science and literature, this episode paints a comprehensive portrait of Roget's multifaceted life.

Early Life and Education

Peter Mark Roget was born on January 18, 1779, in London. His father, Jean Roget, a Genovese pastor, moved to England before Roget's birth but tragically passed away when Peter was only four years old. This loss made his uncle, Sir Samuel Romilly—a prominent abolitionist, legal reformer, and politician—a significant paternal figure in his life.

Roget's mother, Catherine Romilly, described by biographers as domineering and possibly suffering from depression, was highly involved in her son's upbringing. Under her influence, Roget moved to Edinburgh at the age of 14 to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Despite his medical training, his passion for literature and philosophy was evident early on.

Tracy V. Wilson (02:16): "Peter Mark Roget was born on January 18, 1779, in London... After his father died, Peter referred to his uncle as his surrogate father."

Early Career and Scientific Pursuits

Upon graduating from medical school in 1798 at 19, Roget exhibited a keen interest in classification systems, drawing inspiration from Carl Linnaeus. His early work aimed to organize all knowledge into three broad categories: the material world, the intellectual world, and the world of signs. Although his collaboration with philosopher Dougald Stewart never saw publication, it laid the foundation for his systematic approach to knowledge.

In 1799, Roget published his first work in the Journal of Thomas Beddoes, focusing on consumption and its relation to various professions. His tenure at the Pneumatic Medical Institution in Bristol saw him collaborate with Humphry Davy on experimenting with gases like nitrous oxide for medical applications. Roget even documented his disorienting experiences with nitrous oxide:

Holly Fry (06:19): "I seemed to lose the sense of my own weight and imagined I was sinking into the ground. I then felt a drowsiness gradually steal over me..."

Journey Through Europe and Wartime Challenges

At 23, Roget embarked on a year-long European tour as a private tutor for the Phillips brothers. Their journey took an unexpected turn when Britain declared war on France in 1803. Caught in Geneva, Roget faced the difficult task of ensuring the safety of his underage charges. Demonstrating remarkable resourcefulness, he leveraged his Genovese heritage to secure a limited passport and orchestrated a covert return to England.

Tracy V. Wilson (09:32): "It is impossible to describe the rapture we felt in treading on friendly ground. It was like awaking from a horrid dream or recovering from a nightmare."

Academic and Professional Achievements

Returning to England in 1804, Roget took up a position at the Manchester Public Infirmary and initiated Manchester's first medical school by organizing a comprehensive lecture series. By 1808, he moved back to London, continuing his teaching at the Russell Institution and earning his license from the Royal College of Physicians in 1809.

Roget's role as secretary of the Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1811 and his subsequent fellowship with the Royal Society in 1815 underscored his growing influence in the scientific community. His contributions ranged from developing a log-log scale spiral slide rule to writing extensively for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Holly Fry (11:14): "He innovated outside of physiology, inventing a device in 1814 that he called a log log scale..."

Personal Struggles and Resilience

The year 1818 was a turning point marked by personal tragedies. The death of his aunt Anne and the subsequent suicide of his uncle Sir Samuel Romilly plunged Roget into profound grief and self-doubt. Coping with these losses, he found solace in his lecturing at the Royal Institution, which reinvigorated his passion for teaching and research.

Holly Fry (19:03): "In 1837, Charles Babbage wrote an unauthorized Bridgewater treatise of his own... Roget had updated the article... After two years... Roget just stopped participating in any argument about phrenology because at that point he felt that the field was recognized as inherently flawed."

The Birth of Roget's Thesaurus

Throughout his career, Roget maintained meticulous lists of words and phrases categorized by their meanings. This lifelong habit culminated in the publication of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases in the summer of 1852. Designed not in alphabetical order but organized by ideas and concepts, the thesaurus aimed to facilitate more effective and nuanced expression.

Holly Fry (39:54): "The word thesaurus means treasure in Latin, and that was exactly what the author hoped it would be... arranged not in alphabetical order, as they are in a dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express."

The thesaurus was lauded for its intuitive organization, making it a valuable tool for writers and speakers alike. Its success ensured Roget's lasting legacy in both education and literature.

Later Years and Legacy

Despite facing criticism, particularly from proponents of phrenology, Roget remained steadfast in his scientific beliefs. His later years were marked by continued contributions to scientific literature and the refinement of his thesaurus. Roget passed away on September 12, 1869, in West Alvern, England, at the age of 90. By then, over 40 million copies of his thesaurus had been sold, and his work had become a staple in libraries and educational institutions worldwide.

Tracy V. Wilson (44:35): "More than 40 million copies of Roget's thesaurus have been sold over the years. In 1925, Peter Roget was deemed the Saint of Crosswordia by New York Times Magazine."

Conclusion

Peter Roget's life was a testament to the power of organization, resilience, and intellectual curiosity. From his groundbreaking work in medical science to the creation of a thesaurus that has stood the test of time, Roget's contributions continue to influence various fields. Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson's episode not only highlights Roget's achievements but also sheds light on the personal struggles that shaped his enduring legacy.

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Transcript

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And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Peter Mark Roget was born on January 18, 1779 or 246 years ago today. So our episode on him and his thesaurus is today's Saturday classic.

[Holly Fry]

We mention a couple of subjects in this episode that we've covered since then. Our episode on Francis Henry Aetherl of Bridgewater, which I specifically said would be covered later, came out on 2-21-20. And our two parter that covered Humphry Davies self experimentation with nitrous oxide was a two parter that started on April 29, 2024.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This originally came out February 2, 2022. Enjoy.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

So I think it's a safe bet that if you've done any amount of writing, you have probably stumbled across Roget's thesaurus.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, that's, I think one of my earliest experiences of like, here are resources in the library.

[Holly Fry]

Yes, and Roget was a person. Peter Mark Roget, he was a doctor and a scientist who really liked putting things into classification systems. But his life was quite dramatic well before he put together the book that is his legacy. And today we are gonna talk all about that. We wanna give you a heads up that this episode contains discussion of suicide and some detailed discussion because of an event that shaped Roget's life. So if you would like to skip that, jump ahead about two to three minutes to the first AD break, starting when we mention the year 1818.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Peter Mark Roget was born on January 18, 1779 in London. His father, Jean Roget, was a Genovese pastor who had moved to England as an adult. He died when Peter was just four years old. His mother was Catherine Romilly and her brother, the abolitionist, legal reformer and politician Sir Samuel Romilly, became a significant figure in Peter's life. After his father died, Peter referred to his uncle as his surrogate father.

[Holly Fry]

Peter's mother, Catherine, has been characterized by biographers as domineering. She was very involved in her son's life. She likely had depression and sometimes she exhibited paranoia and she really, really pushed her son to be an achiever. When Peter was just 14, his mother moved the entire family, including his sister Annette, who likely also had depression, to Edinburgh, Scotland, so that Peter could study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He did not only take classes intended to prepare him for a career as a doctor, though he also loved and studied literature and philosophy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1798, at the age of 19, Roget graduated from medical school. Even in this early stage of his life, he had this proclivity to study the classification and organization of things that was really apparent. His medical school thesis, which was about chemical affinities, invoked the work of Carl Linnaeus and his classification system, as well as others who had used it in their work.

[Holly Fry]

One of Roget's first projects out of school was, unsurprisingly, a system of classification. This was very, very broad in scope. He wanted to sort all knowledge into three categories. The first was the material world, which focused on natural history. The second was the intellectual world, which included all manner of Philosophies, theories and belief systems. And the third was the World of Signs, which was really about words and communication. And he collaborated on this work with a philosopher, Dougald Stewart, but it was never published.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1799, Roget was published for the first time in the Journal of Thomas Beddoes. This was a series of notes regarding consumption as it related to various professions. Roget also joined Beto's research facility, the Pneumatic Medical Institution, that was in Bristol, England.

[Holly Fry]

In Beddoes group, Roget worked alongside Humphry Davy, experimenting with gases and their possible medical uses. One of the things that they worked on were possible pain management or sedative uses for gases like nitrous oxide. They actually published a paper about it in 1800 that was more than 40 years before such things were ever used in dental work or surgery. And in some cases, the researchers were also experiment subjects. Roget wrote about his own experience with nitrous oxide, which for him was quite disorienting. Quote, I seemed to lose the sense of my own weight and imagined I was sinking into the ground. I then felt a drowsiness gradually steal over me and a disinclination to motion. I was gradually roused from this torpor by a kind of delirium. I felt myself totally incapable of speaking and for some time lost all consciousness of where I was or who was near me.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Roget did not stay with the Beddoes Institute for very long. He left Bristol in 1800 and moved east to London. There he continued his medical studies by working with a number of prominent physicians of the day. One of those was Edward Jenner.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, his connections throughout his life kind of read like the checklist of important scientists and doctors of the period. Peter Roget also made money during this time as a private tutor. He was hired to educate two boys, Burton and Nathaniel Phillips, and also to travel with them on a year long trip around Europe. Roget was 23 when they started their trip, heading first to Paris, where things started out quite well. They visited museums, they walked the city and they took in the culture. And although Roget was not exactly in love with French life, he wrote some very disparaging things about the French people. He was happy to be making money and traveling, and when they moved on to Geneva, he found that to be quite enjoyable.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But then they got trapped there. On May 18, 1803, Britain declared war on France and Napoleon Bonaparte declared that all adult British citizens in French territories were prisoners of war. That means Roget was part of that group. Much to his shock and surprise, his charges, though, were not affected. They were under 18 and he didn't just want to send them off on their own, hoping they would make it home safely. He tried to petition the French government for an exemption because of their situation, but when that failed, he started reaching out to their father's business contacts in Switzerland to try to find these boys a safe haven. He moved the boys first to Lausanne and then to Neuktel.

[Holly Fry]

Then he did something rather ingenious. So, if you'll remember, we mentioned at the top of this episode that his father, Jean Roget, was from Geneva. Peter did an impressive bit of bureaucratic dancing, and in less than 24 hours, he managed to track down his deceased father's birth certificate and a government official to provide certification that Peter was Jean's son and thus eligible for Genovese citizenship. This whole business had, according to Roget, required a bribe.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This let him get a limited passport to rejoin the Phillips brothers, but then to get home, they had to sneak through small towns, never speaking English in front of anybody, making some more bribes along the way. Eventually, they got to unoccupied Germany and from there they were able to get passage home. Roget later wrote of this ordeal, quote, it is impossible to describe the rapture we felt in treading on friendly ground. It was like awaking from a horrid dream or recovering from a nightmare.

[Holly Fry]

Back in England. In 1804, Roget moved to Manchester and took a job at the Public infirmary. In addition to his work as a public health physician, he also put together a lecture series there. Several, in fact. The first was 18 lectures grouped together as an offering of the College of Arts and Sciences. And in these classes he returned, as ever, to his love of classification. To form the curriculum, physiology was broken down into four units of classification, covering the human respiratory, nervous, mechanical and reproductive functions. He also taught animal physiology, although that was separated out into a different course of 15 lectures.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Because of his efforts in assembling those educational courses, he's credited with starting Manchester's first medical school. But Manchester didn't keep Roget for long either. In 1808, he moved once again to London. He set up a private practice, but also continued teaching. This time it was at the Russell Institution, and he built on the lecture plans he had worked on in Manchester.

[Holly Fry]

In 1809, he finally gained his Royal College of Physicians license, and at that point he joined the Medical and chirurgical society.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1811, he became the Society's secretary, and in that role he headed up the Society's periodical transactions. In 1812. He published his own paper in it, which was about the detection of arsenic in poisoning cases.

[Holly Fry]

That same year, he also became the professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Royal Institution. Throughout his time as a lecturer there, establishing a framework of classification for any subject was always imparted in his lectures. One of the major concepts he was working on through all of his practice and teaching was the idea that the brain itself was subconsciously classifying things just as part of a person's perception of the world. And he referred to the brain as, quote, an organ of association.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He innovated outside of physiology, inventing a device in 1814 that he called a log log scale. This was a spiral slide rule that could add the logarithms of logarithms. The paper on this was published in 1815, and it contributed to Roget becoming a Fellow of the Royal society of London.

[Holly Fry]

1815 also marked the beginning of a new job that was decidedly in Peter Roget's lane. He started working with Encyclopedia Britannica, and his writing there included biographies of various scientists and thinkers of the day, as well as articles about medical science itself. And this writing, truthfully, is a little bit of a mixed bag. If you look at it now. It was all pretty advanced for the early 19th century, but today, obviously, a lot of it is outdated or just flat out wrong. He wrote a significant article on the kaleidoscope, which expanded available knowledge of optics and the workings of the human eye. And he produced a lengthy article on physiology. And in that physiology writing, he continued to espouse his approach to categorizing the workings of the human body.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This was where an area that Roget had been interested in really came to the forefront. That was the nervous system. At this time, knowledge of the nervous system and exactly how it functioned were still pretty primitive. That was something Roget acknowledged in his writing. But he did note, as others before him had, that the nervous system quote bears a greater resemblance to the transmission of the electric agency along conducting wires than to any other fact we are acquainted with in nature.

[Holly Fry]

In 1818, Roget's family went through a horrible series of tragedies. It began with his Aunt Anne, that was the wife of Sir Samuel Romilly, dying of cancer on October 29th of that year. Peter had been her doctor. Samuel had been at her bedside for weeks, in the end forgoing sleep and food. And once she died, his own physical and mental health quickly declined from the neglect and the stress of the situation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On November 2, Sir Romilly asked his daughter Sophia to go get Peter Roget. Peter was also his doctor, so this wasn't a surprising request for somebody who was obviously ill. But when Roget arrived, it became apparent immediately that this errand had been a ruse. Romilly had wanted privacy because he intended to end his life. Once Sophia had left, he had cut his own throat, and Peter arrived just afterward. Rose tried to treat his uncle, but after scribbling down the cryptic words, quote, my dear, I wish on a piece of paper, Romilly died in his arms.

[Holly Fry]

After that, Peter's mother, Catherine, also fell into her own deep depression. She became very, very paranoid. She was certain that the house staff was working toward her demise, and she progressively became kind of closed off from everyone. She alternated between paranoid episodes in near catatonia for the remainder of her life.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Coming up, we'll talk about how Peter Roget's work at the lectern was what helped get him through all of this. First, though, we'll take a quick sponsor break.

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[Holly Fry]

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Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

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[Holly Fry]

Unsurprisingly, given what he had just been through, Peter took several months off of work after his uncle's death, and he also wrote to a friend that his confidence was deeply shaken. He wasn't even sure he should be a doctor anymore, but he also knew that he couldn't easily switch professions at that point in his life. And so he restarted his career sort of by going back to lecturing at the Royal Institution. He described it as like starting at the bottom of the ladder and just rebuilding. But his lectures there were very well received and very well reviewed, and this reinvigorated his passion for his profess. He realized that he really was better at educating in research than he was at working with patients, so he slowly cut back on his time in practice until he was working entirely in writing and lecturing.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It also took him several years to complete an entry for Encyclopedia Britannica under the heading of Physiology, but when it was completed, this was a significant addition to the compendium. One of the interesting things here is his assertion that mental functions like remembering and thinking are not for physiologists, but for psychologists to contemplate.

[Holly Fry]

Of course, we know they're interlinked in their physiological processes involved, but at the time he was like, no, no, we're just going to talk about the mechanics. Peter Roget's encyclopedia entry that examined deafness and muteness was quite insightful, actually, for its time. Again, still pretty outdated, looking at it now. But he was one of the first to really make the case that hearing and speech issues were not indicators of any kind of lack of intelligence, which was a commonly held and, of course, deeply incorrect belief of the time. And he suggested that treatments with things like speech therapy, sign language learning, and education in written forms of communication could help bridge that gap.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A lot of what he wrote for the encyclopedia was crossover material that he was also working on in his own research. The two branches of his work really fed into one another. One particular area in which this happened was his writing regarding the structure of the human brain. When Roget's editor tasked him with writing an entry on cranioscopy, there were a number of new ideas in the field. This entry was needed to help people sort out all the different ideas that people were espousing. Roget's writing in this effort was unflinching in his criticism of some of his contemporaries.

[Holly Fry]

Johann Caspar Lavater was a theologian who had advanced his theories that a person's appearance could offer clues to their intellect and behavioral development. And he did that in the late 18th century. That was not really a new idea. Throughout the 18th century, that was a growing theory, and his work was followed by the work of Franz Joseph Gall, who developed a system called craniology. This would eventually become known more as phrenology. For example, Gall believed that he could palpate a person's head and correctly determine that person's natural talents and skills, as well as their deficiencies. When Roget took a close look at all of Gall's writings on craniology, he just found it fundamentally flawed. And he wrote exactly that in his Britannica article on the subject, writing, quote, nothing like direct proof has been given that the presence of any particular part of the brain is essentially necessary to the carrying on of the operations of the mind. Of Gall's methodology, Roget wrote, quote, with such convenient logic and accommodating principles of philosophizing, it would be easy to prove anything. We suspect, however, that on that very account they will be rejected as having proved nothing.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Although Roget had been thorough in his examination of craniology and he had explained his logic and the ways in which he had shown Gall's method to be faulty, there was a significant backlash to the encyclopedia entry. That backlash was even among other physicians. People who were starting to make their living as phrenologists, of course, were incensed. They said that Roget simply could not comprehend the science involved in their work.

[Holly Fry]

A team of brothers, Andrew Comb, who was a doctor, and George Comb, who was a lawyer, wrote that, quote, the publishers of the encyclopedia may yet find cause to regret having ever had the disadvantage of your pen about Roget. The two of them had, of course, started a phrenology business, and in response to their critique, when the next edition of Encyclopedia Britannica was released, Peter Roget had updated the article. He changed the entry title from Craniology to Phrenology. He made clear that the validity of phrenology was on phrenologists to prove, and he included a 21 page addendum to the article in which he refuted all of the Comb brothers points. He had consulted numerous scientists and doctors on the matter to assure readers that he was not writing strictly from his own experience, and none of them, quote, afforded any evidence favorable to the doctrine. After two years of back and forth with the Combs brothers in print, Roget just stopped participating in any argument about phrenology because at that point he felt that the field was recognized as inherently flawed.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Roget wrote for other publications in addition to Encyclopedia Britannica, including the Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, and later the Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine. He wrote entries on a range of medical subjects, including tetanus, asphyxia and aging.

[Holly Fry]

Outside of requested or assigned topics from his editors, he continued to do his own research. Somewhere in the late 18 teens or early 1820, Roget met Michael Faraday and Joseph Plateau, and that led him to start his own experiments in optics. He had, as we just mentioned, already written about kaleidoscopes and their possible improvements, but at this point, he really started working with them to see how they could be used to elicit various responses from the human eye as a research and diagnostic tool, and he published his findings in his paper on the voluntary actions of the iris in 1820. He suspected that his claim to be able to manipulate the iris might be met with questions, and he was clear that he could prove his work if challenged. Writing quote, when I have stated that I possess the power of dilating and contracting at pleasure the iris, the fibers of which are usually considered as no more under the dominion of the will than the heart or blood vessels. My assertion has in general excited much astonishment. Such, however, is strictly the fact I can easily satisfy any person who witnesses the movements.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

As he was becoming really well known for his science writing, Roget married Mary Taylor Hobson. That was on November 18, 1824, in St. Philip's Church in Liverpool. This was truly a love match. The couple eventually had two children, a daughter named Catherine. Mary, who went by Kate, was born in 1825. They also had a son, John Lewis, born in 1828.

[Holly Fry]

Not long after he got married, Peter wrote about the optical illusion that became his most well known work in that area. It was something that he described as, quote, the illusion that occurs when a bright object is wheeled rapidly round in a circle, giving rise to the appearance of a line of light through the whole circumference. This became more commonly known as the spoke illusion, and it started when Roget simply noticed the wheel of a cart on the street turning through his window. He and Mary had only been married a few days at that point. They had skipped a honeymoon. And when he saw it, he apparently said, mary, I have just noticed something truly remarkable about human vision.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He saw how the spokes of the wheel looked like they were curved, even though he knew they were not. And he was instantly curious about what was happening with his vision and perception to create this illusion. The story goes that he went out to the street and flagged down a vendor with a cart and offered to pay him if he would just roll his cart back and forth for him for a while so he could study the wheels. As the cartwheels turned at his direction, Roget took detailed notes. He came to the conclusion that what was happening was that his eye was taking in the movement as frames and what looked like the spokes of the wheel bending was really retinal after images.

[Holly Fry]

In 1827, Roget became secretary of the Royal Society.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1829, Francis Henry Edgerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater, died. Francis was an eccentric fellow and will almost certainly be a show topic in the future, but he's important to the life of Peter Roget because when he died, he left 8,000 pounds to the Royal Society with the use of the money clearly spelled out. He wanted the greatest minds of the day to write essays on the theme, quote, the goodness of God as manifested in the creation, and then that would be collected into book form so that a thousand copies of it could be printed. This project became known as the Bridgewater Treatises and it went to press with eight parts and of course Peter Roget was a contributor.

[Holly Fry]

Oh, Bridgewater. I can't wait to do that episode. For a variety of reasons, Roget wrote a two volume title for the Treatises which was Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology. He took this project extremely seriously and he ended up writing more than 600 pages for it. More than 250000 words. And it was all meticulously organized and accompan by illustrations. Roget believed at the time that this was the most important project of his life. In these pages, while explaining the most up to date information on scientific concepts, he also made the case that the order of nature and what appeared to him and many others to be something that was carefully designed was proof that there was a God. Roget's treatise was published in 1834.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He had written through yet another devastating loss. In the summer of 1832, Mary was diagnosed with cancer. As her illness progressed in the winter, Roget hired Agnes Catlow to take care of the children and their education. Agnes was also one of the illustrators for Roget's Bridgewater Treatise. Mary died on April 12th of 1833 and she was buried in St. George's Church in Bloomsbury. Peter's grief was really intense. He talked about not wanting to be alive anymore. And through the loss and the grief, Agnes Catlow remained. She really held the household together.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, she and Kate were very, very close for years and years and years. And as he had come through this darkest period of his mourning, it had been returning to writing his treatise that had really kept Roget going. The same year that it was published, he moved into a new position at the Royal Institution. He became the first to hold the role of Falerian professor of physiology.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Just as some of Roget's prior writing had garnered criticism, so did this treatise. Though this time the roles were somewhat reversed. In 1837, Charles Babbage wrote an unauthorized Bridgewater treatise of his own, titled Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. A Fragment. In this he made sharp criticism of Roget's work. While Babbage didn't discount the existence of God, he strongly objected to the idea of using science to explain the divine. Babbage's position was much more along the lines of thinking that God had created the universe, but a deity was not intervening in the ongoing development of natural law and our understanding of it in the long run. While Roget may have thought he was working on his most important writing yet, his participation in the Bridgewater treatises didn't really get all that much attention outside of criticism like Babbage's, a new person.

[Holly Fry]

Was about to enter Roget's life at this point, and we're gonna get into that right after we hear from the sponsors that Keep Stuff youf Missed in History Class going.

[Jon Stewart]

Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show, and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports, and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondence and contributors, and with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maria Tremarki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremarki]

Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's a fact.

[Maria Tremarki]

We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective.

[Holly Fry]

And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories. There's one for every story we tell.

[Maria Tremarki]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Danny Trehlve]

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tale from the Shadows presented by Iheart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures, Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Tura Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

[Os Velozian]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaloschen, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Os Velozian]

And often on tech stuff we travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Maria Tremarki]

One of the kind of tricks for.

[Holly Fry]

Surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's.

[Os Velozian]

New energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oz and I will cut through the.

[Holly Fry]

Noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Os Velozian]

Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

In 1837, the family governess, Agnes Catlow, left her job with the Rogets to set up a school. Peter hired a woman named Margaret Spowers to replace her, and while Roget and Spowers never married, they soon began a romantic relationship and they lived as a couple. Although secretly they did not publicly behave as though they were a couple. Spowers lived with Roget for the rest of her life.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the 1840s, Peter Roget's career took a number of hits. Marine biologist Robert Grant accused him of taking many of his ideas and claiming them as his own in the Bridgewater Treatise. In response, Roget had the Lancet print all of his correspondence with grant from the 1830s when he was working on the project. That included him telling Grant that he was using the information in the treatise and that Grant would be acknowledged in it, which he was. This made look like Grant had overblown things that still hurt Roget's reputation.

[Holly Fry]

Next, Roget was criticized by the Lancet for what they felt was him slighting another scientist by keeping his writing from being published by the Royal Society. And for this, the Lancet and many other scientists at the time called for his dismissal. Then Roget was part of a bigger scandal for the Royal Society, in which the Society's Royal Medal for Research had been given to Thomas Snowbeck erroneously. The paper that had won had not in fact been read to the Society. That was something that was part of the rules of that that medal being issued. This once again slighted another scientist, Robert Lee, who had read a paper in midwifery that was lauded as exceptional but had not received any recognition.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On November 30, 1847, Peter Roget, who was exhausted by one scandal after another, resigned as secretary of the Royal Society. He would stay on for one more year to wrap things up. Although he definitely had done some questionable things, he never acknowledged any wrongdoing and called all of the accusations against him malignant attacks. He had been the Royal society's secretary for 21 years.

[Holly Fry]

Peter Roget was 70 when his retirement began, but he was still eager to share his knowledge. And if you read any accounts of him, everyone who knows him comments on how he is in extraordinary good health. And so he was ready to just keep going and doing things. His entire life, from the time he was a boy, he had made lists. This had started as simply cataloging the things around him, but that habit evolved as he matured into listing things related to his studies and then his work. And all of this list making was something that had helped him make order of things in the world. And many modern historians theorize that it was the way he dealt with anxiety and depression, particularly during the many very stressful periods of his life.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He had found a very practical use for one of his collections of lists. Over the years as he was writing, he had kept running lists of words grouping like words together so that he could use them for his own reference. So he decided to revisit that list and prepare it for publication. He had assembled a preliminary version when he was in his mid-20s, but he hadn't gotten it to the point that it was suitable for printing even in his later life. This whole process took more than a decade. He had started it in his early 60s, but it wasn't until his retirement that it was ready. In the early summer of 1852, the first version of Roget's thesaurus of English words and phrases, classified and arranged so as to facilitate. Facilitate the expression of ideas and assist in literary composition, was published.

[Holly Fry]

And while he was preparing that first edition, Peter's daughter Kate had been spiraling with some sort of mental illness. She bounced back for a little while, but she soon had another what's described as a depressive episode. And for a while, Roget had sent her around to visit friends and family, hoping travel would help her. And then there was this idea that she should be a governess, because that might help her focus on other things, but she could not get a placement anywhere. Finally, Roget set her up in her own place with a small staff, essentially kind of banishing the problem from his household. His son and the rest of the family were Pretty mortified that he had done this. Kate did get better, though, and after Margaret Spowers died of breast cancer in 1852, she moved back home with her father for good.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The word thesaurus means treasure in Latin, and that was exactly what the author hoped it would be. Roget stated his intent quite clearly in the thesaurus's introduction. Quote. The present work is intended to supply with respect to the English language, a desideratum hitherto unsupplied in any language, namely, a collection of the words it contains and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it, arranged not in alphabetical order, as they are in a dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express for this purpose. The words and phrases of a language are here classed not according to their sound or their orthography, but strictly according to their signification.

[Holly Fry]

It was verbose gent that a bit, yeah. Peter Roget. The introduction to that thesaurus is so long, like the preface is very long. Now, often if you were to purchase a thesaurus today, even if it is a Roget's thesaurus, it will be in what's called dictionary form, meaning that it is alphabetical. But the initial additions were, and some still are, as Roger's introduction indicated, organized by ideas. He broke them down into classes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Class one was words expressing abstract relations. The subheaders here were existence, relation, quantity, order, number, time, change and causation. Class two was words relating to space, with the subheaders space in general, dimensions, form and motion. Class three was words related to matter, including matter in general, inorganic matter and organic matter.

[Holly Fry]

Class 4 is where things really get intense. This is the words relating to the intellectual faculties. And this is broken down into two sections of its own. First is formation of ideas, which covers everything from operations for intellect in general all the way to creative thought. And second is communication of ideas, which includes nature of ideas, communicated modes of communication and means of communication.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Class 5 is words relating to the voluntary powers, and it's broken down into two sections. Like class four was this time, individual volition and intersocial volition. And class six is words relating to the sentient and moral powers. That's broken down by types of affections. If all this sounds kind of confusing, once you start exploring it, it starts to feel pretty intuitive. It has a certain flow to it, but for folks who never quite got that vibe, there was also an alphabetical index in the back. In total, there were a thousand headings. I definitely remember, like having the. The Roget Thesaurus in this form in the public library. And like thumbing through it. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

And Roget had intended for it to be easy and intuitive writing. Later, in that rather long introduction I mentioned, it is to those who are thus painfully groping their way and struggling with the difficulties of composition that this work professes to hold out a helping hand. The inquirer can readily select out of the ample collection spread out before his eyes in the following pages those expressions which are best suited to his purpose and which might not have occurred to him without such assistance. In order to make this selection, he scarcely even need engage in any critical or elaborate study of the subtle distinctions existing between synonymous terms. For if the material set before him be sufficiently abundant, an instinctive tact will rarely fail to lead him to the proper choice.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And people really liked it. One reviewer noted that you could read through the entire book because Roget had arranged things in such a way that they had a very pleasing flow. It was enjoyable to move through it. The concept was embraced really quickly, and soon there were more printings needed. Roget continued to add to his entries and to refine them, something that all of his years of writing for encyclopedias had no doubt prepared him for.

[Holly Fry]

In September 1869, Roget visited the village of West Alvern on vacation, and he died there on September 12th at the age of 90. He had continued to revise his thesaurus right up to the end of his life, and when he died, his son John took over as editor.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

More than 40 million copies of Roget's thesaurus have been sold over the years. In 1925, Peter Roget was deemed the Saint of Crosswordia by New York Times Magazine.

[Holly Fry]

There are also many other things he's been called. One thing that we will talk about in our behind the scenes okay, his life was a wild ride. So much more than I had anticipated. Yes, I was trying to go for a no Bummers episode and then I got to all of the sad parts and I was like, well, too late. Hot plate.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yep, I understand this for sure. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is historypodcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Jon Stewart]

Jon Stewart is back in the host chair at the Daily show, which means he's also back in our ears on the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend Jon Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is a second term we can all get behind. Listen to the Daily Show Ears edition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your your podcasts.

[Maria Tremarki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarki.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremarki]

Each season we explore a new theme, from poisoners to art thieves.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching.

[Maria Tremarki]

And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails in inspired by each story.

[Holly Fry]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Danny Trehlve]

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me Danny Treh and step into the flames of Fright, an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

[Os Velozian]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff we travel from the mines of Congo to the the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.